Memory and Totalitarianism by Luisa Passerini

Author:Luisa Passerini [Passerini, Luisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Psychology, Creative Ability, History, Modern, 20th Century, Political Science, General, Social Science, Anthropology, Cultural & Social
ISBN: 9781412828420
Google: uPzDz-aFZdkC
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Asked whether such measures had not relieved and frightened him at the same time, Kamp answers in the affirmative. But later on he talks again exclusively about the horror of the wild violence of the individual and the attempts at education by the party. Kamp’s process of rethinking did not simply engender in him a love for the Russian people—whom he describes, using die typical, innocuously racist stereotypes: ‘friendly, good-natured, like their liquor, irascible’—rather, he views the Soviet army as the first new power that has come to re-establish law and order; a power that provides the first semblance of security once again for his endangered existence, giving his damaged identity a firm renewed hold.

He had also found this security as a 10-year-old in the process of his separation from the familial ties of childhood through his participation in the National Socialist children’s organization (Jungvolk). He still recalls: he was accepted on 20 April 1939 (Hitler’s birthday), while the formal oath-swearing ceremony was a few weeks later; the formula contained words like ‘young, hard, silent, faithful, there was something in it like “honour” ‘, and then he got a camping knife ‘on the blade there were the words “blood”, er, “blood and honour” ‘. Training was ‘very hard, very hard, I mean very hard. Service also was very hard, the cross-country field games were also very rough stuff.’ Again and again, Kamp uses this word ‘hard’ (hart) that for him had already characterized the rigid politics of the Soviet officers after 1945. In the field games, what was at stake was the ‘life ribbon’, an armband or kerchief that was then kept by the victor. It stood for ‘life or death’. Kamp was often scared; often needed courage. On the other hand, he had experiences of strength too, like when he marched through the streets of towns and villages with his unit and their band:

that was really powerful, the window-panes were almost rattling in their frames. That was really powerful, very impressive. And then we had these cross-country field games on a grand scale, I mean a thousand or more men, kids. That was very, very powerful.

These adjectives, ‘powerful’ (gewaltig) and ‘hard’ (hart), describe the basic experiences in the authoritarian, strictly hierarchical organization of the Junguolk, where masculinity was experienced and drilled in simultaneously with pain and joy, and the cross-country games were a matter of life and death. Kamp, who praised the comradeship of the leaders in the Jungvolk—he himself, despite frequent, long illnesses, made it to the rank of squad leader—did not experience the collapse of ‘the powerful thing’ until the war’s very end. It was the collapse of the security and power that he had felt by belonging to an organization which was a protective collective, although, when he went through basic training for close-combat in the Wehrertüchtigungslager in 1945 and was at the mercy at night of the harrassments of the intoxicated camp commander, he felt alone. Finally, the only advice he was given, was to set out alone on the way home, right across the territory of the hostile Czechs.

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