About This Site
Following my father's death in spring 2015 I began a fevered search of the Internet for information about growing up in Nazi Germany, the collapse of the regime, the flight and expulsion of Germans across Europe, and the aftermath of the war.
Of Holocaust literature there was no shortage. Of Nazism and the war and prominent figures... again, no shortage. What I was looking for, however, was more specific and therefore problematic: memoirs and oral histories from the perspective of ordinary Germans –– not children of high profile Nazis, rather people of my father's generation -- who had been children or grown up during the war. I wanted to know what every day life had been like.
Narrow that to English language resources for, by or about Germans who had subsequently come to America, and the literature was very, very small indeed, though still much greater than if I had embarked on this search 10 or 15 years earlier.
Thankfully, I can read, speak, and -- with an occasional assist from Google Translate -- write German at a functional level. When my Google searches started coming up dry, I turned to German Google. Late into the night I watched documentaries in German on YouTube. I read German articles. Listened to memoirs via audiobooks. Ordered history books. Slowly my understanding of the war broadened beyond what I had learned at university to include the flight and expulsion, the early postwar years. I learned about mass rapes and the existence of expellee organizations. I also learned more about Polish history -- generally overlooked in my education --and Poland's experience during the war, the Polish resistance, and how that country is coming to terms with it all. I attended lectures at the United States Holocaust Museum, on memory, on post-Holocaust trauma and the creation of PTSD. And I diligently tried to fill holes in my family tree. I'm still learning.
In October 2016 I read a story in the New Yorker magazine by fellow German American, Burkhard Bilger, "How the Germans Make Peace with Their Ghosts." It hit me like. a. thunderbolt. Here was someone my age, raised in America to German parents, also looking at his past. More importantly, it introduced me to the concept of Kriegskinder, Kriegsenkel and transgenerational trauma -- concepts I had never heard of before or associated with Germans. There was a word for this. It was a "thing." I ordered Sabine Bode's books, Die Vergessene Generation: Die Kriegskinder Brechen Ihr Schweigen (The Forgotten Generation, The War Children Break Their Silence) and Kriegsenkel: Die Erben der Vergessenen Generation (War Grandchildren: Heirs of the Forgotten Generation). I learned that this topic had exploded into the German national conversation in the early 2000s (and of course Germany has been wrestling with memory and collective national guilt for decades). Meanwhile across the ocean, I had been oblivious to all this and was now "late to the party," as it were.
By definition it is a different "party," filtered through the uniquely American experience. America, I am reminded, has its own historical demons. Political events of the very recent past have been deeply unsettling, evoking parallels to events of 70 years ago. Swastikas painted in school yards, anti-immigrant rhetoric, violence towards the press, Nazis in the headlines, fake news and vulgar bombast ... it has dredged up a lot for me and, I am guessing, for others as well.
Which is why I decided to create this website in 2017. To start a conversation on the subject of Kriegsenkel here in America -- and in the English-speaking diaspora -- and to serve as a resource for English-speakers who might not have any, or struggle with, German language fluency.
Let's see where this goes.
Of Holocaust literature there was no shortage. Of Nazism and the war and prominent figures... again, no shortage. What I was looking for, however, was more specific and therefore problematic: memoirs and oral histories from the perspective of ordinary Germans –– not children of high profile Nazis, rather people of my father's generation -- who had been children or grown up during the war. I wanted to know what every day life had been like.
Narrow that to English language resources for, by or about Germans who had subsequently come to America, and the literature was very, very small indeed, though still much greater than if I had embarked on this search 10 or 15 years earlier.
Thankfully, I can read, speak, and -- with an occasional assist from Google Translate -- write German at a functional level. When my Google searches started coming up dry, I turned to German Google. Late into the night I watched documentaries in German on YouTube. I read German articles. Listened to memoirs via audiobooks. Ordered history books. Slowly my understanding of the war broadened beyond what I had learned at university to include the flight and expulsion, the early postwar years. I learned about mass rapes and the existence of expellee organizations. I also learned more about Polish history -- generally overlooked in my education --and Poland's experience during the war, the Polish resistance, and how that country is coming to terms with it all. I attended lectures at the United States Holocaust Museum, on memory, on post-Holocaust trauma and the creation of PTSD. And I diligently tried to fill holes in my family tree. I'm still learning.
In October 2016 I read a story in the New Yorker magazine by fellow German American, Burkhard Bilger, "How the Germans Make Peace with Their Ghosts." It hit me like. a. thunderbolt. Here was someone my age, raised in America to German parents, also looking at his past. More importantly, it introduced me to the concept of Kriegskinder, Kriegsenkel and transgenerational trauma -- concepts I had never heard of before or associated with Germans. There was a word for this. It was a "thing." I ordered Sabine Bode's books, Die Vergessene Generation: Die Kriegskinder Brechen Ihr Schweigen (The Forgotten Generation, The War Children Break Their Silence) and Kriegsenkel: Die Erben der Vergessenen Generation (War Grandchildren: Heirs of the Forgotten Generation). I learned that this topic had exploded into the German national conversation in the early 2000s (and of course Germany has been wrestling with memory and collective national guilt for decades). Meanwhile across the ocean, I had been oblivious to all this and was now "late to the party," as it were.
By definition it is a different "party," filtered through the uniquely American experience. America, I am reminded, has its own historical demons. Political events of the very recent past have been deeply unsettling, evoking parallels to events of 70 years ago. Swastikas painted in school yards, anti-immigrant rhetoric, violence towards the press, Nazis in the headlines, fake news and vulgar bombast ... it has dredged up a lot for me and, I am guessing, for others as well.
Which is why I decided to create this website in 2017. To start a conversation on the subject of Kriegsenkel here in America -- and in the English-speaking diaspora -- and to serve as a resource for English-speakers who might not have any, or struggle with, German language fluency.
Let's see where this goes.