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Memory, resentment and the politization of trauma: narratives of World War II (Danube Swabians, Entre Rios, Guarapuava - Paraná) by Méri Frotscher, Marcos Nestor and Beatriz Anselmo Olinto, Oct 24, 2014
"The thick brown crust": resentment and forgetting in survival
In the next issue of the paper, the "account" occupies two full pages. The issues of deportation and forced labor to which Katharina and other women were subjected for almost two and a half years in Ukraine, in the Soviet Union, are discussed. The beginning lets us foresee the interests of the interviewer in the construction of the testimonial narrative and of the newspaper in the constitution of the "account": "Now you want to know how we discovered that we should go to Russia".54 Katharina seems to narrate to a public, not only to the interviewer.
After having walked more than 40 kilometers, Katharina and others entered the Betschkerek camp, a former prison, where they stayed for three very significant days: "What we have seen and heard! There they killed 150 to 200 men a night, night after night, those that they had expelled from the whole region of Banat. In the middle of the yard they shot them and carried them on carts, and the others had to bury them. In the middle of the yard, there was a large, thick crust, and it was brown. Later we discovered that it was the blood of the men who had been killed there. A gypsy was the commander of the camp and he was guilty of all the murders that took place there!"55
The blood, mentioned another time, becomes a symbolic element of the sacrifice of the Swabian people, a reference taken from the Christian vocabulary, so strong among immigrants of the Entre Rios community. The "thick brown crust", which did not come out even after washing, like the blood stain on the floor left by the macabre dance with parts of dismembered bodies, might be understood as a metaphor of that past that could not be erased from the memory.56 To avoid forgetting, by the way, was the biggest goal of the series published in the paper.
The passage in which Katharina highlights that the commander guilty of the shootings was a gipsy shows her concern to identify, from ethnic and racial criteria, the perpetrator. In the following excerpt, Katharina lingers in describing the transport of the deportees in cattle wagons. She was conscious of the extraordinary nature of her experiences even within the colony, and that they might attract more interest from both the person to whom she speaks in the interview and the newspaper reader, hence the included passage.
In another passage, Katharina says that people imprisoned in Betschkerek explained to her, later, why there was that brown crust in the middle of the yard. Once again, we see how her narrative is composed by mixing own experiences and information shared later, in a communicative process of creating the memory.57
As the social psychologist Harald Welzer and his team show in a study about the memory of the National Socialism and of the Holocaust in German families, the ideas and images that people form of the past are composed of many fragments of very disparate sources, such as history books, movies, conversations in the family and at school, as well as their own individual experiences.58 The authors rely on the formulations of Jan Assmann (1995) on the "communicative memory", a kind of short-term memory of society, through which individuals and groups bring the past to the present, always from a fixed point in the present, emphasizing how the criteria of truth of their memory are driven by loyalty to the group "we".59 In the case of Katharina, the "we" is the "Swabian people", who, after the events experienced during the flight and expulsion, also began to share memories based on what they have lived, heard, and read.
The narrative in the interview with Lichtenberger, in 1984, if compared to the interviews given recently to the authors, is more factual and descriptive. The subjectivity is reduced before the objectivity of collective events, except at few places, when she reveals the pain of the family separation caused by the deportation: "On the night of St. Sylvester, we passed [on the train] by our village. It was the last time I saw something of my place of origin. I still heard our dog barking, we used to live not far from the railroad".60 The distance between what can be said about that experience and what it was to bear it presents itself as an irreducible gap.61
In the middle of the courtyard, there was a large, thick crust, and it was brown. Later, we discovered that it was the blood of the men who had been killed there
In a journey that takes about 30 days, in a dark wagon with a total of 40 people, Katharina was transported to Ukraine. The notion that this was a mass deportation only became clear to her when the people there realized the number of wagons of that transport: "When we passed a curve we saw that we were on a train with over 100 wagons. A locomotive was pushing behind, and there were other two in the front".62
The deportation of Germans and descendants to do forced labor in the Soviet Union was demanded by Josef Stalin of other allies for the first time in 1943, as a compensation for the destruction caused by the German army. Only from Yugoslavia, 8,000 women and 4,000 men were deported on eight transports.63
In a resentful tone, Katharina recounts her experiences at the Kriwoj Rog labor camp, where she was first taken:
They always gave us political lectures, saying how our life was good because we were deported to Russia, how the Germans did so much more against the Russians, how they were good to us, things like that. This we soon realized, how good they were. In February they took us to the river margin, where woods had come down the river from somewhere. And we had to pull that wood to the shore with a hook. Every night we would come home wet to the hips and the uniforms were frozen, stiff from such cold. My hands were so frozen that the bones were showing, the flesh had fallen out.64
In the sequence, with a tone of indignation, she refers to the discovery by accident, when working on a road, of a mass grave containing bones of German soldiers: "Often we had to dig in and once a German soldier's uniform appeared. A little later we saw that there was a mass grave of Germans, feet and hands coming outside of the dirt. They were buried like animals".65
Katharina continues to talk about working in a steel factory where they worked every day eight hours straight without food, and the long journey on foot to the workplace, under extremely low temperatures in the winter and the deaths that resulted from that.
