Six days after the visit to Auschwitz exhibition I still didn’t know exactly why I was feeling that way. On one hand, there was Katrina. I am perfectly aware I could have ended up in a concentration camp. And if not, I would have ended up like one of those German women raped by the Soviets. For the Nazis I was no more than a weak young lady with some nursing skills they could use in the front. For the Czechs, I had become a traitor. Had I survived until the end of the war, most likely I would have died thrown in a ditch all the same. On the other hand...
As I know emotions are quite a direct road to past life memories, I decided to meditate that night. I wasn’t thinking about Fritz at all, so I was surprised by the result. And the regression was quite confusing. Only a couple of things stood out: a gun that usually turns up in my memories as Fritz, and a German word.
I have started to meditate today and the only thing that has come to me is my grandfather from my life as Fritz. I always forget that is my Nazi connection, but it is tremendously frustrating for me not to be able to corroborate who he was, the role he played during the war and to what extent it affected me. I have also seen myself gripping a Beretta. Hearing my grandfather caused me anxiety and a lot of anger, I was smoking in his apartment while we were talking, sometimes my mother was also there, she didn’t understand why I used to react that way. But at the end I haven’t gained anything new, and emotions keep being encysted, these ones as much as the ones that might come from my Cathar life, which, after all, it was also a genocide. A German word came to me, something like Rottenkreutz.
(Regression 28-1-2018).
I had to do a compilation of all the data I had about my grandfather. To avoid repeating myself too much, I have left only the most significant.
I know I am at my grandparents’ place. I see a television very near (the living room is quite small), big and with a wooden frame, and in black and white, of course. My grandfather is sitting on an armchair very near, and I clearly see his face. He is quite ugly, he seems quite serious. His hair, brown, is clearing at the top, and I know he ends up bald a few years later.
(1-6-12).
When Weiss tells you to go to a childhood scene, I thought: “O.K., from childhood, but from a past life”, and I again saw the house I identify with my grandfather’s. I am small, around six or seven years old. The house is very humble, narrow rooms. I see my grandfather sat, with a blanket over him, maybe even on a wheelchair.
(16-6-12).
When I thought about that I suddenly saw myself at my grandfather’s. He was in front of a bookshelf that covers all the wall, made of wood not very dark nor very light in color. It is the same living room as always, very small, and I am carefully searching for something, as I want to know more about my grandfather. He already died, but my grandmother still lives, and she comes and asks me what I am looking for, and I tell her to tell me more about him. I have a photo album in my hand. My grandfather always appears dressed in formal attire, with a jacket that looks like that of a prince, dark, military style, with many decorations. Several names come to my mind: Otto, Maximiliam... I think he was a duke and he had relation with some European royal family, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or perhaps Prussia, come to me, I don’t know... But I have the impression that because of the war he lost a great part of his wealth or his position... perhaps he had to go into exile or something like that, and he ended up in this apartment. I don’t know, they are only impressions.
(22-6-12).
Well, I started to see the apartment where my grandparents live, supposedly in Cologne. I see the wooden bookshelves, where I know there is a photo album which for some reason is very important. I see a television on a piece of furniture, medium-height. And I also see my grandfather, quite deteriorated, maybe on a sofa, or maybe on a wheelchair (I incline for this latter), with a blanket over his knees, and practically absent. He has four hairs, long and wrinkled face, I think he retains his moustache... and it saddens me to know who he was. I ask my grandmother to take care of him. When I think about which is his name, comes to me Stanislao Von something... count. I think he was someone important in the military world, during World War I, I always imagine him with a military suit with many braids when he was young, as he is in the pictures. I feel proud of him but at the same time there is something that perplexes me, I don’t know what it is for the moment...
(9-7-12).
I see my grandfather again, prostrate on a chair which might be a wheelchair, with a plaid blanket over his knees, quite deteriorated, and however I feel proud of him, and I think it is because he is a war veteran. I see myself in the small living room in his apartment in Cologne, as a child, at six or seven years old, playing with him, making a plane with my hand, until my mother comes and tells me to stop bothering him.
(17-2-13).
I firmly believe he fought for the Nazi army, though his sentence was not of death. He spent a lot of time in prison until he was possibly released for a disease, or perhaps his sentence ended, I don’t know. I go to see my father to clarify some things with him regarding my grandfather. I hear him say something like: “Because of men like him we were attacked and that is why our country is not what it was anymore”. And I, quite angry, tell him it was a war, what did he think he was going to do, by any chance the enemies killed less than we did? I remember the photo album once again, I think he even was awarded.
