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Wherever Niklas Frank goes he carries a photograph of his dead father.

But it is not a snap of a cherished childhood memory – it’s a picture of his corpse.

With trembling fingers he holds out the battered black-and-white image taken moments after his dad was hanged for murdering four million people.

Because Niklas’s father was Hans Frank, Hitler’s lawyer who become Governor-General of Nazi-occupied Poland and oversaw the “Final Solution” to exterminate Europe’s Jews.

Niklas, who was seven when Frank went to the gallows, says: “I keep this photograph with me to make sure he is dead.

“I despise him. He loved Hitler more than he loved his own family.”

(Image: Ian Vogler/Daily Mirror)

Niklas is not talking about blind loyalty or misguided admiration.

He believes his father was a hidden homosexual and actually in love with Hitler – an attraction that drove him to commit the most horrific crimes in history.

When Frank tried to divorce Niklas’s mother she begged Hitler to intervene.

He ordered him to stay with his wife and four children until the end of the war and the Butcher of Poland immediately agreed, desperate to please his leader.

He even made Hitler godfather to Niklas.

Now Niklas has revealed how he was showered with presents bought with valuables looted from Jews, how he discovered his father’s crimes only when he saw mountains of bodies in a newspaper and how he rowed with his sisters who refused to believe Frank was evil.

Niklas, 76, says: “I would say my father was a hidden homosexual. I have letters he received from two teachers in Munich that were more than friendly.

(Image: Getty)

“And a psychologist at the Nuremberg trials said he thought he had a certain strain of homosexuality.

"I would have loved it if he could have lived out his desires. Then he wouldn’t have made a career as a mass murderer.”

Frank was one of the earliest Nazi recruits and when Germany invaded Poland in 1939 he was made ruler of the General Government – the rump of the country not absorbed by the Reich or Russia.

There he embarked on a reign of terror and looting.

He was responsible for the murder of a million Poles and hoarded an incredible collection of stolen art at Wawel Castle in Krakow where he lived with his family.

The Jews were first forced into ghettos but segregation soon became extermination as Frank ordered his officers to “put aside any feelings of pity and annihilate the Jews”.

He sent three million to the death camps – and was equally prepared to practise what he preached.

When a Jewish slave worker dared to use his personal bath he had the man bundled into the boot of a small car, his arms and legs broken so he would fit.

(Image: Alamy)

He was then driven into the countryside, shot in the head and left to rot.

Guilt surrounded Frank like a foul stench that suffocated Niklas and his

sib­­lings.

He says: “We got lots of toys but we destroyed them immediately.

“My brother and I had two electric railways sets. We never played with them properly, we always made them crash into each other.

"It was as if we knew we shouldn’t have them.

“The grown-ups committed atrocious crimes every day and I think their bad conscience passed down to the children.”

But Niklas never saw any violence.

The closest he got to the awful reality was a visit to the Krakow ghetto when he was left in the car with his nurse Hilde while his mother Brigitte shopped for furs.

(Image: Getty)

He says: “I remember looking at the sad people outside. I stuck out my tongue at one child and he ran off looking sad.

"I was laughing because I was the winner.

“Hilde didn’t say anything but pulled me back from the window. She is responsible for all the good in me, not my parents.”

Niklas learned of his father’s crimes after his arrest in May 1945 – four days before the end of the war.

He says: “The newspapers started to print photographs of mountains of corpses.

"Some were children my own age. Underneath was the word Poland. I felt sick.

“I always thought Poland was ours, the private property of the Frank family.

“But I knew my father had been arrested because of those corpses, so the

connection was suddenly very clear.”

(Image: Rex)

Frank was one of 12 leading Nazis sen­­tenced to death at Nuremberg.

During the trial Niklas’s mother used stolen Jewish jewellery to buy bread and meat for her family – often from Jews in refugee camps awaiting American visas.

Before Frank was hanged in October 1946, Niklas was allowed to see him in his cell for 10 minutes.

He had one final request for his son – to pray for him at a tiny chapel near his home in Bavaria.

It was a wish that Niklas, to this day, refuses to carry out. “I never prayed for him,” he says bitterly.

“I was so angry with him. I feel no affection or loyalty for him.

"With every passing year and every new detail I learn about him, I hate him more and more.

“I can never distance myself from him. I will always be a puppet on a string.”

(Image: BBC)

Niklas has lived in the shadow of his father’s sins.

It caused endless arguments with his two sisters who saw Frank as a Nazi victim.

But his elder brother Norman shared his contempt. He even refused to have children for fear of creating another monster.

Niklas, the only surviving sibling, says: “He used to say the son of a war criminal does not have permission to have children.”

It is not a view Niklas shares.

He has a daughter and three grandchildren who all know exactly what Frank did.

“I am not guilty” he says. “But I am determined not to be a coward like my father.”

So Niklas refuses to hide his family history and even agreed to appear in a cinema documentary, My Nazi Legacy, which was released today.

While filming he travelled to Poland with British human rights lawyer Philippe Sands.

The pair visited the wrecked synagogue in Zhovka, where Philippe’s family worshipped.

(Image: Hulton Archive)

And they saw the sand pits outside the town where most of his family and 3,200 others were marched out to and shot.

Also on the trip was Horst von Wachter, the son of one of Frank’s senior officers.

Unlike Niklas, he refused to accept his father’s guilt, seeking refuge in the deluded idea he was a good man forced to follow orders.

Eventually Niklas became so angry he ended his lifelong friendship with Horst and branded him a Nazi.

He says: “It scares me be­­­cause Horst represents the silent majority in Germany. We cannot acknowledge what happened.”

In contrast, it seems Niklas is in danger of being crushed beneath the weight of everything his father did.

His face flushed with fury when I asked if he had at least one happy memory.

“Just the one,” he admits, before describing how he walked into the

bathroom when he was four to see his father shaving in the mirror.

“He saw me and put a little shaving foam on my nose, then smiled at me,” he says.

“It is such a little thing, a normal thing, but it is burned into my memory because it is the only gentle moment I had with him.

“But even that is tainted by everything he has done.”

Niklas also has one item from his father’s belongings - Frank’s leather coat.

It was stolen after his arrest and many years later he bought back for £325.

“I use it as a scarecrow,” he says, smiling for the first time since we began talking about his father.

“Whenever look out of window I see it and I feel very happy because I know that after everything he did, that is all that is left of him.

“No monuments, no great legacy. Just a scarecrow standing in a field.”