Rereading what I have just written, I realise I’ve missed the most important point. I’ve ducked the issue, what I’ve written is just gobbledy-gook and cheap philosophy. I have to face the facts. They are what they are, nothing and no one, not even God, can go back and deal the cards again. My father did what he did of his own free will, he acted according to his conscience, the proof being that others refused to do what he did and paid with their lives, or managed to emigrate in time. The other, irrefutable proof is that he kept his files like sacred relics, his military record, his medals, that fucking SS Death’s Head, preserved like blessed sacraments. When you can do nothing in the face of totalitarianism and its vile deeds, when you are already caught in the trap, there is still one last means of self-preservation: suicide. It is our last resort, our joker, invisible, invincible. It is why when the wolf, that magnificent beast, gets his paw caught in a trap, he gnaws on it, he chews it off and finds his freedom, whole, intact, troubling as Psyche herself, struggles on to the last drop of blood and dies of exhaustion and overwhelming relief. Even after the crime was committed, Papa still had this recourse, to give himself up, demand justice in the name of his victims, become again the man he had been, regain his dignity. Instead he ran away, he hid, he lied, he disowned himself and, in doing so, left his crime unpunished, silence was his refuge. He consecrated it. I would have preferred him to have appeared before a jury of his peers with the Bonzen of the Third Reich, Hess, Rippentrop and the rest of them. Solemn judgement gives the crimes back their full horror and restores to the guilty some part of their lost humanity. Silence perpetuates a crime, gives it new life, closes the door on justice and truth and throws opens the door to forgetfulness, to the possibility that it might happen again.