An Interview with Author Helene Munson
At once thought provoking and heart rending, Helene Munson has written a cautionary tale for all time. We are honored to feature this one-to-one interview on Hummingbird. For the past six years we’ve been working hard at presenting the highest quality content we can on our blog. It is at times like this that I firmly believe we are doing something right. Here it is folks. With many thanks to Helene, an accomplished North Fork writer. She relentlessly pursued the facts to tell her father’s hidden story. Congratulations Helene for this huge achievement. Thank you for sharing your story with Hummingbird.
HB: How did you feel when you finally did sit down with your father's wartime journal?
I felt terrible at the time, unable to put the information into context. It brought up the transgenerational guilt that most Germans feel when confronted with the horrors of the Third Reich.
HB: Looking back, do you think your father wanted to talk to you about what he experienced or just wanted to be sure that you would read it?
My father wanted to talk about it. For most of his life, it was too dangerous to do so in a country of collective silence. I only realized posthumously how heavy a burden it had been on him all his life.
Do you think that the reason you put off reading his journal was because you felt a premonition that you would learn something that would prove to be a huge burden? Did you suspect that atrocities occurred, or were you taken by surprise by what you read?
It did not occur to me that he might have been involved in any atrocities because, with my father being a high-ranking diplomat and Consul General in New York, such evidence would have already become public, primarily through background checks of the German foreign office before sending him overseas. In New York, he was under the scrutiny of the B’nai B’rith. But discovering that he had fought in an SS unit was a disconcerting surprise. I made sure to find out everything about that unit, which was only involved in combat. I put off reading the diary because I hated the overly romantic, pathetic, and nationalistic style of his language, unaware that this was how the boys were trained to think and write at the elite Feldafing school he attended.
HB: Do you think that the reason your father entrusted you with his journal is because he knew that you would make sure that his story was told?
I hold a degree from the University of London in history and always loved writing. He was hoping that I would tell his story one day.
HB: It sounds as though your father tried to put this part of his life into a "box" so to speak, and perhaps wasn't able to open that box and look in until much later in life. Is this true, and do you think he was successful in segregating it from post war life, the life he led with your family?
Nobody in Germany was able to segregate their terrible experiences from their post-war family life, though no one talked about it, which made it worse. My generation of post-war children always sensed that there was something very wrong. Today there is a Kriegsenkel – grandchildren of war movement in Germany. We are acknowledging that our parents’ generation removed the physical ruins of the war, and we are removing the emotional wreckage. I am in the process of writing a second book about that subject. I will call it: ‘Growing up in post-Nazi Germany’ as the war experiences were only part of what traumatized our parents’ generation. My mother, for example, five years younger than my father, was as traumatized by the KLV (Kinderlandverschickung), the Nazi program that separated children from their parents, as she was by the war bombings. Her unresolved trauma affected me more than my father’s problems, as he had the benefit of spending his early years in South America, far away from Nazi youth programs.
HB: When did you know that you would feel compelled to write this book?
I was attending a lecture at Oxford Brookes University on armed conflict and the use of child soldiers by the FARC in Colombia. It occurred to me that my father’s story was a cautionary tale as to what happens when children are abused as combatants. It is a warning for today when youngsters are fighting in Ukraine. The psychological damage that is inflicted on them right now is so great that if my story is an example, we can expect their children to write a book about it in the year 2100.
HB: Do you remember incidents or times that you now recognize as the effects of your father's wartime trauma that impacted him greatly and also influenced your family?
We were always aware of the effects without knowing their origins. He would have outbursts of rage. My father did not trust people, always questioning their ulterior motives. He had been trained to sacrifice himself for the fatherland, which meant, for example, unquestioningly, he accepted a diplomatic hardship post in Liberia with two young children and his wife, who lost her pregnancy due to malaria medications.
HB: Can you talk a little about your father's relationship with his aunt?
Auntie Tali was one of those women who were condemned to spinsterhood as not enough men had returned from WWI. My father Hans was the child she never had. For him, she was a substitute mother for the twelve years that he was separated from his parents. He was critical of his birthparents for not making more of an effort to rescue him from Germany, but he felt that Auntie had done her best with what she knew at the time, even though she had sent him to a Nazi elite school. During the war, she had gone on a starvation diet to give him extra food rations. The resulting health problems lead to her early death.
HB: What are some of your "stand-out" memories of your father in relation to his comrades in later life?
He had almost no contact with his few surviving comrades except for the Hacker family, whose son had bled to death in front of him. As for his schoolmates, he wanted nothing to do with them.
HB: In reading Hitler's Boy Soldiers, I felt that you were compelled, driven to tell his story and to make known what had happened to as many as 300,000 children. Were you a woman on a mission? Was that mission to expose the truth and to honor the youth, spirit and lives lost among these children?
Yes, I was determined to get this book published. I think those children’s sufferings deserve to be acknowledged. It was little consolation to them that the pain was inflicted on them by their parents and educators. Abusing their own children and accepting their deaths as collateral damage is just one more piece of evidence of how murderous and inhumane the Nazi regime was.
HB: Was the mission to help you better understand the man that was your father?
The first draft of the book was personal, but the final draft was intended as a cautionary story that we cannot ever allow any regime to use our children for their own agenda.
HB: Do you feel you accomplished what you set out to do in writing your father's story?
Yes, I am grateful that I managed to get the story out there. My thanks go to all those who helped with this important project.
Book Signing Event
Barnes & Noble in Riverhead
1470 Old Country Rd, Riverhead, NY 11901
Friday, January 27, 2023
5:00 - 7:00 p.m.
About the Author
Helene Munson, born in Germany, raised in Brazil and Liberia, British educated, has always traveled the world and loves writing about all the wonderful and not so great people and places she has encountered. She considers the North Fork, Long Island her home and she is a member of the North Fork Writers Group.
Helene Munson's nonfiction book, part memoir and part WWII and Third Reich history was published by The History Press in the UK in October of 2021 and by The Experiment in the USA in May 2022.
Helene reports that her family's surviving documents, photos and heirlooms in addition to her own travel mementos feature prominently in her writing which additionally includes published short stories. Helene Munson has been a guest contributor on thehummingbirdpost and will be joining HB as a regular contributor in the near future.
