On April 19, 2005, I sat at table with professors and friends-of-professors after speaking at the Holocaust Lecture Series sponsored by Sonoma State University. I was still on an adrenaline high. The "lecture" had gone well, the students had asked really intelligent questions, I had gotten to meet Edith Stein's still-Jewish niece. And the people gathered at the Holocaust Lecture Series' Stammtisch at a Chinese restaurant were the best of the best. Conversation was that delicious combo platter of lighthearted and serious.
There was even an African-American woman who had grown up near Houston. Like me, she had left Texas as things became less and less pleasant. We commiserated over the loss of a truly great place to live, a place where integration was voluntary, where we knew and loved politicians like LBJ, Lloyd Bentsen, and Sissy Farenthold. We wondered what had happened, how Texas had become the land of hate crimes, a place where the state GOP declared that the United States was a Christian country, why schools that had been fully and voluntarily integrated in the 1960s were now places where the n-word is liberally used. The only liberal thing left in the state, except maybe Molly Ivins.
"Did you hear about the new pope?" her husband suddenly asked.
I had not, since part of my preparations for a lecture or conference include a pretty firm "no TV" rule the day of. Who? When?
My heart sank when he answered. It's not that I don't think German clerics should be pope. I just don't think this one has any business being involved in setting policy, procedure, doctrine, traditions, practice, or anything else within the Catholic church. Much less being installed as pope.
His whitewash of his days under Hitler not only represent severe distortion of the truth, but in cleaning up his own act, he dishonors the many Germans who did in fact stand up for justice and freedom. His claim that he joined Hitler Youth because he had to? Please.
To be sure, young boys (and girls) were under tremendous pressure to join that organization. And after a while, non-Hitler Youth clubs except for Catholic clubs organized for Bible study and prayer were outlawed. In fact, they were outlawed several times, and enforcement ranged from nonexistent to more severe crackdowns over time.
But here and there, boys and girls ~ mere children ~ did in fact have the backbone and courage of their convictions, and refused to join. Their refusal usually if not always brought them beatings. They were societal outcasts. My very first German teacher told us how she hated her father (who was part of the July 20, 1944 resistance), because he would not let her join BDM, the girls' version of Hitler Youth. As a non-member, she had no friends. Life was very, very hard indeed.
Among the White Rose members and those loosely affiliated with it, there are several brilliant examples of students who did not join Hitler Youth, and who paid dearly. Otl Aicher did not join, and because he was of small stature, he was the repeated target of HY bullies who often left him bloodied. But proud. His friend Lilli Holl did not join BDM at a time when Inge (and Hans and Sophie) Scholl tried to beef up membership through cruel and unusual measures. Lilli was beaten with a whip and attacked by a mob, and she did not join.
Nor did Willi Graf, whose father was a founding member of the NSDAP in the Saarland. Willi crossed out names of friends who did join HY and kept to those who would not back down. Heinrich Guter in Ulm applied for membership in Jungvolk (the younger boys' version of HY), but he was turned down because his attitudes were known to be too anti-Nazi. And Heinrich Guter ~ younger than most of the White Rose students by a good 8 - 10 years ~ was about the same age as this pope.
In reality, this pope was given an opportunity unlike any of his predecessors, bar none. His first (or second, or third) day in office, he could have said, Yes, I was part of the Third Reich, and I chose to be. But I repent of my actions and I solemnly pledge to do everything in my power to bring in unsurpassed openness, to bring about healing and restoration, to ensure that the Holocaust and my Church's role in it never happen again.
But he did not.
It's not too late. He can recant his earlier statements and start afresh. As I understand Catholic theology, papal infallibility applies solely to his rulings regarding church doctrine. He is not a deity, he is not a saint, he is not sinless. So he can indeed recant. If he chooses to.
To be effectual, such a recantation must be followed by an immediate opening of church archives, especially regarding documents pertaining to the Third Reich. It is shameful indeed when a religious organization (or any organization or individual, for that matter) claims innocence or purity in a specific matter, then refuses to grant access to documents that can prove or disprove those statements.
The new pope might want to start by reinstating the German texts of Mit brennender Sorge and the Christmas 1942 German speech ~ oft cited by sycophants of Pope Pius XII in faulty English translation ~ to the Vatican Web site. Both used to be there. Both are now gone. Because the original German made it clear that Pope Pius XII was most concerned with protecting church assets and Jews who had converted to Catholicism. To hell with everything and everyone else.
Sadly, this pope's refusal ~ along with his church's refusal in general ~ to address the church's incestuous relationship with Hitler and the NSDAP obfuscates the very real resistance that was carried out by many Catholic (and Lutheran) clerics. The ones like Pater Weiss in Ulm who taught their charges that Nazi hate was wrong? They are the ones who deserve beatification, who should be honored and revered among Catholics worldwide, indeed among all who cherish liberty and justice. Writers like Johannes Maassen who fruitlessly called his church to stop its whoring with the Nazis? His words should be studied in every parochial school and seminary.
But as long as church leaders pretend it didn't happen, pretend everyone did what was right, pretend that the pope then ~ and the pope now ~ had the courage everyone wishes they had had?
