I just finished reading a fascinating
book entitled, My Father's Keeper by Stephan Lebert. The
author's father was a journalist and in 1959 he interviewed sons and daughter's of high-level Nazis - right hand
men of Hitler and published those interviews as a series in a German magazine. Those interviews took place 15 years after the end
of WWII. His son (author of
the book I read) did not read those interviews until after his father's
death in 1993. When he found and read the old manuscript, he came up with
the idea to interview the same children, now in the late
season of their lives. Remarkably, he was able to find and interview six of the same people his father had interviewed, and so came about his book, “My Father's
Keeper.”
I found the book fascinating on so
many levels. First, I was shocked to learn that out of the six interviews, only two of the adult children believe that what their father's did was wrong (almost all of them engineering mass-murder) and four of them believe in the same principles their father's held and are proud of who their
father's were. Call me naive or idealistic, but I
just assumed that with all the truth that came out about the death camps, the hatred and torture, that anyone, even the sons and daughters of the mass murderers would surely see the evil that was
so willfully done. The book opened my eyes to the
startling, horrifying truth that the evil Nazi's of that time, merely
went underground. How many of them successfully passed their evil
ideas to their children and grandchildren? It makes me shudder to
think of it.
Niklas Frank's father was general governor of Poland during Hitler's regime and responsible for “cleansing” Poland and creating means for mass murder. It was nothing
for his father to inform Hitler that on any given day he had exterminated
150,000 Jews. Niklas was the youngest of five children when
his father was hung for his war crimes and only about 5 or 6 years
old. As an adult, he became a journalist and wrote a series
of articles about his father and his hatred for him. The articles were graphic, spewing out his hatred. What shocked me
was that the general public thought the idea of expressing hate
towards ones father, even a war-criminal was wrong. Letters poured
into the editor of the newspaper, that Niklas should at least respect
his dad. Respect? Respect? What was there to respect? I was (and
am) appalled. Partly because I still see this same line of thinking
today, in 2015. I've seen children born to criminal drug-addicts and
the mother will say, “My son needs to know his father and spend
time with him, after all he IS the father.” So what! I believe a
father needs to earn respect and if he is evil or selfish, let the
child find a role-model who he can look up to. It baffles me, the
way people think. The book states that Niklas had to almost go into
hiding due to the reaction of people. They should have been
applauding him! “Wow! Amazing that you can see the truth about
your father.”
The other thing that fascinated me in
the book was the idea that after the war, a whole country basically
went into denial. They almost had to do this for survival sake. Imagine, asking
your neighbor, “What did you do before the war?”
“Well, I was a leading Nazi.”
No one was going to admit to this, so
the “don't ask – don't tell” unspoken code came into effect. It would
have been embarrassing to find out and to admit as well. “Let's
all pretend, we were against Hitler's socialism, let's all pretend we
knew nothing about the Jews.” It was most likely the only way to
survive. But what are the results of massive denial? What are the
results of not being able to dialogue about politics gone wrong or your despair at loosing a war? The book quotes a psychologist who says that repression
brings about anxiety and an unwillingness to change.
I arrived in Berlin the first time in
2000 when my daughter was reaching out to teen-agers in the former
communistic east and it was a distressing city. There were dour faces everywhere;
a feeling of darkness; gray buildings; and a general lack of
color. People even wore dark clothing, from the oldest to the
youngest. The silence was acute on public transportation. I
returned to Berlin to live in 2008 and although color had appeared:
many of the gray buildings were now painted light colors and gone was
a lot of the black clothing but the sadness remained, even to this
time in 2015. There is more lightness on the trains and people speak
more but if you are a newcomer to the city, you still notice that
people don't talk much and you can see a marked contrast from other cities. I see sadness and anxiety on faces and there
is still a sense of deep suspicion and mistrust. I've had it happen,
several times, that if someone accidentally drops something and you
pick it up for them, they look at you as if you are crazy and how
dare you help. On the converse, if you accidentally drop something
yourself, there is a hesitation to help. A whole crowd of people can
ignore you and walk by, leaving you feeling very alone in a cold
world. I believe the unwillingness to help stems from major distrust.
It is all so sad. First Nazism and
then Communism and more repression. Countless east Germans loved
communism and were sad when the Berlin wall fell down. If they admit
that, they are accused of being crazy and if they wanted the wall to
come down, they are looked upon as traitors. Many embraced atheism and today they
are going after Hinduism and New Age religions but the ones who come
to the truth and accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior, are set free.
I have seen joy come into their hearts and peace to their anxiety.
It has been a long, slow and hard process. Many missionaries have
laboured for 20 years and more in Berlin without seeing hardly any
converts. Yet, none of their labor has been in vain. After so many
years of repression, the healing will not happen over night but I do see
change and I see it coming more and more.