Despite the extreme conditions of life and work in the labor camps and the bitter tone of many passages, Katharina does not treat the Russians as a monolithic category, especially when you hear and read the interview in full, in which some scenes of contact with the Russian population or even with those responsible for the supervision and the control of the work appear. On paper, however, the following is mentioned: "They always told us that the Germans were pigs, and that we lived well among them [the Russians]. In part they pitied us, in part they hated us, so much that they spat on us".66 The editor highlighted the last sentence, repeating it in larger letters inside the published text. Katharina had referred to this subject because of the interest of the interviewer -something perceptible only after listening to the tape recording - about the relationship with the Russian population.
In a published excerpt, Katharina criticizes the attitude of German officers - probably from the Russian occupation zone of Germany - that had tried to persuade her to stay in the Soviet Union, demonstrating repugnance at the supposed lack of loyalty of those to the German "comrades". In this and in other parts of the interview, her anti-communist position becomes clear:
[...] A commission came, according to them from Moscow, with German officers. They wore the full uniform with all their distinctions, and presented lectures, saying that we should stay in Russia, that our future was there. Germany lost the war and Yugoslavia was totally destroyed, we could not go home. But nobody signed the contracts, because we thought it was a bluff, because those who had their uniforms, they most certainly had betrayed their comrades. And that kind of people I despise. Either you stick firmly in favor of an ideal or you do not have any.67
For Katharina and other deportees, the war seemed to not be over yet. The Russians were still enemies, which is why she represents those German officers of the Russian occupation zone in Germany as traitors. In this sense, the anti-communism itself can be seen as an element to keep the idea of a group, the "Danube Swabians", which, during the war, had fought against the communist partisans in support of the German army troops.
The expression of a certainty - "Either you stick firmly in favor of an ideal or you do not have any" - is also repeated in larger letters inside the text published by the editor, something very significant if we consider the use of the word people (Volk) in the title of the series of "accounts".
Katharina narrates objectively having been the only one of her shift that had survived, after having unloaded salt under very low temperatures for 16 consecutive hours. Owing to the consequent pneumonia, she received later the news that she had been selected to "return home" (she uses the term Heimkehrer, "the one that returns to the homeland"). She and other girls who were also released only believed in "returning to the homeland" when they realized they were passing through Poland. It is an interesting fact that even if the return was not to Yugoslavia, her place of birth, Katharina considers Germany "homeland": "We only thought that we would really go back when we were in Poland. And really soon we arrived in Frankfurt am Oder".68 However, upon arrival in Germany, Katharina is soon disappointed when she realizes that she had no right to remain there and concludes that all the suffering in the name of "Germans" was not recognized. The expression of this resentment, however, does not appear in the interview published by the newspaper. There, the resentment is only directed against the Russians and Serbian partisans.
The description of how she received the information that she could not return to Yugoslavia, for being considered German, given harshly by the guard of the consulate of that country in Berlin, is the last fragment published in the paper. Katharina thus narrates her despair and desolation: "The guard did not even let us enter. 'You are German - he said this in Serbian - they murdered all of your people, you should not go to Yugoslavia'. So we sat on the curb in Berlin, with no money, and started crying".69 This outcome is significant, because it expresses the news of the tragedy of her people, the loss of the homeland, the desperation, and the lack of prospects for the future.
