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"The Effect of a Nazi Parent's Past on their Child's Present" Book Essay
on: Peter Sichrovsky, Born Guilty: Children of Nazi Families
by Sarah Branstetter for Prof. Marcuse's lecture course |
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& Abstract |
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About Sarah Branstetter I am a Senior Global Studies major with an emphasis in European studies. This past fall I spent four months studying in Italy, at which time I traveled to Germany and took a class taught by a German professor. My professor shared with us his stories of his grandparents who had lived through World War II, but kept most of their experience from war time a secret. His stories opened my eyes to the lasting impact WWII has had on so many generations of German citizens. I was curious to find out more about how German citizens who were born after the war have been affected by the events. Abstract (back to top) Peter Sichrovsky is a Jewish journalist from Austria who interviewed 15 children of Nazi parents. Sichrovsky's intention was to focus not on what the parents did to participate in the Nazi agenda but rather what impact their actions during WWII has had on their children. More specifically, Sichrovsky wants to find out what it was like for the children growing up in a household with Nazi parents, what they found out from their parents, and how they handled the information they were able to uncover about their parents' past. The accounts from the children display a range of reactions from outrage to defensiveness when thinking about their parents' involvement in the Nazi party. While the children reacted differently to their parents' misdeeds, there was a common thread of secrecy in Nazi family households regarding the events of World War II which in turn led to a lifetime of guilt, denial and victimization for the children. |
Essay (back to top) Peter Sichrovsky’s book, Born Guilty: Children of Nazi Families, presents fourteen interviews with individuals whose parents were supporters of the Nazi party during World War II. Sichrovsky, a Jewish journalist from Austria, interviewed the children of Nazi supporters in order to find out what it was like for them growing up in a household with Nazi parents, what they found out from their parents and how they handled the information they were able to uncover about their parents’ past. Rather than focusing on what the parents had done to participate in the Nazi agenda, Sichrovsky intends to find out what role Nazi culture played in the children’s lives and what impact a Nazi past has had on their present. Sichrovsky’s interviews with the children reveal that though some questioned their parents’ involvement more than others, all of the children experienced some form of secrecy in their household. While some parents believed they were doing their children a service by not discussing the events of the past, many of them were, in fact, setting their children up for a lifetime of denial, guilt and victimization. One of the main questions Sichrovsky wishes to answer is how the children of Nazi parents were able to reach an understanding of what their parents’ involvement in the Nazi party had been. He wants to find out what their sources of information were as well as what questions they asked. Sichrovsky found from most of his interviews that the period of Nazi rule was not openly talked about after the war. One interviewee, Stefanie, who adamantly defended Nazi ideals and actions during the war stated that even when she tried to find out more about the past, her father remained silent. Stefanie’s grandfather was executed right after the war and her father’s refusal to talk about his involvement limited Stephanie’s ability to understand what went on during the war and to possibly evolve her opinion. Though many parents chose not to talk about issues from the war with their children, there was discussion of concentration camps and so on in German schools. While this was effective in portraying a general sense of what happened, several of the interviewees claimed they did not feel a connection to the events until they learned their parents had been involved. Werner explained his experience of finding out his father had denounced his own step-father and caused him to go to jail during the war. “Of course I’d also known before what had happened under the Nazis and that denunciations within families were not unheard of. But until this time these were only stories, things that had happened in other places to other people. Only the involvement of my father and Grandpa made it personal” (Sichrovsky, 154-55). It becomes clear through Sichrovsky’s interviews that important events from war time were not openly discussed within families which led to a complicated understanding of one’s own parents. Because the events of the past were largely kept secret, readers are able to further understand why the children of Nazi parents felt that they too, were the victims of the war. Stefan, whom Sichrovsky calls “The Sufferer,” claimed in his interview that he was the Jew of his family. He stated that because his father could no longer take his aggressions out on Jews, his father’s hostility was then focused entirely on him. Stefan also appeared to be disappointed by the lack of attention his father paid him. “There’s all that talk about you Jews being the victims of the war. But for those of you who survived, the suffering ended with Hitler’s death. But for us, the children of the Nazis, it didn’t end” (Sichrovsky, 138). Stefan described his household as one without tenderness and void of affection. He pointed to this when speaking of how he became the victim after the war by having to live with Nazi parents. Though not all interviewees went so far as to say that they were the Jew of their family, many others did allude to a feeling of being victimized or trapped by the horrors of their parents’ past. For example, Rainer describes being told as a child not to disturb his father with any of his concerns. “ ‘Leave Father alone! He’s gone through enough! Seven years of war and four years of prison is more than enough for one lifetime’ ” (Sichrovsky, 60). Rainer’s mother discouraged him from talking about any important events in his life and was consequently trapped in silence by his father’s past. A number of the children also expressed resentment toward their parents for their actions and even stated that they felt no remorse when their parents died. Anna struggled to find out more details of her father’s past after she found out he had been a guard at a concentration camp and was accused of murder. Her attempts were to no avail as her father avoided any conversation she attempted to steer toward the war. Her father’s silence made it difficult for Anna to develop a meaningful relationship with her father and she became indifferent about his death. “My mother sat next to his bed and cried. I didn’t try to comfort her and I didn’t feel pity for my father” (Sichrovsky, 27). In a sense, Anna’s father’s death was liberating for her because she was able to start a new life with her husband and not live life as a victim of her father’s actions. While Anna felt a weight lifted of her shoulders with her father’s death, many other children