More Background: Time Travel

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." (William Faulkner)

Until very recently I didn't know that there were moving images of my grandfather from his time in Australia. Thanks to my uncle, I found this footage of the Kormoran survivors debarking the cargo ship Centaur in Fremantle, WA on Nov 3oth, 1941 - eleven days after the battle with the Sydney. My grandfather's life raft had come ashore on Nov. 26th, so I assume that it took a few days to gather up all of the other survivors, clean them up, interview them and then ship them to Fremantle.

If you watch the clip below, the guy looking into the camera at the end, that's my grandfather. He must have been 24 at that time, if my math is correct, which is crazy to think about. I was stressed about studying Old English Battle Poetry when I was 24. I'm amazed that he looks so put together, in neat uniform, after being at sea without sleep and much food for five days, followed by prison transport and, I'm sure, the first of a lot of interrogations about what happened to the Sydney.

(This is original news footage that I edited out of an episode from the BBC show Coast: Australia. Season 1, Episode 8. "Coral Coast" Produced by Pria Viswalingam)

To be honest, I didn't know much about my grandfather, even after the war. In some ways this project feels like a conversation with a ghost from the past, in others it feels like an intriguing puzzle where you randomly stumble upon pieces like the video above.

Reading memoirs or listening to stories from the older generations can give us a glimpse into the circumstances of the survival of our families, and we love those stories when they tell us of an underdog defying the odds, dodging bullets, or showing incredible perseverance. We rather keep quiet about the stories that remind us of the moral shortcomings of our ancestors, their violent exercise of privilege or killing others to secure their lineage.

I feel like grandfather's story of survival is an example of that ambivalence between underdog story and exploiting powers on the wrong side of history (for lack of a better term). On the one hand, he was fighting on the side of a genocidal regime that not only threw the world into conflict but also murdered 6 Million+ Jews, political opponents, and other humans deemed unworthy of life. Yeah, yeah, the vast majority of German soldier were probably not zealous Nazis, but they still participated in the system, following orders. That's the scary thing about dictatorships. The Kormoran used sneaky tactics to destroy merchant ships at the risk of killing innocent people. Their mission was part of a war of aggression and they had no business in those parts of the world.

According to my grandfather's memoir, he was eager to hear news about the progress of the war while at sea, but then later in the writing he distances himself from Hitler, whom he calls a “maniac,” albeit only in relation to opening up two fronts in the war by attacking Russia. He does not mention the Shoah in any of his writings, even though most of the memoir was composed in the years 1949-50. The typical Verdrängung of his generation.

Then, on the other hand, what happened on November 19th, 1941, has all the ingredients of an underdog story, almost like a movie script. A smaller ship beating the odds and somehow managing to sink the pride of the Australian fleet, HMAS Sydney II. Then the adventure of surviving on a life raft on the Indian Ocean for five days before landing on Western Australian shore. When you look at the video from Fremantle and ignore the big picture, you just see a young sailor who defied the odds, who is lucky to be alive. Some 40 years later I will be born.

My grandfather holding me (left) and my cousin. 1981.

The past is never dead and it's always more grayish than black and white. You can't really escape that idea when you grow up in Germany. (But my white American friends, especially those who grew up in the South, should be able to relate.) My trip to Australia (with its own history of colonization) will be a trip into the past of my family but hopefully it will just as much be a trip about the present and future. What will I be able to take away from this time travel for my teaching? What privileges did I inherit from this past and how can I use these privileges for good? If 645 sailors on the Sydney died so I could live, what is my responsibility knowing that legacy?

[My flight is on Tuesday and I will arrive in Sydney Thursday morning local time. Stay tuned!]