Just one man's story
- 30 Jun 06, 11:22 AM
LONDON - Yesterday I asked 29-year-old Antje to blog about her thoughts on German patriotism, which by many accounts has been given unprecedented licence of expression by this World Cup.
Today I pass on the thoughts of someone from the older generation, who left Germany in 1939 and now lives in Costa Rica. I felt Alfred - a regular reader of this blog and now aged 75 - had an interesting story that deserved to be told.
By Alfred Fiks
I was two when (Hitler's real name) became Chancellor of Germany. I was four when the .
My parents were hard-working, law-abiding Berliners who owned a small business not far off the Ku-damm. They had emigrated from Poland in 1919; married in Berlin in 1920; my father became a master journeyman in his craft in 1924; they became German citizens in 1930, and produced three sons: Max, Fritz, and yours truly - all born in Berlin.
Herr Schickelgrüber soon became the Führer, and he did not take kindly to my parents' success and fairly happy life - they were, after all, members of his favorite scapegoat group responsible for all of Germany's troubles.
So, life became more and more difficult for us: * Our German citizenship was revoked in 1934, without any warning and without the right of appeal; we were suddenly aliens in our own country; among other things this meant we had no passports for travelling. * In November 1938, Herr S. sent his brown-shirted thugs to vandalise my father's store and our flat - looking for him in order to take him away. I remember pieces of glass from the kitchen window flying into my tomato soup before running to hide under the bed. This would became known as because a lot of crystal chandeliers were destroyed that night. This German blemish was a Government-sanctioned foul - the police did nothing to interfere. In my memory of the 68 year-old events, it was the opposite pole of the German character to that evident in the 2006 World Cup
* An "Aryan" Administrator was put in charge of all my parents' property - the store and a four-room, middle-class flat. * In January 1939 we received an expulsion order from Adolf's Berliner Polizeipräsident. We had to leave Reich territory or be forcibly ejected. The immediate problem became where to flee to without documents?? We had already waited in vain for American visas more than a year. * We stored our personal possessions - including my toys and football - in a shipping container in the Port of Hamburg to await our arrival in the USA. We learned after the war that all our things were confiscated by the Third Reich in the early 1940's and auctioned off.
Looking back on it all in the autumn of my life - I'm 75 now - the Führer seriously underestimated my parents. He considered them sub-human; thus, he never saw their immense intelligence and resourcefulness - in 2000 years of exile their DNA had been honed for survival skills, their gene-pool peppered with intellect and genius. He was also in the dark about their tremendously protective good-luck shield.
Because consider this: * My older brother Max was sent to the USA in 1937 - he couldn't continue his studies in Berlin. When America entered the war in 1941, he joined the US Army, which helped our visa application. * The Nazis never found my father on Kristallnacht because some good Christian neighbors were hiding him. * We escaped from Adolf's clutches TWICE. First in June of '39 just two short months before the nightmare of WW2 would become reality. We were on one of the last trains to leave Berlin for Paris. We had relatives there who had got us French visas. * Unfortunately Adolf's troops quickly occupied the area of France where we lived and we had to flee once more. This time (1941) we escaped walking across the border to "Free" France. I was 10 by then. It was night-time and I remember being led by a local farmer - with German border patrols and dogs audible in the woods - across the fields.
* Since the American visas were still not in sight, we managed to get entry permits to Cuba - as a safe haven to await the coveted documents. With the help of some good people we made our way to Marseille and sailed from there to Havana, via Casablanca. It took us three weeks to cross the Atlantic, in bunk-beds built in the cargo holds of the ship below its water line. * In 1943 - five years after applying - we finally got the US visas since we had not perished while waiting, unlike many others. * We began a new life in America. My parents' New York store - smaller than before - required longer work hours but they had survived and they were free human beings - no longer persecuted and fearing for their lives. We proudly became US citizens in 1948. Their intelligence and luck held out until they died of old age in the 1980's in America.
As for me, I've been lucky too. Consider: * I finished my elementary studies in NY, played defence on my secondary school football team (or soccer team as it's called in the US) in the 1950's, when only my mother would come out to watch us play. People say football is not so popular in the USA because the scores are too low; they're used to larger numbers! * I completed university studies in Business Administration; then went on to a Master's degree and a PhD in Industrial Psychology. * In my professional life I've been: a university professor, an international consultant, and a psychometrist. * I am retired and trying to do a little writing now. I have been living in Costa Rica for the last 25 years. A shame the CR team couldn't do better in this WC. * I'm married to a wonderful Costa Rican woman. I have three grown children and two grandchildren. * I have nothing against Germans younger than me (which is almost all of them) and - now that Costa Rica and USA are out - I hope Germany win the 2006 World Cup!
