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Grass comes clean

Just about every biography or memoir of a major public figure promises to spill the dirt on some previously unknown corner of its subject’s life. A little of this is allowed to leak out prior to publication in order to whet readers’ appetites.

In a somewhat less trivial twist on this tried-and-true marketing trick, Nobel Prize-winning author Günter Grass, in an interview with a German newspaper about his upcoming autobiography, has admitted to being a member of the Nazi SS during the final days of the Second World War.

The Sunday Times has the story:

“It had long been known that Grass, who was only 18 when the war ended, had served in the armed forces and been wounded. But until now he had gone along with the story that he had been drafted into an anti-aircraft unit in his native Danzig. The truth, he now admits, is that he volunteered to join the U-boat fleet, ‘which was every bit as crazy’, but was turned down and drafted instead into the 10th SS Panzer Division ‘Frundsberg’, part of the Waffen SS.”

Grass kept this secret from his children and his biographer (who is understandably now a little bitter).

The relatively mild scolding The Times gives Grass at the end of its story gives a small taste of why this late revelation is so shocking, and why the author may not survive this with his high-minded reputation intact:

“Grass’s insistent, repetitive message to his fellow citizens was that they should never, ever forget. It seems that only now has he himself chosen to remember.”

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Read the story in The Times

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