San Francisco Chronicleの記事；
Novelist admits he was a Nazi
Gunter Grass says he joined Hitler's Waffen SS at 17Ruth Ciesinger, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Gunter Grass, the German-born winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize for Literature and author of such acclaimed novels as "Tin Drum," has admitted to joining the Waffen SS, a special force of the Nazi Party, as a 17-year-old.
Now 78 and preparing to publish his memoirs in September, Grass came forward with details of his past in an interview Friday with the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Having been a member of the SS had "oppressed" him, Grass said.
"My silence throughout all these years is one of the reasons I have written my autobiography. It finally had to come out," he said.
"Tin Drum" is considered by many critics to be among the most important novels of the postwar era and has contributed to Germany's quest to come to terms with its Nazi past.
Earlier biographies had mentioned that Grass served as a soldier from the autumn of 1944 until the end of the war in the spring of 1945. However, Grass had been characterized as a member of the Wehrmacht, the regular German army, rather than of the Waffen SS, the combat arm of Hitler's forces, known for committing grave atrocities.
Grass said he voluntarily registered at 15 to serve on a submarine, but two years later received a call from the Waffen SS. At that time, he said, he felt no sense of guilt, but later the "disgrace" became "a burden" (although he said he never fired a shot while in the military).
After the war, a lot of people pretended that the "poor German people had been seduced by a horde of evils," Grass said in the interview Friday, but that "was not the truth. It happened all in broad daylight. And with enthusiasm and with popularity."
Grass said this phenomenon compelled him to write "Tin Drum" as well as his forthcoming memoir.
It is not clear what effect Grass' revelation will have on his reputation. The acclaimed German novelist Walter Kempowski told the Berlin daily Tagesspiegel on Friday, "It comes a bit late."
Kempowski said the biblical proverb now applies to Grass: "The one who is without guilt throws the first stone."
Michael Jurgs, a Grass biographer, said in the same article that he was "personally disappointed," adding that the revelation marks "the end of Grass' moral authority."
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