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Thank you for posting this. It's always v. interesting to hear or read a first hand account of someone's experience.
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Not sure why this historical account is presented here. What's the relation to football? Will there be an eye-witness article on British atrocities in Kenya once the English team has made it to the semis? Or something about French massacres in Algeria? What about the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands? Any experiences with Italian fascists or Ukrainian Kapos?
Just asking....
Yours sincerely,
Basil Fawlty
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Alfred,
thank you for telling us your story. Every time I think about what happened to the hundrets of thousands of Germans who were killed or had to leave their home country only because they were unlucky enough to be jews or belong to another group that didn't fit into the patterns of a perverted idelogy, I feel deep sorrow. You, your familiy and all the others used to be Germans just as my ancestors, identifying with their country and relying on its respected tradition as a "nation of culture". You and they used to be one of us, but they were all so badly betrayed, also by most of their "aryan" fellow Germans. Those who survived as you and your familiy fortunately did, had to look for a new home country and found it all over the world, leaving Germany behind.
Although there are many plausible attempts to explain how the "Third Reich" could arise, it will always be hard for me to understand how humans could do these things to other humans. It's hard to understand because from today's perspective Germany is completely different. From your perspective, the way the Wolrd Cup is celebrated today is the opposite pole of German character that you had to suffer from in your youth. I believe that this character has changed. Neither are we always as euphoric as in these days nor are we latently prone to fall back into these days.
Most of the Germans are aware of what happed and that this must never happen again. There are many who are beginning to understand that the destinies of you, your family and all the others killed and exiled former Germans is not only a crime of unparalleled dimensions but also mean a tremendous loss for Germany itself.
Maybe this explains a bit why many Germans still are a little reluctant in displaying their nationality in full pride. But things are changing as we can see in these days. I'm 45 years and have two children of 9 and 10 years who innocently and blithefully wave the German flag when the German team plays. I still have some difficulties in doing so, but I let them.
Thank you again and enjoy the World Cup.
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Andy (#1) thanks for reading. Your immediate feedback is what makes blogging so attractive.
Brux (#2) You have a point. My original article sought to distinguish the Germany of the 1936 Berlin Olympics with the Germany of WC 2006, but the editor thought otherwise.
Regarding: British, French, Argentine, and Italian atrocities, their main difference with the Nazi holocaust is that they were never official government policy and never on the same scale as the Final Solution.
Wolfram (#3) Thanks for reading and for your thoughtful comment. You have put your finger on the most important question of that sorry period in history: How could the nazis gain power in such a 'nation of culture' as Germany?
I would like to believe that most modern Germans agree with your point of view --- if true, a monument to Der Alter Adenauer and the Allies' De-Nazification program. I'm glad Germany won today, though I'm not sure they deserved to.
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Now come on... for the trillionth time digging up the Nazi past.
Even the ´óÏó´«Ã½... Have you been infiltrated by the morons of THE SUN?
Don't allot me to a wrong pack prematurely ... have written quite a few blogs against German jingoistic idiots ...
But you... The B B C ? Do you realize how highly the cognoscenti in this country still think of you?
Where are the people from India telling a few stories of their colonial past?
Or:
Shall we really go into all this again?
Or:
Are you so afraid of losing audience if you do not produce such stuff?
Or:
Are you so afraid of yet another poor performance of the England squad as to have to divert your countrymen's attention?
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Claire Stocks:
House Rules
We reserve the right to fail messages which:
• Are considered likely to provoke, attack or offend others
The ´óÏó´«Ã½ welcomes feedback, both positive and negative, but we want to keep our blog as focused on the tournament, and people's experiences of it, as possible. For this reason, messages not relevant to the post will be removed.
_________________
What has this do with the World Cup 2006?
I know some survivors from the holocaust maybe your like to ask them some questions if they played football in the camps?
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This article is totally irrelevant to the World Cup. When England hosted the World Cup in 1966 were we constantly reminded of England's involvement in the Slave Trade, the brutal suppression of the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish. The exploitation of Africa, India and China. The colonisation of North America, Australia and New Zealand? Certainly not! Football is a game that unites different peoples of all races, colours and creeds. It is high time that this constant barrage of anti-German predudice was finally laid to rest!
Sincerely,
Son of Desert Rat
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The people bitching about this entry and its relevance simply don't get it. Plus, they don't seem to have read the article beginning to end.
It's astonishing that the horrendous experience didn't make Mr. Fiks lose his objectivity towards the (post-war) Germans. In some way, he should be seen as a positive example to many English (for example) of a much later generation. This World Cup has laid bare some deep rooted hatred towards the Germans coming from people who didn't even experience that period first hand. Here's a man having actually gone through it and yet isn't blindly throwing around with outdated stereotypes.
