“And did you all go along with this reassessment of your nation’s recent history?” I asked.
“When we learnt how many crimes were committed in the name of xenophobia, nationalism and racial purity, we had to go along. None of us ever wanted such a system back in power. We saw all the films about the concentration camps, about mass executions and about the rounding up of thousands of Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals and other Undesirables, and we had guided tours through some of the defunct concentration camps, where we were shown the torturing tools, the gas chambers and the ovens where they used to burn people. We saw photos showing mounds of naked bodies, emaciated prisoners, heaps of clothes, shoes, jewellery, things they had stolen from the poor people they sent to the gas chambers. We saw pictures of some of the so-called medical experiments they used to perform on prisoners, and, last but not least, we saw lists of numbers, huge numbers of deported people.” Renate became very heated.
I told her I could understand. While I knew about all those atrocious crimes too, having read about them, I was nevertheless impressed when Renate placed them in front of my eyes again.
“So, you had a serious conflict between what you had to learn at school and what your parents believed?” I asked.
While we were discussing like this, we were walking up the hill, turning right into Niemöllerstrasse. There, at last, stood my grandfather’s house. Of course, there were other people in it by now, but still it touched me. We walked on in the direction of the town cemetery.
She took up my question after a long pause. “It was more than just a conflict. It was absolute hell. I couldn’t take any friends to my house. The first few who did come were wise enough never to come back. My mother would go at them with Nazi slogans. She would tell them how everything we were learning at school these days was full of lies. She told them what a wonderful leader Adolf Hitler had been and what a crime of the Allies to kill such a great man. I stopped taking friends to my home. But those who had seen my mother told stories about her, and soon the whole school knew that my parents were Nazis.”
I was impressed. And I had to think of the type of history teaching I’d had myself in the States and later my children in England. What a contrast! In America, it was full of the victories of the good ones over the bad ones, the good ones always being us, the bad ones being first the English, then the Native Americans - or Red Indians, as they were called at that time - later the Southern States and in the end, the Japanese and the Nazis. We were always on the good side. If any war crimes were committed, it was always by the others. From what I learnt from my children, it was even worse in England. They had to learn the names of the English kings and queens, the greatness of the British Empire and the Commonwealth and, of course, they were inundated with heroic stories about how the English and the Allies saved the world from Hitler and the Nazis. The teaching of modern history at my children’s schools consisted mainly of hero worship. And flags as symbols of nationalism? Well, public buildings in America are full of the Stars and Stripes, and the English love to fly their Union Jack on every possible occasion.
Quite recently, in the course of my research into Fascism in preparation for my present search for my father’s past, I came across some interesting documents showing how many people in Britain, particularly the aristocracy, hailed Hitler and welcomed the fact that the Nazis - in fact all the Fascists in Europe - set up a stern rule and put the Jews in their place. Such facts are never taught in schools. And which English schoolchild ever learns about the British concentration camps in South Africa, the massacre of Amritsar, the Indian Holocaust - often euphemistically referred to as the Bengal Famine of the 1940s - or the financing of the Hitler dictatorship by the British? Of course, all the war crimes committed by the British appear a lot slighter than those of the Germans in the twentieth century, but my discoveries still made me wonder why they were all swept under the carpet and therefore completely ignored by the history lessons in British schools.
I felt I had to tell Renate something I’d heard when I was in Hamburg as a student. Julia, one of my fellow-students, told me what had happened to her as a girl on a school-trip to England. “When I was at secondary school,” Julia had explained, “we went on a school trip to London. It was in 1970. One afternoon, we were all allowed to go for walks in Hyde Park and relax from the sight-seeing programme. My friend Ursula and I were leisurely strolling through the park, chatting, when an elderly woman heard us, ran up to us and banged her handbag in our faces. She yelled at us, calling us monsters and dirty murderers. We were so shocked and just stared at her with open mouths. She cried that we had killed her father and her husband in the war. We realized there was nothing we could say to contradict her, because, in a way, she was right. Well, it hadn’t been us personally, but our country. That was an awful experience, I can tell you.” When I told Renate now, I expected her to be as shocked as I was when I heard the story.
