Gabrielle Robinson | Api's Berlin Diaries

Born in Berlin, Gabrielle grew up in Germany and Austria. After a PhD from the University of London, she taught Literature and Writing at US universities and abroad. She is the author of seven nonfiction books.  Our discussion for this episode focuses on her most recent book,  Api's Berlin Diaries: My Quest to Understand My Grandfather's Nazi Past.

Gabrielle loves to tell stories about people in their social and historical context and loves to help others tell their stories.  She encourages you to reach out to her with any questions or comments you may have through her website, www.gabriellerobinson.com.

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Transcript

Gabrielle Robinson | Api's Berlin Diaries

Heather Murphy: Hi, Gabrielle. Thanks for joining me on my podcast today. 

Gabrielle Robinson: Thank you very much. I've been looking forward to it.

Heather Murphy: Would you start by just giving an introduction of yourself please? 

Gabrielle Robinson: Okay. I was born in Berlin in October, 1942, and we were refugees in 1945. And after that, I moved around a whole lot. Really until I came to South Bend and I'm settled here now, but I've lived in Vienna and London and New York and smaller towns on the Baltic and you know, just lots of different places. I got my PhD from the University of Lampton and was an English professor and writing teacher for all of my career.

I have published eight books and about 40 some articles. I don't know the exact count and I love to write. And my other passion is to help others write in and tell their stories. And I'm working with people all across the country on that.

Heather Murphy: Well, thank you. And one of the reasons why we're talking today is because of one of these books that you've written about your grandfather and his experiences. Can you give us a little introduction about that? 

Gabrielle Robinson: Yeah. I mean, the interesting thing is I've always loved history and I've written books about historical things, but I never thought that I'd write about my own family that does never crossed my mind until actually it almost literally fell into my lap. After my mother's death, my husband, Mike and I went to her Vienna apartment and checked out the books she had and things, you know, to organize.

And I picked out a book right high, up on a shelf and out tumble two little notebooks. And I picked them up and opened them. And that immediately recognized my grandfather's handwriting. RPSA called Calden. Because I'd spent the happiest years of my childhood with him. He had really given me my first stable home.

And so I opened them immediately and started to read. The first thing I noticed was that they were written as letters to us. Uh, we had fled Berlin in February, 1945 after we'd lost our apartment to bombs, but my grandfather stayed behind because he was a doctor and he was desperately needed. So he wrote these letters to us, which are really daily accounts of what his life was like.

And I think these letters or these diary entries helped him through some of the worst times, because there was stay at night bombing. There were millions of people streaming in from the east in front of the Soviet army and many of them just dying in the streets. They were weak. They have little cards with them, but they hadn't eaten. They had nothing and nobody could do anything for them. And what maybe bothered him was that as a doctor, he could do so little for the wounded and dying in the medical centers where he worked. They had no water after they drained the last drops from the heaters. They had only tallow candles for light. The patients were lying on the bare cement floor and this, every bomb strike, the cement was raining down on them and the dead was simply stacked outside. And of course you can imagine what it all smells like. You know, no toilets, all of these, the blood, the corpses, I mean, it, it, was a nightmare.

So I read this. And I resolved that I wanted to tell the story both as a tribute to my grandfather, whom I love, but also as a historical record. But then I made my second discovery and I never forgot that moment. I had noticed as I was reading that he used to let us occasionally P and G, but I just read over it. There was so much else, you know, I was so overwhelmed.

I didn't pay any attention to it at first, but suddenly it really hit me that meant in German peptide and a member of the Nazi party. And my grandfather had been a member of the Nazi party. That had never been mentioned in my family. You know, I grew up in Germany in the fifties, but I was altogether complete silence about the recent past.

So I did what I thought maybe my mother had done by putting them high up on that bookshop behind books. I hit the diaries again, and I didn't even tell my husband. And then it took three different things to push me finally to do it. The first was that I suddenly, one day it just burst out and I told Mike all about it.

