Tearing the Silence Quotes

“War makes monsters out of everybody.”
― Ursula Hegi, Tearing the Silence: On Being German in America

“What serious children we used to be. . . . Raised within the silence, we lived in communities where the adults were always right, where obedience and loyalty were valued above all.”
― Ursula Hegi, Tearing the Silence: On Being German in America

“It took me a long time to understand that the people of this generation are angry at Hitler -- not because of what he did, but because he lost the war. They make it sound as if it's because of the atrocities and the Holocaust and the whole ideology, but that's not the reason. They're angry with Hitler -- their Hitler -- because he didn't give them what he promised.”
― Ursula Hegi, Tearing the Silence: On Being German in America

“If [my father] did horrible things in the concentration camps, I consider him just as much a victim of the times as anyone he might have victimized. People are victims of circumstance. I've carried the lessons of the Holocaust: What is it in a human being than can change that person into monster? You do have to ask that question. You can't get away from it without repressing a great deal.

I get irate about people in their comfortable lives, looking at history, judging people who supposedly did heinous acts, and assuming they would have behaved differently. We don't -- any of us -- know how we would behave in a situation until that situation hits us right between they eyes, and our children and parents are involved.

~ Beate”
― Ursula Hegi, Tearing the Silence: On Being German in America

“I believe it is important to recognize the capacity to do evil as essentially human and to be alert to what can happen if government legitimizes or rewards evil by providing what historian Steven E. Aschheim calls an 'enabling killing-environment'.”
― Ursula Hegi, Tearing the Silence: On Being German in America

“Even though the individual may not be at fault -- I mean, those of us who were born after the war didn't participate in the horrible events and therefore cannot be found guilty by any jury -- it's not just the individual. It's the collective. It's the culture that bred individuals who created these problems, and since I'm a part of that same culture and my children are to some extent part of that culture, it is at least my responsibility to be aware and to pass that awareness on, because we need to make sure that's not going to happen again. We can't run away.”
― Ursula Hegi, Tearing the Silence: On Being German in America

“To me, love for your country and identification with your country feels suspect. Although I know that nationalism does not have to mushroom into what happened in Germany, I feel the potential of danger when the American national anthem is played and people rise with their hands above their hearts. I flinch when I see the unquestioning pride that many American children take in their country.”
― Ursula Hegi, Tearing the Silence: On Being German in America