BS: Growing up in post-holocaust Germany

Subject: RE: BS: Growing up in post-holocaust Germany
From: The Shambles
Date: 27 Sep 06 - 07:48 PM

Very interesting stuff, which I am sure will result in many different responses. The thoughts and experiences of those being born elswhere in the world at pretty much the same time as Wolfgang - may also be interesting to read?

Just this week a gallery here in the (UK) West Country was holding a sale of Hitler's paintings - this too resulted in many different responses.

One was that as these were painted by Hitler as a very young man they had nothing to do with the later horrors and his part in them. I am not sure what my thoughts are on this view.

I could not help thinking how different the world would have been had Hitler been more successful at making a living from painting than he was. And that paintings which were largely ignored at the time and which very little money would have been spent on - will as a result only of these later horrors - no doubt be worth lots of money.

Subject: RE: BS: Growing up in post-holocaust Germany
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Sep 06 - 07:16 PM

Thank you for that, Wolfgang. There is much food for thought in what you have written.

Don Firth

Subject: BS: Growing up in post-holocaust Germany
From: Wolfgang
Date: 27 Sep 06 - 07:03 PM

I wanted to write this since long and there is no special reason why I do it today instead of last year or next week. I start and I end with facts, but the middle part is a personal account that may not be true for other West-Germans of my generation. Younger Germans (Mudguard) will not have made similar experiences at all and Germans of my generation (Susanne) may not have encountered that type of language I shall describe.

Where did all the Nazis go after the war? It looks at the first glance that immediately after the war all the Nazis were sentenced (and some of them executed) by the Allies and the remaining 99+% of the Germans were innocent or deluded. The allied courts gave the remaining Germans the feeling/excuse that all culprits had been sentenced and that it was not Germany’s business to deal with its past.

As early as 48, the interest of the Western Allies, in particular the USA, was no longer a denazification campaign but the new threat from the East. Germans could now quite easily get the ‘Persilschein’ (a word which is now unknown). Persil was the most popular washing powder then (slogan: Persil washes as white that there is no whiter white) and a good translation would be (assuming that Dash is a washing powder known to you) the “Dash certificate”. That’s how the US certificate that the holder was not involved in Nazi crimes became known in German. In 1948, everyone was busy getting the Persilschein that washed the brown past into an immaculate white. It was easy to get that certificate then (a bit of lying or bribing did help) and so it was official that nearly all remaining Germans were without any personal guilt.

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My father (born in 1919) was not willing to marry my mother before he knew he would survive. His generation were those that had in 1939 finished their military service and therefore fought in the war from the first to the last day. Of the nineteen boys in his class, only four have survived the war, which is quite normal for that generation. That’s why I was not born during the war, but early in 48.

I cannot recollect that the Nazi time was a theme in school when I was young or that any adult talked to us about it. Did we grow up innocent? Not really. “We are not in a Jews’ school”. “Do you think you are in a Jews’ school?” were sentences we often heard from our teachers. Before I knew what a Jew was (or even met one) I knew that ‘Jews+noun’ was bad. The word ‘Jews’ implied that something was wrong or laughable. A ‘Jews’ school’ was a school in which everybody talked at the same time and there was no real order.

I must tell you a bit about our language. If we say “Jewish + noun” that is completely neutral and the “Jewish” is just an adjective used for clarification. If we say Jews + noun (that’s a single word in German then, that implies contempt and ridicule. “Jewish jokes” are jokes as told by Jews, “Jews’ jokes” are bad jokes as told about Jews. If a German would say “Jews’ food” instead of Jewish food he would imply that at the very least he doesn’t like that food.

That “Jews’ school” expression as a mean to discipline us has been a companion of my school years. I have heard it for the last time in 1964.

When I went to a shop to buy the smallest of fireworks (allowed to sell to kids) those that you can explode between your fingers without any harm I asked for “Jews’ farts” (the PC name then was “midges’ farts”). Where does this expression come from? When the extermination camp guards after a hard day’s work burned the bodies there were sometimes (like in most fires) small explosions heard in the ovens. Then the guards may have said to each other: “Have you heard that Jew’s fart?” That’s how this expression did come into our language. As a kid you just repeat the expressions you hear without caring about etymology or about the verbatim meaning. But I cannot recall that I was even once corrected by an adult when I used that expression.

“Bis zur Vergasung”, “until the gas(s)ing (comes)”, was the expression to designate that something was done much longer than tolerable or too long to still be agreeable. “Ad nauseam” would be the “English” expression I’d use today. “He had us make pull-ups until the gassing comes”, “We did play football until the gassing comes” would be two contexts in which I would have used that expression. This expression had a harmless sense long before Hitler in chemistry. “Vergasung” was the process to bring a substance into the gaseous state. That could take sometimes very long and needed a lot of energy. “Bis zur Vergasung” in pre-Hitler German meant “very long”, “unendurably long”. I cannot recollect that I have ever been reminded when using this expression that in post-Hitler German such an expression should not be used anymore for its ugly association. When I found it out one day (old enough then to think about expressions) I couldn’t use that expression any longer.

No, we never had any teacher who taught us the Nazi ideology or who played down the German crimes. But these expressions of my childhood language stay in my mind as indicators that the denazification with the whitewash-certificates was at least in parts only superficial and that some Nazi thinking and talking remained long after 48.


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When did it change? The change started in the early sixties. The first Auschwitz-trial (1963-1965) was a watershed for it was the first ever trial for Nazi crimes in West-Germany that had not been run by the Allies. Then the student rebellion in 67/68 was a time in which the questions like “What have you done in the Nazi time?” became popular. But in the 69 election, the fact that Brandt (who became chancellor after that election) during the war has fought on the ‘wrong’ side has still been used as an argument against him (with little success). Today that would be an argument for him. Perhaps the real reason for the slow change of Germany into a rather normal country was a “biological”. In the sixties and seventies, those who were too young to be involved into the Nazi crimes became the majority among the working population. For the young Germans (who are now getting old), the Nazi time is the most ugly part of our history that we have no personal interest to suppress or to be silent about.

In the early post-war years Germans did avoid mentioning that time and that went so far that some American films about that time were dubbed to eliminate all anti-Nazi elements. Can you imagine for instance seeing “Casablanca” dubbed and shortened so that it was a smuggler story without any Nazi in it? Ridiculous, but so it was to spare the Germans hurt feelings. Since the sixties, we can see that (and other) film(s) dubbed correctly. We now even can see Colditz in German TV and laugh or get angry if the plot is too silly.

I’ve written this even a bit more for myself than for the readers, but some of you may have wondered how quickly Nazi Germany transformed into a democratic West-German ally. To those I say no, it wasn’t quick, it took a long time and the aftershocks of the murderous years could still be felt by a young boy growing up in post-holocaust Germany.

Wolfgang