NORA KRUG BELONGIN A German Reckons with History. and HomeBELONGING [Berman Reto hoy ote NORA KRUG & SCRIBNER New York London Toronto Sydney New Delhija Scribner ‘An Imprint of Simon & Schuster In. 1030 Nenve of the Americas New York, NY 10020 Copypight © 2048 by Nova Krug, Al rights resersed,incloing the night to reproduce this beck or portions thereof ‘in any form whatsoever. Fr iformation, address Sexier Subsidiary Rights Department, 1730 Nerve of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. Fist Scribner hardcover edition Defber 2018 SCRIBNER and design are registered trademarks of The Gale Grvp ne, used under ficense by Simon & Schuster, Inca the publisher of his wer, For information about secil discounts ft bulk purchases, lease contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales 1-866-505-1949 cor busines:@simonandschustercam ‘The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors fo your live event. For more information ot t book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 ot visit our website af nim simonspeakers.com. Library of Congress Catloging-in-Pubication Date is avaiable (SBN 938-1-4762-9662-8 (SBN 978-1-4762-9664-2 (ebook)HO Suediyel 2/166 sownFrom the notebook of a homesick émighé — Things German | N°] |Aansaptast Hansaplast ts 4 brand of bandage developed in 1922. My mother applied it to my bleeding knee after a Poller skating accident when | was six yeats old. Next to my ~ mother, Hansaplast was the Satest thing in the Wobld. No matterif-your-skin-is thick ob thin, smooth oF wrinkly, dry_ot moist, Hansaplast is so reliable that it won't come off until your wound has fully. healed. I+ is the most tenaciovs-bandage on the planet, andit hurts when you tear it off to look at Your scar.“Have you evet been to Germany 2” | asked. "Yes. A long, long time ago.” 1 was standit 1 of iend' u was standing on the tooftop of my ftiends apattmen: Meajaielcye-eontact building —the only person | knew so fat in the city. " | had just moved hete from Beblin to study. s e Ane ter abander stood: » | didn't Know anyone. No ohe Knew me. hs : Evetything was possible. She went on to tell me about how she had subvived the concentration camp because one of the female guards had tescued her from the gas chambeb sixteen times at the last moment. An eldebly woman sitting in a lounge chaib 1 had ovetheatd ovk conversation. The guard, who had exhibited metciless violence toward evetyone else.in the camp, tegularly knocking, prisonets' heads “Whete ate you from?" she. asked me. : together for punishment, had had, the elderly woman Ym: From German. Suspected, a Sectet chush on heb.AG times seeing others walk to theih deaths while you must Live.Our backyard in Karlstuhe , in the south of Germany , faced a US military ait base, where planes hegulahly took off and landed. | heard them hissing and roating above our house like dangetous animals that had —unbelievably — decided to spare our lives. Part of me understood that something had once gone horribly wong...Excetpts from the 1945 US War Department training film YOUR ZOB IN GERMANY, Written by Theodor Geisel, better known as Dh Seuss: You'l Don" vins. You'll see Fl (T Foot You. You are up against 5. You'll see some mighty pretty scenery e in enemy Country, hmah history, The Fihter? Bismabck. The title? “Blood and Iron.” tmany! Tendet people, the Germans ! Ch ‘ set Wilhelm, New title: "Deutschland Uber Altes.” er German people smacked us with their WWI ! that Fuhrer out. We marche ght i many and Sa the Kaiseh we had to get bid of / coltute, they lead the whole Wotld !” “Why, these people are Ok! Ht was j This is really aunty! When it co We pulled out out armies, and they flung Chapter Thtee in our faces. Fuhrer number thee: Hitler. Slogan numbet three "Today, Germany Is Ours. Tomorrow, the Whole World.” And Chapter Four? It can happen again. The next wat. The Getman lust for conquest is hot dead. Practically every German Was part of the Nazi network. Practically everything you believe in, they have been trained to hate and destroy. The German people abe hot our friends. However sorry they. may seem, they cannot come back into the civilized fold just by hand and saying. “I am sorry.” Don't clasp that hand! ane U's net the Kind of a hand you can clasp in fiehdship. Trust none of them. Someday, the German people might be cuted of their disease. The SUPER-RACE DISEASE. The WORLD-CONQUEST DISEASE.My brother and | had never tnet any. of the American soldiers who, since the end of the war, had been stationed in our fown to protect us from resurging Nazism and the threat of Communism, but we knew quite a bit about them. Americans chewed qum; they put theit feet on tables; they read DONALD DUCK in bed without taking off thei shoes; and they still had the death penalty. They. had given chocolate fo our aunt Kabin when she came back from evacuation in the countryside after the war—the fitst chocolate she had ever had. The AMIS, as we Called them, cruised the streets in their extravagant fake-wood -paneled cars and stopped in for hamburgers at the American super- matket, which we weren't allowed to enteh because we didn't have American IDs. We used the word AMI-SCHICKSE for an American woman with pink fingernails and cotton-candy. hai, not knowing that the term had originally. been used in the 1940s for Gerrnan women who fratemnized with men from the Arerican occupying force. We also didn't know that SCHICKSE was a Yiddish word. Nor, for that matter, what Yiddish was.don't bemembep when [ fipse heard +he word KONZENTRATIONSLAGER, but | became Rt ot It long. betote t leatned abot the Holocaysy - | sensed that concenttation camps méhe Siniste. Places, ang | imagined that the Pepe who Lived thehe Webe fotced fo concenttate fo the Pent o¢ Physical anguish. Burt | was too Fraid to ak, Feeling that this was Something to talk about, something thar | St0Wn-Ups discussed in whispets, something evoKin 4 the same vasettling Reeling * the than Who Sometimes gave SMe and balloons to my. \. Dtother and me when we yn \. Wehbe Playing alone inthe Lhout embarrassing| asked my mother one day after coming home from elementary, School. It