As long as that is the case, true heroes continue to go unrecognized, and young Germans, young Americans, young Catholics ~ young Jews ~ go on with nothing solid to hang their hats on. The problem of celebrity is hardly limited to sports. If religious leaders feast on celebrity and not real heroes, their disciples will die of starvation.
It's time that papal scholars faced the hard, cold truth. That is, if their religion is to have any meaning worth living for.
~ Ruth Hanna Sachs
July 28, 2005: Changed the name of this essay from "Papal Sycophancy" to "Papal Fallibility," since that better reflects its intent. I wish to stress, underline, and shout from the rooftops that this essay is not a diatribe against the Catholic church. (I would have reacted exactly the same way had the woman claimed that the Lutheran, Baptist, or Methodist churches had practiced resistance. The Holocaust was enabled by a colossal failure of organized "religion" to act.) It is, however, a call to more openness, more transparency, more honesty.
I would like to challenge the new Pope to be painfully candid about what he did during the Third Reich. Steps in that direction have been made without him, by (for example) the playwrights of Oberammergau who've taken extraordinary measures to rid the 300+ year-old Passion Play of its anti-Semitic overtones.
It's time for the Church to quit pretending that its leaders from 1933-1945 were saints. Honor those men and women of the church who did in fact die for the courage of their convictions.
Beatify them, the Franz Weisses and Johannes Maassens. Teach children about their heroism.
If that were to happen, can you imagine the wave of healing and peace that could sweep across the land?
~ RHS.
Showing posts with label Otl Aicher. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Otl Aicher. Show all posts
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Otl Aicher on War
As long as you are a soldier, you have to stay within the framework of your unit or move within the confines of the line of command of an order.
Since we lounged around for days on end ~ I had unbelievable time to read ~ I risked taking a field trip. We were camped on the fringes of a village. All around us, as far as the eye could see, the unplowed fields of stubble. The tracks of the trucks and tanks from the battle for Charkov spread across the fields like a black net.
I was raised on the topic of war. The first World War with its peace of Versailles and the revolution of the soldiers returning home created a climate of thought and conversation that would give no one a break. Someone would say, 'never again war.' Someone else, 'that revolution is a stab in the back to our army.' Even in civvies, most of the years I was in school, students wore a puttee [Ed: a leather legging secured by a strap or catch or by laces], like soldiers in the field wore. Shoulder harnesses and webbing showed up in the uniforms of many parties and organizations.
In the evenings, the men would tell one another about the war, and we children would listen with our mouths wide open. Demonstrations and public announcements always included marching, flags, and military music. In school, the French teacher talked about war, the biology teacher talked about war. Even the religion teacher had to clarify his nationalistic reputation by speaking about chaplains during the war. The poetry textbook for our German literature class was full of poems about war and the deeds of heroes.
And now, I myself was in a war. I was lying on the ground where a battle had just taken place. It was as though this was a point that my life had been leading up to all this time. After all that talk about war, for the first time I could hold it with my hands. It was tangible reality.
I left our camp without telling anyone. I wanted to go to Charkov, to really see the war. Out here where I was stationed, we got only vague hints about it. I almost ran to Charkov, up hill and down. I had a picture in my mind of what a battlefield had to look like, drawn from my father's stories, from newspapers and books, from teachers' reports. I wanted to see it. So I ran for hours till I reached Charkov.
Once I saw a few piles of something or other in the distance, but it turned out not to be dead soldiers. It was only clumps of straw. The network of truck tracks that criss-crossed the land were wider in some places, and in others, narrow. Then I reached a ravine, and for the first time, smelled the stench of war.
I still couldn't see anything, but a penetrating sweet odor kept forcing me to hold my nose. In vain. Suddenly, they were everywhere. Horses, soldiers, parts of vehicles, a few patches of uprooted earth.
I approached the first dead soldier almost cautiously. His face was bloated, yellow-green, yellow-brown. Teeth bared in a snarl. His wool jacket, ripped open, was encrusted with clotted blood. The battle was probably three or four days ago. The burning sun had turned death into putrefaction. The next dead soldier, I was met with a blank stare. His eyes were looking someplace where he could not see, and blood had run from his nose.
Now I understood why we always close the eyes of dead people. But I did not dare. It was as though poison flowed between us. I was breathing suffocating vapors of poisonous gas. I would have liked to have closed his eyes. Death is only peace when our eyes stop looking for something.
One soldier was lying halfway in a fox-hole, head down. His cotton clothing looked like a sofa that has been split wide open.
One soldier was lying on his back on the ground, his chest split in two, a child's chest with no hair. I tiptoed, like the angel of death, slowly from body to body, choking, mouth dry, yet full of curiosity to see what war looked like. A dead man is a dead man.
But these here, they were not dead men. They did not have a body. They were a mix of scraps of clothing, dirt, mud, blood, flesh, and swollen skin. They did not rest in peace. They had died like animals, had been exploded like a grenade.
One soldier was missing a leg. I never could find where it was. The stump had been bound up with a shirt. The blood looked like red cement. Many of their hands were soft and peaceful. All were swollen. Many hands were like those of Matthias Gruenwald, making a tight fist. Some deaths must have been sudden, others slow and painful.
