Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Gunter Grass

"At present its (literature's) role is to entertain, to serve the fun culture, to de-emphasize the negative side of things and give people hope, a light in the darkness."
From the Nobel prize acceptance speech of Gunther Grass

I was in my teens when I read The Tin Drum by Gunther Grass, the German writer born in 1927. The Tin Drum is the fictional autobiography of thirty-year-old man named Oskar Matzerath. Oskar was in a mental institution. He played his tin drum and screamed, providing a look at the Nazis, the German history and humanity in general. That book impressed me greatly, then.

I looked up at Gunter Grass as a German writer and peace advocate with a deep insight. My views have not changed...not even after Gunter Grass declared yesterday that he had been an SS officer, but not necessarily by his own choice. Even so, he is burdened by his past, his country's past, and his writings are proofs to that.

According to BBC, Gunther Grass had "At the time" not felt ashamed to be a member, but he acknowledged, "Later this feeling of shame burdened me."

Gunther Grass said:
"For me... the Waffen-SS was nothing frightful but rather an elite unit that was sent where things were hot and which, as people said about it, had the heaviest losses.
It happened as it did to many of my age. (He was 17, then.) We were in the labor service and all at once, a year later, the call-up notice lay on the table. And only when I got to Dresden did I learn it was the Waffen-SS."

The Waffen-SS was declared part of a criminal organization at the Nuremberg Nazi trials after the war. What a tough load to carry on one's shoulders!

"My silence over all these years is one of the reasons I wrote this book [Peeling Onions]," he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview. "It had to come out, finally."

I can't remember the names of everything this author wrote but I remember "Rat" and "Dog Years." "Peeling Onions" (to come out next month or so) will be his memoirs of the war years.

It is difficult to forgive anyone who has taken part in crimes against humanity. At the same time, it is important to forgive people who were forced or duped into taking part in such atrocities especially if they have truly regretted their actions.

In my opinion, the writings of Gunther Grass have always demonstrated that regret. Some may accuse him for his years of silence. I feel for him for having carried that guilt with him for so long.