It is the editor, at the end, that tells the reader about how Katharina reunited with her family in 1948 in Austria. His closing remarks express the purpose of the publication of that "account" and also of the series itself: "Human destinies that no one makes a denunciation film about, which also would not be in accordance with the guidelines of the associations of expelled Germans: Forgive, but not forget".70 The motto used, "Forgive, but not forget", which orients the memory policy of many associations of expelled Germans, hints at the existence of disputes regarding the treatment of the past. The use of the word "denunciation" (Anklage) by the editor signals the claim of the victim status for the Danube Swabians, and therefore, the assertion of a "duty of memory" to avoid forgetting. The phrase sets the tone of warning. The comment seems to be a reaction to the making of films about victims of World War II, among which "destinies" as Katharina's would not be included, according to the editor.
The series published by Jornal de Entre Rios can be understood as a kind of "war of memories" in which the Swabians are fighting for their recognition as victims of war
Considering the globalization of the memory of the Holocaust, ongoing since the 1980s, one can reflect that the editor's comment is a reaction to memory discourses in the international public sphere that focus on victims of National Socialism. Jornal de Entre Rios, therefore, upon the publication of "narratives of German victims", invests in the politicizing of the trauma, taking into account the resentment toward the past and also the present.
This "past that does not want to pass", a characteristic trace of trauma in which the repressed thoughts always return, is recalled and politicized in the public sphere. As Aleida Assmann explains, the theme of the "expulsion" in Germany is not a socially tabooed trauma, kept in silence, like the rapes of German women at the end of the war, but a politicized trauma (politisiertes Trauma).71
In the case of the colony of Entre Rios, the immigrants and their descendants were included in a "memory culture", which, although had communication links with Germany, also had to deal with the Brazilian reality. However, the supplement of the newspaper in which the "accounts" were published did not aim at the Portuguese-speaking readers, but rather at the German-speaking ones. Here, again, the trauma of the expulsion is politicized, because there is a claim of a victim status for the Danube Swabians and an affirmation of the need for the "rational overcoming" of the past. The politicization of trauma occurs locally in a dialogue with the memory discourses about the war disseminated at an international level. In this movement, the past experienced during the war is politicized by the newspaper.
According to Aleida Assmann, from the phenomenon of globalization of the memory of the Holocaust, a standardized terminology used in its remembrance was appropriated by other traumatic experiences. When analyzing "narratives of German victims" relating to the Allied bombings and the expulsion of the East, Midwest, and Southeast Europe, Assmann shows how the boundaries between victims and perpetrators are cleared not only by the arguments but also by the use of language itself.72 In the case of the Danube Swabians of Entre Rios, for instance, the use of the expression Vernichtungslager ("extermination camps") in interviews and articles in the local newspaper to refer to the camps where they were confined during the war signals the appropriation of language elements of that terminology.
The series published by Jornal de Entre Rios can be understood, then, as a kind of "war of memories" at the global level, in which the Swabians are fighting for their recognition as victims of war. This reminds us of an investigation, based on oral history, about the prisoners confined in Sachsenhausen in Berlin, which was a concentration camp during the National Socialist regime and after the war it was transformed into a Soviet special camp for "detention of dangerous people". During the research, it was noted how the Germans detained in the Soviet camp struggled to be recognized as victims by comparing their experiences with those detained in concentration camps, trying to make their experiences public through the contact with the interviewer.
73The expression of the need for a "rational overcoming of the past", pleaded by the mentioned editor of Jornal de Entre Rios, can be apprehended from this "war of memories". According to his notion, there was a past to be overcome, not in any way but in a "rational" way. This claim presupposes the understanding that the past would not be seen objectively. The inclusion of the word "rational", thus, politicizes the duty of memory expressed by the motto "To forgive, but not forget".
The remembrance of the past and the creation of "narratives of victims", however, were also served by silencing, since memory and forgetting are part of the same process. In the remembrance of the 50th anniversary of the "flight and expulsion", the adhesions to the National Socialism and the actions of the troops of the Waffen-SS toward the populations of non-German origin, for example, were not among the mentioned topics.
Instead, the series of "accounts" published in the paper transformed "an individual victim into a representative of the Danubian Swabian victims. The individual becomes collectiveness". Apart from a reaction to a memory discourse in the media and in the movies, in which the "destiny" of victims such as the Danube Swabians was absent, the publication of the series of "accounts" aims at guaranteeing group cohesion locally. Elements of the local and the global, therefore, intertwine in the constitution of a memory discourse. Therefore, the publication of the series may be seen as part of the fight of that "people in favor of the future", which depended on the fight against forgetting the past. The group cohesion would depend on these investments in the creation of a collective memory.74 The "accounts" of the generation of immigrants, understood by the newspaper as reports of facts as they occurred in the past, should be kept for the memory of future generations as a warning.
