Ghosts of my grandfather's Nazi past

Today I read this article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/us/friedrich-karl-berger-nazi-concentration-camp.html?searchResultPosition=1
"The Justice Department said the man, Friedrich Karl Berger, 94, was an armed guard in a subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp, where prisoners were held during the winter of 1945 and forced to work outdoors “to the point of exhaustion and death.”

My grandfather, born in 1921, was an armed guard in a subcamp of he Neuengamme concentration camp, Bremen Farge. I wrote about it in my post Telling, telling the story of how I found out my grandfather's past by writing to the German authorities and getting his military records.

So, this man in Tennessee shares a great deal in common with my grandfather, except my grandfather died without his story coming to light, I think in 2000, when I was 30 or 31 and he was 79.

Had somebody known during his lifetime, would police have showed up at my grandparents home, arrested my grandfather, put his name in the paper, deported him to cries of "shame, shame"? How would my family have responded? I think I know: they would have defended him, said "he was just a young man" and "how dare they go after him, it wasn't his fault."

This is where we differ.

My daughter is 17 years old. As a teen, there are certain mistakes I expect her to make. (Shh, don't tell her: I want her to know that I hold her to a high standard!) I don't expect her to be perfect. But I know this, and so does she: she'd better do the right thing when it really matters.

My daughter knows the difference between right and wrong. She knows I expect her to speak up when she sees injustice. I believe, deep in my bones, that she knows, deeply, what the difference between injustice and justice is, and that she understands her obligation to the world to speak up when necessary. If she didn't, I'd be heartbroken and angry and think that I'd raised her wrong and missed some important lessons. (I'm not worried about this one - she gets it, believes it.)

The young men who go to war are responsible for themselves, and my grandfather was young, but not that young, when he put on the Kriegsmarine uniform. He must have seen starving bodies, and understood their hunger. He must have watched their deaths through overwork, and known that he bore the weight of those deaths.

And nobody ever showed up at his house with a warrant. His name was not in the newspaper. He lived until old age.

Today I'm imagining his ghost.

I suspect, like old Marley in the Dickens' tale, once you're a ghost you can't escape your life anymore. I saw hints of my grandfather's ghost as he was dying, and he retreated into a world of fear, of the trauma of his choices.

I'm imagining his ghost looking at the shame of the 94 year old Nazi, and sharing that shame. It could have been him. 


There is no justice in the story of my grandfather. I do not understand it. But today, I feel his ghost, and the incredible tragedy of my grandfather's story. He committed crimes, he hurt people, and he tried to escape, but instead I think he lived in a way where he carried the rot of it inside of him until the day he died. 

I wonder how things would have been different if he'd been caught. Could he have tried for redemption? Would he have confessed, or denied? Would he have tried to atone? Would it have changed our family?

I will never know.