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Tearing the Silence: Being German in America

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Reading "Tearing the Silence" is part of my journey to achieve some level of peace and acceptance of who I am--a "late born" German, whose family immigrated to the US in 1953, when I was 8 years old. For years I have struggled with how a doctrine of hate and genocide could become accepted in a land that gave us Beethoven, Schiller and Goethe. As was the experience of many in the book, our family didn't discuss the holocaust. As adults, my brother and I started our own search for understanding, Chris approaching it from the religious perspective...the role of the church in the resistance...and the colloboration with Hitler. I took the humanistic path, reading books such as "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl and visiting museums and concentration camps. Nothing helped me understand what could cause such a complete breakdown of religious, moral and ethical values. How often I thought: Why didn't my parents DO something about it. They are decent human beings. How could they let it go on? Did they really "not know?" In reading "Tearing the Silence" it helped me understand that my brother and I are part of a larger group who share similar experiences and who feel that same shame, but that it is also our generation that must be vigilant not to let the impact of these dark events be mitigated by time. I now no longer constantly think "Why didn't my parents...." I now think "What would I have done? Would I have had the strength of my moral convictions to put my life and my family's life on the line? What can I do now to be a peacemaker and healer in this world?" Dietrich Bonhoffer, the great German Theologian, said, when asked if he would resist swearing allegiance to Hitler as part of his duties as a Lutheran Minister "I pray I will find the courage to resist." That too is my prayer if my convictions are ever tested. In the meantime, I recommend this book to those who share my background or those living with us....so you can better understand the guilt and shame we carry (as we must). My only disappointment was that Ms Hegi generally selected the experiences of people whose parents were very violent, cruel, disfunctional and abusive. I don't believe that represents German parenthood, unless my own family experience is unique. Our German parents were loving, suportive of us and each other, and I owe much of who I am today to their personal sacrifices.

Ursula Hegi does a great service by examining the feelings of the "2nd generation" of Germans who were too young to have participated in the Nazi horror, but who have had to deal with it nonetheless. It is also an examination of what it is like to be a German immigrant in the US, and deal with American Christians and Jews and their feelings towards Germans and the Holocaust. As a child of Holocaust survivors from Poland who has read much of the "2nd generation" children of survivors literature, as well as other interviews with Germans of the "2nd generation" (Sabine Reichel's "What Did You Do in the War Daddy" comes to mind), I believe this book contributes greatly to creating an understanding among all of us who have been so heavily effected by the Holocaust. It was also an eyeopener for me to read the descriptions of the relationships these people had with their parents, and compare them to the issues Holocaust survivors and their children deal with. Very well written and hard to put down. Highly recommended.

At first I also thought this was another "guilt trip" - something the present generation of young people in Germany have resolutely turned their back on, probably to the relief of much of the rest of the world. But, as a German born in Germany towards the end of the war and leaving to come to America just before I turned four (where the banks of the Mississippi in Minnesota after bombed-out Berlin were Paradise Found despite loss and dislocation), I found the commentary and the interviews fascinating. They were able to stir up long-compartmentalized memories of what such an origin at such a time meant and continues to mean for those of us who "escaped" into a better world. Knowing more fully from these interviews that others of my generation share memories, traumas, repressions and longings which had mostly been "silenced" by the new world, and being able to understand them as specifically shaped by our being the children and survivors of families torn apart by the war, and by the pressures of being German in the post-war world, has been illuminating, clarifying, and in a strange way reassuring: it IS possible to confront, face this legacy rather than simply trying to ignore it. Read the book if you too are of this generation and background; and do not expect it to resonate much if you are not.

This is not "another German hating book" because its testimonies are universal and are valid for all. This book not only relates the experiences of Germans and their feelings of guilt but leads the reader to the most important question: What is the responsibility of each person who knows about the Holocaust? It is important to remember the Holocaust and it is even more important to make sure that it NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN. But what is it that each one of us can DO to prevent history from repeating itself? We can turn the lessons of the Holocaust into action if we not just preach tolerance but practice tolerance. When we see people suffering hunger, homelessness, persecution and discrimination do we step in and feed the hungry, shelter the homeless and help those who are persecuted? If more individuals had acted on those humane impulses, the Holocaust would have never happended. Has the world learned the lessons? We see bigotry, hatred and prejudice all around us, not just in Rwanda, Kosovo and Ireland. Do we act?? We can all be part of "repairing the world". This book reminds us to act. Thank you Ursula Hegi.