No angel of death had been at work in this place, no unceasing angel of death. No, here had walked a tormentor, a torturer, someone who inflicted pain, a butcher.
This was anything but a sacrificial death. One does not become a hero by dying. One bleeds to death, one wastes away, one witnesses his own death as a public embowelment. Even the one who passed away with his head bound in white, the only thing that is white in this whole tumult of blood and earth, even he lies there still and stutters his pain. Beards and fingernails grow over death, and the faces quickly take on the image of grimaces and ghosts. These are creatures of hell, of the devil.
War does not allow man to end his life as man.
From innenseiten des kriegs, by Otl Aicher. Translation (c) 2001 Ruth Sachs. All rights reserved.
Since we lounged around for days on end ~ I had unbelievable time to read ~ I risked taking a field trip. We were camped on the fringes of a village. All around us, as far as the eye could see, the unplowed fields of stubble. The tracks of the trucks and tanks from the battle for Charkov spread across the fields like a black net.
I was raised on the topic of war. The first World War with its peace of Versailles and the revolution of the soldiers returning home created a climate of thought and conversation that would give no one a break. Someone would say, 'never again war.' Someone else, 'that revolution is a stab in the back to our army.' Even in civvies, most of the years I was in school, students wore a puttee [Ed: a leather legging secured by a strap or catch or by laces], like soldiers in the field wore. Shoulder harnesses and webbing showed up in the uniforms of many parties and organizations.
In the evenings, the men would tell one another about the war, and we children would listen with our mouths wide open. Demonstrations and public announcements always included marching, flags, and military music. In school, the French teacher talked about war, the biology teacher talked about war. Even the religion teacher had to clarify his nationalistic reputation by speaking about chaplains during the war. The poetry textbook for our German literature class was full of poems about war and the deeds of heroes.
And now, I myself was in a war. I was lying on the ground where a battle had just taken place. It was as though this was a point that my life had been leading up to all this time. After all that talk about war, for the first time I could hold it with my hands. It was tangible reality.
I left our camp without telling anyone. I wanted to go to Charkov, to really see the war. Out here where I was stationed, we got only vague hints about it. I almost ran to Charkov, up hill and down. I had a picture in my mind of what a battlefield had to look like, drawn from my father's stories, from newspapers and books, from teachers' reports. I wanted to see it. So I ran for hours till I reached Charkov.
Once I saw a few piles of something or other in the distance, but it turned out not to be dead soldiers. It was only clumps of straw. The network of truck tracks that criss-crossed the land were wider in some places, and in others, narrow. Then I reached a ravine, and for the first time, smelled the stench of war.
I still couldn't see anything, but a penetrating sweet odor kept forcing me to hold my nose. In vain. Suddenly, they were everywhere. Horses, soldiers, parts of vehicles, a few patches of uprooted earth.
I approached the first dead soldier almost cautiously. His face was bloated, yellow-green, yellow-brown. Teeth bared in a snarl. His wool jacket, ripped open, was encrusted with clotted blood. The battle was probably three or four days ago. The burning sun had turned death into putrefaction. The next dead soldier, I was met with a blank stare. His eyes were looking someplace where he could not see, and blood had run from his nose.
Now I understood why we always close the eyes of dead people. But I did not dare. It was as though poison flowed between us. I was breathing suffocating vapors of poisonous gas. I would have liked to have closed his eyes. Death is only peace when our eyes stop looking for something.
One soldier was lying halfway in a fox-hole, head down. His cotton clothing looked like a sofa that has been split wide open.
One soldier was lying on his back on the ground, his chest split in two, a child's chest with no hair. I tiptoed, like the angel of death, slowly from body to body, choking, mouth dry, yet full of curiosity to see what war looked like. A dead man is a dead man.
But these here, they were not dead men. They did not have a body. They were a mix of scraps of clothing, dirt, mud, blood, flesh, and swollen skin. They did not rest in peace. They had died like animals, had been exploded like a grenade.
One soldier was missing a leg. I never could find where it was. The stump had been bound up with a shirt. The blood looked like red cement. Many of their hands were soft and peaceful. All were swollen. Many hands were like those of Matthias Gruenwald, making a tight fist. Some deaths must have been sudden, others slow and painful.
No angel of death had been at work in this place, no unceasing angel of death. No, here had walked a tormentor, a torturer, someone who inflicted pain, a butcher.
This was anything but a sacrificial death. One does not become a hero by dying. One bleeds to death, one wastes away, one witnesses his own death as a public embowelment. Even the one who passed away with his head bound in white, the only thing that is white in this whole tumult of blood and earth, even he lies there still and stutters his pain. Beards and fingernails grow over death, and the faces quickly take on the image of grimaces and ghosts. These are creatures of hell, of the devil.
War does not allow man to end his life as man.
From innenseiten des kriegs, by Otl Aicher. Translation (c) 2001 Ruth Sachs. All rights reserved.
History: July through September 2001
September 13, 2001
There is nothing else to write except for deepest grief at the events of this week. On Monday, facing a week full of bright prospects, we could never have imagined how changed our world would be today, how very different we have all become in so short a space.
May our innocence lost turn to wisdom gained.
September 6, 2001
Interesting news out of Germany... Hans Hirzel has left the Republikaner party. Reasons are unclear at present. Just a development worth noting.
