two separate senate committees. they will both be questioned about allegations over whether russia interfered in the us election and colluded with the trump campaign. scientists say 8.3 billion tons of plastic has been made since 19505. the researchers say half of that has been produced in the last thirteen yea rs. and this is trending on bbc.com. ivf will be used for the first time to try and save one of the world's most endangered species from extinction — the northern white rhinoceros. more on that story online. that's all from me now. stay with bbc world news. now on bbc news, another chance to see stephen sackur‘s hardtalk interview with niklas frank, whose father was the governor of nazi occupied poland. welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. today i'm in rural northern germany.

stable, prosperous, 21st century germany. but i'm here to talk about the past and its relationship to the present. my guest is the writer, journalist and son, niklas frank. now, his father was appointed by hitler to be the governor general of nazi—occupied poland. he was intimately involved in the murder of millions of people. so, how has this german son dealt with the terrible crimes of his father? niklas, i'm wondering why you have chosen to make your life in the very

far north of germany. is it because you wanted to get as far away as possible from yourfamily background in bavaria? no, i still love bavaria. and every year we have about many weeks in bavaria, in the same village where i grew up. but it was my profession as a journalist at stern magazine, which i worked for 23 years, was based in hamburg. so, i had to lure my wife, she was attached to munich, because she is a big gardener, to her house with a big garden, so we've lived here for 33 years. this place where you now live is extraordinarily peaceful. yes, it is. would you say it has helped bring you some sort of peace of mind? ah, no. no, i don't think that it depends

on the country i am living in. it is in myself i that have found peace, because i acknowledge what my father has done. that i think is the first and most important step. thinking of my father is thinking first about his victims. there is no german around who has not certain pictures of corpses in his mind. and those pictures always remind me of my father, what he did. and especially when i look at him... that's the leather coat of my father. it's a scarecrow. in german, you call it vogelscheuche. and this scarecrow is the most expensive one in germany, i would say, because i bought it from a soldier who had stolen it. the coat, you mean? the coat, yes. and someone gave me a call and asked it if i was interested in the coat of my father and i said yes.

she wanted $500 and i paid it. you mean this old military greatcoat, leather coat, is actually your father's old coat? yes. what i have to admit, since the scarecrow is standing here, i have got a stronger connection to my father. it's very strange. and always, when i'm sitting in our living room,

looking at him and say, "this you have earned, father, being a scarecrow in the end." that's your fault. niklas, i want to hear more about your family history. i want to dig deeper into your relationship with your father. but i also want to get out of the cold north german wind. that is a good idea. why don't we head back into your home? ok, that's great. bye—bye, scarecrow. niklas frank, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. do you feel that you have some sort of a duty to your country to speak about your past? i think so, yes. i have the duty because, by chance, i was born in this family and i could tell the people... ah, how to behave with parents like i had. when do you think you first began to feel that you must speak out as volubly, as publicly

as possible about your father and about your feelings toward your father? it was a growing wish, because of the silence in germany. families, all the families of my friends, everybody was silent. and they didn't talk about the past. and this i couldn't endure, because i always wanted to know how is it that society behaves if it changes to a dictatorship. and i always have a feeling that germany is still prepared to do this. and so i looked closer towards families and friends and connectedness, and ifound out that still there is something in the german people which makes me fear them. fear, your own country and your own people? yes, i would say so. well, i want to pick up on that,

because that's a pretty remarkable thing to feel and to say. but before i get to your thoughts on the country, on germany, i do want to stay with the personal. because it seems to me in that period you're talking about, after the end of the war, and for decades afterwards, many families of senior, top nazis still felt a sort of, a residual, a vestigial loyalty to their kin, to their blood. did you never feel that? no. especially not for my father.

it's slightly different with my mother, because i have experienced my mother as a really fighting motherfor us. but she was a nazi too. she wasn't a nazi. was she not? she was never a member of the nazi party, nor was she a nazi. she hated all this screaming of her husband when he was delivering a speech. and she hated this kind of stuff. but she very much liked the luxury she found through the position of her husband. she was a very cold and inhuman woman. in terms of your father, i want you just to look at this picture with me of your father in his nazi uniform. when you look at him, do you feel anger, rage, what do you feel? angerand rage, angerand rage.

and the next thing was i always... the word which for me is always sticking to my father is, what a coward you are. what a coward. and that feeling isn't just a memory feeling, it's something that is very alive in you. it's very alive, it's very alive. it is still as if he is sitting in your place. i despise him, really. he died, he was hung, after the nuremberg trials,

when you were seven years old. so i'm just wondering how strong your memories can be of him when you were in that castle in krakow, his headquarters, the headquarters of the nazi force in poland, do you really remember what it was like and what he was like? no, i didn't remember what kind of profession he had. i only knew poland was ours. and the castle was ours. and the other castle outside of krakow was ours. and there were our properties. it was almost like you were part of the royal family. yes, it was, it was. and this i enjoyed very much, like my mother. i enjoyed it. what about the truth of the unimaginable crimes and cruelty as a young boy growing up from the age of, well, from being a baby to being six years old. did you have any awareness of what was happening? no.

