Back Across the Rubicon: Eight From the Land of No Return II

I’ll never forget the sight of those guns, those fences. Years later, I still remember them, and I think--it’s amazing how quickly the world forgets past tyrannies. And how blind most people are to injustices. But I’m a chameleon, right? I’m not supposed to think or care about anything but my own survival, I admit. I’m no hypocrite.

It’s easier not to care so much.

* * * * *

I am a German, and if you aren’t, you can’t imagine how it is to grow up with the weight of the Holocaust and our defeat in WWII on your shoulders. I think Germans have developed a mechanizing with coping with our tremendous sense of guilt-a lot of people won’t admit to the guilt, but it’s there, we know it, everyone has labeled us for all time as "the bad guys". Anyway, some Germans that I know deal with the shame by being a bit flighty and absent-minded; others become fun-loving thrill-seekers, while never entirely losing their sense of having always to be in complete control of the situation. This empowering feeling of control helps to combat cultural feelings of a guilt you can’t fight. As for the flighty, float-about type, they just run from the guilt.

The rest of us try our hardest to prove to the world how productive we are... to make up for the humiliation of losing? And we pride ourselves on being good to each other and providing a good quality life for all-good health care, shorter, more productive work weeks and better social programs; it’s as if we have to convince ourselves we are humanitarians after all, not the beasts they always make us out to be in American movies.

Now of course you could argue that we know it wasn’t our fault what other Germans, what the Nazis did before we were born, but you can’t help but feel guilty when the entire world keeps pointing the finger of blame your way.

I know because when I was eight, my family moved to Canada, and the Canadians started pointing the minute I got there. And whispering about me behind my back. And calling me names I couldn’t yet translate or understand. And always the cry of "dirty Nazi", the "Hail, Hitler" imitations and snickering snickering snickering.

By dint of my birth, I was suddenly a social pariah, even if I didn’t know what the word meant yet. The closest thing to an outcast as I could be, and there was nothing to be done about it, except accept the situation and fight to alter it. We weren’t going back home. We had left Munich and Germany behind because my father took a teaching position at a Canadian University, and once he got tenure, he didn’t want to leave.

I was eight years old, my sister Monika only twelve when we left home forever.

I was glad I had Monika with me. I loved Monika, my sister, more than most brothers generally love their sisters. Sometimes I even worshipped her. When we were kids I had to do what she did at the same time, even though she was four years older than me. I suppose that made me grow up more quickly. She used to share her Kinder egg chocolates with me when I had eaten all my own. She carried me on her shoulders or piggy-back whenever my bare feet started to burn on the pavement, even if we had wandered kilometres from home. She knew I hated to get burned; I used to scream if anyone launched me towards the fireplace in those jesting games adults will subject children to. In the summers when we stayed with Opa and Oma, our grandparents, and Monika and I set off on wild adventures like a pair of hooligans. We were too curious for our own good-and oh the games we played!