Anne Hirschle - July 21, 2006
Returning to Germany II
Mm-hm.
And she made some other remarks during the few days we were in Breslau which really uh, bothered me a lot. The first thing she said to me, "Of course you kept your German citizenship." And I thought, you know, I mean, but she, she didn't understand. I mean, she's been brainwashed, she's, you know...
Sure.
...old lady and she meant well and she kept saying, "Oh the Nazis were terrible and they did dreadful things," but at the same time she said, "Look what happened to our beautiful Breslau, it's all Polish now," you know. I thought, "Big deal," you know...
Sure.
...good luck to them. So this was my trip back to Breslau. I never identified with it. I, I never felt particularly attached to it in any way. Uh, I, I was really fortunate. But I was young enough to get to England and was able to grow up in England and consider myself British. And what happened there was something bad that happened that shouldn't have happened, but so what? I, I didn't, I didn't feel I'd lost anything. I don't think my parents were particularly patriotic Germans. I do think my uncle who had been in the German army was much more of a patriot. And I do remember sitting at table during wartime when the war was going very badly for the, for the British and he would say negative things. You know, "If they don't change the way they run this war they'll never..." He meant well, he meant to say, "The British will never win this war." But I, I took it as negative criticism of the Allies...
Yeah.
...and I would get very upset and leave the table. But um, he still identified more and after the war he really had no way of making a living in England and um, he had been a lawyer in, in Breslau and he was depending entirely on my father to support him. So after the war when he had an opportunity to go back to Germany, he did go back to Germany uh, to practice law. But uh, I would have never considered it.
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