the only thing was, when i accompanied my mother into the krakow ghettos, when she was shopping, maybe it was one visit, maybe more, but i remember especially this one visit, there was a lot of people, everybody was looking very sadly. and this was the only memory. but i didn't know where it was. later on i talked to my mummy, my beloved hilda, and i told her the flashes of my memory. and she told me it was krakow and we were together and i remembered her sitting beside me in the car. we now associate your father with the holocaust. he was instrumental in delivering millions ofjews and others to their deaths, and he seemed to be enthusiastic about it. was there any way that anybody else in your family could have known exactly what was happening? exactly knew it, um,

his wife, my mother. your mother? she knew exactly. you have to imagine this wawel castle in krakow, it was really like a kingdom. everybody knows each other, yes. everybody talked to each other. they knew exactly what was going on in the death camps and what was going on day by day. you have said, i think, that you have no doubt that your father loved hitler more than he loved his own family. yes, that's for sure. and you use that word love advisedly. you really mean love. really love, real love. it was something of a homosexual kind of love. tell me about your last encounter with your father. he, of course, was tried at nuremberg as one of the top nazis

to be held responsible for the genocide, for the war crimes, crimes against humanity. but before he was executed, you saw him one last time. yes. sitting on my mother's lap, it was a big room on the other side... i will always remember i was sitting behind this window with small holes to understand each other. i was sitting on my mother's lap. and knowing that will be my last visit to him. and he smiled at me and laughed. do you have a picture of him at nuremberg? it is here, during his... this is during the trial. during the trial, yes. so, he smiled. and what did he say to you, what was his last message to you? the last message to me was a big lie. i knew that he would be hanged and he told me, "hi, niki," which was my name in the family, "hi, niki, we will soon celebrate christmas at our house," and i was really thinking, "why is he lying, why is he lying?" let's move forward and think

about the impact of all this on yourfamily. you have siblings, two older sisters and i think two brothers. yes. could you, in the years that followed, talk to them, share feelings with them, actually have the same sort of understanding of what your father had done and what it meant to you as a family? i was living in a boarding school until i finished school. we were separated in different places. but whenever we came together, after a short "hi," we were discussing our father. and then very slowly i found out the very different approaches to my father especially. and this separated me. because your sisters, what, they... three of my sisters defended my father as innocent victim of hitler, himmler and the justice of nuremberg. i would say it cost them their lives.

they died very early. my next oldest sister, brigitte, she wrote in her diary when she was about 16, i7, "i will not become older than our father." and she committed suicide when she was a6, the same age when my father was hanged. my next elder brother was a really great looking guy, very sporty, a very funny guy, and he suddenly started to drink milk, till 13 litres a day and became fatter and fatter and died of all that follows when you are too fat. and he also defended. he was alive in my book came out, and he attacked me in public. it sort of destroyed your family. yes, for sure. what about forgiveness? there are many people

who hear your story, and the rage and the anger that you acknowledge you feel to this very day, and they say there#'s something inhuman about it, because humanity is full of the deepest failings and flaws, and in the end, part of humanity is to find forgiveness. i am an inhuman being. i will neverforgive him. looking around in europe and also in the other countries such as america, wherever, you find a lot of families my father has ruined, has killed a part of those families. and this i can't forgive. never. do you ever wonder if you may have had a better, happier, more positive life if you had found a different way to deal with what is, after all, your father's terrible

crime, not yours? yes, but these crimes, you can say it was my father, but the crimes belong in demolishing demolishing societies, and demolishing families, and killing innocent children. they were the victims, not my father. my father did it, and he gave the signatures for death penalties and for all this kind of stuff. he was responsible by german law — he was the deputy of hitler in poland. so, every death camp, he was responsible for. the true power was with himmler, for sure, but he was responsible. with you talking to me, asking this question, as you can see maybe in the redness of my face, that i become furious again because it was unbelievable in which he was involved,

and which he did actively. but the red cheeks and the fury that you feel, does that not allow your father to define you? what means "define you" exactly? you are giving your father another form of enormous power. he wielded this terrible power over so many millions in poland, and still over you. i think you once called yourself a puppet on a string. why not cut those strings? don't allow your father, even in death, after so many years, to pull your strings. too many victims. let's not just talk about you, though, let's also talk about germany. you introduced that topic earlier, and i would like to return to it. it seems to me that you feel — and i think you used the word — fearful, still, of your own country and your own people. yes.

