Kindness remembered

This afternoon, while surfing through various on-line sources for news about Switzerland, I chanced upon an article discussing a subject I had never heard about before.  Now it was not the first time such a thing has happened.  Nor, I am sure, will it be the last.  But this was a little footnote to history with a very human dimension, where one small subset of victims of injustice and inhumanity, who would otherwise have blended seamlessly into the overwhelming mass of those who were even worse victims of the horrific Nazi Regime, were treated with kindness, kindness they have remembered for more than 60 years. 

It is all too easy to forget that not all Germans were supporters of Adolf Hitler.  That is, in part, due to the fact that resistance or opposition groups in Germany, especially in the early years of the Nazi Regime, were for the most part disparate and had little communication, coordination or common goals among them.  Still, some sources report that more than 3.5 million Germans had been held in prison or concentration camps for political reasons from 1933-45 and approximately 77,000 Germans were killed for one or another form of resistance.  There was also more than one attempt to assassinate Hitler.  The best-known and most supported attempt, Operation Valkyrie, revolved around Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, who after several aborted preliminaries, finally activated a bomb in a briefcase during one of Hitler's conferences with his military officers in July 1944.  After Von Stauffenberg excused himself and left the room, the bomb exploded.  Hitler survived, although several officers present at the meeting were killed in the blast. 

Retribution, as can easily be imagined, was swift and terrible.  Von Stauffenberg and a few of the other plotters were executed almost immediately.  Others committed suicide.  The Gestapo rounded up anyone who had even the most remote connection to the plot.  All relatives of the principal plotters were also arrested.   It is estimated that some 5,000 people were arrested; many were tortured; at least 200 were executed; and some were sent to concentration camps.  Some few managed to escape.  Executions continued until the last days of the war.

This plot was the basis for the 2008 film, Valkyrie, featuring the actor Tom Cruise in the role of Von Stauffenberg.  In the film, as Cruise/Von Stauffenberg is being executed, there is a flashback to a farewell scene with his family.  And so, we arrive at last to these all unwitting young victims.  What happened to them after their fathers had been executed?  At least some of the older ones, together with their mothers, were sent to concentration camps.  Younger children were placed with families considered not to be involved in the plot or in group homes.  But after the war, those who survived had a small, but meaningful in retrospect, respite.

As described in the article I discovered this afternoon, dozens of sons and daughters of the executed members of Operation Valkyrie were taken to Switzerland from 1947-49 to recuperate from their trauma.   This action occurred apart from official Swiss relief efforts after the war.  The official efforts included "Swiss villages" that were set up in Germany to house and feed orphaned or abandoned children.  Food rations in the villages included fresh fruit, hard bread, chocolate and the staple of every Swiss pantry, Ovomaltine. In addition, thousands of the sickest children were brought to Switzerland to recover, and supplies of books were sent to German universities to restock their libraries.

This private effort was organized by a Bernese doctor, Albert von Erlach, who used his connections in the Allied sectors of Germany and in Switzerland.   Von Erlach was a controversial figure who had been closely associated with groups sympathetic to the Nazi Regime.  It is unclear what change of heart had occurred so that he would reach out to children of the Regime's opponents.  Whatever the reason, the children benefited.

In November 2009, forty of these now-grown children, returned to revisit the families in canton Bern who had hosted them as well as to revisit a children's home in the Bernese Alps where many were cared for.  Photos taken at the time can be found here.

"When we gathered on the first evening to talk about our memories of Switzerland as children between 1947 and 49, we realised how many emotions we still have and how thankful we are when we think of this period," said Hans-Manfred Rahtgens.  Rahtgens, currently chairman of the association representing the group, was born only months before his father, Karl-Ernst Rahtgens, was executed.  He himself has no recollection of his time in Switzerland as a three-year-old.  As described in the article, however, others had vivid memories of the trauma they had undergone before their Swiss experience as well as of their time in Switzerland. 

According to Rahtgens, the larger aim of the association representing the children of the German resistance is to "reach out to the youth of today."

"We must let them know what our fathers did and why they did it. Their resistance came too late and was a failure, but on the positive side it was enormously courageous of them to stand up to such an inhuman regime.

"If we succeed in convincing our children that integrity, respect and the rule of law are goals worthy of following, we can be safe in knowing that they will never be forced to take the kind of decisions our fathers did."

Let us hope that this message succeeds.  Those who do not remember the lessons of history are destined to repeat the mistakes that already have been made far too often.