This month, coauthor Anika Hanisch weighs in on her musings about Brigitte’s book.
From Anika: Brigitte’s
story is one voice amidst millions whose lives were shattered by World
War II. It’s a lesser-heard voice, sharing the experience of one German
child. That child’s voice makes the story more accessible; perhaps
we’re a little more likely to listen to a child with empathy. Through
her eyes, we’re encouraged to recognize the culture of fear that took
root in many rural German communities during the war.
As
Americans, we are familiar with what happened at the southern and
western fronts, because that’s where U.S. forces were. As school kids,
we learn about Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge, but we hear very
little about what happened in northern and eastern Germany, Poland, and
Russia. In high school, we all read the Diary of a Young Girl and The Hiding Place, and we watch Schindler’s List.
Most of the narratives are focused on the Jewish experience or the
experience of people who helped Jews and other minorities. So, both
geographically and culturally, our understanding of that war is limited.
Today, through some intriguing fictional works (i.e. The Book Thief, Children and Fire, All the Light we Cannot See), we’re just starting to hear a little more about the German civilian experience of WWII.
Clearly, there are some rarely heard stories here.
WWII
displaced over 50 million people globally.(1) 11 to 14 million of the
refugees were German.(2, 3) Of that number, over 1 million were from
Pomerania, an eastern German region that was transferred in part to
Poland in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement.(4) Many of these
Pomeranian refugees were ethnically German, from rural villages and
farming communities.
In Brigitte’s case, her foster family
listened to the radio during the war, horrified at the government’s
actions, but essentially powerless to effect any change. They had a
family member who had been sent to a work camp solely for expressing
anti-Nazi views. They lived in fear.
After the war, when their
region was ceded to Poland, there were few protections in place to
assist uprooted Germans on their journey toward the new German border.
The Polish people, understandably enraged at Germany’s treatment of
their nation during the war, took their anger out on these civilian
refugee groups. Retaliatory acts—theft, rape, beatings, murder—extended
months and years past the German surrender in 1945.
Through
Brigitte’s story, we’re also confronted with the reality of the
reconstruction years in Germany: the widespread poverty, starvation,
and illness, as well as the ingenuity and determination to rebuild.
We’re stunned at the relative silence in terms of English literature and
popular media covering this specific period and perspective. On a
grand whole, the German war generations do not talk about these things.
Unhealed hurts twine with a heavy collective shame; the complex
emotional slurry probably makes silence seem the easier path.
That’s not how healing works.
Post-war, intercultural healing requires story-sharing for all involved
parties. Silence of any wounded party only fosters generational
bitterness. This is an ancient cycle; it’s how ongoing ethnic conflicts
have re-fueled themselves over the millennia. Post-war stabilization
absolutely requires basic infrastructure, food, shelter, security,
schools, and medical care. But, if you want war cycles to end, you’ve
also got to create healing spaces where dialogue, story-sharing, and
empathy can be fostered for every cultural group involved.
If
any war had clear demarcations of good and evil, it was WWII. And yet,
through Brigitte’s story we are forced to confront the existence of a
full range of heroism, passivity, and cruelty on the part of individual
Germans, and both heroic and abusive actions on the part of Allied
Forces. It’s impossible not to note the overlaps between the experience
of oppressed minorities during the war and the experience of German civilian refugees after the war.
Brigitte’s
story presents us with new insights into the past. It also stirs up
uncomfortable and vital questions related to current conflicts and
wars. How are civilians treated in the aftermath of war? How does that
treatment assist, limit, or obstruct individual and collective
healing? How does that treatment affect the likelihood of conflict
recurrence in the future? How might listening with empathy help ensure
that such things truly never happen again?
Resources
1 – A comparison of today’s global refugee numbers to that of World War II. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/06/refugees-global-peace-index/396122/
2 – Report by the Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims. Facts concerning the problem of the German expellees and refugees, Bonn: 1967.
3 – David P. Forsythe, Encyclopedia of Human Rights, Volume 1, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009, p. 164.
4 – Piskorski, J. Pommern im Wandel der Zeiten (German – “Pomerania Through the Ages”).
Brigitte Yearman 