Yes, other countries did terrible things, too, what happened in Germany took place in the 20th Century, allegedly the most humane and civilised of 'em all. I'm German and didn't feel offended in any way by this post. My motto is 'we shall never forget' and it's a shame that, as time moves on, the witnesses of that time become fewer and fewer. The good thing is, of course, that finally the nazi generation is dying out! I'm suspicious of those in Germany that think articles like this one should be suppressed during the World Cup. It's who you are, deal with it. ("Du bist Deutschland"; slogan of a huge advertising campaign to lift Germany's self-esteem). If you need to get angry at someone, take it out on your grandparents, they're to blame.
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Rolf,Applemat, and B.Lavin (#5,6,7),
The ´óÏó´«Ã½ and Claire Stocks can answer your points if they so choose. As for me, I think you're partially right --- the relevance to WC 2006 doesn't jump out at you.
My original title for the article was: 'From the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games To the 2006 World Cup'. I tried to contrast the hateful Nazi propaganda atmosphere of the first with the human, democratic, tolerant atmosphere of the current affair, within the context of my own experiences in the intervening 70 years. Unfortunately, that was edited out.
As for equating the nazi systematic extermination program of an entire people to the exploitation and cruelty sometimes --- or even often ---seen in various European colonies seems simplistic IMO --- its like comparing a cancer to a cold because they're both illnesses.
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That was rude and unnecessary. If it bores you don't read it.
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To Alfred:
Coming from a Jewish background many of my relatives could tell a similar story. However there is one part to it which basically is unknown to British people and therefore I would like to add it. In 1939-1940 most of my relatives who had fled to Britain were arrested as "alien enemies" independent of the fact that they had fled Germany where they had been persecuted on racial and political grounds. In one case parents had been deported and imprisoned while there 9 year old son had been put in a boarding school and suffered a lot for being German while his parents could do nothing for him. In another case a relative was deported to Australia on HMS Dunera. The captain had informed his crew that "those were all Nazis" and the deportees (which came from a lot of different countries, many of them occupied by Germany) suffered enormously on the voyage. When they reached Australia they were put into pow camps in the middle of the bush, among them whole families. I have a friend who was born in one of those camps. There is no excuse for what was done by Germans during that time but the attitude "holier than thou" which one often meets in Britain is ill advised.
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To:TeutonicaUK, Karolina, Renate ---thanks for reading and commenting.
#8, TeutonicaUK, I found your comment very incisive and heartening. Assuming your reaction (along with Wolfram's #3)represent the majority position, then "Never Again" may really mean Never Again.
#10, Karolina, I can guess whom your remark is aimed at. You're right!
#11, Renate, Extremely interesting --- and sad. I never realized how widespread this little system glitch so full of irony and paradox must have been, nor how much pain it caused.
When we arrived in the USA in '43 we were given some ID papers which also said "Enemy Alien" on them because our last citizenship had been German. Never mind that it had been revoked 9 years earlier, as the opening salvo in the persecution program of the Third Reich. The 'enemy alien' label caused us only psychological pain because we never had to show this ID to anyone else.
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* Alfred. Hi - yes - I did cut two or three sentences from your original piece, including the title (I felt it didn't need one) but the following was the only other reference to the 1936 Olympics:
"No Jewish athlete could represent Germany in the 1936 Berlin Olympics."
* What has this to do with the World Cup? I felt in the context of the debate about German patriotism/nationalism, which has taken place on this blog in largely peaceful, erudite and illuminating tones (which have frankly boosted my sometimes flagging faith in human nature and for me been one of the highlights of the whole tournament), I wanted to share some first-hand accounts - they are after all (imo) what blogging is all about.
You are entitled to comment. Or not.
I would suggest if you don't find this particular post interesting, the latter is appropriate. This isn't a messageboard.
* Had the World Cup been taking place in France and Algeria were playing, been taking place in Kenya and England were playing then I'd say discussion of political/historical events would be a. inevitable b. interesting.
* I don't think it is an understatement to say that this World Cup will have done more to change the stereotypical view many English people have of Germans than any lesson in school. It may be a foolish self-delusion, but I will admit I am proud that this blog has reflected that debate and even provided a rare focus for it.
Claire S, blog editor
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Claire, you're right. The factoid about the German-Jewish athletes kept out of the '36 Berlin Olympics was insufficient material to justify the title which was 'From the 1936 Olympic Games to the 2006 World Cup' Its circumcision did hurt, nevertheless.
Your other point is also well taken. The historical frame of reference for any event --- sports or not --- including first-hand accounts is always enriching. That's why I accepted your invitation to write this piece. Peace.
Alfred F., guest blogger
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