Jewish leader criticizes Grass

BERLIN - The head of Germany's main Jewish organization has criticized writer Guenter Grass for waiting decades to reveal that he had served during World War II in the Waffen-SS, the Nazis' dreaded military force.

Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Central Council of Jews, said Tuesday that the admission negated Grass' longtime criticisms of German politics and society for not adequately dealing with the Nazi past.

"His long years of silence over his own SS past reduce his earlier statements to absurdities," Knobloch was quoted as saying by the Netzeitung online newspaper.

Grass, author of the classic "The Tin Drum" and many other writings, has for decades stood as his country's literary conscience, urging Germany to face up to its Nazi past and warning against any resurgence of imperial ambition. He has been widely criticized after acknowledging in an interview published Saturday in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that he had served in the Waffen-SS. In the interview, he expressed shame at having been part of the organization and said he was making the admission because "it weighed on me."

Previously, it was only known that he worked as an assistant to anti-aircraft gunners — a common duty for teenagers at the time — and that he was wounded before being captured by U.S. troops toward the end of the war.

Grass, 78, said he volunteered at age 15 for the submarine service and was refused, only to be called up for military service at 17. When he reported for duty in Dresden, he found it was with the 10th SS Panzer Division "Frundsberg." He said that under the sway of Nazi indoctrination he did not view the Waffen-SS as something repulsive, but as an elite force.

Grass has a memoir coming out on Sept. 1. The book details his military experiences.

A Forsa poll for Stern magazine showed that 87 percent of those surveyed did not agree that Grass should give back his 1999 Nobel Prize for literature, as some critics have demanded. Eight percent said yes and 5 percent did not know in the survey of 1,005 people taken Monday. No margin of error was given.

Michael Sohlman, head of the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, was quoted as saying by the Dagens Nyheter newspaper that the Nobel Prizes cannot be revoked.

"The decisions are absolute and it has never happened that a prize has been revoked," Sohlman said.

Officials at the Swedish Academy, which awards the literature prize, declined to comment.

Naw, the Nobel Prize for literature committee knows what it was doing.

No way Grass kept this Waffen SS stuff secret all those years.

That's one of the reasons really honest folks are better off never getting a Nobel for anything.

Grass [by my calculations] was 17 in 1941. That's TWO years before FRUNDSBURG was formed. And I don't think he could have been drafted, under German law, into the Waffen SS in 1941.

3 posted on 08/15/2006 2:17:55 PM PDT by PzLdr ("The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am" - Darth Vader)

The real irony is: The US administration knew of Grass's SS membership all the time, as he was a POW.

Grass's offical record: "W-SS" meaning "Waffen SS".

A pity, that his compatriots didn't know about this.

Which is the problem, I think - as he played the first to be considered as fully "Nazi-free", eager to condemn others for their Nazi record, or to teach how to deal with Nazi past (which turns out to be the role definitely not for him).

5 posted on 08/15/2006 3:51:45 PM PDT by lizol (Liberal - a man with his mind open ... at both ends)

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