Günter Grass and the Secret

There were a lot of secrets in postwar Germany. There still are. For some it was a matter of incriminating knowledge of crimes and fear of prosecution. But many people who witnessed Nazism kept silent because there were no words for what they had seen. What they saw was as far removed from everyday normalcy as the earth is from the moon. Hannah Arendt described the experience of the concentration camps as "life on the moon." But the horror of the war could also remain lodged in the synapses. Later generations did not always ask questions, and among them were many who didn't want to know what truly had transpired. Best to leave the burden of the past and memory to those who passed through its inferno. Many of us, but not all, are within the folds of that secret.