Truth Sets You Free
In 1933, a clear majority of Germans voted to cement Hitler’s power. In the same year, all government agencies were brought in line with Nazi ideology. They were forced to support the expansionist mania of Aryan supremacy.
‘The truth will set you free’ is a quote from St. John’s gospel: ‘Wahrheit macht frei’. The Nazis cynically changed ‘Wahrheit’ to ‘Arbeit’: Labor sets you free. This was the inscription over the entrances to many of their concentration camps, most infamously, at Auschwitz.
12 years after the Nazi’s rise their symbols of power lay in ruins. The 1000-year Reich was destroyed. Millions of Germans in the Eastern provinces were fleeing the advance of the Soviet army. They fled on foot, on horse carts, and on ships. Many died. They froze, they were bombed, and they sank to the bottom of the sea.
My father was 11 when he fled with his mother and sister from their home just east of Berlin. For months, they fled through battle zones and bombed out places. They ended up in a small town near Hannover. Today this would be a 3-hour train ride.
Alongside the Germans hundreds of thousands of prisoners were also fleeing. They came from the hastily disbanded Nazi concentrations camps. Severely weakened from years of abuse from their German captors, many marched to their death. Perpetrators and their victims marching side by side.
Berlin 1945. One block from a city in ruins. For years after the war, the women were in charge of keeping everyone alive. Their children were left to their own devices, cloaked in scars after years of war. Three girls playing in the rubble that had made up the city of Berlin. Maybe they were put to work to clear the billions of bricks off the streets. One of them could have been my mother.
Today a new extreme right-wing party is on the rise in Germany. The red arrow in its logo points from West to East, counter to the direction their ancestors fled 80 years ago. Pointing to the vicious cycle of history.