Armin Ziegler sent me his biography of Eugen Grimminger. More for the database, but more important, more puzzle pieces to complete the White Rose picture. It grows increasingly fascinating the greater its complexity.
August 24, 2001
More of Otl's work is "in the database" now. Nearly finished, after a long hiatus from his writing. So many why's, not many answers. It is chilling to realize that they were very much aware of the odds against them. 30, maybe 50 individuals at most, in the face of 60 million Germans who either followed Hitler blindly and loudly, or would not say no to those who did. Chilling, and an indictment.
30, maybe 50, against 60 million. How much more alone could one be?
August 17, 2001
This White Rose "puzzle" is so intricate, so beautiful. Asked Armin Ziegler a simple question this week: Was Tilly Hahn related to the educator Kurt Hahn?
She was not... but she represents one of those White Rose jewels who has been ignored far too long. She gave Hans Scholl and Alex Schmorell the 500 Marks that Eugen Grimminger was arrested for. Out of her own pocket. Long depicted as his pretty secretary, Tilly instead handled customer accounts ~ and shared Grimminger's views of the Nazis completely.
It's a shame that the falsehood of the legend has hidden the charm of the real story. High time people like Tilly Hahn received the recognition, and honor, they deserve.
August 10, 2001
There's movement in the White Rose work again. I won't talk out loud about some of it. Suffice it to say, I alternate between breathless and agony. Listening to people who can make a difference... And it's exciting to be talking to Leslie Friedman, a fellow Fulbrighter who shares my strange sense of humor, regarding art direction for a potential White Rose movie.
August 2, 2001
When a person thinks about becoming a writer (or at least when I did), there's this romantic vision of sitting at a computer and pouring meaningful words onto a blank page. I remember the early days, writing whenever inspiration struck... usually late at night. It was simply fun, that theater of and for one.
I still love to write, but have discovered in the interim that it's a business like anything else. The routine may "interfere" with the creative, but it enables it as well. Would not trade this business for any other! Keeping routine and creativity in balance is, however, a dance on egg shells.
July 20, 2001
Ran across some people this week who willingly distort truth just to win an argument. Had nothing to do with the White Rose. The topic, in fact, was media bias. Instead of honestly discussing the matter, they invented specious supports to their claim, including but not limited to the mind-boggling assertion that writing "Rep. Condit" was a deliberate attempt to make people think Condit is Republican.
Yes, there really are people like that. Finding them outside the realm of the White Rose made me feel a little better. I was beginning to believe all those types had migrated to this topic.
Still enjoying the ongoing correspondence with Armin Ziegler. Questions are good. He forces me to nitpick and think hard.
July 13, 2001
It's been one of those weeks where, if you touch it, it breaks. I'm sure that no one reading this has ever had a week like that. (Yeah right.) Guess these days make me appreciate other times when creativity comes easy, when everything rhymes, and mistakes are unehard of, I mean unheard of.
In the meantime, I've been reading the new John Adams biography. Astounding, isn't it, how many stories we once knew are quickly forgotten. He lived a scant 200 years ago. What have we forgotten from time even more immemorial?
July 5, 2001
On this day after we celebrate our declaration of independence, it is sobering to realize that not everywhere and not in every time have people enjoyed so much luxury of freedom as we do here in these United States.
A recent discussion about what drove the students in the White Rose to sacrifice their lives pointed this up clearly. They were of one mind on one topic only, namely, that human and civil rights were worth dying for. They could never have agreed on religion or politics. But they understood what we take for granted, that this precious freedom is for every one of us, not just for the privileged few.
There is nothing else to write except for deepest grief at the events of this week. On Monday, facing a week full of bright prospects, we could never have imagined how changed our world would be today, how very different we have all become in so short a space.
May our innocence lost turn to wisdom gained.
September 6, 2001
Interesting news out of Germany... Hans Hirzel has left the Republikaner party. Reasons are unclear at present. Just a development worth noting.
Armin Ziegler sent me his biography of Eugen Grimminger. More for the database, but more important, more puzzle pieces to complete the White Rose picture. It grows increasingly fascinating the greater its complexity.
August 24, 2001
More of Otl's work is "in the database" now. Nearly finished, after a long hiatus from his writing. So many why's, not many answers. It is chilling to realize that they were very much aware of the odds against them. 30, maybe 50 individuals at most, in the face of 60 million Germans who either followed Hitler blindly and loudly, or would not say no to those who did. Chilling, and an indictment.
30, maybe 50, against 60 million. How much more alone could one be?
August 17, 2001
This White Rose "puzzle" is so intricate, so beautiful. Asked Armin Ziegler a simple question this week: Was Tilly Hahn related to the educator Kurt Hahn?
She was not... but she represents one of those White Rose jewels who has been ignored far too long. She gave Hans Scholl and Alex Schmorell the 500 Marks that Eugen Grimminger was arrested for. Out of her own pocket. Long depicted as his pretty secretary, Tilly instead handled customer accounts ~ and shared Grimminger's views of the Nazis completely.
It's a shame that the falsehood of the legend has hidden the charm of the real story. High time people like Tilly Hahn received the recognition, and honor, they deserve.
