September 22 - September 30, 1942.
Storybook:
Willi Graf describes his position on the front lines for his sister Anneliese. He tells her they are in the middle of a forest, only a few meters from the Russian side of the front. “For security, there is a strand of barbed wire running square down the middle of the terrain.”
Hubert calls Willi and they discuss the announced changes for their studies. Start of the winter trimester had been postponed until December, meaning they would only get two trimesters - two short semesters - that school year. They hope that the news does not mean they will have to winter in Russia, but agree not to think about it.
Willi writes a long, comprehensive letter to his good friend Marita Herfeldt. He tells her many of the same things he’s told Anneliese, but in greater detail, with more attention to Russian literature and folk music, her academic specialties. The letter to Marita feels like a conversation.
He takes a walk directly to the front lines. The ground is still muddy, but blue skies and autumn leaves cheer Willi.
On Sunday, Willi Graf volunteers to act as paramedic and retrieve a wounded man from the First Company. It’s an excuse to get out of the bunker. As he’s walking across meadows, he spies a village - Afanassyevka - that appears peaceful. The closer he gets, he realizes it is anything but peaceful. The town has been gutted.
The sight disturbs Willi. That afternoon, he sits in the bunker, not wanting to do anything. “I thought about all the scenes I had seen.”
Werner Scholl visits Hans the same night. Hans later tells his parents that Werner has become quite taciturn.
Hubert Furtwängler visits Hans and Alex at HVP Plankenhorn and stops by Willi’s bunker to fill him in on their gossip.
The last day of September, Willi Graf heads out for Kolesniki, a nearby village. Unaware that the SS had committed one of its crimes against humanity in that town only a few months prior (burning everyone over 70 and under 10 alive in a farmhouse), he enjoys the beauty of the town. Most homes and businesses are still intact. It’s a welcome change from the bunker.
Willi and Hubert learn they will be transferred away from the front lines. Willi celebrates that night by playing skat, regretting only the location, not the card game. Although the two men are thrilled to be leaving the front lines, they are concerned that they could possibly be sent to a worse place.
Willi resolves not to let his surroundings get him down, resolving to keep his nose to the grindstone and do whatever is necessary.
Why this matters:
PTSD is real and should not be ignored. If anything, we as human beings should advocate for greater mental health assistance for our young men and women who return from fighting our wars. If we cannot figure out how not to fight wars, we can at least take care of those who put everything on the line.
Throughout the White Rose story, you will repeatedly see Willi Graf struggle with PTSD. With nightmares from everything he bore witness to.
I do not know how he managed to stay relatively sane and stable.
If you have been following this podcast-serialized audiobook, you know that “deaths of civilians during World War II” is a recurring theme.
The war crimes that happened all around our White Rose circle of friends take civilian deaths to a whole new level. In Vyaz’ma, Gzhatsk, Ržev, and Kolesniki - and in many more villages and towns in Russia and Poland - the brutality of Germans and their allies towards the local populace was unspeakable. Where the Jewish population was murdered in such horrific fashion, often locals would help the Nazi criminals. Jedwabne, Poland is (in)famous example of Polish complicity in Nazi murders.
And Nazis would then turn on their accomplices and do the same to them.
This aspect of the horror of the Shoah has not received nearly enough ink. Every time I get to this part of the story, I find it unfathomable how anyone can inflict such pain, such a ghastly death, on another human being.
If you teach the Holocaust to high school or college students, please spend time talking about this. Two things: How to strengthen international law; and, how to weed out sociopaths from the military. Not just from our military, but international standards for mental fitness to serve.
White Rose History, Volume II, pages 198-201.
Making this segment public, so everyone can comment. Please share! We need a wider discussion of this topic.
Notes and references
Only a fragment of Willi Graf’s letter to his sister Anneliese dated September 22, 1942 has been published. Unusual ‘censorship’ - makes me a bit uncomfortable.
On the “dull” Saturday, I translated das Baden as swimming, since a few days earlier Willi Graf had mentioned that he went swimming with Hubert and “Assi.” Alternate translation could be “take a bath.”
At the time that Willi was observing what had happened in Afanassyevka, the SS and SD were torching the village of Borisova (Borysovka) in the same manner.
The September 28, 1942 letter from Hans Scholl to his parents was highly censored.
Re Kolesniki: Inge Jens noted that Kolesniki was 10 km [6 miles] east of Gzhatsk.
Any complaints about the Graf-centric nature of this chapter should be taken up with Scholl heirs. Inge apparently censored almost all of the correspondence by and between Hans, Sophie, Werner, and the rest of the Scholl clan during the last two weeks of September 1942. Why?
Jens, Inge (Ed.). At the Heart of the White Rose: Letters and Diaries of Hans and Sophie Scholl. Translation by J. Maxwell Brownjohn. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1987.
Knoop-Graf, Anneliese and Jens, Inge (Eds.). Willi Graf: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, 1994.
The Trial of German Major War Criminals (Volume VII). Retrieved from www.nizkor.org/ hweb/imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-07/tgmwc-07-61-03.shtml. Same document can be found at www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/02-18-46.htm.
Errata to auto-generated transcript:
He resolved not to let his surroundings get him down. “Circumstances should not influence me as much, because they are always present and have to be put up with.” The only visible solution to his dilemma involved keeping his nose to the grindstone and doing whatever was necessary. — Italicized portion omitted from transcript.
Podcast © 2024 Denise Elaine Heap. White Rose History, Volume II, Chapter 16, © 2002 Denise Elaine Heap and Exclamation! Publishers. Please contact us for permission to quote.
This podcast is a project of WHY THIS MATTERS, a newsletter of Center for White Rose Studies, that explores the reasons that voices silenced more than eighty years ago still speak to us today.
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Chapter 16, part 3: Try to Remember