I know I will be judged by what the Germans did.
When my mother’s job as a governess came to an end in Wiesbaden, when the American lieutenant and his family moved back to Vermont, they promised to find her a job with the American forces in Germany. She had spoken to them about wanting to become a chemist or studying law, so they found her a job as a court clerk in the denazification courts. Everyone in Germany had to prove their innocence after the war and the courts were set up to make sure that no Nazis would get back into powerful positions. Everybody had to fill in forms called ‘Fragebogen to state what they had done during the war years and whether they had belonged to the NSDAP. My mother had a clean sheet, except for one box which said she had joined the BDM, Hitler Youth for girls, but that was because she had no choice and she always told us she used the ‘silent negative’, as they called it in her family, withholding their allegiance to the Führer by expressing a silent resistance inside their heads. Her new job was to take notes of what was said in court and to type it up afterwards. She got a clothing allowance, a fine salary and an apartment all to herself, which was an unimaginable luxury at that time, she says. She had access to as much food as she wanted so that it was no longer a problem sharing it around Mainz and Rüsselsheim.
After the war, people in many key positions had to go before a tribunal to demonstrate that they had not acted improperly during the Nazi years. Before they were allowed to take up their old jobs as theatre directors, hospital consultants or university professors, many of them were forced to make a case before the tribunal and my mother says she witnessed grown men break down in the court when they were told they could not work because of their Nazi past. She saw a bakery manager who had continued to run the bakery after his Jewish employers had been thrown out and who was then thrown out of work himself after the war, even though he had nothing to do with the changes and claimed he only made ‘Brötchen’ all his life. There were some people who still believed in the Nazis and other people who didn’t care very much one way or the other who was in power. There were lots of people who claimed they had just joined the party because they had to. My mother says it was usually the people who claimed they were innocent who were the most convinced Nazis and the people who acknowledged their guilt who were actually most innocent.
The small courtroom held about fifty people at the most, she told me. The person on trial was normally accompanied by his relatives, because they were all affected by the outcome. My mother had never been inside a courtroom in her life before and it was just as she had imagined, with a few rows of benches for onlookers and other benches for the prosecutor and the judge. The people before this court had no lawyers and usually defended themselves. The tribunal was led by an American officer, but my mother says she was actually working for a German prosecutor named Willenberger, who conducted each case. My mother says Willenberger was a very clever man who kept the most interesting piece of evidence until the very end, when the person before the court was already convinced of their innocence, then he would drop the most devastating fact, something that would make the accused and his relatives turn white with shock. And then she told me how when a person got the all clear, you could see the family members embracing each other outside the court afterwards.
Mostly it was only people who had obvious connections with the Nazis who were charged in the first place. You could see the hatred and resentment seeping through their statements, because they had been in control and now they were powerless. But sometimes there were marginal cases where it was hard to distinguish between being German and being a Nazi. Sometimes the difficulty for the tribunal was to choose between patriotism and Nazism.
One day, my mother says, a well-known gynaecologist was brought before the tribunal to answer for his attitudes during the Hitler years. She cannot remember his name now, but he had been in charge of a delivery unit at a hospital in Frankfurt and was accused of being anti-Semitic. He was a very quiet man who hardly tried to defend himself at all, only answering each question very briefly and factually. He said he had never used his position against anyone. He said he was forced to join the NSDAP and now he was forced to renounce the party, when in fact he had no interest in anything at all but delivering babies.
The prosecutor accused him of working directly for the Nazis, because every baby born in the Third Reich was a gift for Hitler. The gynaecologist then said children were not born Nazis. The arguments went back and forward for days with the prosecutor saying that he delivered only Nazi babies and the gynaecologist saying he didn’t care what kind of babies he delivered as long as they were healthy. It was clear to my mother, who had to type everything up, that the arguments were going around in circles. Everybody was waiting for the final trick from the prosecutor, but this time it was the gynaecologist who waited until the last minute before bringing in his key witness. A Jewish woman had travelled all the way back from London to testify that she had had a baby boy while she was being treated by the gynaecologist. She said he knew the baby was Jewish, but had kept it secret.
