when you are German

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

Anne Frank

At age 14, I went on a school exchange to the UK because my grades in English were abysmal but also because I wanted to get away from boring Germany. I ended up in an incredibly dull town on the east coast of England and had a miserable time. My English improved but not to the expected standard, also I had picked up the local accent. So it was an allround failure. (I did, however, come back with blue nail varnish and some excellent memories of a week in London.)

From day one of my time in England, I was told in no uncertain terms by the good people living there that I was a Kraut and that Germany had lost the war. Some people had a good laugh, showed me funny tv sketches, others decided to provide history lessons and occasionally, I was asked, how come the Germans allowed hitler to do what he did? What did your family do? Why did the Germans let this happen? 

I am grateful for this experience. I returned home and started to ask questions - which were not answered. Anyway, life interfered and it was not until much later, that I began to take longer and harder looks at my country's recent history.

Where to begin. There's the guilt, the shame. To face it, even when you are second and third generation. The responsibility I have felt at times is overwhelming. 

Some milestones along the road.

There is my obtaining of my maternal grandfather's files from the national archive and while there is so much that I cannot reveal or even locate, the knowledge of his involvement.

There are relatives of my parent's and grandparent's generation who are angry with me, who want me to understand that there wasn't a choice, that one had to remain silent, not attract attention, that it was all too much to cope and understand.

There was Daniel Goldhagen's book about hitler's willing executioners (2012) that sparked months of public debates and heated discussions, and not just regarding the historic German anti-semitism but the  Mitläufer (follower, hanger-on, collaborator), ordinary (?) citizens who basically did nothing, failed to rock the boat.

There was a long cold day spent in Dachau concentration camp, a short distance from where my parents met and where I was born. It was the first camp established by the nazis, used - especially in its early years - to imprison and intimidate political dissidents. The camp, which is massive, was built in the first months after hitler came to power, i.e. years before Auschwitz.

I could go on. There are days, when I am still hoping with all my heart that I will find one, just one distant relative who may have hidden someone in their basement or attic, enabled a family to escape, participated in a secret resistance group, printed leaflets, developed even the smallest form of sabotage. 

Nobody did, they all felt too exhausted, too shocked, too worried about their own family, status, well being, survival. I could call them all cowards but what do I know. The 12 years of nazi regime, the six years of war that ended it. It was never a topic of conversation in my extended family. And if the subject came up, rarely and by accident, there was often silence, people would leave the room, my mother shaking and smoking.

When you are German, to this day people from other countries feel obliged to remind you of what your parent's and grandparent's generation did. They tell you stories of how their father fought against the nazis, of how their politicians helped to end fascism in Europe. And they tell you that they would never  let anything like it happen in their own country. That it's a German curse, and that these Germans, these lazy, idiotic Germans did nothing to stop it. 

On national tv last night, yet another expert explained that in the US there surely will come a point when Trumpism has exhausted itself and people are tired of it. That much is certain, he said. I wonder at what price.