“Yes, Mum mentioned people like Hans Filbinger and Kurt Waldheim.”
“Right you are. But there were thousands of Nazi followers who had only obeyed orders but caused misery to unwanted individuals by just doing their office jobs. They wrote lists of Jewish families, they copied and filed Gestapo documents needed to persecute and imprisoned dissidents, they helped the Nazis in power in many possible ways.”
“We don’t know what we would have done in their situation.” Andrew threw in.
“Exactly. So why punish everyone? If the Spruchkammern had been set up with members of the Allied Forces and if they had been as strict as possible, Germany would have been even more depopulated than it already was through the numerous casualties. You can’t build up a new country without people.”
“I’m just disappointed. So, the whole process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung was just a sham? A big show to pretend that the German people weren’t so bad after all?”
“Not at all. The process was the best thing that could be done in that situation. It was impossible to deny the past, and it was equally impossible to throw a whole nation into prison. But what was possible was some large-scale action to prevent such horrible crimes from ever being repeated. The German people had to be re-educated.”
“I see.”
The two friends stopped at a street-café and sat down for some nice refreshment. Andrew looked out to the sailing yachts in the bay.
“But Granddad was more than a small follower. He was in the SS. He must have blood on his hands.”
“Do you remember? One evening at the pub a few years ago we were discussing Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment in view of what can be done with a heavy guilt?”
“Yes, and you drew a comparison with L’Etranger by Camus. I can clearly remember.”
“Now, if we want to explore the moral sides as well as the social sides of a heavy guilt, we have to do a lot more thinking.”
“Indeed. But listen, Dave. Only half an hour ago we agreed that we can’t know how we would have reacted if we had been young men during Hitler’s dictatorship. Young men without the type of democratic education that we have today! Wouldn’t we have joined what was presented to us as a great cause?”
“Yes, possibly.”
“So how can we sit on our high horse and judge those men and women on the basis of today’s enlightened insights?”
“We aren’t judging them, and you shouldn’t judge your grandfather either.”
“What are we doing then, I’d like to know?”
“We cannot judge them because we are individuals.”
“What do you mean?” Andrew raised his voice.
“Remember Dostoyevsky,” David replied. “His view isn’t that of an individual either. His great novel asks what society as a whole can do to cope with such aberrations as Raskolnikov’s. So, if we take the view of our post-war society in Europe as a whole, including not only Germany but all the European nations, even the ones who won the War, we can and we should try to assess the whole phenomenon from a moral, a legal and a social position on the basis of democracy and Human Rights.”
“Those are big words, my friend.”
“Indeed, they are. But they aren’t any less appropriate for that, are they?”
The two friends spent the day walking around Weymouth. The weather was fine, so their extended walk offered them many new views of this seaside town. Andrew loved the fishing boats they found moored to the quay, while David was more interested in the expensive yachts. They also admired the modern car ferry for the Channel Islands, promising each other that they would visit Jersey and Guernsey with their girlfriends one of these days.
Their conversations were mostly about the topics of the day, but from time to time they returned to Nora’s diary and Granddad’s role in the War.
“Actually, we don’t know any details of what he did during the War. So, he may have been just one of the followers,” Andrew suggested.
“If he was an officer of the Waffen-SS you can bet he committed his share of horrible crimes, I am sorry to say.”
“The question is: Do we have to find out?”
“Didn’t you say your grandfather is already far advanced in his dementia? He probably couldn’t even remember everything himself, let alone share those awful memories with you.”
“You’re right.” Andrew heaved a long sigh. “And what about that son of his in Canada? My Uncle Manfred, or rather half-uncle? Do you think I should urge my mother to find him and visit him in Vancouver? Or should I go?”
“That’s for your mother to decide or to negotiate with you. If it was me, I would certainly be curious about a new uncle popping up on the horizon.”
They left it at that.
The next morning, they had a long breakfast. Between mouthfuls of bacon and eggs they uttered occasional comments on what they had discussed the day before. Especially David felt the urge to place everything he had said then in the right light. He was afraid that Andrew might get things the wrong way. It was important for him to make sure his friend didn’t get the impression that he had to do what he told him. Andrew was completely free to act in any way he considered right. There was no hard and fast rule about how to speak to his grandfather or what to say to his mother.
“Then there’s that fellow, Wolfgang Löffel,” Andrew said at the end of their long breakfast session. “What am I to do with him?”
“I don’t think there’s anything you can do,” David replied.
“He must be in his late eighties. I only hope he’ll kick the bucket soon.”
* * *
When back in Eastbourne, Andrew spoke to his mother again; he asked her a lot of questions about further details she might have found out on her visit to Germany. But she said she couldn’t remember anything else but what she’d written down in her diary.