But she answered, “Yes, I’ve heard of similar experiences among the West Germans on holiday. Here in the GDR, we couldn’t travel to England or other western countries. But for West Germans, it seemed to be quite common to be verbally attacked in shops in Holland or Belgium, or they were not served in restaurants when they spoke German.”
I had to admit that such experiences were alien to people like myself. We have always been the good ones. So, it is quite a different matter in my generation whether you grew up as an English or a German child in the first decades after the War. In Britain - and in the States, for that matter - you grew up in full consciousness of the noble past of your country and with a perfect understanding that your fathers and grandfathers had all been great heroes. After all, there were, and still are, numerous ceremonies and memorials to remind you of that wonderfully comforting fact. Even to this day, every British town celebrates Remembrance Day in November. In Germany, on the other hand, you grew up with the full knowledge that your fathers and grandfathers had been either murderers or cowards. Murderers if they were Nazis - like my father - or cowards if they couldn’t prevent the Nazis from committing all those crimes. For us, it was very comfortable to sit on our moral high horse.
While I was following my own train of thoughts and occasionally exchanging a few words with Renate, we were walking along the hill-slope, through quarters that were obviously built after the War, until we reached the cemetery.
I found the grave of my grandparents. It was overgrown with lichen and looked untended. I decided to buy some flowers and come back another day. There was no grave of my Uncle Thomas. I asked Renate if she or her mother knew anything about my father’s brother. But they obviously didn’t know anything. It was generally understood that he’d died in the war. He had joined the Navy, so it’s possible he went down with one of their warships.
“Would you like to see my mother again?” she asked.
“Only if you think she can tell me anything I don’t know yet. You know, since I talked to her the last time I have accepted the fact that my father wasn’t just a Nazi but an active member of the Schutz-Staffel. Do you think she might have any more shocking news for me?”
“I don’t know. But I think she would like to see you again.”
“I’ll see her once more, then.”
So, I went to see Frau Erdinger in her clean apartment a second time. She received me with a friendly smile.
After the usual small-talk we came to talk about the old times again. I asked her how she got all that information about my family. She said her husband used to have good connections, as she had pointed out before, but this time, she added that he had been good friends with a man called Löffel. Wolfgang Löffel, a man of many talents, as she said.
When I heard that name I was all ears.
Apparently, that Wolfgang fellow had spread a lot of bad news about the entire Weidmann family. Nobody really knew what role he played in the War, but Frau Erdinger was told he was involved in some prett
y important work for the Gestapo. Her husband found out that Löffel was one of the Gestapo’s thugs for the dirty jobs. He wasn’t the intellectual type who would cross-examine important dissidents before they were sent to prison or executed, he was more the hands-on fellow, he had to go to people’s homes and teach them lessons with his truncheon or his gun. It was rumoured that he blackmailed lots of people, even some Nazis themselves. But because Gerhard Erdinger and Wolfgang Löffel had always been such good buddies, they could protect each other.
“And did you learn anything about my father’s further career?” I asked.
“Not much. His name was only mentioned once more after the War. It was a few months after the Russians had taken over Thuringia from the Americans. One day, Gerhard told me he had found out how Manfred had escaped to the American Zone. After the end of the war, my husband considered it his duty to fight all forms of Wehrkraftzersetzung, so he bribed lots of farmers near the Zonengrenze, the area near the border to the West that had to be crossed by cowards who tried to escape. Of course, most of them were caught by the Russians, but some obviously made it. Gerhard told me he knew about Manfred’s escape and he knew his new name.”
We were silent for a few moments before I asked my next question.
“And do you happen to know what Herr Löffel did with his dangerous information?”