"We are not political." This assertion by the German family hosting the senior judge in the 1961 film Judgment At Nuremberg typifies the prevailing attitude of the parents of Hegi's subjects. It lies at the foundation of the "great silence" experienced by Ursula Hegi and other children who had to come to America to discover the Holocaust. Hegi and her peers grew up in a vacuum of information about the Nazi years. Realization came as a shock, disillusioning some, generating anger and resentment in others. But as Hegi's subjects relate, few cast off their roots. Some made pilgrimages to the sites of the Nazi crimes. Others sought understanding from parents who kept them in ignorance. Assembling a collection of interviews with her counterparts, Hegi gives us their viewpoints, life histories and introspections of their pasts. It's a unique and worthy effort.

In trying to reveal the present feelings of German children who came to America, Hegi undertook to understand for herself why Germans remained reticent about the Nazi years. She delved into people's lives through the interviews, asking them to examine their own feelings to see how they equated with her own. Clearly, the responses amazed her with their familiarity. Silence from the older generation and a strong desire to understand the root causes of Nazism in the younger, immigrant population.

The stories told, garnered from twenty three individuals, relate the upbringing and disrupted lives of Germans, usually children, who carry the burden of their parents' origins. American children, cognizant of the Holocaust in ways the immigrant children were not, might characterize their German-born peers as "Nazis," even when it was clearly impossible. For most of the interviewees, the accusation was more mysterious than offending. Confident of their own innocence, whatever resentment arose was usually directed at their families in Germany.

While this book is of great value in bringing the memories of the post-Nazi generation into view, it also poses some interesting questions. Oppressive fathers and submissive mothers aren't a uniquely German phenomenon. We aren't even clear as to whether these dominating parents are viewed as Nazis or sympathizers by Hegi's subjects. The only common theme, unique among immigrants to America, is the Holocaust. Some wonder how "normal" people could have engaged in such barbarity, asking themselves how they would have reacted had they been aware of the circumstances. Hegi, as investigative journalist in this book, is careful to avoid judgment. But the subjects raising these questions pose another: how did they view injustices in their adopted country.

Few current prejudices are related in the interviews. One man admits to discomfort at seeing the "Dots;" South Asians "who "smell bad" and "never offer you a fair profit." The reader cannot help but wonder how these people reacted to the protest movements of the 1960s. Did they react to racial hatred in America with quiet acceptance as their parents had done in Germany? Unlike Germany, the violent reaction to protest was visible on any news channel in America. Did they object to America's most controversial war, or support it? One is left with the impression that these exiles comprised part of Richard Nixon's "Silent Majority" and that they, like the parents they admonish, remained equally silent when confronted by issues of moral weight. What Hegi has done is document again the universal that ethical values remain the province of those who stand to be counted. They are, after all, no more or less than human.

Tearing the Silence by Ursula Hegi tells the unique and sometimes painfully insightful stories of sixteen German men and women, including the author herself, who were born just after World War II. They are the now-adult children of the German families who lived in Germany during the years of Hitler's Third Reich.

Unlike the many books that have been written about the Jewish experience in concentration camps, these interviewees are the children of Christian families who were not driven out of Germany, but who suffered the consquences of living in wartorn Germany, and their parents' refusal to talk about the atrocities occurring openly in their daily lives.

To her great credit, the author does not paraphrase what she learned from her interviewees. She records their answers faithfully. As I read, I can hear the accents, the speakers' sometimes awkward phrasing, and the wholehearted sincerity of these emigres as they responded thoughtfully and conscientiously to Hegi's probings concerning their lives during this troubling time in our history.

Each interviewee discussed the resentment and often anger they still feel toward their parents for hiding the truth from them, for refusing to answer their questions or for dismissing them with, "We didn't know," or "We just did what we were told." Many of them talk about how their parents' silence and evasions resulted in their own stifling sense of inferiority and lack of trust. Many of them admitted that they still grapple with those feelings today.

I was deeply touched as I read the complicated and conflicting feelings discussed because I too am German, though, being Jewish, my family fled in time to avoid the war. And I too was turned away when I questioned my parents about why we had to leave. I know now that my parents were unable to discuss the trauma of being evicted from their beloved homeland--the country that defined their heritage and which they could not bear to leave. As one woman told Hegi, "You write about things most of us don't dare to look at." Johanna admits to a sentiment many of us share: "If this can be done by human beings, it can be done by me. She asks over and over, "What can we do so this will never happen again?"