So, he asked her about Wolfgang Löffel. She answered she didn’t want to know about that awful fellow. He might still be in England, from all she knew, probably scheming. He might still try to blackmail the family.
“What a pain in the neck. He raped Anna, he made life difficult for Granddad and he’s still trying to make trouble. I wish I had him here. I could kill him.”
“Don’t say a thing like that.”
“But it’s true. It’s how I feel.”
“Listen, my dear. Before you judge a man like Löffel, look at what your grandfather may have done. Having been in the SS, he most probably caused misery to many more families. So just hold your horses.”
“Okay. But you can’t expect me to like the fellow.”
They spoke about other things. Nora told her son about her friend Debbie and the difficulties she was having in her job.
When he got back to his flat, Andrew was greeted by Rebecca. She told him she had booked a wellness weekend at a beautiful hotel near Canterbury.
“So I’m going to be on my own for the weekend?” he asked.
“Of course not, my darling. It’s for two people. We’re going together. It will do you good to get away from all your worries. You’ve been reading that story in your mother’s old schoolbooks, so you need a break now.”
Andrew was at a loss for words.
“Aren’t you going to give me a big kiss?” she pleaded.
“Now, look here,” he tentatively began, “you should know that there’s nothing that I hate more than so-called wellness weekends. Besides, I have too much to do. I can’t get away like that.”
“You aren’t going to read any more of that morbid story of your mother’s?” Having said this, her face drooped and tears began to roll down her lovely cheeks.
“You still don’t understand. It isn’t a story. It’s my mother’s diary which she wrote when she was visiting Germany, back in the nineties.”
“But
it’s so morbid. Why do you keep delving into the past like that? Aren’t we happy as we are?” With a pouting mouth she tried to win him over to her side.
“Listen. You go on that wellness weekend. Go on your own, or if you’ve booked it for two people, take one of your friends.”
“And what are you going to do in the meantime? Are you having an affair with another woman?”
“Of course not. I need the time to discuss what to do with what I’ve learnt from my mother’s diary, discuss it with Dave and with Lisa.”
“Oh, you are so boring. Why can’t you leave things as they are?”
“Because we might learn something from those events in the past, learn important lessons for the present and the future.”
Rebecca was silent for a few minutes. While he was getting himself a scotch on the rocks, she busied herself with unnecessary household chores. It was meant to give him the message that while he could always get his own way, she was not much more than his household slave. She remained in her offended state for the rest of the day.
The next morning, she took up the subject again. “What lessons can you learn from a woman’s old diary, tell me.”
“It’s not so much from what Mum wrote, it’s more the things she found out about Granddad during the War. The events of those days have enormous social and political implications. It’s only now that I’ve read Mum’s diary - or rather her report about her research - that I’m beginning to understand things better.”
“What things?”
“Well, one of the most dangerous questions that I’m asking myself is this: Will the world of today ever force us to take such hard moral decisions? Another issue concerns the relative significance of truth. Do we always have to tell the truth? Where is the borderline between a white lie and a huge self-deception? And then there’s the question of individual responsibility.”
“Stop it. All those big words. They don’t mean anything to us.”
“That’s exactly my problem.”
“You are losing your mind, if you ask me.”
Sad as Andrew was about his darling’s incomprehension, he had to admit to himself that he had actually expected something like this.
* * *
On Saturday, after Rebecca had left for Canterbury, Andrew decided to speak to his mother again, and then later to David.
Sitting over a hot cup of tea in Nora’s lounge, he came straight to the point. “In my opinion, there are two issues to be clear about right from the start. There’s the Löffel fellow, as we discussed last time, and there’s the existence of your half-brother in Canada. What do you intend to do in either case?”
“I haven’t done anything about any of these ‘issues’, as you call them, for the past sixteen years. So why wake up sleeping dogs now?”
“If you don’t want to do anything, will you allow me to do something?”
“But not to kill Löffel.”
“Of course not. I was only joking. He’ll die pretty soon anyway. So that problem might solve itself quite naturally.”
“And Manfred in Canada?” she asked.
“If you allow me, I’ll try to find out his whereabouts. It shouldn’t be such a big problem today with the Internet.”
“And then?”
“Then I’ll contact him, explaining our connection. If he doesn’t reply, then so be it. But if he’s interested in some sort of contact, we might perhaps find out if he really is your half-brother, or if he is the son of old Löffel. Of course, only if he also wants to know.”
“How can you find out if he’s my brother or not? Not even Anna knew.”
“Oh, Mum, we’ve got DNA in this day and age.”
“Ah, yes, I’ve heard about it in one of the science programmes on TV.”