The prosecutor argued that he had heard from other patients that he was an angry man, but the Jewish woman said he was always friendly to her.
My mother says it was very similar to the famous case of Wilhelm Furtwängler, the famous conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra who stayed in Germany and continued to conduct all through the Hitler years. For the Nazis, he was the great showcase for German music, but Furtwängler himself said he was only devoted to the music. But music was not neutral, my mother says, no more than babies were neutral, because everything became part of the war machine. When it became law that no Jewish people could take part in German culture, Furtwängler refused and stood up for his Jewish colleagues in the orchestra, sending letters to Goebbels personally to protect them and keep them working with him. Because Furtwängler was such a famous conductor, the Nazis went along with him for a while. But as time went by and the Nazis became stronger, he found himself having to conduct under the Swastika, with Goebbels and other leading Nazi figures in the audience. There is a well-known moment after one of those concerts when Goebbels came to shake his hand. Immediately afterwards, Furtwängler took out his handkerchief to wipe his hand. Maybe it was a true sign of how he felt about the Nazis and their concentration camps, or maybe it was simply a sign that he had sweaty hands after the performance. It made no difference because the great German conductor had compromised his music, just as the great gynaecologist had compromised his profession, even though there were a lot of good babies born during the Nazi times. My father says there is a recording he would love to hear of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony which was made during the war with the sound of bombs falling in the background and it goes to show that Furtwängler was not afraid to die for his music.
The trouble at the denazification court began when my mother had to type up the reports and the prosecutor asked her to change things. He said she had mistaken some of the testimony and that what the Jewish woman had actually said was that the gynaecologist was always angry and hostile towards her. My mother was to put down that the Jewish woman was in fear of her life that the gynaecologist might suspect that she was Jewish.
My mother refused to write any of that. She said she had taken very careful notes, they could check her handwriting. The prosecutor then said she could lose her job if she did not comply, he would accuse her of trying to help a former Nazi. When she continued to refuse, he asked her if she was taking bribes from people. It was only then that she realized what was happening. She had seen packets of cigarettes and other things like cognac and tins of meat in the prosecutor’s office at various times, so she began to understand why some people got the authorization to work and others didn’t.
She decided not to work under these conditions any longer. She handed in a letter of resignation, stating that she could not go along with it. The letter caused an instant crisis. Before she had time to clear her desk and leave the office, the prosecutor, Willenberger, asked her to withdraw the letter. He said he would make it easy for her, all she had to say was that she had made a mistake and he would allow the gynaecologist to have his name put forward for authorization. Then he changed his mind and said he would bring her before the court herself and say that she had been friendly with the gynaecologist, that they had been seen together. He would see to it that she would be blacklisted.
My mother says she didn’t need to make life so difficult for herself all the time, but she could not get the gynaecologist out of her mind, the way he sat there quietly without getting angry. The letter of resignation came to the attention of the American administrators who were responsible for the denazification courts, so they came and asked my mother if she had written this letter freely, without any pressure from anyone. They asked her if she wanted to take the letter back. My mother explained why she had come to this decision and says she felt very stupid, sitting there with a number of officers smoking and offering her cigarettes, asking her why she was so eager to give up such a good job. They couldn’t believe anyone had a conscience in Germany and wanted to find out what was really behind the letter. It was only after a few days, when they realized that she was not going to change her mind, that they began to believe her.
The problem was that the letter was on file now. They must have thought she would contact the lieutenant from Vermont and tell him what had happened, so they were forced to take the letter seriously. They made more attempts to change her mind. The prosecutor asked her if there was anything she needed, things he could provide for her and her family. He even mentioned the use of a car. He was kind one minute and then turned aggressive. She was afraid and decided to leave immediately.
She thought she was safe back in Kempen, but the prosecutor, Willenberger, came after her, appearing on her doorstep, begging her to withdraw the letter. She could only assume that he had now lost his job as a result. It was going to be on her conscience that Willenberger was blacklisted. He explained that he had a wife and family and that she was making them all destitute with her grand, untouchable conscience. And what did she do during the Nazi years, why was she suddenly so worried about her conscience when she could live through the whole of the Third Reich and not ever have to write a letter like that before?
