“a German devil.”
Olin winces at her premature relief; hearing her speak of it, a few faces set hard and others turn away.
Close to tears, the elderly daughter of a Wehrmacht soldier killed on the Russian front confesses that at the prayer service at the Black Wall this morning, she had dared recite Kaddish in her father’s memory.
“Only this most horrible of places permits my heart to speak!” She spreads her arms, baring her heart to the hall, then repeats her countrywoman’s mistake, blurting out how grateful she feels to be here bearing witness with all of these good friends from many nations. Again, cold silence.
Several Germans are still struggling with their discovery that beloved menfolk in the family were implicated or worse in “the Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” One woman’s late poppa turned out to have been an SS guard in this very
Lager
. “Perhaps he was ordered to assist in unspeakable actions,” she mourns, starting to sniffle. “And always so kind he was to dogs and children.”
A no-nonsense woman from the Netherlands pounces on this cliché. “Jewish dogs, too? Jewish kids? Like our poor little Anne Frank?” Here a soft moan in honor of the young diarist’s sacred memory mixes with a groan of disapproval of the unsporting kill. And a voice says, “
Your
little Dutch girl, are you saying? Born in Frankfurt?”
The Dutch woman—big-voiced, with large squarish front teeth—demands to know why the “witness” with the SS man for a father failed to recognize the fascistic propensities of a man who lived under the same roof. How could she have loved so blindly “the kind of man who would take work in Hell”?
“No, no, orders only he obeyed!”
An American cantor, Rabbi Dan, attempts to mediate. Perhaps a child’s love for her loving “dad” comes more naturally than mistrust, he pleads, bestowing a gentle smile of blessing and forgiveness on the gathering. After all, weren’t there many like “this lady’s dad” who got caught up gradually in a great evil, step by fatal step—
“Goose step by goose step,” Earwig barks. “Millions of goose-stepping
Dummkopf
dads lending their big pink Christian hands to cold-blooded murder—”
“Mr. Earwig?” Ben’s admonition is pitched just above the hiss of whispers in the hall.
For many years, the German woman continues, she ran away from the story of her father, who was sent to fight on the Russian front when still a boy, scarcely sixteen. “He was victim also!” Badly wounded, he was transferred by the SS to guard duty at this
Lager
. And she’d come here to pray he had not done horrible things, “just maybe he help to hunt some Jewish, maybe put them on trains.” She clasps her hands upon her breast, imploring the silent rows to understand.
“Poor liddle SS sol-cher poy age of sixteen. He vas victim also!” calls Anders Stern with that loose grin of his, not malevolent nor intentionally unkind, simply uncouth and callous—yet it worries Olin that any sort of jibe at their expense will only further isolate these German people.
S OME OF THE A MERICAN J EWS, Olin supposes, have come to assuage a secret guilt; some even dare express the hope that in this place they might experience some inkling of the agonies others had endured while they prospered.
Though her family lost no one in the camps, Awful Miriam, as Anders calls an overdressed American, bemoans her “trauma” on that fateful day when her best friend was “oppressed” by the school bully: he made the “Jew-Jew girl” salute him in his soldier-father’s souvenir regalia, the swastika armband and broad black belt and high-peaked eagle cap. No teacher interfered, she mourns, and one even pretended it was all a joke when those jeering kids marched around her friend making “
Heil
Hitler” salutes!
A silence. Earwig rears around to squint at her. “That’s it, lady? Your little classmate got hurt feelings?” He closes his eyes, facing
Olin winces at her premature relief; hearing her speak of it, a few faces set hard and others turn away.
Close to tears, the elderly daughter of a Wehrmacht soldier killed on the Russian front confesses that at the prayer service at the Black Wall this morning, she had dared recite Kaddish in her father’s memory.
“Only this most horrible of places permits my heart to speak!” She spreads her arms, baring her heart to the hall, then repeats her countrywoman’s mistake, blurting out how grateful she feels to be here bearing witness with all of these good friends from many nations. Again, cold silence.
Several Germans are still struggling with their discovery that beloved menfolk in the family were implicated or worse in “the Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” One woman’s late poppa turned out to have been an SS guard in this very
Lager
. “Perhaps he was ordered to assist in unspeakable actions,” she mourns, starting to sniffle. “And always so kind he was to dogs and children.”
A no-nonsense woman from the Netherlands pounces on this cliché. “Jewish dogs, too? Jewish kids? Like our poor little Anne Frank?” Here a soft moan in honor of the young diarist’s sacred memory mixes with a groan of disapproval of the unsporting kill. And a voice says, “
Your
little Dutch girl, are you saying? Born in Frankfurt?”
The Dutch woman—big-voiced, with large squarish front teeth—demands to know why the “witness” with the SS man for a father failed to recognize the fascistic propensities of a man who lived under the same roof. How could she have loved so blindly “the kind of man who would take work in Hell”?
“No, no, orders only he obeyed!”
An American cantor, Rabbi Dan, attempts to mediate. Perhaps a child’s love for her loving “dad” comes more naturally than mistrust, he pleads, bestowing a gentle smile of blessing and forgiveness on the gathering. After all, weren’t there many like “this lady’s dad” who got caught up gradually in a great evil, step by fatal step—
“Goose step by goose step,” Earwig barks. “Millions of goose-stepping
Dummkopf
dads lending their big pink Christian hands to cold-blooded murder—”
“Mr. Earwig?” Ben’s admonition is pitched just above the hiss of whispers in the hall.
For many years, the German woman continues, she ran away from the story of her father, who was sent to fight on the Russian front when still a boy, scarcely sixteen. “He was victim also!” Badly wounded, he was transferred by the SS to guard duty at this
Lager
. And she’d come here to pray he had not done horrible things, “just maybe he help to hunt some Jewish, maybe put them on trains.” She clasps her hands upon her breast, imploring the silent rows to understand.
“Poor liddle SS sol-cher poy age of sixteen. He vas victim also!” calls Anders Stern with that loose grin of his, not malevolent nor intentionally unkind, simply uncouth and callous—yet it worries Olin that any sort of jibe at their expense will only further isolate these German people.
S OME OF THE A MERICAN J EWS, Olin supposes, have come to assuage a secret guilt; some even dare express the hope that in this place they might experience some inkling of the agonies others had endured while they prospered.
Though her family lost no one in the camps, Awful Miriam, as Anders calls an overdressed American, bemoans her “trauma” on that fateful day when her best friend was “oppressed” by the school bully: he made the “Jew-Jew girl” salute him in his soldier-father’s souvenir regalia, the swastika armband and broad black belt and high-peaked eagle cap. No teacher interfered, she mourns, and one even pretended it was all a joke when those jeering kids marched around her friend making “
Heil
Hitler” salutes!
A silence. Earwig rears around to squint at her. “That’s it, lady? Your little classmate got hurt feelings?” He closes his eyes, facing
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