“Well, I don’t know exactly. But my Gerhard told him he should use his knowledge to make money. You know, we were all so extremely destitute after the Zusammenbruch of the Reich.”
“You mean blackmail the people who made it to the West?”
“I don’t know. I only know that Wolfgang was never a poor man. While we all had to struggle to make both ends meet in the newly established German Democratic Republic, he always had enough money. He was one of the first friends of Gerhard’s to own a motorcar. Have you got any idea how difficult it was to get a car in those days?”
“Well, how did he manage that? What do you think?”
“I believe he did a complete turn-around. From being a Nazi, he switched over to being a Communist. His broad experience in dirty work for the Gestapo must have given him an entry ticket to the Stasi in the new system. Gerhard considered him a traitor. But they remained good friends. You see, we tried to keep a low profile, and I believe Gerhard could be quite useful for Wolfgang on several occasions.”
I decided to change the subject.
“Do you know anything about Manfred’s girlfriend at the beginning of the War?”
“You mean the Kleinschmidt whore?”
I gulped. “Yes, if that’s what you called her.”
“I don’t know what became of her. She and her family should have been dealt with by the Gestapo. They were traitors, British spies. At least that was what Wolfgang told us. He told us how she would jump into bed with any man who paid her. Now that you mention her, I think I remember there was some talk about an illegitimate brat, and Gerhard said it was Wolfgang’s. It seems the Kleinschmidts were trying to blackmail the Weidmanns, believing the baby to be Manfred’s. But of course, it was Wolfgang’s.”
“How can you be so sure about that?” I asked.
“It was obvious. It was Wolfgang who fancied her after Manfred had left. And he told my husband how she had seduced him, the slut.”
I really had to swallow hard and keep my impulses back.
“Do you know what happened to the baby, the little boy?”
“No. And I don’t care. Never thought much about that lot.”
I thanked old Frau Erdinger for what she had told me and wanted to leave, but she kept me back, wanting to know what I could tell her about my father.
“I’ve given you all the information, now it’s your turn to tell me how your father got on after his escape. Wolfgang told us he’d escaped to Switzerland. That was the last I knew.”
“I don’t know anything about his life until we lived in Chicago, in America,” I lied. “From there, we moved to England, where we still live now.”
“Was your father involved in anymore political work?”
“Not that I know of. He worked for an American company. His interest lay more in spreadsheets and trade agreements, in profits and losses.”
“Ah, a true Capitalist, then.”
“If you like. Yes.”
I threw her a few more raw bones, but I avoided to tell her too much about Dad. I wanted to protect his reputation in the eyes of that awful old Nazi. It was really pointless, but I followed my instinct.
Soon, I managed to get away. Renate walked down the stairs with me and bade me good-bye at the front door. I walked away, along the grey street, with a heavy heart.
* * *
I am back at the hotel. It’s raining. This gives me an opportunity to stay in my room and catch up with my diary. I haven’t written down the latest findings yet. This has been partly because of my emotions. Some of the things that Frau Erdinger told me shocked me, whereas my heart felt very joyful when I talked to Anna Kleinschmidt. I find it strange, but it is a fact that I can’t ignore: I have grown to love the old woman. I feel as if Anna was my own mother. Or is this bad? My own mother died only six years ago. I’m not very good at psychology, but I wonder if it’s possible that I might have adopted Anna as my surrogate mother, as it were.
When I saw her yesterday, she told me more about her son Manfred. He grew up in Anna’s family with her parents and a young cousin, Henrietta, who came to live with them as an orphan in ’42, when her own family was killed. They had lived in an apartment block in which the SS found a Jewish family hidden away in the attic. The SS killed everyone in the apartment block. They just broke down the doors, entered every apartment and shot everybody dead. Henrietta managed to hide in the bottom of an old wardrobe under a heap of old linen. She escaped from the building at night and walked to the Kleinschmidt apartment, which was about two miles away. Anna’s family took her in. It was quite difficult to explain the little girl’s presence to the authorities. They declared her as a refugee. Had they registered her as who she really was, she would probably have been shot.
