In the early 80s, I spent a year in Germany, where I researched and began writing this book. The horrors of World War II had haunted me for a long time. I wondered how it could be that good people scheduled the trains, kept the records for the gas chambers, counted the glasses and shoes collected from the victims, and went home and hugged their children at night.
I was curious to know how, after the war, they explained their silence as Hitler’s vicious regime rolled steadily over Germany and the countries around it. If they had been Hiltler Youth or had uncles in the SS, how had they explained it when their own children grew old enough to ask questions?
At the time, I was a school librarian, fluent in English and French and with enough knowledge of German to read in the language. So I focused on young adult novels written in those three languages. They were by survivors of World War II, people who had recorded and reflected on their experiences in order to inform the next generation.
The research gave me nightmares.
I had access to the books at the International Youth Library in Munich, where I spent every week day. One day the kindly IYL receptionist called me aside and said quietly, “Frau Wellner, you must understand, in my family, we were National Socialists, but we were not Nazis.”
She and her family were, I’ve no doubt, among the good people, the quiet people, the keep-your-nose-down people. They joined the party because any whiff of opposition was dangerous.
After the war, they walked by houses confiscated from the Jews, where Aryan families now lived comfortably. Their cities were rebuilt with the help of funds provided by the Marshall Plan. They struggled to move beyond the lost years. And they wrote for the next generation, hoping to make sense of a horrifying time, hoping to explain to their children their suffering at the hands of the Nazis or their participation in the wheels of suffering they helped to grease.
How will MAGA adherents explain that they stayed silent as neighbours disappeared into the maw of ICE atrocities? How will GOP politicians tell the story of allowing Trump, Project 25, and all their enablers to dismantle freedom and democracy? How will the Supreme Court write its justification of support for a monster?
Every day, I hope for the kind of massive pushback that will stop The MAGAtts in their tracks, that will derail ICE, that will restore justice and sanity. Every day I am disappointed. But I am old enough to know that history goes through periods of chaos and calm. So I continue to hope.