was aouhd the time that | had made it @ habit to change into 7@ the panthet costume she had sewn me for catnival. Corrs they arent // eee Tota youThat 2 She stopped stitbing and vigorously rubbed heb hands dty on heb aptoh. Not knowing any Jews, | assumed that they. didn't exist outside of the Bible. They seemed distant, Like a long-extinet species. Expebiehcing my mother's anget, | concluded that day that Jews — all Jews — wete good.One of my, favorite books as a child was DER STRUWWELPETER, a collection of 19th—centuty ilivstrated stories about childten who get punished for misbehaving. The book was considered outdated because of its motal severity, but my mother happened to keep heb old childhood The story that stuck with me most was about a gibl alone at home with het cats who plays with matches and bubns herself into q heap of ash. The qitt's demise was depicted in colorful axaqqekation, What the story tavght me was that You shouldn't y feel sorry for yourself if you were besponsible for yout ovin downfall,Throughout my childhood, the war was present but unacknowledged, like the heirloom lion's head tubeen stored behind our usual dishware. | understood that THE WAR was a loud and deadly event and that it happened before my. parents were born. | knew that my country. te refused the idea of engaging in wab ever since THE WAR. | thought that there was nothing heroic om meaningful about being a soldier, and that preserving peace was paramount. The notion that other countbies could Still _be at war seemed To me like madness. Though my parents weren't religious, they occasionally took my brotheb and me to church on Sundays when we were children, so that we would Grow up | pemembeh waiting in line outside the confessional box, desperately trying to recall a quilt -evoking-enovgh incident to be confessed. Even though | didn't understand why. ZESUS DIED FOR OUR SINS, the _ concept of INHERITED SIN —as the Germans call ORIGINAL SIN ~ and of having to beat the consequences of another genebation's actions Seemed familiah, and | swore to ae Fesus that | would — accept it. elieving in something. After finishing my confession, | knelt down on the unforgiving wooden plank and made amends by, saying four Hail Mabys.Ltt Wounorbik 9. 94 © br Penet dlodurch in diet Hyicdmithh ? Jok. (Anger. Fethearsbert : Siok cb Brvelors.dryces0) Amnalom irm Getty Aue, Ukberstror: Pol orton din Mutachony Lrrts sie j | learned about the Holocaust in school abound the Same time that my mother ceremoniously announced ex Bote $5 the family, over dinner that | had had my itst peniod. Maal She wanted to do me a favor by acting less phudish than her own pabents had, but for me, the idea of being a woman seemed to be as shameful as being a Gehman. A yellow Star of David, which | drew in my Jt- gtade exercise book, to illustrate a story on the Holocaust. One day my motheb walked into my Foom as | was sewing a Yellow star with the wobd JUDE onto the sleeve of my jacket. "What abe You doing 2” she asked. "\ made this staf and ('m going to weab i+ { out of Solidabity with the Jews." "I don't think that's a good idea." \ undid my wokk, confused.Whenever I traveled abtoad as a teenaget, my quilt traveled with me.aaa car Ys ca he Pichu 4 ne aus ae f 5a aa gect Reaaay aes maa LUCE tr CY AU) Aaa ee Sa ata cipeeiioit vas eat cays ae sles AND es ait of ss agg bette ste Ca : a oe hex an ioand MY mothe(farmers! to drive etbeets on the s gare’ eeWe were taken on class trips to concentratfon camp museums in France, Germany. and Poland. | hemember walking past the Train tracks, the barracks, and the electhic fences, past the poplan thes that looked too beautiful, documenting it al with my camera in black and white, trying to understand the scope of the atrocities committed — right here — by my own people: acts that cannot and should not evet be forgiven. Two of the pictutes | took were of my classmates. | Labeled them in bold letters on the back | remembeb the sense of gratification | felt when | developed the photos in my basement and saw the images Slowly emetge in theit acid bath: Hebe was the evidence of out collective guilt.Excerpt from my 1i*-grade exercise book «Analysis of an Adolf Hitleh speech. © comment on Hitler's mode of heasoning and intention. (2) Examine how Hitfer uses Linguistic devices. © sess Are effect that Hilet's speech hed inte specie historic situation @ “who possesses linguistic Skills possesses people." Using. exenples, portion yourself within the challenges of 4nis statement. Stesooctat ce a ety und Hemdesn, die in _ul seren Shae iten dem or, = Wut Dgor eS oes a ae a oe econ —ze-sichern, im itorwen, gegen une nieeten Se Raekzug gibt. ohne da6_ihz ibn ge- Gel poles 1,7 kay ee =e Heae ‘Trott geine Prlicht tut. er return atone’ sexbrechen bv aon ata Riek ae bh Dlesbt deutash, Vien GTC wieder_dewrscm und Surope find» Eten Wari madennfour pete eas eet ae ir don Pesik, irk _— ay“Being FEHLERFREI (Favlt-free) was ovb universal goal. Out teachets' ted pens divided ouvb exercise books into “bight and Wrong, and the ted marks felt as heassuting in theih clakity as they wete vn forgiving. eoorne path from the Vetsaittes Treaty to the Paris Peace Conference , my teenage classmates and | left no stone untuhned, We analyzed Hitler's speeches alliteration by alliteration, tavtology by tavtology , neologism by neologism. ___We staged avant-Gatde theater performances oh the anniversary of REICHSKRISTALLNACHT. We pe pated questions for the old women who thaveled from Amekica to tell us about the camps, but we neveb thought to ask about one ____ahothet's Grandparents. We leatned that cub language was once poetic but now potentially dangerous. We head — Schillep but didn't leatn to Love him as we loved Shakespeate. We sttuck the German _wotds for HERO, VICTORY, BATTLE, and PRIDE ftom aur Vocabulaties. We avoided supeNatives, and we used the wobd ZUSAMMENGEHORIGKEITS- som GEFUHL, the sense of identifying with a group and believing in an idea labger than oneself, when defining Ametican cultural identity, but hot our own-We tesorted to the expression “That's so typically Gehman” to desctibe Someone's Unfriendly ob