Nazi crimes remain burden on Germans -- 'Grandfather was a murderer'

BERLIN - Rainer Hoess was 12 years old when he found out hisgrandfather was one of the worst mass murderers in history.

The gardener at his boarding school, an Auschwitz survivor, beathim after hearing he was the grandson of Rudolf Hoess, commandant ofthe death camp synonymous with the the Holocaust.

"He beat me, because he projected on me all the horror he wentthrough," Rainer Hoess said, with a shrug and a helpless smile."Once a Hoess, always a Hoess. Whether you're the grandfather or thegrandson - guilty is guilty."

Germans have for decades confronted the Nazi era head-on, payingbillions in compensation, meticulously teaching Third Reich historyin school, and building memorials to victims.

The conviction Thursday in Munich of retired Ohio autoworker JohnDemjanjuk on charges he was a guard at the Sobibor Nazi death campdrives home how the Holocaust is still very much at the forefront ofthe German psyche.

But most Germans have skirted their own possible familyinvolvement in Nazi atrocities.

Now, more than 65 years after the end of Hitler's regime, anincreasing number of Germans are trying to pierce the familysecrets.

Some, like Hoess, have launched an obsessive solitary search.Others seek help from seminars and workshops that have sprung upacross Germany to provide research guidance and psychologicalsupport.

"From the outside, the third generation has had it all -prosperity, access to education, peace and stability," said SabineBode, who has written books on how the Holocaust weighs on Germanfamilies today. "Yet they grew up with a lot of unspoken secrets,felt the silent burdens in their families that were often pairedwith a lack of emotional warmth and vague anxieties."

Like others, Hoess had to overcome fierce resistance within hisown family, who preferred that he "not poke around in the past."Undeterred, he spent lonely hours at archives and on the Internetresearching his grandfather.

Rudolf Hoess was in charge of Auschwitz from May 1940 to November1943.

He came back to Auschwitz for a short stint in 1944, to overseethe murder of some 400,000 Hungarian Jews in the camp's gas chamberswithin less than two months.

The commandant lived in a luxurious mansion at Auschwitz with hiswife and five children - among them Hans-Rudolf, the father ofRainer.

After the war, Hoess went into hiding on a farm in northernGermany; he was eventually captured and hanged in 1947, in front ofhis former home on the grounds of Auschwitz.

"When I investigate and read about my grandfather's crimes, ittears me apart every single time," Hoess said.

As a young man, he said, he tried twice to kill himself. He hassuffered three heart attacks in recent years as well as asthma,which he says gets worse when he digs into his family's Nazi past.

Today, Hoess says, he no longer feels guilty, but the burden ofthe past weighs on him at all times.

"My grandfather was a mass murderer - something that I can onlybe ashamed and sad about," said the 45-year-old chef and father oftwo boys and two girls.

"However, I do not want to close my eyes and pretend nothing everhappened, like the rest of my family still does ... I want to stopthe curse that's been haunting my family ever since, for the sake ofmyself and that of my own children."

Hoess is no longer in contact with his father, brother, aunts andcousins, who all call him a traitor. Strangers often look at himwith distrust when he tells them about his grandfather - "as if Icould have inherited his evil."

Despite such reactions, descendants of Nazis - from high-rankingofficials to lowly foot soldiers - are increasingly trying to findout what their families did between 1933 to 1945.

"The Nazis - the first generation - were too ashamed to talkabout the crimes they committed and covered everything up. Thesecond generation often had trouble personally confronting theirNazi parents. So now it is up to the grandchildren to lift thecurses off their families," said Bode.

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HIgh price to pay

Tanja Hetzer, a therapist in Berlin, helps clients dealing withissues related to their family's Nazi past. While there are nostudies or statistics, she said, many cases indicate thatdescendants of families who have never dealt with their Nazi familyhistory suffer more from depression, burnout and addiction, inparticular alcoholism.

In one prominent case, Bettina Goering, the grandniece of HermannGoering, one of the country's leading Nazis and the head of theLuftwaffe air force, said in an Israeli TV documentary that shedecided to be sterilized at age 30 "because I was afraid to bearanother such monster."

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