Review: Make War No More
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 9, 2013
"When I Was German" by Alan Wynzel is a riveting and engaging memoir of a child who matures into a young man in the US, raised in unique and challenging circumstances of a German mother and a Jewish father. The time period is 1960's and 1970's when the echoes of World War II are still heard in his household, especially considering the backgrounds of his parents.He is caught between two different cultures, religions, and world views and struggles to find his own path in life. Both of his parents were shaped by real events and political propaganda, and their methods of raising their son reflect their own internal turmoil. Christmas with toys but without Jesus, Menorah next to the Christmas tree, Bar Mitzvah followed by visits to Germany, ham sandwiches after visits to the synagogue  - all these events created a childhood as unique as it was traumatic and confusing.At one point, Alan Wynzel writes that his mother "was an open vessel shaped by the songs and marches of the Hitler Youth, burdened by her own pliant grief, twisted, in a bitter circle, into hate." And just when she seems to have gained some confidence in her heritage and looks forward to the glory that would be cast upon  Germany during the Munich Olympics, her country, once again, becomes the center of the world's negative attention, creating more conflict in the family.  In the words of the author, his mother's "Munchen Olympics were ruined by the Arabs and the Jews and I was dreading what she would say about it."All throughout his childhood, the author felt torn between the two strong forces that were his parents. Later in life, he reconciled the situation for himself by realizing that both "of them were bad, and both were good to me, in their own ways. But neither was evil."  They were human and as all humans, prone to error, especially in the dramatic circumstances they were put in by life and fate.A beautifully-written, honest, emotional, and compelling memoir that provides insight not only into universal human truths about the relationship between parents and children, but also into the history of World War II and the post-war era. A wonderful story.