Everybody has an Onkel Hugo

Let me tell you a story about my heritage (one I am fortunate to know, unlike so many descendants of victims of the slave trade). In August 1939, at the age of 14, my German grandmother Alvina Müller (from Swedish origins on her mother’s side) attended a sailing camp for girls at the Chiemsee, a lake in Bavaria, Germany. You see, her father was a big-time mariner and this activity was the only one Alvina proved to be better at than her younger sister Katia. Katia was a gifted individual, with perfect pitch, and excelled at anything she put her mind to, such as fencing, a discipline in which she was supposed to represent her country in the 1940 Olympic Games in Tokyo — cancelled because of the Second World War.

One day, at this joyous camp, the girls were told there was to be a special visitor, and that they should all look their best. When that day arrived, Alvina got dressed in her best Sunday clothes and curled her perfectly blonde locks, framing her bright blue eyes and pale skinned face. Now, when this important man and his entourage arrived, the girls lined up, shoulder to shoulder, to greet this VIP. The girls were told this man was a prominent political figure, but that taking private pictures was strictly forbidden. To Alvina, this ‘figure’ appeared to be vaguely familiar, though no more remarkable than the Metzgershe would buy her sausages from around the corner from her home in Berlin. He was short-ish and slightly stout, dressed in a light summer suit and hat, with dark brown hair and pale sallow skin, not forgetting the peculiar tuft of hair above his upper lip.

The man began making his way over, from left to right, shaking each girl’s soft porcelain hand. As he reached Alvina, he stopped and smiled, then continued. After this introduction, there was to be a photo opportunity with the man, to be used as an official record of his visit. To Alvina’s surprise, she was summoned. She had been selected to appear in the photograph alongside the man. She stood still next to him, a vision of Aryan purity as the flash and bang of smoke from the camera went off.

Little did she know, in a matter of weeks this man, Adolf Hitler, self-appointed and perhaps most sadly and worryingly: ELECTED, Führer would invade Poland and plunge the world into the most devastating war mankind had ever known. This photo was perhaps one of the last of him out of uniform.

Now my grandmother could have told this far better, and some details have been added for poetic licence, but what comes next is an important story to be told and I’m afraid the ending is not filled with sunshine and daisies, no hippies singing kumbaya around the stump of a tree. This is a story of human nature, of good and evil.

Granted, the inherent need for me to defend my ancestors is of course there: ‘My great grandparents wanted the Kaiser back and believed in the good old German imperial ways! They didn’t vote for Hitler and didn’t agree with the Nazis and the holocaust!’ — but where would that get us? My German / white guilt has no place in this story.

Fast forward now to 1944. Germany is at war and anyone who cannot prove their pure Aryan descent is being rounded up to be sent to ‘special’ camps. This means Jews, Homosexuals, the disabled — any political dissent having long been suppressed. Times were bleak, with bombs overhead and an atmosphere of mistrust among neighbours and friends lingering in the air. A state of fear enveloped the nation. Freedom of speech was now gone and any opposition to the people in power would result in being denounced. There was no more Metzger with his endless supplies of Bratwurst, everything was rationed and nothing could go to waste.

What Jews there were left in Berlin faced the choice of deportation or going into hiding (becoming “U-boats”). This meant that they had to move from one place to the next, hoping to avoid discovery or denunciation in the general chaos. Susi Goldlust was one such woman. She was arrested in my great-grandparents’ house on 6 September 1944. My grandmother Alvina, then 19, was home in bed with a sore throat. She heard the door bell, loud knocking and people entering the house. Eventually she decided to go downstairs to see what was going on. What she saw was her mother and a lady she knew by name, though not very intimately, sitting on chairs in the kitchen, surrounded by police and what looked to be plain clothes agents. She realized that the two women were being arrested. Next thing she knew, they were being marched off and taken away in a police car. She did not see her mother again until the next day. It turned out that Susi Goldlust, who must have been denounced although we never knew by whom, had found the courage and presence of mind to say that my great-grandparents didn’t know she was Jewish, but thought she was just another person made homeless by the bombing and looking for shelter. So, the Gestapo and/or police let my great-grandmother go. Susi was shipped off to Auschwitz and never heard of again — except for a pre-printed postcard my great-grandparents received saying “I am fine where I am and have received your food parcels. Many thanks, Susi Goldlust”. By which time Susi Goldlust had in all likelihood already been gassed.

I’m sure you’ve heard of Auschwitz. Started out as a military garrison in the Austro-Hungarian empire, then morphed into a prison and labour camp under German occupation during the Second World War, first for Polish prisoners, then for Jews, Roma, and remaining political dissenters, motivated by ethical, religious or political convictions, across Europe. Finding that this was not enough to satiate their hatred and drive for racial supremacy, the Nazis soon added an extension: the infamous Auschwitz II, or Birkenau camp, solely intended for the purpose of extermination, in gas chambers. Those who did not get out in time were condemned to perish at the hands of the powerful and hate-filled fascist regime. More than a million people died in Auschwitz, and millions of people died in all the Nazi concentration camps combined. Having visited Jewish friends around Tel-Aviv, I assure you, the stories live on, as if it had all happened yesterday.

I sometimes try to think myself back to that dark day in September 1944 when the Gestapo came bursting into my great-grandmother’s house in Berlin. You see, she was a strong woman who didn’t like the idea of people being discriminated against, and despite knowing the risks of concealing the identity of a Jewish person, she did.

