GERMANY: Truth Comes at a Price for German Author

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Igal Avidan

BERLIN, Oct 29 1996 (IPS) - Two years after she emigrated to the United States, German author Anna Rosmus returned to Germany last week to receive an award from the Jewish community in Berlin.

But it was not entirely a happy homecoming: Rosmus needed police protection during her stay here, she told IPS in an interview. The search for truth has gained the author international recognition, but it came at a high price.

She was a 20-year-old student from a middle-class Roman Catholic background when she took part in an essay competition with the theme ‘My home town during the Third Reich’. Rosmus’ home town happened to be Passau, the Bavarian conservative small town where Adolf Hitler grew up.

She did her research well and won the third prize in the 1980 competition. But when three years later her work was published, she found out that not everybody in Passau appreciated its thoroughness.

In her essay, Rosmus revealed that many people still holding prominent positions in Passau had collaborated with the Nazi regime during the 1933-45 period. One highly-regarded priest, for example, tipped the Nazis on where Jews in hiding could be found.

After such disclosures young Rosmus started receiving threatening phone calls. When she wanted to continue her research, she had to enter the courts time and time again to be given access to archives.

Tired of death threats and worried for her children, she moved to the United States two years ago. Last week she returned to receive the ‘Heinz Galinski’ Prize from the Jewish community in Berlin.

The welcome from the Jewish Community Centre was arm. There were long embraces with community leaders whom she described as “close friends who have always supported me”.

In her speech to the community she attacked a number of prominent Passau citizens. “I use such opportunities to point to a few local scandals”.

The head of the Jewish federation, Ignatz Bubis, praised Rosmus’ “important work” but added that she “overshoot the mark, which is why she has so many enemies in Passau”.

In recent years Rosmus has written six books about Passau. But she conducted most of her research in Washington, where she did not have to fight her way to the archives through the courts. In August 1994 she moved to Silver Spring near Washington, partly because of her work, but mostly for her two little daughters, then aged nine and 12.

“I didn’t want them to grow up in such the closed city of Passau, but in a very mixed community where they could learn two languages and two cultures,” she explained. “I wanted them to experience themselves what it’s like to be a foreigner.”

In order to find the “almost perfect” new home, Rosmus studied four U.S.-metropoles and visited as many as 60 schools until she founded those fit for her daughters. Very soon she was also embraced by the Jewish community as “the good German”.

“Holocaust survivors where overwhelmed by me, a young, non- Jewish, German so interested in them,” Rosmus said. “I was welcomed by liberal Jews and Orthodox rabbis alike, and was even allowed to speak in the synagogue during Yom Kippur, the holiest Jewish day of the year.”

German diplomats to the United States, however, ignored her. Considering the fact that improving the tense relations with the Jewish community in America is very important for Germany, Rosmus says she is puzzled that “they don’t understand how much I could have helped them”. She added, “older men with a title have a hard time accepting my success among U.S. Jews. They are a bit jealous.”

In each case, she said, she can be safe in the United States and her daughters can for the first time live without fear. The death threats have stopped coming in. “Maybe because it’s too expensive to call from Germany,” Rosmus commented.

German journalist Lea Rosh, a former winner of the Galinski Prize, said she respects and understands Rosmus’ decision to move to America. “While I was promoting a Holocaust monument, I lived for 18 months with permanents death threats.”

But even in Washington, Rosmus still manages to push things in Passau. On Oct. 15 her native town contributed to Jerusalem 3,000 trees to mark the Jewish birthday of Israel’s capital. And on Nov. 9 Passau will inaugurate a memorial for the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

“I worked 15 years to see this moment,” Rosmus concluded.