nabhow - minded behavior. We ‘leatned that VERGANGENHEITSBEWALTIGUNG means “coming to terms with one’ political past,” but felt that it heally defined “the process of struagling to come +o tehms with ft. We learned that the German word for RACE should only be used to distinguish animal. species, and ETHNIC only. in the context of genocides j yet we felt that history. was in out blood, and Shame in oub genes. But there Wee also gaps _ _ in oub education: we didn't Leatn that tens of thousands of Germans had been | the Nazi hegime have made out ghand- didn't hesist + Look quiltieh in compabison?), or that 450,000 men of Jewish descent had fought in the WEHRMACHT (because theih participation would have Made us feel less quilty2) ; we Leatned Little about the losses endubed during ae: Allied bombings, of about the millions of Germans who had been displaced from Germany's former eastern tegions after 1945 (because we knew that feeling sorry for ourselves was wtong?), Because we neveh Leahned about contemporary Jewish culture, we associated the wobd JUDE strictly with the Holocaust and we understood that it could be uttered only in a whisperWa oa - Cons sf Cas PU lana) Tam plod) di earoaLaM Nama ade ety ee aly DOU Ca ae al We never learned old folk songs. We struggled to understand the meaning of ianHeimat [hairma:t] f (no plural) From the comprehensive Geb CKHAUS encyclopedia: “That term which defines the con or actual landscape oF location se of familiarity. This experi ns, through family. and othe through. political ideo refers fo the place (a! person is botn into, where they expetience eably of of ain imag, th which a pe an immediate In common usage, HEIMAT alse understood as a landscape) that a | (2ation that larg ly shapes identity , character, mentalitg, and worldviews... The National Socialists used the term fo .. associate a space of withdrawal, in particular for those groups that were looking to identify with a simplistic template for psychological otientation.”How do you Know who you are, if you don't understand where You come from?From the notebook of a homesick émighé Things German | N°2) dirWiald A Woodpecket; an abandoned “hunting stand; fingers of | vebtical silence. The forest makes me feel calm and pho- tected Unlike any other place. (+ is the “ “forests in their Silence” that have kept otd hing the word WALD. favorite ones are WALDEIN- er 0d); WALDFINSTERNIS (forest ~ obscubity), and WAUDUMRAUSCHT (suttounded- by-a-tustlingfobest). In 1852, the Gehman Jewish avthor Berthold Avetbach stated that “French should be spoken at the Salon) ahd German in the forest." Duting the 1936 e iympic Games gotd=medal wi ete ph ith a seed ___ these so-called 1 yiTLER OAKS : stilt stand i in the United States todays In 4938, the Reich's propaganda, ininistet Joseph Goebbels considered babhing fews Chom “Ger! sts. As part of the postwar beparations; the French and B i +the mastive harvesting of German fobests. ln4983,the tem WALD- STERBEN (fotest die-otC) was included th the Getman thesautus fot-the Fitstetime. A wave of existential angst washed oveh the country.This time, | am not listening to a Holocaust survivor's stoty, but to.a singeb's live performance of Schubert's WINTERREISE. father than shame.And yet, after all these Years, | still try to hide my accent: by covering, my mouth while speak, Even though tabbis Qheet me with warmth and cubiosity at the bab mitzvahs | attend, and even though some of my Fewish Friends Ae ~ tell me that the Americans were as bad for kitting the Indians and “enslaving Africans, my shame hasn't disappeabed. | can'+ even Stretch and hold my right atm at an angle, Like the other students in my Yoqa class, without thinking of the Hitler salute.++ Lam told by strangers at patties that one should never travel to Germany (because it will always be the land of the Huns and the Nazis) . ..the stereotype of Getmany as a “northern European” country where Winters are hatsh and summets painy, and where humobless people speak in martial tones, is repeated ovet and over again in the Ametican TV. shows and musicals | watch. a friend ina Russian nei or that an American fellMy husband grew up with a Christmas thee and a Jewish sense of humor, His mother came ftom a family of assimilated German Jews. When one of my motheh's Friends found out that he was Jewish, she was.thtilled: "A Tew from New York! They. ate the most intelligent people! | always wished I'd had a Jewish boyfriend so | | could have made up forthe hotrible things dur parents? genetation did .» “Lhave only positive feelings about it,” my mother told me when | asked how she felt about my matriage. “| yust hope that his encounters with Germans ate positive. The only other thing | am wottied about is if you had @ Son and circumcised him. If history. should ever repeat itself, | wouldn't want your child to be physically, distingvishable ftom others.” For my fatheb, becoming the father-in-law to a Jewish man meant “not quite making amends, but mending my belationship to Judaism.” Even though het family had always swotn never to support the land of the Nazis by buying a Getman cab, my 80-year-old mother-in-law came to her grandparents’ homeland for the wedding. The fact that | am Getman was never an issue fob heh, “| don't cate if you ate Getman,’ her Doyfhiend told me, Straight like the gih in his glass, the first day | met him on the patio of a cocktail bak in Florida, whete he owns a condo. Yiddish was the only lanquage he spoke gtowing Up th 1920s Brooklyn. “When went to Istael tor the first time and saw all the Metcedes on the streets, and people told me what the fepatation payments had done for them, | Stopped resenting the Germans. As long as You Love this man, You're welcome, wherever You abe from.” Now, my mother=in-law Lives in an assisted- Living facility, and she ho Longer temembets her thip +0 Getmany.. “Why on eabth woutd | have gone there 2” she asks in disbelief each time we bemind heb, and makes sube to jokingly advise us “not to trust them" when we betubh to Getmany to visit my family._ After 12 yes of Ban in America — whete absolution is given to those who confess their ae : ’ hatety