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January 3, 2006
60 Years After - Some Personal History Questions
My recent connection with Susanne
Schleyer, a German photographer who has done several large-scale
photo exhibitions, questioning Germany history, has reopened some
of my own questions about history. As you know I was born in Austria,
more than 20 years after the Second World War. I left my home country
at the early age of 20 to come to Canada, and to be frank, when
I was growing up I always felt like I was a bit of an outsider,
a rebel who didn't quite fit in.
It is now just about 60 years after the end of World War II, one
of the modern world's key historical events. My father was a key
person in my own personal history, mostly because of his physical
and emotional absence, and my absence of knowledge about him and
his past. What I do know is that he was drafted at the age of 17,
in 1941, that he was an ardent Nazi, and that he fought both on
the East and West Front. I do know that my father remained a racist
until the end of his life. Until 1994, when my father was on his
death bed, I had never had a personal conversation with him, and
even at that time I was unable to get any insights about his past
or personal involvement in World War II.
This immediate personal connection to one of the most horrifying
(if not the most horrifying) eras of human history has
rummaged around in my subconscious for a long time. Even as a child
I had a real interest in the Second World War, and particularly
in the Holocaust. What has puzzled me for a long time is how could
human beings, regular human beings from my own neck of the woods,
go down these dark roads of inhumanity and evil.
The mass psychology of the Third Reich has always fascinated and
scared me because many people seemed to have lost all vestiges of
civility and turned into hateful obedient tools of death and destruction
for Hitler's regime. That fact that Hitler was born in Austria,
and that many of the top Nazis were from my home country, has fuelled
my profound interest in this era. I can't help but feel a certain
sense of shame and guilt for what members of the generation before
me did.
The two key topics that have impacted me the most are the psychology
of the victims and the psychology of the perpetrators. For many
years I have been reading books written by survivors of the Holocaust,
about the time after the Nazis came to power in 1933, the time before
the war, the early years of WWII when some emigration was still
possible, stories about the Jewish ghettos in Warsaw and Lodz, stories
of emigrants living in exile all over the world, and stories of
survivors who reported about the horrific crimes against humanity
that were committed in the concentration camps. Most recently I
have been reading survivor stories about how survivors coped after
the War and rebuilt their lives, started families and tried fit
into a normal existence again, despite all the trauma they had gone
through that kept reappearing in their lives, even after liberation.
I have also read some interviews with perpetrators, about how many
of them claimed that they were just following orders, that they
had no choice but to obey these orders. That doesn't answer the
questions for me why many of the perpetrators participated so ardently
in some of the atrocities, as if they derived some sadistic pleasure
out of these events. The key question for me is: how would I have
reacted if I had lived in these times? Would I have stood up for
some human principles? Or would I have quietly collaborated, turning
a blind eye, trying to avoid unpleasant attention from the authorities?
Or would I have been an opportunist, participating in whatever ways
necessary to ensure my own personal gain?
The generation immediately before me, first and foremost represented
by my own father, remains a mystery to me. I strongly hesitate to
say that people from my geographic area (Central and Eastern Europe,
including Germany, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine and neighbouring
countries) have a propensity towards racism, since that in itself
would be a prejudiced thing to say. There were indeed people who
stood up to the regime at great personal risk, some of whom paid
the ultimate price. There were people who tried to help their persecuted
friends and neighbours. In some of the recent books I also read
that none of the other major world powers was particularly proactive
in saving Central Europe's Jewish citizens from destruction by the
Nazis. I think the antisemitism of that era was a much wider problem
that manifested itself in the most horrific way under the Nazis..
However, the question remains, why is it so hard for us human beings
to peacefully coexist? Why is it so hard for us to accept differences
in religion, dress, customs, traditions and lifestyles? Why do we
have to judge other groups negatively that are different from ours?
I guess some of this is answered by basic behavioural science,
that we have a tendency to react to something that is unknown and
different with fear and suspicion. Maybe our propensity to have
prejudices is deeply rooted in our biological heredity of self-preservation.
Whatever it is, history is there to be learned from, and mistakes
that were made should never be repeated. These questions have been
tormenting me for a long time, and I don't have the answers. I have
realized, however, that maybe as a response to the generation before
me, I am going to try to be an advocate for diversity, for acceptance
and tolerance, to make my own small contribution so we will never
go down this road again.
Related Article:
Interview
preview: Susanne Schleyer - A German photographer confronts history
What makes me tick &
why I love Toronto
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