The Curse

“You don’t seem to be German,” someone will say occasionally to German-born author Ursula Hegi. I have been told the exact same thing many times. No kidding. What are we supposed to be like? Swastika-swinging blond Ubermenschen with master race smiles and that famous caricature accent? It’s probably meant as a backhanded compliment, but it feels as if someone points out a pernicious deformity of the soul. Sure, we’re innocent, we know that, but it’s hard to be seen as the slightly suspicious descendants of one of the greatest war criminals who ever set a jackboot on this planet. It still isn’t fun to be German.

Scratch through any German immigrant’s surface, and under that well-adjusted, happy-to-be-here veneer emerges a torn and tormented person with a secret longing for her roots and a sense of belonging. To be a postwar German immigrant in America (where it is understood that you will have to leave too unyielding national traits at the entrance to this paradise) is an especially mixed blessing. On one hand, the new identity is a perfect place to hide from old Nazi ghosts who rear their “Heil”-screaming heads once in a while. On the other hand, it is precisely the lack of pride in their native country that pains those who tried to chop off their troubling roots.

And troubling they are, as the acclaimed novelist Ursula Hegi proves time and again in her new book of oral history, aptly named “Tearing the Silence: On Being German in America.” Legacies aren’t necessarily wonderful gifts that instill pride, joy and delightful memories. In the case of Germans born during and after the war, something terrible and unwanted was dumped on us without explanation or preparation. I am one of those “innocent by birth” German American immigrants, born after the war. We grew up in a depressing country among ruins and a stifling silence where questions were swallowed for fear of what the answers might be. Some of us are still choking.

Hegi starts her book with herself, the quintessential uprooted and self-loathing German who couldn’t look at her country’s crimes and her family’s background for decades. Born in 1946, she came to America as an 18-year-old, happy to have escaped it all: fatherland, father figure (in her case, an alcoholic) and the curse of the Nazis. An illusion, as it turned out.

The past caught up with her. She met Jews, she was asked questions, she was ashamed to be German. She suspected that she couldn’t be alone in this turmoil and set out to find collective soul mates. Which isn’t as hard as it used to be because being a postwar German these days means having to say “I’m ashamed.” Obsessed and eager, they grapple, they dig, they search, they delve into the past like a suicidal diver who expects nothing but harm from a dangerous dip into the abyss called homeland but needs to do it just the same.

Maybe it’s compensation for the many years of denial, inherited from the original Nazi-burghers, now almost all dead or dying. But in the last 20 years, the convenient and enraging collective amnesia, which the nation has long been accused of, has disappeared.

The 15 Germans interviewed for “Tearing the Silence” were born between 1939 and 1949 and emerge as distinctive characters from these pages, in spite of their stunning sameness. What they share with each other, regardless of their different backgrounds and biographies, and what makes them typical for their generation, is the burdensome heritage. Who did they turn out to be? These now middle-aged boomers appear to be slightly damaged goods, sad, soulful, insecure people with chips on their shoulders. They are both warrior and victim, desperately trying to understand (and forgive) their forebears who slammed them with that Nazi curse.

Most of the interviewees came as children with their parents to America; a few were adopted by Americans. To be a German immigrant child in the ‘50s in America was a tough assignment. Too vivid and fresh were the images of emaciated bodies piled up high. But life isn’t fair, and these youngsters learned fast that they came from a place that had a flaw so severe and so secret that it couldn’t be defended or discussed.

And yet, postwar German immigrants were grateful exiles because America was a colorful and welcome getaway from their poverty-stricken, dreary homeland of losers. As Marika, born in 1941, an outstanding woman with a heartbreaking story points out: “America was the great liberation. I woke up and was reborn in America.”

Almost everything that one has read about Germans somewhere reappears in Hegi’s accounts. There are the irrepressible old uncles and aunts complaining that “there has to be an end to the constant showing of German atrocities because what’s gone is gone.” There is the classic claim, “We didn’t know what was going on,” custom-made to erase guilt and complicity. There is the soldier dad who yearns for “the wonderful camaraderie” of the trenches and the old Nazis who still miss their beloved Fuehrer because “under Hitler, things were a little more orderly.” Even the twisted German logic, the incredulous “They couldn’t have killed that many Jews,” isn’t missing. In fact, there are quite a few hearty, still unashamedly anti-Semitic old German parents quoted in this book. No wonder their children didn’t want to prod and still cringe when they tell about their parents’ Third Reich tales.

