Even if we had known better, we wouldn’t have suspected his involvement in crimes of the Gestapo, the secret police, that only came out after his retirement.
I remember the nights that I worked in a factory as a student in the 1960s. I had a twelve-hour shift, I worked a day from six am to six pm, had twenty-four hours off, and then worked a night from six pm to six am. My impressions of my fellow workers, who had all fought in the Second World War, were always as nice, decent and helpful people. But in the hours between two am and five am they sometimes talked about the war and where, when, how and in what capacity they had been involved. They didn’t talk in detail, but it was very clear that some had been involved in evil things that they could neither forget nor repress. I am sure that even in those war years, when they were at home with their families and friends, they put on the same nice faces that I saw at work.
And I remember the professor whose class I attended in my third year at law school and through whom I came to understand that studying law is more than studying articles and paragraphs; that it includes history and philosophy and is a rich intellectual universe. After my exam I started reading the legal literature from the Third Reich that, during my years of study, had been locked away in the so-called poison closet and had become available only as a concession to the rebellious students of 1968. And there they were, his writings on the totalitarian state and its necessary homogeneity and exclusion of the other, the Jew, the enemy.
No, sticking with what appears typical is no guarantee for truth: nor is avoiding it. My impression is that the demand for fiction to be representative by presenting typical characters and situations doesn’t come out of a concern for the truth but rather for keeping up a precious image of events. It arises from the fear that writing about Germans as victims might damage the image of Germans as perpetrators, that writing about collaboration in the German-occupied countries might relativise German responsibility, that writing about the Judenräte , the Jewish councils required by the SS to govern affairs within the ghettos, might damage the image of Jewish suffering, and so forth. Again I understand the impulse. It is the same impulse that makes us tell legends, myths and fairytales. Yet I don’t believe in avoiding or suppressing the tension that reality holds for us. Germans were perpetrators and also victims, the people in the occupied countries were suppressed and also collaborated, Jews suffered and were also involved. Since the tension is already there, an image free of tension couldn’t be upheld in the long run even if it served a noble cause. What can and should be upheld and strived for is not a reduced but a complete image where the involvement of the Judenräte is not suppressed but explained, where the fact that Germans were victims is not meant to insinuate any excuse, and where collaboration is shown as a companion to each and every occupation – as is, in one form or other, resistance. The truth is not protected by presenting only what’s typical. The atypical is also part of the truth – as long as it is presented and explained for what it is: atypical.
Once more: I understand the impulse to defend a precious image of events. It is similar to the impulse to tell and to preserve myths, legends, and fairytales. They can serve good purposes; The Lives of Others was, for my still-divided country, the right film at the right moment. Legends can inspire and encourage us, and founding myths can hold nations together. But they can do so without pretending to be the whole truth. We don’t have to fear that they will lose their power in the bright light of truth.
At the beginning of this essay I mentioned not only people who want their truth about the Holocaust to be acknowledged but also those who want their trauma to be respected and to have their dignity
I remember the nights that I worked in a factory as a student in the 1960s. I had a twelve-hour shift, I worked a day from six am to six pm, had twenty-four hours off, and then worked a night from six pm to six am. My impressions of my fellow workers, who had all fought in the Second World War, were always as nice, decent and helpful people. But in the hours between two am and five am they sometimes talked about the war and where, when, how and in what capacity they had been involved. They didn’t talk in detail, but it was very clear that some had been involved in evil things that they could neither forget nor repress. I am sure that even in those war years, when they were at home with their families and friends, they put on the same nice faces that I saw at work.
And I remember the professor whose class I attended in my third year at law school and through whom I came to understand that studying law is more than studying articles and paragraphs; that it includes history and philosophy and is a rich intellectual universe. After my exam I started reading the legal literature from the Third Reich that, during my years of study, had been locked away in the so-called poison closet and had become available only as a concession to the rebellious students of 1968. And there they were, his writings on the totalitarian state and its necessary homogeneity and exclusion of the other, the Jew, the enemy.
No, sticking with what appears typical is no guarantee for truth: nor is avoiding it. My impression is that the demand for fiction to be representative by presenting typical characters and situations doesn’t come out of a concern for the truth but rather for keeping up a precious image of events. It arises from the fear that writing about Germans as victims might damage the image of Germans as perpetrators, that writing about collaboration in the German-occupied countries might relativise German responsibility, that writing about the Judenräte , the Jewish councils required by the SS to govern affairs within the ghettos, might damage the image of Jewish suffering, and so forth. Again I understand the impulse. It is the same impulse that makes us tell legends, myths and fairytales. Yet I don’t believe in avoiding or suppressing the tension that reality holds for us. Germans were perpetrators and also victims, the people in the occupied countries were suppressed and also collaborated, Jews suffered and were also involved. Since the tension is already there, an image free of tension couldn’t be upheld in the long run even if it served a noble cause. What can and should be upheld and strived for is not a reduced but a complete image where the involvement of the Judenräte is not suppressed but explained, where the fact that Germans were victims is not meant to insinuate any excuse, and where collaboration is shown as a companion to each and every occupation – as is, in one form or other, resistance. The truth is not protected by presenting only what’s typical. The atypical is also part of the truth – as long as it is presented and explained for what it is: atypical.
Once more: I understand the impulse to defend a precious image of events. It is similar to the impulse to tell and to preserve myths, legends, and fairytales. They can serve good purposes; The Lives of Others was, for my still-divided country, the right film at the right moment. Legends can inspire and encourage us, and founding myths can hold nations together. But they can do so without pretending to be the whole truth. We don’t have to fear that they will lose their power in the bright light of truth.
At the beginning of this essay I mentioned not only people who want their truth about the Holocaust to be acknowledged but also those who want their trauma to be respected and to have their dignity
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