today. 72 years after the liberation of auschwitz. yes. why? you know my people not so as i know. i don't trust them. nobody talked in the families. the normal german family never really talked about what our fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers have really seen. whether they were cowards, whether they were actively involved in the system, they were silent. and this is like a swamp. a swamp that was never drained. so, here and there in germany you find nowadays, you find these poisoned flowers coming out. and suddenly there's a meadow full of souls, poisoned flowers. but when you say there is suddenly

a meadow full of poisoned flowers, that's where i wonder whether that is fair. this interview is being filmed by three young german men, all in their 20s and 30s. why should they have to bear any sense of guilt or shame or responsibility? no. no guilt, no shame. acknowledge. acknowledge, really acknowledge. if you talk to these youngsters, really, you will find out a lot of uncertainty, of not really wanting to talk about it. they say, "why should we be taking high school trips to bergen—belsen or dachau? why should we have to, as kids, be fed this sense of our collective responsibility?" the responsibility

for me is a dead word. you have to know your history, the history of your people. it hurts to admit that there was a time in germany where we left the family of people all around the world and we killed millions of innocent people in a system which was really a tough system. and to be against the system then, you had to have a very brave character to do it. but this hurt, you can endure, like i endured, and i still love germany. i love being world champion in football, for instance. really. i am a nationalist. i also love very when merkel said we will do it with the refugees, now it may be thrown out, but that was a good thing.

also, as you can see, especially with merkel and the refugees, everything changed because the silent majority, as if it werejews again. ah, this swamp is coming. you really feel that insecure about your germany today? yes. don't trust us. and the special thing, i was very happy when the european community suddenly... we were watched by countries all around germany that we have invaded in centuries before, sometimes often. so, that gave me a happy feeling. now, england is leaving, poland is like a dictatorship, hungary, czechoslovakia, austria, italy — now, who is the strongest left?

the germans. yes, but the germans, as you paint it, germany today is a bulwark of moderation, of tolerance, compared to so many messages coming from hungary orfrom marine le pen or from so many people in so many corners. as long as our economy is great and as long as we make money, everything is very democratic. but let's wait and hopefully not see if we have five to ten years‘ heavy economic problems and the swamp is a lake, and is a sea and will swallow again everything. i swear it to you, stephen, really, i don't trust them. it always makes me... thinking and feeling exactly, wait a minute, niklas, there is something else.

you can lead a happy life but there is something else around you. yeah, it hurts but, on the other hand, because i have had really a happy life. ask my grandchildren. niklas frank, that is a nice way to end, and we must. thank you for being on hardtalk. thank you. hello there.

there was still quite a lot of energy in the atmosphere had during wednesday afternoon so intense thunderstorms broke out across north wales and part of north—west england. torrential downpours. across the rural area and parts of western lancashire. during the small hours of thursday, heavy showers moving away northward. a wet start. further south, cloudy with showery outbreaks of rain. the odd heavier burst also. the humid start again for thursday morning across eastern areas and it means it will be quite a drab start through eastern areas, outbreaks of rain, heavy outbursts clearing in to the north sea and confined to the north—east of scotland. brighter and drier in the afternoon but with that cooler and fresh air. further west, cooler. around 18 celsius but with

sunshine to compensate. outbreaks of rain in scotland across the northern ireland is in particular. northern ireland, showers later in the day. that is because of this area of low pressure which will become quite a player in our weather. moving into western parts of the uk. a windy day for the western half of the country. lots of rain to northern ireland and wales and south—west england and maybe the west midlands. to the north and east, a fine dry day with sunny spells and temperatures around 23 degrees, cooler further west under the rain. into friday night, the weather front moving further northwards and eastwards but still with us as we head

into saturday and a disappointing start to the weekend across northern and eastern areas. feeling quite cool as well. sunshine coming out but then blustery showers arriving and it will feel fresh. on sunday, windy. showers are quite slow—moving and quite a bit of rain falling in a short space of time. through this weekend, it will remain fairly cool and fresh for the time of year with longer spells of rain more likely showers and sunny spells. i'm babita sharma in london. the headlines: donald trump's son, son—in—law and former campaign manager will testify before congress next week as part of investigations into alleged russian meddling in the us election. pleas from the family of a new zealander who died in a japanese hospital, to improve psychiatric patient care.

i'm mariko 0i in singapore. also in the programme: plastic, plastic everywhere. scientists say we've manufactured billions of tonnes and showing no signs of slowing down. and a promise from vietnam to save more than a thousand bears from the practice of bile farming.