August 10, 2001
There's movement in the White Rose work again. I won't talk out loud about some of it. Suffice it to say, I alternate between breathless and agony. Listening to people who can make a difference... And it's exciting to be talking to Leslie Friedman, a fellow Fulbrighter who shares my strange sense of humor, regarding art direction for a potential White Rose movie.
August 2, 2001
When a person thinks about becoming a writer (or at least when I did), there's this romantic vision of sitting at a computer and pouring meaningful words onto a blank page. I remember the early days, writing whenever inspiration struck... usually late at night. It was simply fun, that theater of and for one.
I still love to write, but have discovered in the interim that it's a business like anything else. The routine may "interfere" with the creative, but it enables it as well. Would not trade this business for any other! Keeping routine and creativity in balance is, however, a dance on egg shells.
July 20, 2001
Ran across some people this week who willingly distort truth just to win an argument. Had nothing to do with the White Rose. The topic, in fact, was media bias. Instead of honestly discussing the matter, they invented specious supports to their claim, including but not limited to the mind-boggling assertion that writing "Rep. Condit" was a deliberate attempt to make people think Condit is Republican.
Yes, there really are people like that. Finding them outside the realm of the White Rose made me feel a little better. I was beginning to believe all those types had migrated to this topic.
Still enjoying the ongoing correspondence with Armin Ziegler. Questions are good. He forces me to nitpick and think hard.
July 13, 2001
It's been one of those weeks where, if you touch it, it breaks. I'm sure that no one reading this has ever had a week like that. (Yeah right.) Guess these days make me appreciate other times when creativity comes easy, when everything rhymes, and mistakes are unehard of, I mean unheard of.
In the meantime, I've been reading the new John Adams biography. Astounding, isn't it, how many stories we once knew are quickly forgotten. He lived a scant 200 years ago. What have we forgotten from time even more immemorial?
July 5, 2001
On this day after we celebrate our declaration of independence, it is sobering to realize that not everywhere and not in every time have people enjoyed so much luxury of freedom as we do here in these United States.
A recent discussion about what drove the students in the White Rose to sacrifice their lives pointed this up clearly. They were of one mind on one topic only, namely, that human and civil rights were worth dying for. They could never have agreed on religion or politics. But they understood what we take for granted, that this precious freedom is for every one of us, not just for the privileged few.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
History: Excerpted posts from 2001
Occasionally, and before the RuthSachs.com Web site disappears, I will copy old posts from my author's journal to this site. Here are some excerpts from early 2001:
March 29, 2001
Smiles enough, and laughter the last seven days. Putting aside White Rose has been like opening the windows on a gorgeous spring day, letting in the fresh air. Mark Twain has that effect on you. I've simply got to finish White Rose, so I can go back to Joanie and Sid.
Have practiced writing in different voices this week. Nothing publishable. In fact, I need to shred anything that made it to the printer. It is simply a delicious exercise, thinking out loud from another point of view.
I think sometimes we've got to back away from the things that normally consume our lives and stand in the sunshine a while. Clears out cobwebs hidden by the dark. This I will do!
March 22, 2001
Early this week, I found myself struggling. I would look at the Otl Aicher book that has very little left to translate, and think I could not bear to write another word. I finally got out some Mark Twain I had not read in years. In the ensuing laughter, I knew that every once in a while, when you deal with such a dark subject, you simply have to take a break and step completely away without feeling guilty.
So I have managed to do exactly that. Working on a few short, bright, airy pieces, nothing more than happy fluff. Nothing serious, or long.
Maybe in a week or two, I can return to that dark place that does hold such light, a little refreshed and ready to tackle it head-on.
March 15, 2001
Not a writing week! Stephen King may say that every writer should write ten pages a day, but odds are, he doesn't have to deal with car repairs and telephone people. Only one-and-a-half pages this week. For the whole week. Sometimes you just have to be thankful for what you do get done and quit obsessing over the work you wanted to do.
Oh well. At least the imminent trip to the garage turned into a new car instead. Fun shedding the staid, business-image automobile for something a little more me.
March 8, 2001
Varied week, lots of little things accomplished. Sometimes a break from the darkness of the Third Reich is very much in order.
Finished one article for Children's Writer, started another. Doing these makes me understand a little more here or there about the corners of writing that I am still discovering, the niches that are out there, still unexplored.
Also started translation work for hagalil.com, that excellent German Jewish Web site. Focusing first on contemporary German Jewish life, because so much Shoah material is already available in English. It's a breath of fresh air to write about today's struggles, joys, and perplexities, instead of always looking to the past for inspiration.
Looking to the "future" too, as a very strange and funny dream may have solved the way to get Joanie to talk again. Maybe I can write a chapter or two there next week, get her story moving. Need to look up something about Jupiter, so I can get the commentary right. I like the days I work on Joanie's Letters, because I find myself laughing as I write.
March 1, 2001
White Rose work this week has taken me well beyond the usual confines of thinking about them in terms of resistance to Hitler. Their words resound in our own politics.
I am wondering about collecting things I find here and there, bits of wisdom across the centuries, on the horror of war. How is it that our sages tell us always and again that war is hell, yet each generation goes out and has to learn that anew? Such somber, dark reflections this week, but it can not be any other way after translating Otl Aicher's eyewitness account of what he saw.
