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Afterword
- State University of New York Press
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AFTERWORD Our next assignment took us to a Russian repatriation center in Heidelberg located at the Grenadier Kaserne, formerly a German military post. We worked with a French-Belgian United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration team, two French Army doctors, an American Army nurse, and four liaison officers at this shipping and receiving plant for human cargo. Each day we registered, screened, examined, disinfected, and sent home thousands of Soviet citizens in boxcars decorated with pictures of Stalin. By June 22, ten days after our arrival, 20,000 Russians had come and gone, and the Kaserne became home for 6,000 Poles who were undecided about where to go or what to do. One evening, having nothing else to do, Howcroft and I and Mace, our driver, headed for Heidelberg's famous castle in our distinctive Mercedes-Benz convertible, acquired a month before . I We roared up a curved steep road, past woodlands, vineyards , gardens, granite columns, and ruined buildings, to a hotel whe~e we found a roomful of GIs-the castle was occupied by an American regiment-sitting on the floor listening to a heavy, gray-haired woman with alert brown eyes and a deeply lined face. She wore a gray skirt, cotton stockings, and low, flat oxfords. She fingered a set of wings pinned to her blue blouse. Gertrude Stein, said one of the soldiers. We sat and listened, engaged by her warmth. An American major, probably her escort, said, "Of all the people in Europe, I have the most respect for the Germans because they do what we tell them to do." Miss Stein reacted; her thoughts poured forth, her meaning clear, her voice firm. I 247 "We are flattered by the Germans," she replied. "We should not be deceived by their attitudes of subservience, docility, and rectitude. These are the only bad features of the Germans, who, unfortunately for themselves and the rest of the world, are obedient . When you have a nation of obedient people, that country is bound to do the wrong thing. History proves that a man will come along and take an obedient people into places where they do not want to go. He will make them do things they should not. It is better for people to be skeptical. "Germans have always believed everything they were told. There was never a revolution in Germany as there was in the United States and France. The Germans must learn to ask questions ; they must be taught disobedience." I thought of the German people who had lived to serve the state, convinced that it was supreme, divinely empowered to govern the world. Oftheir slogans: "Heil Hitler," "Deutschland ueber Alles," and "My Fatherland, Right or Wrong." It was unnecessary for them to think. A Nazi booklet in my office at Dachau simplified decision-making for its readers: "The Fuehrer is always right. Right is what serves the movement and thus Germany, which means the nation." During the five years of the German occupation of France, Miss Stein was on their wanted list. All this time she lived in a small French village. Hundreds of German soldiers were billeted in the house where she was a guest. Every French person in the town knew who she was, but she was not caught because no one told the Nazis she was there. One enemy officer, an Italian , discovered her identity but kept silent. The Gestapo was effective, she said, only when its agents received tips from informers . She rented rooms in Paris. German law required the registration of all dwellings. Her landlord listed her apartment as a place for "French refugees, empty." It was never inspected. She recalled another story. Aliens and Jews were required to register. A Jewish woman came to the proper office. "Can you prove you are Jewish?" the French clerk asked her rudely. "Why, no," stammered the woman. "Well, get out of here and don't bother me until you can!" 248 i Afterword Miss Stein talked about her French friends, honest and individualistic , people who accepted you as you were. Then it was time to go. We fell into weeks of routine. There were many frustrations. The camp was overcrowded; the residents inequitably distributed . It was difficult to maintain elementary standards of cleanliness. Some of the Polish officers tried to avoid working with their countrymen. Often the Poles were moody, unaccountably violent. They remembered the years of persecution and slavery; they were forced now to watch Germans stroll through the streets...