My mother says she wishes she could have had the courage to write that letter during the Nazi times, that she might have been more like Sophie Scholl and protested openly. But then she would not be alive now. And now is the time to reshape your conscience, she says. Maybe it was the silent negative that she and her family had kept in their heads that was finding its expression at last in words. At some point you stop being silent. She says it’s even more difficult to resist now than it ever was under the Nazis, because there is more to lose. It’s easier than ever to say it doesn’t really matter all that much now. Just getting rid of every Swastika in the world is never going to be enough. Just because the Nazis are gone, doesn’t mean that injustice is gone.
She would not change her mind. Willenberger kept following her around the town and people in Kempen must have thought he was a former fiancé whom she didn’t want to marry any more. He sat behind her in church. He whispered that she had made him desperate and that if she didn’t change her mind, he would do something really drastic, something she would not like to be responsible for. He even pulled out an envelope and said he could let her have a nice little sum of money.
‘You cannot sting me,’ she said aloud outside the church.
She could see the anger in his eyes and thought he was about to attack her. She says a woman knows when her life is in danger because you can smell dead leaves in the air and you can feel your legs going weak and lose all the colour in your face. She thought she had already met her killer. Very often when they found a woman’s body, they first assumed she was a prostitute. It was something that Willenberger said to her then, that convinced her that he had been the true Nazi himself all along.
‘You would not have lasted long,’ he said. She took a few steps back. She was afraid to turn around and stood there until he finally left.
By this time, my mother had already applied for a visa to Ireland. She wanted to get as far away as possible. She was afraid to stay in her home town any longer. She didn’t want to tell her sisters or her aunt any of these threats. Onkel Gerd knew and made sure she was always accompanied when going out. The weeks that she had to wait were agonizing. But then the visa came at last and the house was full of excitement. Even when she was leaving on the train and had embraced her family, even when she was still sitting on the train, wiping her tears, she knew she had still not got away, because Willenberger came after her.
My mother says she had never been so afraid in her life, seeing him smile from behind his newspaper. But there comes a moment, she says, when you have been so afraid for such a long time, that you don’t care any more. Suddenly you become light-headed with courage. The train was full with people going into Krefeld and Düsseldorf, so she just suddenly spoke up to the whole carriage.
‘I want you to leave me in peace,’ she said in a raised voice. Everybody in the carriage looked around and stared at Willenberger sitting opposite her, until he eventually had to move away.
Sometimes my mother still thinks he will come after her in Dublin, that he will suddenly knock on the door. For years she had nightmares about men outside the house, sitting in a car, waiting for her to come out with her children. She had escaped to Ireland without losing her conscience. And then she laughs and says she would have made a terrible lawyer.
When she first arrived in Ireland, she felt so free. She vowed to go on her pilgrimage to Lough Derg. She had a job as a governess and was collected in Shannon by Mister and Missis Bradley who owned a public house and a shop on the main street in Ballymahon, in the middle of Ireland. They had three boys. She remembers the welcome that Mister Bradley gave her at the airport, clasping her hand with both of his, then taking her suitcase from her. They brought her to the car and made her sit in the front seat, so that she would see as much as possible along the journey. My mother thought they would go straight to Ballymahon and she was anxious to start working right away, but that was not how the Irish did things, she says, and the Bradleys first brought her to Ennis, where they stayed in a hotel and had a party. Mister Bradley knew lots of people in Ennis and invited them all to come for a drink. She says she could not understand why the Irish wanted to celebrate before she had even done any work. It was a poor country, a country that had not been bombed during the war but looked much more destroyed and starving than Germany. The party lasted until late in the evening with people toasting her and singing songs and a priest explaining the rules of hurling to her, even though she didn’t understand how you could play with sticks and not hurt each other, so the priest told her that hurling was a substitute for war, like all sport and singing.