I'd like for us to start defining heroes a little better. Remove professional sports figures from the pedestal first, those who simulate war, taking the sport out of it. How can we write the word hero so it's understood as the people who make us more whole? This has been a week for questions.
February 22, 2001
Today is the 58th anniversary of the execution of Christoph, Hans, and Sophie. Guess it's appropriate that this week has been filled with nothing but White Rose.
Nearly done entering Otl Aicher's memoirs. He gives such a clear view of who Sophie was. "She had hair like I like hair. She had a body like I like bodies." He speaks so frankly, no masks trying to be politically correct. Researching him a little has been fun too. Wonder why no one ever picked up on the fact that he was in Munich that week to talk to them about working with the resistance? It's been there in black and white for so long.
Finley came out Tuesday. We looked at the CD-ROM software that Brian recommended. It's exactly right. Now the only question remains, how to sort through the piles in the conference room to choose only those things that other people besides me will be interested in?
February 15, 2001
Finally got Hans and Sophie, 1933-1942 in the database. (2,200 entries and more to come!)
Went through ups and downs doing this. Sophie's honesty is refreshing, especially when it follows a section of Hans that is purposely deceitful. Wish Scholl archives could be forced to let us read the letters he wrote "girls" besides Rose Naegele at the same time he was writing her. Actually, at this point, I would be happy to read un-edited versions of letters to Rose!
Letter from Dr. Schmorell. More details on his wife's father's role in protecting many of the ones who were in the army, and her memories... He wrote that he had been worried that I had abandoned the White Rose project. If only he knew how close I came to doing just that last year.
Bomb scare this week at Valley Forge Post Office. Is that #16?
Thinking about the Joanie Letters. Am I getting close to figuring out her relationship to Sid? If so, I can finally get past Chapter Four. Should Kirk disappear, or start dating Mandy (maybe that's the answer)? Joanie has simply quit talking. Hmm, maybe this is part of her transformation, that she has to stop talking and just "do" for a while. She is 18, after all. I'm sure she will start talking again once she and Sid are in Israel. Hard not to talk when you're there.
February 8, 2001
Took a break from the Hans and Sophie Scholl entries. I would probably be finished by now if I were not having to deal with conflicted emotions over Hans' letters.
Short week, with unexpected snowstorm on Monday. Decided to stay home, though at the time they were just saying an inch. Got eight inches! The delightful interruption to routine made it easier to take a break from everything else.
Organizational issues. How am I going to be able to manage the piles of photographs and other documents that are for the proposed CD-ROM? Right now, I have two stacks on the floor, and others in the bookcase. I have to start thinking about weeding out some of the information.
Dinner with Sara Lieberman. I think I am getting spoiled.
February 1, 2001
What a nice week! Arlene's here from Phoenix, so Mom and I lunched with her at King Street Grille. Why is "Hans and Sophie" taking so long? I wonder.
Very nice response from Susanne Hirzel. Wish I had been able to meet her in 1995. One of the few I missed. Her book makes her terribly vulnerable. She hides none of her questions, none of her pain. I hope I can honor that sacrifice in my own work.
January 25, 2001
Still talking about the possibility of a documentary. Good to have friends to brainstorm with. I still want the documentary to be the first step to a feature film or mini-series. Dan thinks the story is made for a documentary only. But even this isn't easy. A simple one-hour program with the basic information, or an in-depth approach? The latter costs more.
And I still want the mini-series, Hallmark Hall of Fame style! I know I am stubborn.
Tracked down lots of details this week. Hans Scholl spoke so disparagingly of the "French doctor" who committed suicide the day before Paris fell. But it felt like his usual shallow assessment of the situation. So searched till I found her: Sophie Morgenstern. Child psychiatrist. Freudian school. Instincts were right. He clearly passed judgment without having half the facts. A character trait he never lost.
Also became curious about where he was in France, especially after knowing where Willi and Fritz were. Never intended to get bogged down in the military aspect of this story, but turns out that their joint perspectives are fascinating. Fritz was in the northern "prong", Willi in the central, Hans in the southern. Hitler's "scythe" makes more sense when you read about it from inside the sweep.
Now, is that information, including Winston Churchill's braggadocio speech on June 4, 1940, appropriate for the scope of what I am doing? I don't know.
Eichmann book came today. Rosen did a great job. Only two typos in the whole book, that I found at least.
January 18, 2001
Talked to Dan and Peter and Finley about documentary possibilities. The brainstorming has begun!
Finished Willi Graf, 1933 - 1942, except for the photocopies of handwritten letters. I like that "young man" even more now than I did when I started this project seven years ago. There is just something so decent and honorable about Willi Graf. His decency knows nothing of blind duty. There's simply a sense that he followed his conscience and always tried to do what was right. People like him are rare enough in any age.
January 11, 2001
Incredible letter from Lilo Ramdohr. I enjoy finding out that the "insides" of a person are as lovely as their "outsides", and she qualifies.
