Lessons from a Nazi

My Opa was a Nazi.

It’s taken me decades to come to terms with this fact. Growing up, when kids in school found out that I’m German, they would jokingly call me a Nazi. I hated it because my Opa was one. There was no way I would ever admit that he voluntarily enrolled in the army at the age of 17 to fight for Hitler’s Germany - a Germany that was responsible for killing 6 million Jews.

To be clear, I love my Opa. He’s the only grandparent I’ve ever known and I’ve only felt love from him my whole life. Anyone who has met him always comments on his fun-loving humour and delightful nature. I never thought of him as racist, and even though his participation in WWII says differently, I don’t think he would have ever called himself a racist either. 

Is it possible to hold these dynamics in tension? In our time of cancel-culture, our society might suggest that I should “cancel” my Opa - take his pictures off my walls and stop giving him access to his great-granddaughter. But I believe there’s a better way forward, whereby we refuse to sugar coat the past but also make room for transformation, forgiveness, and redemption. 

In order to find this way forward, we need to focus on the stories that we tell and that are told to us. Let me use my Opa as an example:

For as long as I can remember, my Opa told us stories about the war. More than any other time of his life, he remembered the war the most. He told us that his only brother died in the war and that Hitler was making things better for the German people. Hitler made it possible for them to enjoy simple luxuries again - like fresh butter. As the war went on and it seemed inevitable that conscription was going to happen, my Opa volunteered to join the fight.

But before he ever got to that point, he had already been shaped by the stories that were told in Germany at the time. He was taught that anyone who wasn’t Aryan was less-than-human - not worthy of the same life he had. This was the narrative that my Opa heard from a young age, and all aspects of German society (school, church, government) reinforced it. 

In Nazi Germany, my Opa had no counter-narratives that challenged the stories he heard. And so, he believed them. When he was told that these “second-tier” races were also their enemies, the noble thing to do was to defend his family and way of life.

But again, I’ve never known my Opa as being racist. His daughter married a Filipino and all his grandkids are of mixed race. So what happened? My Opa’s worldview, which was shaped by the stories he was told, was eventually challenged. After experiencing people of other races and cultures, he realized that what he was taught wasn’t true.

It began in Siberia, where he was taken as a prisoner-of-war. He told us that Russian civilians passing by the POW camp would sacrifice the little food they had in order to help the starving prisoners. He couldn’t fathom how his enemy would share their last piece of bread with him. He was taught that the Russians were evil, but when he actually encountered them, he realized that they were human just like him. 

Many years after the war, when my mom went to Africa as a missionary nurse, my Opa went to visit her. He would always smile and laugh when he told us about how amazed he was by the hospitality and generosity of the African people. He experienced a different narrative and realized that people who were different from him were not “second-tier.” The more my Opa travelled, the more he realized that there’s no such thing as second-tier humanity. We are all equally human.

My Opa’s life has taught me that stories matter. Racism doesn’t begin with war or acts of violence. It begins with the stories that we tell about ourselves and the other people, countries, and cultures that inhabit the world. When left unchecked, stories create stereotypes and prejudices against other people. When gone unchallenged, prejudices and stereotypes give way to discrimination. When reinforced by institutional power, discrimination leads to systemic racism, and in extreme cases, to the kind of genocide we witnessed during WWII. 

Stories are powerful! The stories our families, churches, schools, and institutions tell will affect our actions as a society. If you’ve ever wondered about how Canada could allow the Indian Residential Schools, just listen to the stories that were told about Indigenous people at the time. Indigenous people were said to be “savages” who were “less-than-human” until they could be “civilized.” The stories told by society, especially in pop culture, reinforced this stereotype. Even today, you will still hear the same stories being told about Indigenous people, albeit with different language.

If we start addressing racism when we see people oppressed or marginalized, we’re already too late. We need to begin with the stories being told and the stories we tell. How we tell the stories of our history will shape our understanding of people who are different from us. Even more, how we tell the stories of today (e.g. Black Lives Matter, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Idle No More, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls) will affect our attitudes and actions in the future. 

This isn’t something that comes easily. But if we’re continually aware of our stories, we’re more likely to avoid the kind of deconstruction and reconstruction my Opa had to go through to finally realize that all human life is valuable. But how do we know if the stories we tell and are being told to us are true? That’s the question of next week’s blog.