Henrietta was very good with little Manfred. When she came she was ten, while Manfred had just turned two. Through the remaining war years, the girl was a great help. While Anna went to work - she had found a job, sewing insignia and rank badges on tunics in a uniform factory - Henrietta would look after the boy.
“What became of her?” I asked Anna.
“She lived with us until 1952. Then she fell in love with a returned soldier. They got married and moved to Leipzig. But we kept in touch. She still lives in Leipzig, a widow.”
“And what became of Manfred?”
“He was a happy child and a lucky boy. He started his apprenticeship as an electrician in 1956 and completed it successfully. Then, in 1960, when he was working for VEB Elektroinstallationen, he fell in love with a girl from Berlin. He often travelled to Berlin for the weekend, and I thought he would move in with her. She was a lovely girl. Her name was Angelika. He often brought her to see me.”
“Well, did they get together?”
Anna hesitated before she answered. “They had great plans together. They only argued about where they were going to settle down. Manfred liked it here. Gera was his town. But Angelika was a girl of the big city. She wanted to remain there. So, things went on like this for months, she visited him here and he visited her there. Until the 13th of August 1961.”
“Oh, the building of the Berlin Wall. What happened then?”
“Angelika was visiting her aunt in West Berlin when the wall was built. She was staying in the West for a few days. Nobody believed they would make the border so watertight as they did. When she was trying to get back two days later, she was shocked to see the wall and the border guards in reality, not only in the paper or on TV. She was too frightened to cross back into East Berlin
, hoping she might get an opportunity later but really only putting it off. The machine guns of the Grenzpolizei frightened her so much. She wrote a letter to Manfred, explaining it all.”
“And what did he do?”
“He went very quiet. He stopped telling me everything. He became more outspoken against our political system. Eventually, the Stasi got wind of his critical attitude. One day two Stasi thugs fetched me in handcuffs and took me to their interrogation rooms. They wanted to know what I knew about my son’s seditious activities. After two days they let me go, but I was intimidated enough to be careful from then on. When Manfred heard of the questioning I had undergone, he went berserk. He said he was going underground, he might even leave the country.”
“Did he become a rebel?”
“You can say that, in a way. I don’t know what he was doing or where he was hiding for several months, until late in 1962, when the Stasi arrested me. They kept me in a dark room for about three or four days, feeding me on dirty water and mouldy bread. There was no bunk or chair. I had to sit or lie on the floor, which was cold and wet. Then they led me into a brightly lit room where a strong lamp was aimed straight at my face. I went blind for a while. I was tied to a chair, my hands tied at my back. My clothes were dirty from the dirty room in which they had kept me in the dark. When the Stasi interrogator left the room, the two guards stepped up to me and started to tear the front of my clothes. They said their boss had given them permission to do with me what they liked. They boasted to each other what they were going to do to me, how they were going to rape me and what injuries they would like to inflict on me. But then the Stasi man entered again, and they stepped back to the wall. He told them off, but it was only play-acting, I could tell. The men’s actions and threats were meant to intimidate me. As if I still needed intimidating!”
“How awful!” I had to breathe.
“Yes, it was an ordeal. The Stasi interrogated me about Manfred, what I knew about his activities, in what way I was involved in his crimes against our great republic and so on. I couldn’t tell them anything. They kept me for about three weeks, torturing me from time to time, then being extremely friendly and mock-conspiratorial, but always trying to get information out of me. Then, suddenly, I was let out. They must have given up. However, I had to sign a document stating that I was bound to absolute secrecy. I was forbidden to talk to anyone about what I had experienced during my time at the Stasi headquarters. If I violated that secrecy, I would be convicted as a Staatsfeind, an enemy of the state, and sent to prison in Bautzen.”
White Lies Page 33