were haunted by their parents’ offenses long after they had died. Rudolf, “The Guilty One,” speaks about his parents and their actions during the war with disgust. He states that he was “Born in guilt, left behind in guilt” (Sichrovsky, 39). Even though Rudolf’s father ended up being acquitted during his trial, Rudolf believed the charges were true and was burdened by extreme guilt for his father’s actions. At times Rudolf even seems crippled by his guilt. “Just look at me. Innocent, I am living the life of a guilty person” (Sichrovsky, 40). It is as if he is so overcome by guilt for what his parents may have done to harm Jews during the war that he feels too guilty to live his life freely. Naturally, each of the interviewees deals with the information about their parents’ past differently. While Rudolf was overcome with guilt, another interviewee, Brigitte, states that she does not feel a connection to the events during the war and refuses to live the life of a guilty person. She believes in her ability to have personal command over the events in her life and does not feel responsible because she did not commit the same acts her father did. She does not understand her brother who feels responsible for the acts of the Nazi regime, and says that his feelings of guilt and responsibility are a product of him living in the past. In contrast, Werner, who was shocked by his father’s betrayal of his step-father during the war, is proactive with his guilt. Rather than being paralyzed by feelings of guilt or denouncing responsibility altogether, Werner believed his function was to serve as the link between generations (Sichrovsky, 156). Since he was privileged enough to have heard the stories of survivors while growing up, he felt it was his duty to share his knowledge with younger generations who thirsted for a greater knowledge about history. Through his interviews, Peter Sichrovsky effectively answered his own questions in his discovery that a negligence to talk about the past existed in many families of Nazi party members, that the children were burdened with guilt for things they did not do and that they consequently felt like victims of their parent’s past. In addition, the testaments of the German citizens answer the questions Sichrovsky set out to answer as well as allow for a greater understanding of the many facets of life the Nazi regime penetrated. First, the secrecy within families resulted not only in a minimal understanding of the past, but also helped shape the children’s view of their parents. Sichrovsky approaches the German citizens as children of Nazi war criminals, but what he initially fails to consider is that the identity of a Nazi war criminal is not the parent these individuals have grown up knowing. To the younger generations who did not live through the war or were too young to remember, their parents’ actions in the war at first seemed irrelevant or too far in the past to consider. By the time they grow old enough to question what happened during the war and what their parent’s contribution was, it comes in stark contrast to an identity which has already formed, and for some is not worth changing. When Werner decides to confront his father about his participation in the war, his father, who was naturally a silent man, simply could not talk about it. Werner decided to let the issue rest and instead draw his own conclusions from outside research and what he had already gathered from his grandfather. Werner’s reaction speaks to the notion that younger generations may be better off or at least prefer to not have their viewpoints inundated by those of their parents who were part of arguably the worst human crime in history. Sichrovsky’s book brings about the notion that silence can be viewed as a service to younger generations in that those of the war generation are transmitting as little of their ideals as possible. Also, several of the accounts claim that their parents were simply being decent citizens and consider that it must have been very difficult to escape the pervasiveness of the Nazi agenda. Brigitte states, “Millions went off to war with enthusiasm…” (Sichrovsky, 59). With these descriptions, the individuals are alluding to the idea that the horrible occurrences of the Holocaust could have occurred to any generation and those involved were simply caught up in a movement larger than them. In his postscript, Sichrovsky mentions a statement made by Chancellor Helmut Kohl of the “good fortune of being born too late,” (Sichrovsky, 163). This statement means that because he was born late enough, he avoided being involved with Nazi crimes. There seemed to be a similar sense in other accounts, that the children had a hard time placing full blame on their parents because if it had been during a different time period, they could have been involved in the same situation. Sichrovsky’s book demonstrates that events of World War II have had a lasting impact on both the people who lived through the war as well as the generations to come in Germany. Events of war are often incommunicable to those who have never experienced the atrocities first hand. Whether silence about the occurrences of WWII resulted from the inability to describe events, or a parents’ desire to not transmit their ideals, the silence left a noticeable mark on the children of Nazi Party members. As seen through the interviews, it led to denial by the children, acceptance of guilt for their parents’ actions, as well as becoming victims of their parents’ misdeeds. The ambiguities created by Nazi parents have left many of the children to make sense of the incomprehensible events of the Holocaust all the while sifting through their own feelings about the war and about their parents. |
Bibliography and Links (back to top)(links last checked 3/x/09) Book Reviews Stern, Fritz. Born Guilty: Children of Nazi Families. Foreign Affairs.
Summer 88. Vol 66 Issue 5. p 1128, 1/6p. (ebsco
link) Willrich, Michael. Born Guilty: Children of Nazi Families. Washington
Monthly Company 1988. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_n4_v20/ai_6676313 Web Sites Hillary Burbank, “German National Identity: Patriotism and Stigma” (Volume
7: Spring 2008), http://surj.stanford.edu/archives/2003-05GermanNational.html Helm Stierlin, “The Parents’ Nazi Past and Dialogue Between the Generations”
(August 5, 2004), http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/120048047/HTMLSTART “Non-Jewish Victims of the Holocaust: Five Million Forgotten” (accessed
March 8, 2009) http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/
Related Books Norbert Lebert. My Father’s Keeper: Children of Nazi Leaders - An
Intimate History of Damage and Denial (Back Bay Books, reprint, 2002),
256 pages. Birgit Maier-Katkin. Silence and Acts of Memory: A Postwar Discourse
on Literature, History, Anna Seghers, and Women in the Third Reich
(Bucknell University Press, 2007), 214 pages. Dan Bar-On. Legacy of Silence: Encounters with Children of the Third
Reich. (Harvard University Press, 1989), 338 pages. |
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Any student tempted to use this paper for an assignment in another course or school should be aware of the serious consequences for plagiarism. Here is what I write in my syllabi:
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