examples – 17 – So the Russians just shot him – brainwashing

So the Russians just shot him – brainwashing

I’m looking at a photograph. In a forest clearing, you can see two middle-aged men dressed in suits. They’re smoking. One leans toward the other and lights his cigarette. As he does so, we see the back of his shaved head. He is a German employee of the Totenkopf Waffen-SS at the Dachau concentration camp.

Two younger women peek out from to the right and left of the tree trunk and smile stiffly at the camera. Everyone is dressed in black. If J. hadn’t pointed it out to me, I wouldn’t have realized that this photo shows a family gathered to mourn the death of family member, who died on the Eastern Front.

I ask J.: Do you know how he died? J. replies: “Yeah, sure! Two comrades who fought alongside him visited us later and brought us Reinhold’s diary. They’d been more careful than Reinhold. They said that Reinhold stuck his head out from behind cover, looking back and forth, back and forth. That’s when the Russians just shot him down. “

This sentence is a distortion of reality. While he’s reporting seemingly, he’s obscuring a complex emotion.

According to J., his father had an obituary printed with the words “In deep sorrow and proud mourning.” Suddenly, as she was telling the story, J. flared up briefly with a sense of rage: “In proud mourning!? What an idiot! Look at what they did in Russia! You can read about it in Reinholds diary. They stole food from Russian families at gunpoint. And other things too. How can anyone live with that kind of guilt?”

Silence

“Reinhold was a truly wonderful man.”

Silence.

Twelve hours later, again at midnight under the halo of light at the table in the kitchen, otherwise shrouded in darkness, she said slowly and quietly:

“Reinhold really wanted to join the SS Leibstandarte ‘Adolf Hitler,’ but ended up in the SS Standarte ‘Großdeutschland.’ In his room, he had written in large, arched letters by hand: “My honor is loyalty,” and then he had drawn the SS runes next to it.”

Silence.

It is perhaps only thanks to the quiet hour of the night and both of our patience and effort that J. told me this. Rombach was now palpable. The Müller house on the hill by the Guissebonne. The brother’s room next to that of the two sisters. The little girl peering into the room of her big brother, whom she loved so dearly. On the second floor of the miner’s house. Silence in the house. It was quiet in the kitchen after midnight. J. returned home that night to her brother.

The Frenchman Renauld — germanized and brainwashed by his father and having voluntarily joined the SS-Totenkopf / June 22, 1941, deployed to the Eastern Front and died in Kharkiv in July 1943 under unclear circumstances at the age of 21. (Suicide not ruled out)

Foto on the right. the name Reinhold, was the germanized version of his true french name Renauld. Renauld loved his sisters from the bottom of his heard and so did they.