quilt on television shows; fa ne ~ Case Scenario, but ene h 5 a C ci a 7 believe that nothing bad will happen » until it happens; 7 and whete being an aduLterer can disqua- Lify you from obtaining. citizenship as easily as having been a member historic figure into the symbol of evil itself; where the bug. sprays — FRONTLINE, COMBAT, RAID — abe named with militaby terms; Where + diseases abe oe BATTLED, Party pather than . SUFFERED; | feel amma German Han cher belore:The longer I've lived in my. Caribbean neighborhood in Bhooklymn, the mote | find myself scavenging. American thrift stotes for the gheen-stemmed Riesling glasses, the vine-branch corkscrews, and the cuckoo clocks | would never have thought to buy. in Germany. The longer I've deen away, the mote books \ pick up at the New York Public Librahy. about my hometown, to leabn everything | can about its Wartime history. From this safe distance, | allow myself to see the loss it once endured. And yet, the longer I've lived away from Germany , the more elusive my idea of my identity becomes. My HEIMAT is an echo, a forgotten wobd once called into the mountains. An unrecognizable revebberation-Tid, Nes pat 4: USA Ih seatch of aHEIMAT untainted by the wah | visit the STAMMTISCH (hequLars' table), a group of German and Austtian Jewish immigrants who have been meeting in New Yobk since 1943 +o speak Gebman and maintain theih sense of cultural identity. The group's host recently. turned 100. They. talk about the wat and about starting a new life in the "Fout rth th Reich’ the neighbor- hood in Manhattan where those who had subVived the Thibd settled. They talk about the lack of universal healthcare in Amebica I and about the Democratic presidential hopefuls. | eat their rea hazelnut cake and potato salad, and | Long to be Loved by them like & ahanddaughter "What does 1t mean +o be Getman2”| ask 89-year— old Thudy, sitting to my rigirt. | am hoping for a clear-cut answer, but all. she says is “I don't know.”| practice German pattsatism at the New York City Stevden Parade ,an annual event named after a < prominent Prussian general, where proud Ameri— cans of German origin march alongside members of the LAS VEGAS MUSTACHE CLUB and the GERMAN DOG GROUP, the GERMAN HIKING CLUB, and the SWABIAN SINGING CLUB of New Jersey. I'm given the fitst German flag, I've ever touched, but because | cannot bring myself to wave it, | discreetly slip it into my bag, only to be given another, then another, and another. | march uneasily, hoping that no ohe jn the cheeting., cowbell-ringing Ctowds that line the sidewalk will recognize me. | ask a 40-something German tourist onthe sidewalk why She came to the parade. "it's about time that Germans feel confident about Theit country again,” she says, and Waves heb Little paper flag. Have | been away from Germany, so long that | have missed a crucial tuning pont?| travel to Milwavkee , where Getmans settled during. the 1800s, long before the quilt set in, where the streets Stell of hops, and whete national pride ts displayed even bythe dogs Who tun the annual Getman Dachshund Derby Race in ditndls. I scavenge local junk stores for ol photo plates an¢ other evidence of 19 century. midwestern German Life and eat > Viver- dumpling soup at a 100-Year-old restaurant on Old Wotld Street. | attend an Oktoberfest celebration at a nutsihg home, where elderly women hum along. as an g cappella group sings about lost love and peaceful forests in German. | fight a bout of sentimentality, while watching people — women Wearing ditndls and men Sporting lederhosen and Republican Party pins — swirl abound to the thythm of the polka at a German dance ss festival. Most people TT _ hete ate descendants of the Danube- Swabians —ethnic Germans who were displaced from Eastern Europe after WWI. 4“Being German is my life, the otganizer of the festival, a woman my. & age weating edelweiss- § shaped eattings, tells me. 5 “We abe the Lifers. z We Live it. We breathe it.” : Het German pride makes i me uncomfortable, but 5 it also makes me envious. 2. As | watch the dancing & gitls with braided blond hair, | find myselt feeling = sad over hot being able to feel if, too, angry $ about hot bethg able +o identify. with my culdvte, & OF any ethnic hebitage, the way it Seems to - come so naturally to Americans. a | feel Like a traitor to these Ameticans with > whom | am supposed to share my Getman pride, = a spy from a country that exists ertibely ‘ inside myself, that has no banner and no anthem, @ nation with only one inhabitant. Nobody suspects = that I'm a Spqg; my glass is topped > up with Riesling and | am stuffed with bratwurst and given a tide back to my hotel, and my hame is added to a mailing ListU from the woman with eatrings in my in-box 3 by the Jewish people during. The pain suffered and| petutn to Germany TV, politicians and uniand bapid s to be crossed.| see deep, fetn-filled forests to be hiked with futry leather backpacks and walking sticks; bked with breadT see hills neatly combed into grapevines and temember a forgotten Song. & ‘sea ae ears with theit beautiful voices, ea ibens T see snow-covered fir trees and the thaces of deer sniffing out chestnuts Tue ROSS watching me from behind.Fe er No mater how hard | look) 4 nagging. Sense of Unease won't disappear. ORR eT UR CL A A oat RON Rae CUCU Caen ol aCe Cl ee A eee Ce CR Lane back to the towns where each of them is from. To hetuen SUMS ee Coa TY ae RL RRC aU eREvery year, we wert to Itdly for a family vacation. once had) but lost, in the perfectionist Peconsthuction of the postwar Yeats. Hete, we could feel uninhibited and Live the exotic fantaS+ of southern -European life. We spent days driving around in ovh non-ait-conditioned green Volvo, ‘exploting smalt medieval towns, Sampling local. devicacies, Visiting hemote huseuns, and following in the footsteps of famous abtists, writers, and filmmakers. On one of those excutsions, We came upon @ Large militaty cemetery. The cemetery's qeomettic precision was intimidating. Neat the entrance, we found an inschiption in Getman. , — ts.SELIG. SIND, DIE DA LED TRAGEN, DENN STH SOLLEN GETROSTET WERDEN. BLESSED ARE THEY WHO ARE