White Rose Status Report as of January 1, 2001
Finley's database has been amazing. Everything from May 1, 1942 through October 12, 1943 is in. What is that, like 1300 entries? I've had good success in shaping the report so the information is useful. Nice feeling to be able to add ten entries at random dates, re-generate the report and sometimes be astounded at the difference a little new information can make.
I am learning too that this database is helping me pinpoint exact dates. Susanne Hirzel may have written, for example, that something happened at the beginning of October. So I put it in as October 1, just to have an anchor date. Then, when I compare her memories to Sophie's diary to Dr. Muth's letter, I can determine when it was. Sometimes by process of elimination (if Susanne was "here" on October 4, she couldn't be "there" too), sometimes by finding an exact match to a described activity.
So, what's left to do in the database? Willi Graf, 1933 - 1942 (actually two books worth, because Anneliese Knoop-Graf gave me a treasure, the photocopies of letters in his own handwriting, and not all are published). Hans and Sophie's letters, what we are allowed to read of them at least, 1933 - 1942. Otl Aicher's memoirs. Going back through Lilo Ramdohr's memoirs with a fine-tooth comb to make sure I didn't miss anything. Albert Riester's memoirs. The Ulm/Hitler Youth information from Dr. Lechner. And whatever I learn from Dr. W next week.
"What's left" actually sounds overwhelming on the face of it. But it's nothing compared to what's already in. This is the home stretch!
March 29, 2001
Smiles enough, and laughter the last seven days. Putting aside White Rose has been like opening the windows on a gorgeous spring day, letting in the fresh air. Mark Twain has that effect on you. I've simply got to finish White Rose, so I can go back to Joanie and Sid.
Have practiced writing in different voices this week. Nothing publishable. In fact, I need to shred anything that made it to the printer. It is simply a delicious exercise, thinking out loud from another point of view.
I think sometimes we've got to back away from the things that normally consume our lives and stand in the sunshine a while. Clears out cobwebs hidden by the dark. This I will do!
March 22, 2001
Early this week, I found myself struggling. I would look at the Otl Aicher book that has very little left to translate, and think I could not bear to write another word. I finally got out some Mark Twain I had not read in years. In the ensuing laughter, I knew that every once in a while, when you deal with such a dark subject, you simply have to take a break and step completely away without feeling guilty.
So I have managed to do exactly that. Working on a few short, bright, airy pieces, nothing more than happy fluff. Nothing serious, or long.
Maybe in a week or two, I can return to that dark place that does hold such light, a little refreshed and ready to tackle it head-on.
March 15, 2001
Not a writing week! Stephen King may say that every writer should write ten pages a day, but odds are, he doesn't have to deal with car repairs and telephone people. Only one-and-a-half pages this week. For the whole week. Sometimes you just have to be thankful for what you do get done and quit obsessing over the work you wanted to do.
Oh well. At least the imminent trip to the garage turned into a new car instead. Fun shedding the staid, business-image automobile for something a little more me.
March 8, 2001
Varied week, lots of little things accomplished. Sometimes a break from the darkness of the Third Reich is very much in order.
Finished one article for Children's Writer, started another. Doing these makes me understand a little more here or there about the corners of writing that I am still discovering, the niches that are out there, still unexplored.
Also started translation work for hagalil.com, that excellent German Jewish Web site. Focusing first on contemporary German Jewish life, because so much Shoah material is already available in English. It's a breath of fresh air to write about today's struggles, joys, and perplexities, instead of always looking to the past for inspiration.
Looking to the "future" too, as a very strange and funny dream may have solved the way to get Joanie to talk again. Maybe I can write a chapter or two there next week, get her story moving. Need to look up something about Jupiter, so I can get the commentary right. I like the days I work on Joanie's Letters, because I find myself laughing as I write.
March 1, 2001
White Rose work this week has taken me well beyond the usual confines of thinking about them in terms of resistance to Hitler. Their words resound in our own politics.
I am wondering about collecting things I find here and there, bits of wisdom across the centuries, on the horror of war. How is it that our sages tell us always and again that war is hell, yet each generation goes out and has to learn that anew? Such somber, dark reflections this week, but it can not be any other way after translating Otl Aicher's eyewitness account of what he saw.
I'd like for us to start defining heroes a little better. Remove professional sports figures from the pedestal first, those who simulate war, taking the sport out of it. How can we write the word hero so it's understood as the people who make us more whole? This has been a week for questions.
February 22, 2001
Today is the 58th anniversary of the execution of Christoph, Hans, and Sophie. Guess it's appropriate that this week has been filled with nothing but White Rose.
Nearly done entering Otl Aicher's memoirs. He gives such a clear view of who Sophie was. "She had hair like I like hair. She had a body like I like bodies." He speaks so frankly, no masks trying to be politically correct. Researching him a little has been fun too. Wonder why no one ever picked up on the fact that he was in Munich that week to talk to them about working with the resistance? It's been there in black and white for so long.
Finley came out Tuesday. We looked at the CD-ROM software that Brian recommended. It's exactly right. Now the only question remains, how to sort through the piles in the conference room to choose only those things that other people besides me will be interested in?
February 15, 2001
Finally got Hans and Sophie, 1933-1942 in the database. (2,200 entries and more to come!)
