My activities in the Hitler Youth were never again held against me. But that is not to say that it was easy for me to come to terms with myself and my country. I developed a lasting aversion to becoming involved in politics, and a deep-seated skepticism about all political and spiritual leaders. It took years to understand the truth that the man whom I adored, and the nation to which I gave my fanatical enthusiasm, twisted that kind of devotion into unspeakable atrocities. I learned in 1945 that my kindergarden friend Heinz had been gassed in Auschwitz. But I also learned, over the next few years, that I had known other victims of Hitler. Of the 26 boys who began the Gymnasium with me, 14 died — all of  them believing they were giving their lives to a great cause. None was yet 18.

Along with my postwar classmates, I was greatly helped in overcoming my brainwashing by the priest who was our Latin teacher. Dr. Schneider had been arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 for making anti-Hitler remarks in his class; he was the only educator I knew who had the courage to speak out. He returned from Dachau with a mutilated arm but no bitterness. For three years after the war, he met with us at least once a week to discuss what had happened to our country and to us.

In 1951, I emigrated to Canada. I had come to admire many of the qualities of the Americans I’d worked with in Germany, but it was still difficult for the average German with any Nazi background to enter the US. I lived for 12 years in British Columbia, marrying a Canadian and working at a variety of jobs; then my wife and I applied for permanent visas so we could move to California. It took perhaps five months for my records to be checked and I was asked to appear at the American consulate in Vancouver. But just as when I became a US citizen, six years later, I encountered almost no interest in my political past. Of course, I had never been a member of the Nazi Party, though only because one had to be 18 to join.

In 20 years of living in the US, I have been continually amazed at the ease with which people have accepted me, even when I told them about my past. In fact, I have been most disturbed by people’s assumption that I share their prejudices, and I am appalled by the hatred I have witnessed in Americans. Quite a few acquaintances, some of them college-educated, have told me bluntly that “you Nazis” had done “ a good job on the Jews.” More often than I care to remember, I have heard the sentiment that it was “too bad you Nazi guys didn’t have the chance to do the same job on the niggers.” And a black colleague told me bitterly one day that I, who had waged war on his country, was far more readily accepted here than he was.

Faced with this sort of sickness, and with the shame so many Germans felt, I wished for years that the whole Nazi era could simply be forgotten. But five years ago, I mentioned in an article in the San Diego Union that I had once been a Hitler Youth leader and had fought for the Nazis, and that to my mind, any American who walked around in a Nazi uniform had to be a nut. I received two death threats — not because I had once supported Hitler, but because I disapproved of the wearing of Nazi regalia.

It was then that I realized that the past does not speak for itself, and that each of us is responsible for giving it a voice. I know now that to be silent can be criminal.