SUFFERING, FOR THEY SHANL BE COMFORTED: Buried beneath out feet lay the bodies of hot Italian but German Ww soldiers. A few decades after the end of the wat, 30,683 of them had been dug up from nearby provisional qraves for identification and Finally bebutied here. , oa I SS S &> zs a ESD ; © wy = whe Wy We 2 A 1 WA as Wd: wl The cemetery was vast. We made our way thtough the labyrinth in sitence ee {ech Wi) a *» - \ After a witile we spotted him in the distance. He walked briskiy and held a piece of pager in his handPd always known that | had an uncle who died oungsat age 48. “He fell in the war) my fathet used to Say, but bald in my Family seemed to know how ob where he was killed. | knew that my uncle had been the heir to my grandparents? Land in Kolsheim, a tiny town in southwest Germany, surrounded by fields, forests, and vineyards. | knew that my father was born a few years after my uncle's death, and that his parents had named him Franz-kant, after his dead brother. \ knew that because my uncle had died, they expected my, fatheb to inherit and tend to theit atm, to look after the animals, the fields, and the plum trees. And | knew that my father had never fulfiited that expectation. My father, ca. 1942. Saencn Bae As a child, | discovered a musty-smelling box in the drawer of the mahogany, cabinet in ovr living boom. It contained old photographs of my Uncle and a few of his 6t grade school exercise books. Theik stories described the Life cycle of the maybug and the history of European forestry, the heroic Viking adventures and the havoc of the 30 Yeats’ War, the importance of chatity and the necessity for personal hygiene, the Fuhrer's difficult childhood and his reintroduction of Mother's Day to celebrate German Women and their Aryan children, .eae ees ELLVVVE The. d. y . ¥ b hf ohn tlie ‘ FOUK sak cre ¥ ng he iaeaee \ dh Ba aie’ fbr ania aranayar » © paplaidite. Soon Aitne 2 pal 4 V Sue Jiend forkonewinenonr 6 e e@ @ 9 + P¥¥VV YETIay de dbase Tsien’ Badd. V" if HE f Ned How | Honored My Darling. Mother When { woke up on Mother's Day. | quickly got ovt of bed and put on my clothes. Then quickly into the garden to pick a bunch of flowers, which | put next to mothep's bed. When she woke up, ! gave her my best Motheb’s Day. wishes. Then { went out into the kitchen and put 4 cup on the table for heb. On the cup it said + “Mother's Day." | also put a piece of cake on the table. At noon, 1 went into the forest and picked a bunch of may flowers for heb. lily [atu ste AE HE Ge He AE eR EG I grad ae rtit ‘ ( Kulsheim, May 31, 1938 Yi): ¥ = ¢ ¥ $Y HVT EL OEYFRANZ - KARL, 1936unlike my fatheb, who was q stubborn and ill-tempered child. My father skipped days of kindergarten, then skipped school playing all by himself on the grounds of Kulsheim's medieval castle.My uncle was a complete stranger to me. | didn't know anyone who had knovin him War and death were the only things | associated with him. Because he had been one of Hitler's soldiers, | learned early. on that | wasn't supposed to feel sadness over his premature death. His photos and exercise books were the only physical evidence of his existence, and | thied desperately to find him somewhere in between the lines of his propagandistic essays. Ht was like searching a concrete wall for cracks and leaks.ater aac tiie, 6. i. 6. Radin. LAr x ait he Ad - , The Jew, a Poisonous Mushroom «. When You goto the forest and You See mushrooms that Look beautiful, you think that they abe good. But when You eat them, they are poisonous and can kill a whole family. The Jew is just like this mushtoom . When you see the Jew from behind, you don'+ immediately tecognize him. But if you talk to him, you hecognize him immediately. He pretends to be nice and flattets You shamelessly. Just Like the poisohavs mushheom can killa whole family. the Few can kill a whole beople. Kulsheim, January 20, 1939Ftom the notebook of a homesick Smigté - Things German | N°3 (4/24; | Collecting mushrooms: With my familys examining each mushroom Cabefully and Compating it to the corres- — ponding Pictube in the PILZ- —FUWRER (mush- toom guidebook) before placing i+ in the woven basket; back home , Scrubbing, off the bits of Pris onthe stem and in beredd +he gills, and then savteing +he_mushboomsin a pan with butten, salt, and peppeb and eating them with a piece of dak rye bread. By eating the mushtoms (feel as if Ive become part of the forest. The poisonous bed, white - potka-dotted mushhoorm is depicted fh_many German children's books-On New Yeah's Day. jit isa symbol of good lyck that — Appears on greeting cats and in mabzipan sweets made im its shape.| Mg mother, dressed as a Poisonous mushroom , 4953. | ‘ i (Costume made by my grandmother.) | To this day, she hemembebs the moment the picture was taken because of how disappointed she was that She couldn'+ be a princess, instead.My uncle signed his name beneath the mUShroom Stoty and added the date: the mayor of Dachau heports that his town {5 how “cleaned Of all Jews,” Fanvary 20, 1959, ZS Ds ty A 6m 6 6 6 2rd Z heating, in Betlin takes place abovt the stehiliaa- tion of a “mentally. unstable” woman , LLLRLLLLM XXX KKK “ae Stalin endorses the use of torture, Gnd Joseph Goebbels writes his diary. a Ten days later, Adolf Hiller will give a speech preclaiming that if “Jewish financiers should plunge the nations into a worl wap Yet again, the outcome will be... the annihilation of the Jewish pace in Eutope.”Was my uncle's story influenced by THE POISONOUS MUSHROOM, +ne A938 collection of anti-Semitic children's stories? The beck was given out for free by the National Socialists. In one of the stories, 4 mother and het blond, Ledethosen- Clad 50M Jo fot a walk in the for bon www i y ary, where she compares Jews to poronous tmushtooms- Coincidentally, the name Of the bo¥ in the story was Franz, the Same name as m4 uncle's. fi u Tt takes qheat effort to leatn to write. How thuch effort did it take my uncle ty white a. ple fa ta £ z i stoty Like the one about the myshroom? The teacher marked three speuting in the mushroom story, gave it @ mnistakes and two Qhammatical mistakes B for its content, and signed it “St.”Adolf Hitler, 1938 * “ub youth shall learn nothing but to think German and to act Gehman. .. A young. boy oF a young girl entets into ovr organizations at age ten, then they move on ftom the Juhiok Hitler Youth to the Hitler Youth fout yeats Later, and we will keep them there for another four years, .. and then put them into the pabty ob the Labor Front, the Assault Division, ob the $5. ...And if thete fs still a bit of class Consciousness and elitist thinking Left in them..., they will receive further Treatment fromthe atmed fotces. ... And when they tetutn after two oF thtee oF four Years , we'll put them back into the Assault Division oF $5, 50 that they won't relapse. And they. Shall never be free again for the rest of their lives.’ wees sotFROM THE SCRAPBOOK OF A MEMORY ARCHIVIST Fleq market find # : Chitad's Bla a | a.caticatute of Jew: £20 22) oe md brooches givent in exchange for Winter Relief donations: € 4 each ¢. Hitler Youth trading cards : set of 10,€2, IWhen | finally. caught up with my father at the cemetery, it turned out that he had walked up to its chapel and, for Feasons unknown even to himself, had scanned the names in the register. Thete, among the thousands of names his eyes rested on for a fraction of a Second — names that had once been called from kitchen windows at dinnertime; names written on Christmas gifts and school exetcise books; names Spoken severely in classhooms} names pronounced ceremoniously by mayors On enlistment day s names whispered bY girs and women the night before i departure ; names shouted out on the battlefield when q hesponse could no Longet be expected names reported to superiors j Names spelled out on clacking typewriters in colonels’ sechetanies' offices | names read, hetead, and head again on damp military Stationery; names chiseled into stones | names hemembehed quietly by mothers and fathers before a final breath was taken — —— among ait these unfamiliah names belonging to people unknown to him) my father found what he had been looking for: HIS QWN NAME.ee The pumber on Wl the piece of we ‘theb ‘ ae he ing ee yar Specified the exact Location of my uncle's Qrave. The grave- stone was meti- culously maintained. POR ec Be Inscribed on it was the hame that my uncle and my Fathet-had always sated, for the fitst time, | expetienced the loss of my uncle's life ina Physical way. Briefly, he emerged ftom the depths of the heavy mahogany cabinet, not as a shadow, but as a human being whose eyes | could have looked into and Said, “Uncbe,” who could have given tne a goat as a gift for First Communion, whose children’ ovtgrown clothes | could have won, and +o whom | could have sent a post- cat} ftom Htaly. that summer, tering him about out visit to a German WWI cemetery that was filles with gravestones inschibed with the hames of total sthan gebs. Standing at his grave , | longed to understand what it had felt like to be him. Was he proud to fight in the wap 2 Was he afraid ? what was the last thing he saw, the Last thought he had 27 aC He Paes 8 on Cras a) ies match perfectly. aOR EC io Weir mc’ ed (en Amea enRoute ca a Me a ae *My mother grew up in the age of oblivion. She was born in 4946 in Karlshuhe, my hometown. Al. that played on Getman television in the 1950s were escapist homance dramas set in Alpine and Black Forest landscapes. When she was sixteen, she discovered a left-wing magazine about the Holocaust fn a garbage can. She had already learned about Germany's athocities at School, but the photo- graphs jn the magazine wete the first ones she had ever seen of the camps. Terrified, she confronted her father. "What did he say 2” | asked her when | was a teenager myself. | don't think my father was a Nazi. He told me he didn't like Hitler because of the way he Scheamed all the time. | hemember once overhearing a conversation my parents had With friends aver coffee. ‘Nobody knew what was happening to the Jews,’ they said. ‘But six million sounds a bit exaggerated)"“Grandpa wanted me to give this to You oh Your Sixteenth birthday,” she said. “I think he got it in the akmy.” The watch's crystal. was broken, but it still kept loop, cattied everywhere, wp incessantly, imagined somewhere to the same telentless metallic ticking. It was the image | associated with men of his generation, when, one Christmas, he gave me the battery-operated barking dog that m4 mother would neveb have bought me} when , to my hottot as a child he killed a harmless Spider by stamping on it in the garage of.my patents? house; and when he choked on a potato choquette at the fancy restaurant with the pink tablecloths where we went on Special occasions.ob told me Willi and Anne stories of their Lives. They never talked about their youth. never showed me photogra H didn't occur to me that at one time they were young. until | learned c Ab in School. Mu mother d talk about them rw n she did, it was with the one feels when having to revisit a subject out too many times before. [n my mir kind of weatt t+ or talked a family began with one's parents and ended wi h oneseltWilli's wife, Anna, died of a heart attack in 1982. Het body was Laid out at the mortuary behind a glass wall and suttounded with bouquets. Six Yeats Later, Willi died, too. My mother stood in heb apton in the Kitchen with red-timmed eyes. He was 86.1 was 11. Both of my father's parents had died before | was botn. There wete ho ghandpatents left in mg life- The photographs | had never been shown migrated into the old shoebox in the bottom draweb of out living-room cabinet, along with my uncle Franz-Katl's exercise books. When | chose my: eyes, | can temember every detail of my Grandparents! apartment. The hallway with the mothball- scented flannel hart that rests on the coathack ; the Black Fotest clack with the Gickoo that my grandfather silenced by gluing Shut its window to the worlds the living-toom cabinet with Bambi, The china deet that / teturned ny. gaze with equal shyness thtough the 4la : _“<-the clinking. of floweted cope cups on . floweted Saucers. hesting on floweted PS tablecloths; the severity of my o grandfather's oak : idesk with its Leitz ting binders ; : and the Spongy. : = Green-and-ohange