(27-7-13).
I know my maternal grandfather is the one that inspires me to get out of the hole and I start to train to enter the Army.
(31-7-13).
As my grandfather’s name, comes to me Maximilian, though Otto repeats itself a lot too. Already in the apartment, my grandfather, who is very tall, sits me by his side in his armchair and shows me his photo album in which he appears young, today I have seen pictures of tanks and I think he drove one. He feels proud about it, he has a cross of Prussia as decoration, but when I ask him what happened in the war he gets sad and my mother shuts him up, as she doesn’t want him to tell me. I am a child and I say nothing by then. But later on, I have the impression that when he died I was very upset I didn’t learn anymore of the story (the year 1963 came to me very strongly as the year of his death... I would have been 16 years old, which also fits in), and I even blame my mother she tells me nothing, she never, ever, told me anything, the same way she divorced my father and I never knew why I barely saw him... except when we went to that palace.
Then I saw myself with my sister, sitting on the floor one of those nights in the palace, smoking a cigarette as always and commenting with her the rage all this causes me, she doesn’t understand I feel so much admiration for him. One day I press my mother to tell me what happened after the war. The words “shame” and “imprisoned” come to me. And I guess he was released due to some health problem or his age (or both), though I have no idea what used to happen in this kind of situations. I think the apartment belongs to the government, as assistance to war veterans. I see myself picking up his stuff after his death, though it doesn’t seem to me this is immediately after his death, and I take his cross and caress it with my fingers, feeling very angry because he fought for his country and not only his merit wasn’t acknowledged, but he was utterly forgotten, and on top of this now we are “invaded” by the British and the Americans, and besides, if you don’t see them as heroes, you are some kind of traitor.
(4-2-14).
But in reality none of that explained the bottomless pit I was in. To soothe my anxiety I resorted to cigarettes and further on to heroin, getting dangerously close to self-destruction, turning my home into a dark dump with a grimy mirror in the bathroom that only reflected a haggard and sunken being with blood trickling down his forearm. I didn’t want to be that. I wanted to be like my grandfather. And thanks to him I resolved to become a military man, and so I started working as an engineer for the U.S. Army, despite the fact I viewed them as invaders of my country. They were friendly guys after all. Not very different to what my grandfather must have been in his youth, when we Germans still had a country of our own, a country we could feel proud of.
Only a few days ago I could mourn his death at last. I saw myself in the apartment again, still affected by his loss, smoking nonstop, with the lights turned off and the reflections of the street lights outdoors. I was trying to decide if I should go out to get more heroin. Before that, came to me the flash of a wooden long case I have in my hands. Outside it is made of wood and inside of black velvet. It contains all my grandfather’s awards and we are deciding what to do with his belongings. I think I didn’t keep them myself, as he still had juniors who could take charge of them. But I wonder if I am the only one who remembers him today. I wonder what will have done with those awards some Germans that surely feel shame for their Nazi past and don’t want anyone to disturb the peace that the oblivion and disdain of their descendants grant them.
While I was writing these last three entries, I recalled one of my Marillion’s favorite songs, entitled “The space”. In that same album there is another song entitled “Berlin”, which describes very well the environment one could see in Cold War Germany. But “The space” summarizes much better all the feelings I have had as a result of the visit to Auschwitz exhibition. It summarizes my life as Fritz, a young man trapped in a whirl of emotions that go from the blind search for justice and the desire to forget the pain suffered in a different time, taking refuge in a woman’s arms or drugs, nearly falling into self-destruction without really knowing why, to the final verses where one begins to understand that, beyond labels, beyond ideological differences and separatisms, deep inside, we all are the same. We all are human.
On top of the world like a flag on a mountain
Feeling so high you can feel so alone
Unable to breathe at the height that you flew
Staring on clouds with no view of below
On top of a girl like a dream in a hotel
Falling towards something out of control
Unable to miss like the man in the tram
Crashing your car in Amsterdam
He did it without knowing, didn't feel a thing
He just wrecked it and kept going
The space around the stars
Is something that you know
A billion miles of darkness
Left you feeling low
The space around the stars
Is something that you know
Everything about you
So perfectly restrained
But everything inside you
Bites you
Everybody in the whole of the world
Feels the same inside
Everybody in the whole of the world
Everyone is only everyone else
Everybody's got to know
Everybody lives and loves and laughs and cries
And eats and sleeps and grows and dies
Everybody in the whole of the world
Is the same this time
Is the same inside
In the whole of the world