Lindahl - The pendulum: a granddaughters search for her familys forbidden Nazi past

Praise for

The Pendulum: A Granddaughters Search for Her Familys Forbidden Nazi Past

An extraordinary meditation on evil and complicity and on the role future generations play when trying to uncover a perfidious past. With a brilliant prose that often reads as poetry, Julie Lindahl explores and discovers her familys Nazi past. A narrative that is deeply moving as well as informative in its history.

Marjorie Agosin, Wellesley College; author of I Lived in Butterfly Hill

I opened The Pendulum and immediately found myself drawn into it. As a historian, I often wondered how we could profit from the determined pursuit of haunted family stories by descendants of individual perpetrators. Heres the breathtaking answer.

Jochen Bhler, Friedrich-Schiller University, Jena

In the literature of the Holocaust, the story of the perpetrator is rarely told from the inside. Julie Lindahl has taken on this painstaking task when she tells us the story of her family. It is written from the heart but has outstanding literary qualitiesa rare but phenomenal combination. The result is a very important book that is difficult to put down before you reach the end.

Stefan Einhorn, Karolinska Institute; author of The Art of Being Kind

Outstanding insights into the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaustbased on the perspective of both perpetrators and their descendants. The book is indispensable for anyone who wants to see the extent and complexity of the lasting influence of war, not only in its own time but also for future generations.

Eskil Franck, Uppsala University; former director, The Living History Forum

A powerful book about good and evil that has become even more important in todays climate of mounting far-right extremism and alternative facts.

Hdi Fried, author, psychologist, and Holocaust survivor

I have never read a book as perceptive, intuitive, and courageous as Julie Lindahls memoir. She is the first of her generation to describe the reverberations of that terrible Darwinism, that Herrenmensch orientation, and its overwhelming consequences, so profoundly. I thank her with all my heart.

Gerhard Hoch, theologian and historian of Nazism in Schleswig-Holstein

A powerful, painfully human, and honest work of words and heart.... Beautiful in the writing sense, horrific in reflection upon all the lives.

James Wine, American poet, writer, and filmmaker

The Pendulum

A Granddaughters Search for Her Familys Forbidden Nazi Past

Julie Lindahl

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

For the angels of hope

Umacha Hashem dima meal kol panim

God will wipe the tears from all faces

Isaiah 25:8

Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of selected individuals. The author is happy to correspond with other qualified researchers in order to facilitate continued historical inquiry.

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

www.rowman.com

Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB, United Kingdom

Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

Copyright 2019 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lindahl, Julie Catterson, author.

Title: The pendulum : a granddaughters search for her familys forbidden Nazi past / Julie Lindahl.

Description: Lanham, MD : Rowman & Littlefield, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018027691 (print) | LCCN 2018028013 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538111949 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538111932 (cloth : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Lindahl, Julie Catterson. | Lindahl, Julie CattersonFamily. | WomenSwedenBiography. | Grandchildren of war criminalsGermanyBiography. | Holocaust, Jewish (19391945)Atrocities.

Classification: LCC CT1328.L385 (ebook) | LCC CT1328.L385 A3 2018 (print) | DDC 940.53/18092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018027691

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Cover illustration by Alice Wellinger, whose Austrian grandparents fled the Nazis. They left Europe for South America in 1940, traveling through Hamburg as Lindahls grandparents did twenty years later. Wellingers mother and aunt were born in Colombia, and Wellinger herself now lives in Austria. The image was first published in the Spring 2017 issue of Wellesley Magazine along with Lindahls long article The Hidden Truth.

Prologue

If I looked back would I, like Lots wife, turn into a pillar of salt? Would I become brittle and crumble at the sight of devastation as I looked over my shoulder? Or perhaps like Orpheus, who looked back to ensure that his love, Eurydice, was following him out of the Underworld, might I lose all that I held most dear? Whether the law of Gods angels or Hades, the dictate was the same: do not look back upon the story of your ownthe story of the deadlest calamity befall you.

Day to day, most of us live unaware of the extent to which we are influenced by the legends of our own cultures, important stories rich in learning, as long as we do not allow them to become propaganda. By the time I was in my early twenties and had started to become conscious that the story of my own family was troubled, I was fully immersed in the propaganda of our cultures legends. To pursue the answers to my questions risked the unimaginable, which only dared to reveal itself in the many fearful nightmares that fade in daylight. Yet, like the art we remember because it uncloaks our emotions, the nightmares left permanent traces. In them I had become the cause of suffering among those I loved, the object of their wrath, and, as a consequence, endured an expulsion from the safe structures that I had once known. Somewhere at the root of all this fear was the legacy of human evolution, which made the familythe tribethe basic unit of safety. It follows that to question it must be to bring ourselves down.

There are many strands to disentangle in this narrative, and, to a great extent, that is what these years of exploration have been about. What is it that we will see if we look back, and why must looking back be punished with severity? Will we really bring down our families by doing so? While these are questions asked by the descendant of a perpetrator, my conversations with Holocaust survivors and their descendants have revealed that there are some dilemmas that we share, in particular the burdens of guilt and shame.

The urge to cut loose from the past has always been great. History can seem a burden that we must unshackle ourselves from in order to march confidently forward into a bright new future. Dear friends often entreated me not to dwell in it, not least as some of them had experienced World War II and the Holocaust, and knew the horror and the loss all too well. The desire to protect the young from our sordid past, and to keep them inside the boundaries of our figurative beautiful gardens, is strong. As a mother I know this instinct well. I have met people who believe they will be defined by an undesirable past if they speak about it, and others for whom the degree of pain evoked by memory threatens insanity. I sympathize with all these instances, particularly when it comes to the victims, who have experienced firsthand the evil that humans can wreak. I dont use the term evil lightly, and I have often objected to calling any person, no matter what they have done, evil, because it can become a label that we use to absolve ourselves from trying to understand the human condition. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that there are acts of evil.