He leaned over me, smiling, his blue eyes sparkling with pleasure. He picked up the baby, unwrapped the blanket, saw that she was a girl, and turned to stone.
“This was your idea! This whole pregnancy was your idea! And what do I have to do now? Another daughter!”
Werner was in a fury. It seemed to me that his eyes turned white. The flame of love that I had felt for him moments before went out. A Nazi husband: What could I have expected? Was it not a regime which despised women and prized only their ability to breed? Was it not a country that had made a religion of twisted, primitive virility? He paced back and forth by my gurney, fuming and sputtering with anger. I hated him so much at that moment, I never wanted to see him again … The next day I received a letter from Werner apologizing for his bad behavior in the bunker. You know we have moments of passion when we are in pain. And then the moment ends, and with it the passion and the pain, and we forgive and forget. But I think that every time you hurt somebody you care for, a crack appears in your relationship, a little weakening—and it stays there, dangerous, waiting for the next opportunity to open up and destroy everything.
From “The Nazi Officer’s Wife” by Edith Hahn Beer and Susan Dworkin
I like this memoir. The book provides surprising details of the life of Jewish people in Nazi Germany before and during the war. Did you know that the mail was never interrupted; that the Jewish people could send packages to their relatives; that they were allowed to travel in the German territories? These activities formed part of the criminal deception of the Jewish population and languished with the passage of time. The misleading privileges went on as the Nazi evil scheme was carried out.
In this snippet, the authors point out that an apology for wrongdoing does not eliminate the harmful effect on the other person. “I think that every time you hurt somebody you care for, a crack appears in your relationship, a little weakening—and it stays there, dangerous, waiting for the next opportunity to open up and destroy everything.” This aftermath reminds me of what I wrote in my book “The Stranger’s Enigma”: “The first intention is what matters in the world of dreams, and corrections, although noble acts, don’t count.” Perhaps, there is not much difference between reality and dream.
