Papa Trilogy

Part 1:   Die Stunde Null   

 

Liberation from the Nazis – commemorated every year on May 8 or May 9, it was also Liberation Day for Germans. They, too, needed to be liberated from violence and persecution. They, too, had suffered, but of course rightfully we could not speak about that since the Germans had been the perpetrators – not only of World War II – but of the worst unspeakable crimes of humanity, the Holocaust.  On May 8, 1945, my father walked out naked from a military hospital in southern Germany, draped only in a blanket, and he surrendered to the Americans approaching. They let the skinny still wounded teenager go. Nobody knew how life could go on. Rubble everywhere. Homeless, hungrily scavenging for scraps of food, begging at farmer’s houses for just one egg, this was my father’s fate for the next several years. Hour Zero had arrived. Die Stunde Null. 

 

In Part 2 of this Trilogy, I will recount the story of my father’s survival, a story that was only told to us in bits and pieces. He did not like to speak about it ever. Having been drafted into the army as a foot soldier, 17 years old, but then becoming a traitor, he never considered himself a hero. His form of resistance was a quiet inner awakening. He could have bragged about it, like so many proclaiming after the war that they were never Nazis. This is perhaps the most impressive trait of my father, and I understood it only fully after he died at age 67 from lymph cancer. The shrapnel in his body was finally catching up with him. That my father even lived that long is due to several miracles. Since I owe my existence to him, I will take the courage to tell his story of survival that was kept secret in our family for so long. I will let it fly, like a caged bird finally escaping to freedom, allowing it to have its own life….  

 

Since only very few concrete details are known, my father’s story has the shimmering glow of a quiet parable. The craters in my father’s flesh intrigued me tremendously as a child. I kept touching the big round scars when Papa was home on a Sunday, which was not that often. They seemed to talk about things unfathomable, and they followed me all my life into my dreams. Once here in America, a potent dream turned my father’s war wounds – visible and invisible – into turquoise stones embedded in my own skin at the exact same places where his wounds were. I was marked with precious turquoise. Not only did I feel a holy healing, but I knew this dream was also for my father, much bigger than me. 

Turquoise my lifelong companion – these stones were gifted to me in Iran 14 years ago