Explicit abandonment
We cannot explicitly abandon our responsibilities to know the issues and make real decisions, even if our single vote does not radically alter the political landscape.
I tend to get a little obsessed whenever genuinely-new information about White Rose resistance comes available. All right, a lot obsessed. So many books and articles are thrown together for a specific purpose, e.g., to promote a political agenda or religious cause, that it can be difficult to get worked up about recent publications in the field.
But when one of these rare documents appears, it is more than enough to keep me happy for days — for weeks! — on end.
When writing the post entitled The Clergy-The Judiciary-The Military last week, I was reminded of how I felt when Susanne Hirzel published her memoirs. And then found I could not put it down.
Rarely will a person bare her soul so magnificently. Hirzel spared no one her honest pen. Not her parents, not German churches, not her neighbors, and most of all, not herself. Yet her words were far from politically correct. She saved “black and white” for things she felt most certain about. Which wasn’t much.
The rest of that world was painted not in black and white, nor in gray, but in vivid colors, horrid stench, lice-filled prison cells, apple trees in blossom, hugs, kisses, lies, bombs, and bruises. She made me sort out things for myself, refusing to hand me the easy answers I am accustomed to finding in literature about this evil era.
I quite stopped breathing when she described her younger brother Hans. We would call him gifted and talented. He mastered everything he tried, and he tried practically everything. A pianist, he also excelled in mathematics and physics.
In 1941, he became politically aware for the first time in his life, at age 17. Introverted around strangers, Hans Hirzel could talk for hours on end to people he knew. He believed something was wrong with Germany’s politics-as-usual. His friend Heinz took him home to talk to his father. Sigi Weglein had lost a leg in World War I. He was a highly decorated soldier, a good patriot. And the Wegleins were excluded from German society, Heinz from school, Sigi from his career, because they were Jewish.
Hans and Susanne were distraught when the Nathans, their Jewish neighbors, disappeared. No good-byes, no warning. They took what they could, packed up and left for England. Only later did Susanne understand that they were the lucky ones. It did not appear so at the time.
The Hirzels’ parents refused to talk politics. Reverend Hirzel did not especially care for Hitler, in fact had joined the anti-Nazi Confessing Church. But he was loath to stir up trouble, to call attention to himself by brave words or deeds. The topic generally stayed off limits at the dinner table, with notable exceptions.
Hans Hirzel therefore decided to undertake his own poll, to determine why people had voted for Hitler, why they left him in power as atrocities began to visibly mount.
And this is where I stopped breathing. Susanne wrote of her brother:
He determined that two factors characterized our political lives. First, the explicit abandonment of the responsibility to make any real decisions by carefully examining an issue under strict, self-critical checks and balances. Instead, blind obedience and fanatical faith were demanded. Second, the explicit abandonment of fairness to anyone who thought differently. Fairness was portrayed as a weakness, captioned with the words “the befuddled state of humanity,” which was meant as an insult. (For those of you who know German or Yiddish, you will appreciate the stronger original text: der ausdrückliche Verzicht.)
No, the US in 2025 does not yet compare to Germany in 1941, although our current regime is pushing the limits. And no, I do not believe we should panic every time a swastika appears in one of our neighborhoods. Though we may not treat it lightly either.
But I do believe that our responsibilities as citizens far exceed the minimal expectation that we will vote. We cannot explicitly abandon our responsibilities to know the issues and make real decisions, even if our single vote does not radically alter the political landscape. The whole point of the Shoah is that eighty million voters explicitly abandoned their responsibilities and abdicated innocence. Each of those eighty million likely felt that his or her vote would not change the outcome. Each of those eighty million was dead wrong.
I have to hope that neither we, nor our children, nor our children’s children shall ever have to face the choices that Hans and Susanne, Willi and Alex, and the rest of that noble circle of friends faced so well, so young. The price is enormous.
© 2025 Denise Elaine Heap. Please contact us for permission to quote.
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