NEXT: Final Considerations
Footnotes
54 "Ein Volk kämpft um seine Zukunft. Die Vertreibung der Donauschwaben. Siedler aus Entre Rios berichten über ihr Leben", Deutsches Wort (Suplemento do Jornal de Entre Rios), Entre Rios - Guarapuava, n. 169, 26 de março de 1994, D1.
55 "Ein Volk kämpft um seine Zukunft. Die Vertreibung der Donauschwaben. Siedler aus Entre Rios berichten über ihr Leben", Deutsches Wort (Suplemento do Jornal de Entre Rios), Entre Rios - Guarapuava, n. 169, 26 de março de 1994, D1.
56 By the way, in Entre Rios, every year in the month of October a procession is held to the chapel built for that purpose (Wallfahrtskapelle) and dedicated to the Virgin Mary, remembering the dead in the camps in 1946 in Yugoslavia, where "Danube Swabians" were confined.
57About the functioning of the "communication memory", see Harald Welzer, Das kommunikative Gedächtnis: Eine Theorie der Erinnerung, 2. ed., München, Beck, 2008.
58 Harald Welzer; Sabine Moller; Karoline Tschuggnall (orgs.), "Opa war kein Nazi": Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust im Familiengedächtnis, 6. ed., Frankfurt am Main, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2008, p. 9.
59Jan Assmann, "Collective memory and cultural identity", New German Critique, vol. 65, 1995, p. 125-133; Harald Welzer; Sabine Moller; Karoline Tschuggnall (orgs.), "Opa war kein Nazi": Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust im Familiengedächtnis, 6. ed., Frankfurt am Main, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2008, p.12-13.
60 "Ein Volk kämpft um seine Zukunft. Die Vertreibung der Donauschwaben. Siedler aus Entre Rios berichten über ihr Leben", Deutsches Wort (Suplemento do Jornal de Entre Rios), Entre Rios - Guarapuava, n. 169, 26 de março de 1994, D1.
61 François Hartog, Evidência da história: o que os historiadores veem, Belo Horizonte, Autêntica, 2011, p. 211.
62 "Ein Volk kämpft um seine Zukunft. Die Vertreibung der Donauschwaben. Siedler aus Entre Rios berichten über ihr Leben", op. cit.
63 Fritjof Meyer, "Hohn für die Opfer", In: Stefan Aust; Stephan Burgdorff (orgs.), Die Flucht: Über die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten, Bonn, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2005, p. 102.
64 "Ein Volk kämpft um seine Zukunft. Die Vertreibung der Donauschwaben. Siedler aus Entre Rios berichten über ihr Leben", Deutsches Wort (Suplemento do Jornal de Entre Rios), Entre Rios - Guarapuava, n. 169, 26 de março de 1994, D1/D2.
67 "Ein Volk kämpft um seine Zukunft. Die Vertreibung der Donauschwaben. Siedler aus Entre Rios berichten über ihr Leben", Deutsches Wort (Suplemento do Jornal de Entre Rios), Entre Rios - Guarapuava, n. 169, 26 de março de 1994, D2.
69 "Ein Volk kämpft um seine Zukunft. Die Vertreibung der Donauschwaben. Siedler aus Entre Rios berichten über ihr Leben", Deutsches Wort (Suplemento do Jornal de Entre Rios), Entre Rios - Guarapuava, n. 169, 26 de março de 1994, D2.
71Aleida Assmann, "Deutsche Opfernarrative", In: ______, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit: Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik, Bonn, C.H. Beck, 2007, p. 184.
72 Aleida Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit: Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik, Bonn, C.H. Beck, 2007, p. 187.
73 Anne Kaminski, "A integração de conhecimentos históricos na narrativa da própria vida: entrevistas com ex-prisioneiros dos campos soviéticos entre 1945 e 1950 na Alemanha", In: Marieta de Moraes Ferreira; Tania Maria Fernandes; Verena Alberti (orgs.), História oral: desafios para o século XXI, Rio de Janeiro, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz; Editora e Fundação Getulio Vargas; CPDOC, 2000, p. 143-153.
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