This is an archived copy of a post written by Conflict Of Justice (conflictofjustice.com). Used with permission: Conflict Of Justice may not agree with any alterations made.
We were greeted by a tiny old woman who must have been 90 years old. She led us up the stairs and into a room plucked straight out of the 1930s. The apartment was modern but filled with objects from an older era. There were bell-shaped table lamps with brass embellishments, Art Nouveau furniture with embroidery of flowers, and a great wood china closet. Ornate picture frames with paintings of men in old suits hung on the walls. It looked like a museum. Frau Speiser stood only four feet tall and her wrinkles settled into deep creases on her face, like a character from a Hayao Miyazaki cartoon. Her long, fine white hair obviously used to be blonde.
She picked up her glasses and checked my companion’s name-tag which read “Speiser,” and then she looked over at the paintings on the wall. (Names have been changed in this story to protect anonymity) “These are some of the ancestors in the Speiser family,” she said. My companion had contacted Frau Speiser on the street, and she had wanted to meet to see if they were related, as his name was also Speiser. “This is grandfather Speiser. This is my cousin. This was his wife.”
Frau Speiser never actually said she was a Nazi. I suppose this is quite an assumption for me to make about a person, that they were a member of the Nazi Party in the German 1930’s. But next she showed us a photograph of a line of pretty blonde women smiling in front of a waterfall and tropical trees. “This was my home in Venezuela,” she said. “It was a very lovely place to live.”
“But you are German, aren’t you?” I asked.
“Yes,” she replied simply.
Something told me it was a bad idea to question her further about this. Maybe it was coincidence that she lived as a German in Venezuela 60 years ago? But then it struck me that Speiser was the name of Adolf Hitler’s top general. Could it be? Well, she couldn’t be Albert Speiser’s wife, as his wife was already dead. Maybe she was Herbert Speiser’s daughter, if he had one? Or maybe a relative? She spoke as if she descended from the Speiser family, so she probably did not marry into it, so does that mean she never married? She never mentioned a husband during our meeting, if she ever had one, or children, and I wasn’t about to ask about it.
“Uh, are you a practicing Christian?” I asked, remembering that I was a missionary. But she brushed the question off. She didn’t seem interested in discussing religion at all.
“I decided I had to move to Germany or I wouldn’t be happy. It is lonely, being here with all of my family and friends gone. But I do have a purpose. Let me show you what my purpose is.”
She pulled out a newspaper clipping carefully placed inside a picture slide. “After my dear Schnuki died, I visited his grave every day. There were some hoodlums going around desecrating grave sites, in dark Satanic rituals, and a couple years ago I saw them digging up his grave. Well I gave them all a good beatdown!” She held out the newspaper clipping proudly, which showed a photo of a pet cemetery and a headline which read: “Old Woman Fends Off Teenage Vandalizers.”
Reading the article, the writer sounded amused that a four-foot tall old woman chased off a whole group of teenagers. I smiled, but Frau Speiser was not amused. “I’ll take out anyone who messes with my pets,” she growled. “I have two dogs downstairs, and all I have to do is snap my fingers and they will tear you to pieces, young man, if you try anything!” This would have been cute if my grandma had said it, but Frau Speiser truly meant it, and I could sense deep sadness bubbling below the surface like lava.
“The unconscionable things people do to animals! I believe this is the greatest problem of our lifetime. It is Satanic. Well, I do not stand for it. I donate to several organizations that go to drastic measures to protect animals and the environment–some say questionable measures.”
“Greenpeace?” I asked.
She chuckled. “Oh, more extreme than Greenpeace.” My companion shifted in his seat. The irony of all this gradually settled in. What I had been told by TV documentaries was that true-believing women in the Nazi era were mothers. They were put in home-making schools where they learned to produce and nurture future members of the supreme society, right? But Frau Speiser appeared to be childless, and unlike many of the old widows I saw dutifully visiting their dead husbands’ graves, this woman visited the grave of her little pet Schnuki. She was like some twisted version of a cosmopolitan TV star. Instead of fiercely defending her Nazi ideology of hate, she gave fierce beatdowns to teenagers who disrespected animals, and instead of Naziism she donated to radical environmentalist groups. Well, I suppose if you had to choose a radical hateful ideology, wouldn’t protecting animals be the best one you could pick?
I successfully avoided Neo-nazis on my mission. One time in Stralsund, I got stopped by Polizei and patted down because there was a Neo-nazi march taking place that day near our apartment. Apparently, the Neo-nazis like to dress in white shirts and ties. It was chilling sitting at home and hearing the echoes of Hitler chants through the streets of an old German city. Those hoodlums like to appeal to this ancient ideology of hate, but they read the same school history books I had read, and I don’t think one can get a true sense of a society unless you have lived in it. My face to face meeting with Frau Speiser changed what I thought of the Nazis, with human tragic brutality before my face. I never imagined a Nazi would move on to environmental extremism or be so devoted to her yappy little pet Schnuki. They say most most of us if we had lived in 1930’s Germany would have gone along with the Nazi movement. It takes a very rare personality to stand against popular culture to the point of risking his life. If Frau Speiser was part of the movement, maybe she was simply forced into it because she grew up in the family she did. Maybe she wasn’t a true believer, or if she was a true believer, maybe it was just something everyone believed. Perhaps she got caught up in the fervor of a rising nation and took pride in her family being such a prominent force for change, and then the ground fell from beneath her. Her cause lost, she was forced into exile, and it turned out her cause was responsible for the extermination of populations of people and horrible human atrocity. I have read that members of the Speiser family spread conspiracy theories about the war. Maybe her moving back to Germany was an effort to face reality. Maybe it was a search for solid ground in a life where everything she knew was wrong, where everybody was pretending like World War 2 never happened. These years of betrayal fell heavy on her, but she was fierce and defiant. If so, I think that’s really something. How could a person grow up so close to an evil ideology and be willing to come back and face it? People make excuses, conspiracy theories, project onto others, or just run away, but who is willing to admit that they were wrong, everyone they loved was wrong, and to go back and face it? And to some extent, isn’t this something we all have to face? All of us have ancestors who did something horrible and we can’t help but admit it. If it is difficult for a survivor of an atrocity to go back to the scene of the crime, imagine how it is for a woman unwittingly on the side of evil to go back and face her homeland.
The result was biting loneliness. Unfortunately, one cannot be part of an evil ideology guilty of such horrible acts, and avoid the punishment that naturally results. Every day was punishment and Frau Speiser survived by pure prodigious will-power. I met plenty of other elderly people in Germany who fought in the German army, but they did not go crazy because of it like Frau Speiser. She was an inmate serving her prison sentence.
This human face of Nazism has made it easier for me to understand and compare social movements, and see the same mindset in the eyes of some of today’s social movements. It has kept me away from the lazy tendency of dehumanizing members of a poisonous ideology. Instead of the comic book characters that fill movies and history documentaries, I try to look at them as people. It was also a glimpse into the part of World War 2 that we never talk about: the German women raped by Soviet soldiers, the misery and starvation of millions of civilians that had nothing to do with Hitler’s aggression, and the enormous shame Germany still feels today. I wish I could say Frau Speiser had a great epiphany and found peace. But I couldn’t have changed her mind about anything if I had tried.
My companion and I exited the apartment, and we were greeted by the familiar honking and bustle of the city. “Well, I think that went really well.” I muttered.
“There is no way I’m related to her,” he replied.