In Ballymahon, everybody in the town was talking about her and coming up to have a look for themselves as if they had never seen clothes like hers before, only in the films. Groups of children came to the public house to see her coming out and when she smiled at them, they were shy and held on to each other. She felt like a famous visitor. She was invited to dinner every evening, unlike the other people working in the pub and around the house. The Bradleys had made a lot of money during the war when Mister Bradley stored gallons of whiskey and boxes of tea which had become scarce. He had made so much profit selling these during the rationing, that even the Bank of Ireland came to borrow money from him because they were broke. But it wasn’t long before my mother learned what Ireland was really like and why there was so much poverty that could not be explained by bombs.
Next door there was a small cottage where the door was always open. The little Bradley boys would run past and shout ‘Dirty, Dirty.’ She told them to stop, but they would not listen to her. It made no difference, they kept on shouting ‘Dirty, Dirty.’
My mother went to the door of the cottage and looked inside. It was dark and smoky because of the small windows. It was true that the place was dirty. She couldn’t believe that humans could live like this. There was not a single piece of furniture in the house, not even a chair, and the man sat on the earth floor beside the fire with his wife. My mother says his naked legs could be seen coming out under his ragged trousers like a skeleton. They never seemed to come out of the house. They must have been ashamed to be seen in the town and never moved from the spot where they were sitting.
My mother spoke to the Bradleys and told them what was happening. Mister Bradley laughed. Missis Bradley said the tailor and his wife were dirty people, living in squalor. My mother was not able to persuade them to control the boys, so she tried something else. The next time they shouted ‘dirty’ in the door, she decided to go in and apologize for them. She stepped inside the cottage and got the smell of poverty coming up from the two old people. She apologized for the children’s behaviour and said she hoped they were not offended. The old people looked up and said nothing, because they didn’t understand English. They could only speak Irish and the Bradley boys started laughing. Even Mister and Missis Bradley found it funny and my mother says the whole town was laughing at the idea of a German woman trying to apologize to the poor tailor and his wife when they only spoke Irish.
My mother then learned her first words so that she could go into the house and greet them in their own language. She found out their names as they were known to other Irish speakers around the town. Páraic Mháirtín and Sinéad gan cainte. The tailor even got up from the ground to come to the door and shake her hand. She says it felt like a thin black leather glove. It was soft and bony, with no weight at all left in it, and hardly any warmth. She can never forget shaking hands with somebody so poor and so destitute, but still so much alive.
She started taking some spare food from the house and bringing it to the cottage and the tailor thanked her in Irish. Missis Bradley didn’t like the food going out of the house, but she didn’t say anything except that she wanted her children to grow up clean. Everybody was afraid of being like the tailor and she wanted my mother to give the boys a few words of German instead of Irish.
She continued to bring food to the cottage from time to time under her coat, like she did in Germany. But unlike the Americans in Wiesbaden, the Bradleys got annoyed because my mother went too far. One day she asked if she could give away an old coat belonging to Mister Bradley. They were throwing it out onto the rubbish tip to be burned, an old brown torn coat which she cleaned up. She sewed on new buttons and fixed the sleeves, then brought it over to the tailor. After a few days, Mister Bradley came into the house in a rage, saying that he could not understand the Germans any more, because he walked along the street and saw the dirty, filthy Gaelic tailor standing at the door of his little cottage wearing his old coat. He was shocked to see what he would look like if he hadn’t made all that money selling whiskey and tea. Missis Bradley said it was an outrage and that people in the town would mistake the tailor for her husband. After that, my mother decided it was best to leave her work with that family and moved to Dublin, where she met my father. But even when Missis Bradley brought her to the bus to say goodbye, my mother noticed that maybe she had begun to change a tiny bit, because she said my mother had done something that nobody else in the town was able to get away with. She wished her good luck and said she would be missed.
My father puts his arm around my mother and praises the way she stood up for the Irish language, for the people dying out and going into extinction. He says the Irish people began to pretend they didn’t belong to the same country as the tailor and his wife. They made a foreign language out of their own tongue and that allowed them to become racist against their own people. He smiles and says my mother shook hands with a dead language and brought it back to life again.