“So, will you allow me to proceed with my quest?” Andrew was eager to get something done, to produce some sort of result.
“All right. But we won’t tell your father or your grandfather. If and when we have a result, it’ll be early enough to involve them.”
“Agreed then,” he said.
“And about Löffel, shall we just wait and see if he tries to blackmail us again?”
“I don’t think there’s much else we can do. So yes, let’s do that.”
Andrew left his mother and went home for a quick lunch. In the afternoon, he had arranged to go for a walk along the seafront with David. They met at the bandstand, from where they directed their steps towards Holywell. It was a very pleasant afternoon, blue sky with a few clouds and a light breeze from the sea. There were quite a lot of people strolling along the seafront, many of them with dogs and some with prams and small children.
“I think more people ought to do what you did,” David said. “I mean study some of the most important chapters of history, particularly twentieth-century history. Too many people don’t know the dangers of political extremism. Too many people are far too careless about the effects of Globalization and rampant Capitalism.”
“How could they learn about such dangers from studying the history of the last century?”
“They could see how dangerous it is for societies to exclude large sections of their people from participation in the process of political decision-making. Also, if more people could see these dangers, the whole idea of the European Union would have been built up differently, and the governments of many countries would have understood that Globalization not only brings more shareholder value but also the danger of eroding the middle-classes, which will lead to more social unrest and possibly to the next world war.”
“Aren’t you being a bit too gloomy here?” Andrew asked.
“That may be. But the dangers are there.”
“You are criticizing the EU. Isn’t it a safeguard against anymore wars on European soil?”
“That’s what it was originally meant to be.”
“What’s wrong with it then?”
“For one thing, it was set up the wrong way round. Instead of developing it bottom-up, it was established top-down.”
Andrew was a bit puzzled. “Can you explain?”
“The countries involved should first have held referendums and asked their people if they wanted to be in the EU, also what was important for them in such a union. And only then the entire administration in Brussels should have been elected democratically. As you know, the present EU is anything but democratic.”
“But the European Parliament is elected democratically,” Andrew objected.
“And does this parliament have anything to say? Does it have power?”
“I don’t know. I’m not so well-informed about what’s going on in Brussels.”
“There you are. The structures and the activities of all the EU institutions should be a lot more transparent, and all the EU citizens ought to be familiar with them.”
“I see. You may have a point there. But could it be that it’s only us, the British, who have this problem? I imagine the Germans, the French and the Italians are much more familiar with the institutions of the EU. After all, they’ve got the Euro.”
“Another shambles, I tell you!”
“Why? Isn’t it great for all those people travelling between the different countries to have a common currency?”
“It may be very practical for tourists, but it isn’t healthy for the economies of the different member states.”
“How is that?” Andrew was surprised. He had always thought the Euro was a fantastic idea.
“Go on the Internet and listen to the speech that the German politician Gregor Gysi made in the Bundestag on 23rd April 1998. He predicted every problem with the Euro. He correctly pointed out that the monetary policies and the national banking systems of the member states should first be made compatible, then certain measures should be implemented to cope with the differen
t economic situations in the member states, all that before one could even think of establishing a common currency. But like the EU, the Euro was also set up top-down instead of bottom-up. It was practically forced on many countries. Gysi exactly predicted the problems they are having now with Greece. It was first Ireland, then Spain and Portugal, and now it’s Greece. Their economies can never compete with Germany.”
“Yes, I’ve heard of the Greek financial crisis.”
“I could tell you a lot more, but I fear I’m getting a bit too professorial,” David said.
“Not at all! Tell me, what could come of this situation? And how could our knowledge of recent history help us?”
“The main points are democracy and common respect. We should have learnt these from the terrible mistakes of the last century.”
“Okay. But what do you see as the worst case for our political, social and economic future?”
“Well, in the case of the EU, either it will have to be reformed dramatically, made more democratic, or it will fall apart, which would be a great pity.”
“And in larger terms?”
“Well, my dear chap, I’m basically a linguist, so I’m not really an expert. But I’ve studied the political and economic situations in most European countries because this whole question interests me.”
“And what conclusion have you come to?”
“In most European countries there’s a deficiency in democracy. Their political systems may very well be set up in a democratic pattern, but in reality, there are large proportions of the population that are excluded. The politicians are far away from the ordinary man in the street. You need a lot of money to get elected. The politicians form what experts call une classe politique. They don’t really know what concerns that proverbial man in the street. Most political decisions are geared to suit the dictations of macro-economics, not to help the ordinary people. Meanwhile, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The middle-classes are being eroded, dried out.”
“Isn’t that Communist propaganda?”
White Lies Page 36