Only a few parts of Hegi’s accounts are that scary, but even this distortion is understandable in an attempt to cover up the painful truths about a father. Consider Anneliese, born in 1942, who is proud of her father, who was in the SS, not because of what the intrepid killer did but because he had been accepted into the elite organization. On the other hand, Anneliese, who still has nightmares about the war, can’t watch concentration-camp footage. She’s too sensitive. As a no-nonsense legal secretary, she’s worked with a lot of Jews who loved that she was German because that meant she was a hard worker and they bent over backward to be nice to her. (She probably kept the SS-officer story to herself.)

Eva, born in 1941, on the other hand, feels “guilty by association.” Hers was a horrible refugee life with all the hardship, sense of dislocation and difficult adolescence, including begging for food and shelter on a daily basis and fleeing from Russians who were on a raping spree. It becomes clear throughout the book that life on the run and in the ruins has shaped every pre- and post-war German’s life in some dramatic way.

These are portraits in pain. They are laced with melancholy, loss and deep doubts. They lack exuberance, joy and high spirits. There’s a shadow, a gloom, a spell. None of the Nazis’ self-confidence and unshakable belief in their superiority has been passed on to their children and grandchildren. Instead, it has left women and men who ache to be respected and accepted for who they are and not for what their parents did.

Maybe that’s why they can be irritatingly passive. Few Americans, or anybody for that matter, would swallow outrageous remarks like “You Germans are all Nazis” without blinking an eye, yet this is still hurled at Germans by prejudiced Americans.

What do people do when they feel unloved as a people? When they are Germans, they turn inward and they work hard, as if to prove that “good Germans” aren’t bad seeds but reliable, disciplined and democratic. In most ways, they are decent people with social consciences. There is not one single person in this book who doesn’t shine with achievements based on solid, dedicated, admirable work.

But by and large, Germans aren’t a cheerful lot. No free-floating artists here, no flamboyant personalities, no frivolous indulgences, not many witty, light conversations. Only a few add refreshing candor and deft humor to their stories.

There are only few shortcomings in “Tearing the Silence.” One is Hegi’s tendency to cater to foreign stereotypes about the German “national character” in the first third of the book. Too many stories are focused on the problem of being German, and the whining of these exiles is a bit self-indulgent and makes it difficult for the reader to feel sorry for these “victims.”

Hegi, who’s written the best-selling and beautifully evocative novels “Floating in My Mother’s Palm” and “Stones From the River,” has a narrower focus in “Silence” because she herself is one of the walking wounded here. Fortunately, halfway through the book, the Germans she has picked come alive and become more complex individuals. They are compelling for anybody interested in stories that transcend countries and races. Their sincerity is touching; their courage to expose self-doubt is admirable. Their stories are sharp, blatantly honest, broad-minded, critical and insightful.

Growing up is hard; growing up German can be a trip to hell and back. Almost all of the participants in “Silence” come from what we now call abusive and dysfunctional families and are alienated from their parents beyond repair. For myself, this aspect proved to be the core of the book. What emerges in these pages is that German parents, mother and father, Vatis und Muttis, of the war and postwar era weren’t very loving, warm or understanding. It brings tears to one’s eyes reading the accounts of brutal beatings and lacerating mental cruelty, which tough unfeeling mothers and cold fathers piled onto the loneliness of these uprooted children.

I’m afraid that strictness, the authoritarian regimen of total obedience, is an old German tradition. The hardships of war can’t fully explain this unconscionable treatment of defenseless children. Could this absence of compassion lie at the root of why a once cultivated country went mad and murderous, turning innocent people into smoke and ashes in designated extermination camps?

Not surprisingly, the most interesting and complicated friendships of these Germans are with Jews, and many Germans in this book (and practically all the ones I know, including myself) can count Jews among their friends. It feels good to read what Katharina, a therapist, born in 1947, says: “. . . Some things can happen that avert tragedy when Germans and Jews talk.” But Gisela, born in 1943, has a point, too, when she states: “I’m beginning to think that the nature of violence is inherent in the human being, and that we’re never going to get past it.”

The immensely likable Germans in this book seem to be the least likely candidates to harm even a fly, let alone round up people and stuff them into ovens. America is lucky to have such model citizens; one would feel lucky to have some of them as friends.