A Dog’s Eye

Inflation destroyed my family’s savings … – many stories in Germany begin like this. So does that of young Rolf Nagel, who is born into a completely ordinary family in Hamburg in 1929.

When the Nazis take power, his childhood changes. His father joins the NSDAP. The boy experiences prisoners being murdered, as the family’s fl at is in close proximity to a satellite camp of Neuengamme concentration camp. Fifteen-year-old Rolf is recruited and joins the »Werwolf« group. Ostensibly a secret group of partisans created by Heinrich Himmler, in reality they were nothing but cannon fodder.

Shortly thereafter the war finally ends. Rolf Nagel becomes an actor at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, is on camera with actors of international fame. But the events of the past weigh heavily on him, just as the gaze of a black dog’s eye, an image that haunts him.