Kurt Waldheim died this past week. [1] [1] Hardly worth a thought, unless you are like me, the first-generation daughter of Eastern European immigrants. Elizabeth Sullivan noted the event in her Plain Dealer column. [2] She tends to cover the Balkans, which makes me wonder, is she, too, a mixture of Celtic and Eastern European ancestry? So many ugly skeletons in our closet. The sins of our fathers on this father's day.
I look at Kurt Waldheim face and I see someone's father, someone who greatly resembles my dignified grandfather, who worked as a trade attorney for the Austro-Hungarian government before and during World War II. Do I really know what happened? Did he know what was happening? What horrors do we each turn away from and chose to ignore everyday? Are there degrees of guilt? I see photos of my grandparents, my mother and my uncle taken after the war as they escaped from Hungary to Germany, to France, to Spain and finally, to America. There are gaps in the story. My grandfather escaped before his family. My uncle was smuggled out of Hungary on a train. My mother and grandmother walked across a minefield. Are these true stories? Were identities changed? For awhile, my grandfather's papers state the name Bessner. Does it matter anymore? Tivadar Soros, George Soros' father picked the same name as my grandfather's family name to use as the masquerade for his wife during the last years of war in Budapest, as the Jewish-managed commercial sector continued almost to the end, and Tivadar Soros maintained his daily swim to retain a semblance of normalcy, until he was forced, at last, to escape the hate. Later, his son found out that their survival was not so heroic.
So, which lies and compromises are permissable? Don't we all share complicity in not seeing the evil? Are we all one and the same? [3] Can we all be forgiven for the sins of our fathers?
Links:
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=a99ffHBLxaOE&refer=germany
[2] http://www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/stories/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1181982827316480.xml&coll=2
[3] http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/articles/2007/06/08/news/ohio/divestment0608.txt