In early September of this year I had the chance to visit my hometown of Worpswede near the city of Bremen in northern Germany. I was invited to introduce my recently published book of memoirs: “Das schweigsame Dorf am Weyerberg — Worpsweder Zeitreisen 1931-1947.” The English version title is “Remembering — Years of Hiding Behind Silence.” The focus of the book is the years of living under dictatorship, injustice, brutality and war from the mid-1930s to 1945. Although I have traveled to Worpswede several times since the 1970s, this visit meant more than getting together with family and old friends. This visit meant traveling back into the past and would include a public conversation about my early perceptions and later insights concerning the terror of the Nazi years and its impact on the residents — my own included — of Worpswede.

Although I was eager to share my memories and experiences of that time in the very community that had been home to me during those years, there was hesitancy on my part as well. I remember that the community of Worpswede (friends and neighbors of ours, whether based on national identity or out of fear for their own lives) had not resisted the orders of the Third Reich. Could my written words give rise to a resurgent shame – a shame that had retreated or been put aside for some years? Might they generate anger in people of subsequent generations who did not feel implicated by what had happened long before their birth? Or could my words help the reader understand that the past needs to be acknowledged in order to move forward to a worldview of justice and inclusiveness?

My audience of old friends, close and distant relatives and newcomers to Worpswede and surrounding towns was attentive to my reading. In the follow-up discussion it became clear that the recounting of my youthful impressions was a revelation to the generations born since 1945. This was a different version of history — not of dates and specific events — but a history based on the personal observations and questions of a child.

The discussion period also generated unexpected questions, such as those dealing with my becoming engaged to an American soldier and leaving Germany within two years after World War II. “How could you transition from seeing an American soldier as an enemy to someone who was going to be your husband?” I had to pause to let that question sink in. Then the answer came to me: “I don’t remember considering anyone an enemy.” Was that true? Another pause and my answer: “I did not grow up with the word enemy.” In spite of the fear and dread of Nazis, in spite of knowing about deportation and disappearances, guessing about terror and murder, living with bombing and hunger? I searched my mind and could honesty say that my mother neither taught us to hate nor to identify people as enemies. I still don’t. I am thankful to the questioner for giving me the chance to examine my mind and to reflect on my relationship to my fellow human beings. I am thankful to my mother for being such a powerful example of empathy in a world that was then and continues to be rent by boastful revenge and carnage.

As the conversation between reader and audience drew to a close I was not surprised that there were neither questions nor comments by those of my generation. The ensuing silence eloquently expressed that for those of us born in the 1920s, 1930s and early 1940s the years of the Nazi terror remain a personal as well as a communal experience of shame and disbelief. How was it possible that the 1935 Nürnberg Racial Laws were accepted without protest? How could any human being be a signatory to the resolutions of the 1942 Wannsee Conference and its “Final Solution?” How could personal fear change courage into obedience to carry out unthinkable acts against humanity?

Is each of us willing to confront the root questions about justice and injustice, about love and hate, compassion and indifference, truth and reconciliation outside the framework of national interests? For the sake of humanity and Mother Earth I hope we will.

Christine A. DeTroy is a Member of PeaceWorks. She lives in Brunswick