stamp mals tenet a }From the notebook of a homesick émigté _ Things German |N24,| Se The binder, hamed ofter its inventor, Louis Leitz, was developed in 1896, in an attempt to establish order duting Getmany’s increasing __Suteauctatization. [ts stutdiness _Phomises dubability, its utilitarian. design accountability. In New York City, the Leitz binder is the German consulate’s binder of choice, and it is imported together with its matching. hole punch. The Leite binder has provided reassurance in matters of utmost impottahce in my Life: health insurance, Life insvtance, bith and death cebtiticates. ORDNUNG Muss SEIV (ordeb is essential and ORDNUNG (ST DAS HALBE LEBEN (order is halt yout lifels battle) are German sayings, ALLES-IN-ORDNUNG (everything. [5 in order) means that You have nothing in the wotld to Wotty about.A 4) | pieced together Willi was born in Kablstuhe in1902, He had a younger brother, Edwin sand a Younger sisten, Frieda, who died early. Willi's motheh died when he was 16- ‘ & , ; i : + Betts qu) tan SB WoL. @) Two ‘years later, Wili's father died to bt fiien te 4 meee i | Over the yeats, by asking my mother and Aunt Karin, | 4! the story o exer GD | f Wills's Life, Pal | ae ee | | 6 @SEa | oi’ Sans Oy Wy | ee ei) Nae ri Yehy A For Will's confitmation, his father,a factory Wotker, could only afford to buy him a Suit made of paper. The suit was black, and when it tained on Confirmation Day, Willi tutned as gray as the sky. eaeuap! a le sii \ Willi Was 18 and, from that moment of an intetnal obstruction, And his Widow decided that het home no longer a” Sg the stepchildien. on, took care of his 44-year.old brotheh, Wherever they went, Will and Edwin linked theit pinkies in otdet not to lose each otheh eeCarl Benz, the man who first patented the motorcar, came From Karlstuhe, and car mechanics Wete in high demand there. To support himself and his little brothel Willi trained ina garage... With: found himself @ position as a chauffeur with a Jewish linen Salesman. He loaded the trunk with sacks of bedsheets, hand towels, and tablecloths and dteve the davghter of a milkman: | his employer to the countryside fo Sell the linens as They mattied in 19ZO- | dowry +o people Looking +o marty off their daughters.What did they talk about on tet ON ¥ Hides Tibsogh the country 2 Di ig become friends over the years? Lationship,” my avnt Katin used to tell me. “they, had a Very qoot rel joyeh told him that he had to ‘go away.) A prom pr tee —— } Witli He gave Will; a large sum Of monet} +0 thank him fob nei qood work helationship,”Was the stot tny. @handfatheh Told heb about the Jewish Salesman xo ae co sos 10) So cE c's ot ns oO Dy S ae oe oa gt ae nd : oS XW 2 a S \w Se AC . “a Og er os é a ae No x ey) a FS Oi oe : ao we nad the cuff {ink a: ok" See ue TS cae 7 ce re weno az) ce rd Aaa Pras : ast Aye cu ce Peco a ale a ry ye ois CU eC PoeADS v accepted ily 4 eros vee and bought himself a cah, Soon afte, he statted his own oe School. hei -ae a 4 oa Al © | 5 a Wheh the war began, he was fectuited a a driving teacher fot soldiers at the ‘home fro and was thus spated ftom dyt} at the fant line. mny, grandfather's life with his generous gift. But by doing so, he had also in- Mg mother's and aunt's sense of belief when they told me the Story heassuted me. The image of Willi lying inthe muddy n: Ll wish employer fe naw saved uae Sid the German war effort, thet of hin siting motionlessly, eternally qlued to the gray. Leather seat ih his car, While other meh commit atrocities far, far away. trench was peplaced with a new ohe at\ Ss x Willis brother, Edwin, completed an apprenticeship as a stonecutterand | He made it all the way te Switzerland avd into the akms of a woman ramed Elsa LY While Elsa looked after 4 In. the spring of 4943, only a couple of built church steps and months before becoming. a Swiss citizen, 2 Played soccer and performed as dwin beceived a letter From Germany. jetman Stonecutters weren't needed in Switzerland. They were heeded at-the front Line. Edwin was ordered back to Germany, tavght] Elsa and the childten remained how +o fite a qun, and sent to Russia.| in neutral SwitzebLand. 3 yA chil \ ldren, Stvffed their teddy bears Gp The journey was interrupted by an Allied aib paid. {iter one year, Edwin betutned to Germany on furlough. Elsa grabbed the with coffee beans for Anna to sell at the ee ae and boarded a train to Germany, DQ}! ¥ Z ERS y Ls Wey ie 1s De ee ag SAP the Hitler salute, but oly meat THREE LieRs, When greeted in the street, Edwin bes- ponded with a phhase thet sounded like. a ey g anticipation of Alied bomb attacks, the childten wete put to bed in theih street Clothes. Then, one hight; the alatm was haised, When bil he svagested that his litle ‘brother dese. But Edwin rejected the idea. Fi karin was mesmebired by the British Oo parachute flares ,vsed to illuminate the target area. They were the most C beautiful things she had ever Seen \ Ze «€ &§FROM THE SCRAPBOOK OF A MEMORY ARCHIVIST. Fleq market find # © : Bowt a.Pilots snapshot: <9, | ¢. Phogham for mock evening's v eae dining alved bombing, singed on left during 4943 bomb attack. Activities include Cheerful Overture, petforned by the Municipal Siren Orchestra; Opening hemarks by the bunker Warden; Outdoor Fireworks. €4 | d. Membership (D for German Lifesavers’ Urion:€.28 4 Lesa e. Letter from C. te his sisteh, M.:€.59 Fel “Pye had no revs Fromm you. { don't know if you're well, and if you're stilt alive! You must have suffered ngtts Full of anguish in Ant Live tote that old cellar Please get in touch mediately and bat octr + 50 that | can get Some peace of mind.” ie anne nian he i wetter Qngat Anagtsttnndire Kahin Sai ro fut, GSrete!! Vor ter Vojca Cats doh aiset KeresBecause it had been % windy NIthts the bombs, intended for the train station, H Arad. died inte tong oe When they teemerged from the shelter, Katin had caught lice, and the’ city had SF fire. at a HUT uv i LE > es ae Pek 5 had, ma hazed the eas Se FL where Wi Li an and E Edwin had @howh up — RA Wj A Fesbeeaiag and with it the shed j in the backs Yard of Will's: mother-in-law, a) ad where Willi had Supposedly. ‘ hidden his Jewish employer: [am j | a / B ox 2 fy Xe ae Zi [v: ( a : : TEM \ fe (> " ie : : Edwin boatded his train back 40 Russiau feefragmentary history of Kilshetm from a neighboring village, heats about a Few's desecration of the sacramental bread and vows to kill all Jews. He annihilates 146 Fewish communities in the hedion desectation, storms Kiilsheim (along with ottr| towns), and Kilts tmost of i I Se town's ance Participate in & the Peasants! Wap. The movement is suppressed and Kkidlsheim's ringleadebs are executed. agit of Soldiets fighting in the 30 Yeats" Wat Pass through the town and introduce the plague. The bodies of etal have te be caked if on a dessnated po Hat aves fe own. | x ABEZ| A new Law Grantees: Fews (the same rights as Chr ritians. GSS 4ees 4 WWI ends, ané of 305 soldiers, F4 dont return. Some of them are Jewish] 1926 | My uncle, Franz-Kah,is born oe ol sigs b Ker ah A A —f_ls sa Ot “Ye _| as5 Fewish shops close. [nthe wake of it 1938 [Jews are prohibited from moving to the |IREICHSKRITALNATHT, thiee Jewish menare taken] town, Prom funchasing teal estate, and from Y getting. tomanticaily involved with Christians. a3B/ b/ | an from d nearby town Yorees the Tewith ten of Kiilsheiin to climb into the; S SSE = [AIL of the town’s ews, except these hettied themselves. The town's Sews are kept kite Christians, ate deported to a concen-| [Fovether under house arrest for several weeks. [j] trati¢n camp in Gurs, Southern France, eae z = Fai: =a for haying criticized The regime- tig uncle Franz- Karl is killed in Halal | = wh 4946 [Ma father, Frana-kartits born. eaKRIEGS TAGEBUCH He was He was an irDespite the mustache —which felt out of fashion soon after the war ended— Alois little hesembles a fonyent Hitler supporter in his photognaphs. Rather, he looks like an actor playing a Nazi in a foteign Wivil comedy, his small, stout body unintentionally. ridiculing, the sel4- important gallantry of the soldiers surrounding ee Alois was one of the Fitst men in town to own a car, Because he was one of Kulsheim's wealthiest farmers, everyone pefetred to him as "The Lotd.”To m4 grandmother Matia, beir Meant often Letting my father without breakfast because she. liked to sleep. in, and sending him to bed alone, to his foom in the attic that he shated with Lt meant Letting, bumors be Sptead about hetself and the man who lived in the Shed behing het havse Cbecause his house in Cologne had been bombed), and who dyed Wa uniforms black $0 that they Covi be worn a5 heevlat clothes. T GOR ef SS It meant inadvertently. teaching my father about the Fisks of trusting others when she. acted as a quatantot for Yet another mann | she fell in love with, who disay idhen his venture. failed, Forcing hero sell everything her husband had let het, +o settle her lover's debts. {meant abandoning, my. Sathet 49 the priests at the Catholic Reece where he lived from age eleven to twenty. and where students ‘could choose between the Stick ot the belt. [+ meant merely standing by and watching vihile het brothet, Uncle Auguit, a butcher, iho {ater fall to his death from a beam in -| his barn, vented his anger at mi father,Kilsheim for my. father was nothing. but an open wound. Atter graduating from monastery. school he left to study in Karlsruhe. AIL that he tock with him from Kulsheim wete his mother’s demijoha of plum schnapps from the basement and his father's two rifles ftom undek the floorboards, where Alois had hiddeh them when the Armevicans arrived. When Maria died, he tetutned 40 the old farmheuse, ook some of his brothet's photogtaphs and exetcise books, and left — only tetuming in his dreams, My father talks about his childhood as if i had been lived by Someone entirely unbelated to him. “Let's change the subject," he says whenever { ask him about ft. What he means is that two questions be asked abut Annemarie — the aunt Whom | have hever mety his sister, who is foutteen years his Seniot and to whom he hasn't spoken since the Year before | was bom.X Because my mother hardly evel when | was Growing up that when ue asked me to 1 held the shoebox in the living - room . take a handful of photographs. _ to expl Often, she would | Browning at the i) eo fetes apabtmenty oe tablecloths, __the severe oak T ey Sideboatds and the paintings of i Now, about twenty-five Yeats later, when | betutn to Kattstuhe, | decide to open the drawer again. Hete is the same Soapy- sinell of the candles, the same old shoebox with its wotn cobnets, the same pictures, still in disattay. | remove the box from the drawer and bring it back to Brooklyn,Only a handful of Will's phsto graphs point to his wartime experience. Written on the back of one is - Anothek shows @ group of 9/5/44. ATTACK ON. KARISRUKE. Soldiets digging a fe The test Feature my grandfather in military inion with my grand mother Anna and my aunt Katin. Except for the national eagle insignia, his Wehtmacht belt, and the number 5 embtoidered ob his shoulder boat) Willi’s ‘vniform oo unadorned. \ x ee of nen ih Wet ackt tnifotms, Some, historical, Some ecoha eu ps Por vp on my screen as | look onfine for clues about Willi's uniform. 1 sit stiffly in my chair at the café. in Brookliyn trying to use my torso asa shield to hide the Swastikas and SS insignia from the people sitting behind me. Pb make my grandpatents! faces disappear on saine of the photographs and = them on 4 fam dedicated to los ‘discusion on the axis nations.”"Klo Holocaust denial is tolerated,” the website states, but Some of the Comments make me wonder about its political integrity. In the "For Sale & Wanted" category, Someone from Scotland is looking for uniform accessoties in prepatation for his first eenactment meeting. A woman from the United States offets heh grandfathers SS belt buckle for $400, but is told, “NOBODY pays TOP DOLLAR for something this ordinaty.” Someone in Hong, Kong sells miniatute Russian houses with lift-off roofs so that Fiqutes can be placed inside to ite guns from the windows. A couple in the Czech Republic replicates WWI Getman military and soccer Shoes that featute swastika insignia on the Soles. They are the most skillfully chatted shoes I've ever Seen.