Went through ups and downs doing this. Sophie's honesty is refreshing, especially when it follows a section of Hans that is purposely deceitful. Wish Scholl archives could be forced to let us read the letters he wrote "girls" besides Rose Naegele at the same time he was writing her. Actually, at this point, I would be happy to read un-edited versions of letters to Rose!
Letter from Dr. Schmorell. More details on his wife's father's role in protecting many of the ones who were in the army, and her memories... He wrote that he had been worried that I had abandoned the White Rose project. If only he knew how close I came to doing just that last year.
Bomb scare this week at Valley Forge Post Office. Is that #16?
Thinking about the Joanie Letters. Am I getting close to figuring out her relationship to Sid? If so, I can finally get past Chapter Four. Should Kirk disappear, or start dating Mandy (maybe that's the answer)? Joanie has simply quit talking. Hmm, maybe this is part of her transformation, that she has to stop talking and just "do" for a while. She is 18, after all. I'm sure she will start talking again once she and Sid are in Israel. Hard not to talk when you're there.
February 8, 2001
Took a break from the Hans and Sophie Scholl entries. I would probably be finished by now if I were not having to deal with conflicted emotions over Hans' letters.
Short week, with unexpected snowstorm on Monday. Decided to stay home, though at the time they were just saying an inch. Got eight inches! The delightful interruption to routine made it easier to take a break from everything else.
Organizational issues. How am I going to be able to manage the piles of photographs and other documents that are for the proposed CD-ROM? Right now, I have two stacks on the floor, and others in the bookcase. I have to start thinking about weeding out some of the information.
Dinner with Sara Lieberman. I think I am getting spoiled.
February 1, 2001
What a nice week! Arlene's here from Phoenix, so Mom and I lunched with her at King Street Grille. Why is "Hans and Sophie" taking so long? I wonder.
Very nice response from Susanne Hirzel. Wish I had been able to meet her in 1995. One of the few I missed. Her book makes her terribly vulnerable. She hides none of her questions, none of her pain. I hope I can honor that sacrifice in my own work.
January 25, 2001
Still talking about the possibility of a documentary. Good to have friends to brainstorm with. I still want the documentary to be the first step to a feature film or mini-series. Dan thinks the story is made for a documentary only. But even this isn't easy. A simple one-hour program with the basic information, or an in-depth approach? The latter costs more.
And I still want the mini-series, Hallmark Hall of Fame style! I know I am stubborn.
Tracked down lots of details this week. Hans Scholl spoke so disparagingly of the "French doctor" who committed suicide the day before Paris fell. But it felt like his usual shallow assessment of the situation. So searched till I found her: Sophie Morgenstern. Child psychiatrist. Freudian school. Instincts were right. He clearly passed judgment without having half the facts. A character trait he never lost.
Also became curious about where he was in France, especially after knowing where Willi and Fritz were. Never intended to get bogged down in the military aspect of this story, but turns out that their joint perspectives are fascinating. Fritz was in the northern "prong", Willi in the central, Hans in the southern. Hitler's "scythe" makes more sense when you read about it from inside the sweep.
Now, is that information, including Winston Churchill's braggadocio speech on June 4, 1940, appropriate for the scope of what I am doing? I don't know.
Eichmann book came today. Rosen did a great job. Only two typos in the whole book, that I found at least.
January 18, 2001
Talked to Dan and Peter and Finley about documentary possibilities. The brainstorming has begun!
Finished Willi Graf, 1933 - 1942, except for the photocopies of handwritten letters. I like that "young man" even more now than I did when I started this project seven years ago. There is just something so decent and honorable about Willi Graf. His decency knows nothing of blind duty. There's simply a sense that he followed his conscience and always tried to do what was right. People like him are rare enough in any age.
January 11, 2001
Incredible letter from Lilo Ramdohr. I enjoy finding out that the "insides" of a person are as lovely as their "outsides", and she qualifies.
White Rose Status Report as of January 1, 2001
Finley's database has been amazing. Everything from May 1, 1942 through October 12, 1943 is in. What is that, like 1300 entries? I've had good success in shaping the report so the information is useful. Nice feeling to be able to add ten entries at random dates, re-generate the report and sometimes be astounded at the difference a little new information can make.
I am learning too that this database is helping me pinpoint exact dates. Susanne Hirzel may have written, for example, that something happened at the beginning of October. So I put it in as October 1, just to have an anchor date. Then, when I compare her memories to Sophie's diary to Dr. Muth's letter, I can determine when it was. Sometimes by process of elimination (if Susanne was "here" on October 4, she couldn't be "there" too), sometimes by finding an exact match to a described activity.
So, what's left to do in the database? Willi Graf, 1933 - 1942 (actually two books worth, because Anneliese Knoop-Graf gave me a treasure, the photocopies of letters in his own handwriting, and not all are published). Hans and Sophie's letters, what we are allowed to read of them at least, 1933 - 1942. Otl Aicher's memoirs. Going back through Lilo Ramdohr's memoirs with a fine-tooth comb to make sure I didn't miss anything. Albert Riester's memoirs. The Ulm/Hitler Youth information from Dr. Lechner. And whatever I learn from Dr. W next week.
"What's left" actually sounds overwhelming on the face of it. But it's nothing compared to what's already in. This is the home stretch!
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