Hans-Peter believes that it is already happening again. When visiting Germany he saw the hatred against the foreigners whom Germans believe are stealing their jobs. He saw again how groups of people insist that they are superior to others. He lives with the feeling (and fear) that someone may one day treat him with the same hatred, the same unmitigated violence, and that the same discrimination will start all over again.

A subject that comes up frequently among the interviewees is the dilemma of feeling neither at home in America nor at home in Germany: They feel too German to feel like true Americans and too American to ever feel at home again in Germany.

In addition to their disorientation, there is much shame around being German: "How can we expect others not to hate us for what we have done?" The author tells the story about her fourteen-year-old son Eric's friend, who, upon learning that she is German, asks: "Does that mean you are a Nazi?" She hears the question and can hardly breathe.

Hegi writes about the obedience to authority that was ingrained in all of us and in most of German citizenry, generation after generation. Marika tells us how she believed that if she did exactly as she was told, if she was just "good enough," everything would turn out all right... both in the political future of her country and in her steadily deteriorating marriage. She believed that under no circumstances must she "make waves," or she would "lose everything."

I must say here that this is not just a German way of being. It is universally human to want to take the easier, smoother road. That is why this book has much to offer everyone. I was moved to tears as well as uplifted with admiration as I read the stories of these postwar men and women who experienced firsthand the evils of the Third Reich and have the courage to speak about it.

Hegi, in my view, expresses what is most important in her book when she reminds us of the importance of taking the time to talk with one another... not just about the good things in our lives but about our worries and conflicts as well. She admits there may be pain involved..."But that is only a part of it; there is so much more." Speaking openly and with trust will lead to a greater understanding of ourselves and of one another, and much tragedy will be averted that comes from the refusal to discuss and confront our uncertainties and different points of view.

by Duffie Bart
for Story Circle Book Reviews
www.storycirclebookreviews.org
reviewing books by, for and about women

Tearing the Silence is one of the most important books that I have read, as I am the child of parents who grew up in the Third Reich. It was a truly rewarding experience reading this book and it helped me understand how others in my situation have been affected by the Nazi aspect of their German heritage. If I remember correctly, though, the author really only interviewed people of the "2nd Generation" born shorty after the war; there are, however, people like myself who were born somewhat later and had to come to terms with their heritage during the 1980s rather than the 1960s. The inclusion of one or two interviews with people in this situation would have added considerably to the book.

My mother emigrated to the US in 1950 after growing up in Nazi Germany, so this book was particularly interesting and meaningful to me. It is a must read for anyone from Germany or with German heritage. I don't agree with some of the remarks made by the interviewees or by the author, but their stories were valuable and authentic. I would advise the reader to take one essay at a time, read it and think about it, and then move on to the next. It's not a book to read in one sitting, and is a book to return to again. Ursula Hegi has helped to fill a huge void, the void of the experiences of the Germans who survived Nazi Germany, who suffered in a completely unique way. The tragedy of the Holocaust and those who died in the Concentration Camps does not outweigh the tragedy of an entire country of citizens who were scarred and maimed (or worse) by what the Nazis and Russians did. I would say that the suffering of each group of people has equal validity, but the reader will draw his/her own conclusions and that is as it should be.

Ursula Hegi must have been squirming during some of these interviews, as the subjects were sometimes brutally and tastelessly honest about their feelings. I found that honesty a draw for me to keep reading. Having read 'Stones From the River', and a few other Hegi novels, I was familiar with her style. However, she mostly lets her interview subjects guide the way; she does great with this style as well. Anyone who is in the least bit interested in what goes on in the minds of some of Germany's children from World War II, should pick up a copy.

Ursula Hegi moved to the US from Germany at the age of 18. She was born one year after the war ended, and she remembers vividly what her elders told her about those years. In her Introduction to _Tearing the Silence_, she states why she wrote this book, and how it helped her identify with her cultural heritage. With the title _Tearing the Silence_ she makes her point very clear: Post-war German immigrants have stories to tell.

Hegi conducted interviews with post-war German immigrants in the US. Most of the stories were similar to her own: born and raised in Germany during, or after, World War II, and immigration to the United States before age 20. Some are children of SS officers, others are children of privates. Some live happy lives and do not focus on the past, others are haunted by what happened.

There are some great stories in the book--very thought-provoking. I was amazed at how some of the same phrases were repeated in all of the stories--even though the interviewees never met each other. Many were told that there parents "...never knew about the Holocaust", and others said "Germans suffered too..."

With _Tearing the Silence_, Hegi provided a much-needed contribution to World War II history, and biography.