Completely clueless as to what happened in Germany and environs during what appears to have been a rather turbulant period roughly between 1939 and 1945, a young German historian has written a book in which he asks his readers to ask their grandparents if they might possibly know.
“Whatever it was, it must have been a pretty big deal,” the historian said. “And as my studies now indicate, immediately after this whatever it was event, conversations about it between parents and children appear to have been nearly impossible as it was, well, hell if I know. That’s part of the mystery. And that’s why I’ve written this book.”
Time is running out. The answer to how a cultured, civilized nation did something “I dunno” (text slightly altered here) lies in the minds of the dying generation that took part, many of whom are ready and willing to talk at the end of their lives.
Observing Hermann 
Schwitzschwein (name is not Epstein): Ooh! ooh! Herr Kotter!
Herr Kotter: What IS IT, Schwitzschwein?
Schwitzschwein: I know what happened, Herr Kotter! We were invaded by the US, the UK, and the Soviets!
It astonishes me how little modern Germans know of that period. Those who survived it, kept their mouths shut. For obvious reasons.
People knew what they were doing. You can’t kill six million people across Europe and keep it a secret.
Thanks to all this secrecy, the lessons which should have been learned, haven’t been learned.
As Bertholt Brecht says, the bitch that bore him is still on heat.
No kidding. I’ve regularly found myself explaining what life was like in East Germany TO GERMANS.
Very true. That’s the one thing that took me years to really understand here (after becoming “an insider” in German families), EVERYBODY knew what was going on and yet the unspoken rule is that this remained/remains unspoken. Yet another case of classic German schizophrenia.
I’ll bet Herr Grass could tell him.