This autobiographical story by Christa Wolf provides a unique perspective on the final days of World War II, told from the viewpoint of a middle-aged German woman looking back on her time as a teenager fleeing the Russians with her family. Part of a column of refugees, she recounts being strafed by American fighter planes, learning of Hitler’s death, encountering a retreating Wehrmacht unit, and coming face-to-face with liberated concentration camp survivors. Ironically, some confronting experiences on reaching the “safety” of American lines leave her in tears. Themes: war, the vagaries of memory/selective amnesia, changing perspectives, dislocation, loss, death.
The story’s title refers to the protagonist’s reluctance to engage in conversation with a concentration-camp prisoner who sat with them by their fire in the American encampment. Earlier in the story she concedes that, contrary to popular belief, many Germans in what is now Poland were aware of the existence of the concentration camps. In spite of what we protested to each other and ourselves, we knew. She goes on to admit how easy it is to put aside such unpleasant thoughts. Fearing that the camp survivors would attack as they approach the refugee column, she writes: And to my horror I felt, It is just, and I was horrified to feel that it was just, and knew for a fraction of a second that we were guilty. I forgot it again.
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