Her name was Susi Goldlust. She had come to the family home seeking refuge. My great-grandparents, part of a chain of like-minded neighbours, accepted and attempted to hide her. This had been a success up until someone denounced her. My great-grandmother was reported and in came the Gestapo. Alvina was home with the flu and was jolted awake when this police force came charging in. Susie was taken away and Alvina’s mother was arrested. My great-aunt Barbara, Alvina’s younger sister, remembers coming home from school and finding her home surrounded by plain-clothes agents and police.

My great-grandmother was threatened with prison and worse, but thanks to Susi, she was set free. Susi did not reveal that my grandmother knew she was Jewish. Susie was rounded up, like so many before her, and shipped off to Auschwitz in Poland, where she died from gas asphyxiation in a ‘shower’. Have you ever been to a concentration camp and seen the inside of these? The marks on the walls from people trying to claw their way out remain (By the way, of the seven “U-boats”, being hidden around the neighbourhood, apparently five survived. So, not all efforts were in vain). And, as my mother found out accompanying students on a school trip to Auschwitz, Susi Goldlust’s name lives on in the Book of Names, which records four million + names of people who died as a result of blind hatred, racism and mass hysteria.

So why is this story so important to me? Because, I wish I could tell you that I only had stories where my relatives acted as heroes, but this isn’t the case. I have also heard stories of relatives who came specially from Sweden to show their support for this evil Third Reich. A cousin who came to visit, dressed in black to make himself look as much like a storm trooper as possible, to the embarrassment of my grandmother and her sister, then teenagers, who were supposed to show him round Berlin. And this is where ‘Onkel Hugo’ comes in. Now he was married to my great-grandfather’s sister, and as he owned a leather factory, and Hitler’s war machinery needed lots of leathery supplies for the military, his fortunes were on the rise. Not surprisingly, Onkel Hugo joined the Nazi party and was known for boasting his brown fascist party uniform in the streets, undying loyalty being a source of great pride to him. He was a Nazi and he did believe the hateful rhetoric of the time and NO ONE had the power to speak out against the injustice, although my great-grandparents did forbid him to come to their home wearing the uniform.

Here I am today, a young, educated, white woman, witnessing the same hatred being openly perpetuated in the streets of the United States and what I have taken from my ancestors’ stories is that if you happen to be born into a position in society where you have the liberty to speak out against oppression and hate being acted out at the hands or your social and racial group, it is your responsibility to do so. It is our responsibility to stick up for those who have to suffer because they do not fit our demographic. It is absolutely vital to educate those around you.

I have friends from all colours of the rainbow but it still astounds me what some white people think is ok to say. I have had my black friends be called ‘oreos’, ‘too white for the black kids and too black for the white kids’. I have witnessed my friends being told they are ‘pretty for a black girl’. I have seen white people inadvertently (or on purpose) change their speech around black people, resulting in some weird rendition of what they think ‘gangster’ sounds like. I have been asked countless times if it is ok to use the ’N’ word around my black friends. I have even heard people ask them directly. I have heard black individuals be told they speak remarkably eloquently for their demographic. I have been to festivals where every white person in sight has had their hair braided or cornrowed, screaming the ’N’ word at the top of their lungs to every hip hop song they hear, while half naked girls are gyrating on stage in the background, brandishing fake machine guns, and in doing so, glorifying the violence experienced by millions thanks to a system that structurally oppresses minorities. These are sadly only a few examples.

What were the Germans promised? They were promised bread and work. Hitler promised to make Germany…. ‘Great again’.

Now I’m not claiming that every white person is in some way related or associated with obvious racists, but this is no Utopia. And what I mean by obvious is outlined impeccably in a comment about Ron Weasley in Harry Potter:

Ron Weasley’s character is consciously written as somewhat racist. Not as racist as Malfoy, of course — he doesn’t scoff at mudbloods and halfbloods, and he doesn’t see himself as superior at all. Still, he unquestionably accepts the inferior position of house elves (they love serving), when he finds out that Lupin’s werewolf his reaction is not only scared but also disgusted (Don’t touch me!) and he is clearly very uncomfortable finding out that Hagrid is half-giant (giants are wild and savage).

And this is brilliant. Because it demonstrates that racism isn’t only present in clearly malicious and evil people, in the Malfoys and Blacks — it’s also there in warm, kind, funny people who just happened to learn some pretty toxic things growing up in a pretty toxic society. And they can unlearn them too, with some time and effort. Ron eventually accepts Hagrid’s parentage, lets Lupin bandage his leg and in the final battle, he worries about the safety of the house elves.

Some people are prejudiced because they are evil, and some people are prejudiced because they don’t know better yet. And those people can learn better, and become better people. And that’s an important lesson. The lesson taught about discrimination shouldn’t be “only evil people do it”, because then all readers will assume it doesn’t apply to them. Instead old JK teaches us “you too are probably doing it, and you should stop ASAP” (unknown).

Everybody has come across racism. This could even be your harmless great-aunt Gwen who still refers to black people as ‘coloured’, because she doesn’t know any better and it’s ‘a generational thing’. The opportunity to influence people’s views and challenge damaging and dangerous rhetoric is there. Responsibility lies with us to educate those around us because we all have an Onkel Hugo somewhere in our white past — it is called colonialism. It is too easy for these movements to gain momentum and for hate speech and violence be legitimised. It is because of the good and the evil of my ancestors that I believe we each have a duty to stand up alongside our like-minded brothers and sisters.