Uh, and he immediately started putting pressure on me to write the Seesaw. It was even more important now to write this and show, you know, how people get caught in totalitarian regimes and so on, but I just couldn't do it. What I did do after a while I was, I started reading about the satellite. Uh, my field had been modern literature and I had never read, you know, since we hadn't talked about it when I grew up, I had never read about the sad writing Hitler and the Nazi period, and now I started to read about it. And the strange thing was that historian after historian stressed how important individual testimonies or accounts of a time, uh, for our understanding of history, they kept saying history isn't just made by the people on top, but it's made by the millions of people and their experiences, and in order to get a better sense of what the time is like, we need to have those accounts. But, you know, I still couldn't do it. It felt so much like a betrayal of my grandfather. And then the third push, the final push was a book, an American book actually.

I was writing a book about housing discrimination, in the 1950s against African Americans. And as background I read, Edward was slaves in the family. And he starts off by saying when he told his family that he was going to write about this, they were absolutely infuriating. He quotes one is saying, you're going to dig up our grandfather and Tang him and has thought, yeah, that's a bit how I would feel.

But then after quite a bit of hesitation, he decided that no, you may not be responsible for what his grandfather did, but he is accountable. And to know that felt as if he was speaking to me. And I realized, yes, we have to face, I have to face my families and my country's past. But from what I see from reviewers that resonates for center, the two that we have to face our past truthfully and not hide behind comfortableness in life. So that's when I got started on writing.

Heather Murphy: I think that's your experience is beneficial for other people who are looking at hard things in their family, that it wasn't, that you just found out this thing about your grandfather and that you were all of a sudden could jump to the end of being able to address it, but it took time and it took a process to get to that place.

And that's okay. 

Gabrielle Robinson: Absolutely. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. That's okay. And it is, um, you know, for those people out of your listeners out there who may be dealing with issues like that, one thing to consider is that writing about it is actually therapeutic, you know, it kind of processes the events of the emotions involved. So once you get yourself, decided that you are going to do it. I think it is helpful and you'll make so many discoveries. That's one thing that really surprised me as I started writing, I also started thinking more about my grandfather again, who had been dead since 1955. And it brought up so many memories that I had forgotten for decades. Do you want me to give an example or just 

Heather Murphy: Oh, yeah, that would be wonderful. Yeah.

Gabrielle Robinson: Um, but one example that comes to mind, although there's tons of them is when I lived with my grandfather, he brought so much joy into my life. He was also very insistent on my education and developed with me on my Latin grammar and all that, but he also brought so much joy and fun and play. So in the fall we would build a kite together.

And he would, you know, get those crossed things just right with the right bend to it and so on and then stretch paper over it and it was my task to put the tail on the kite and paint the face and a German, uh, kite is drachen, meaning dragon. So in those days are kites were dragons, right? So I painted a dragon face and made a dragon tail and so on. They took it out on a very blustery fall afternoon and I first went with it, but soon the pull got too strong and he took it over and I ran after him and suddenly he disappeared and I didn't know what had happened. And I ran to the spot where he disappeared and he had fallen into one of those many drainage ditches, you know, I've, we were, uh, refugees in Northern Germany, which is a very humid and wet climate.

And he sat down there and he laughed, still holding onto the kite. So I jumped down with him and, you know, we both held on we and laughed and enjoyed seeing the kite soar high above us. Those kinds of childhood memories just kept coming almost faster than I could write them.

Heather Murphy: Oh, that's wonderful. What was this process like for you as you would research and go through everything both like with historic, with the documents and also emotionally, as you were learning more and more about your grandfather. 

Gabrielle Robinson: Oh, Heather. I'm so glad you bring that up because it's a pet thing for me, although we write about our own families or write memories, we still need to do a ton of research and I certainly had a lot to learn. But the important thing has been, I've worked with people, but often happens is they do research and research, beautiful things, but then they're overwhelmed.

They're bogged down. They don't know how to incorporate them. And the important thing is to always do the two together, you know, you write and you realize, oh, I need to find out something, you do the research and then you write again and then you need to do more research. So that's a recipe, proper a relationship in a way, but that's important because as a teacher I've seen so many students, never finishing their research papers. Or my colleagues never writing their books, but they have, volumes of research. So I knew how to do that. And I found also so many documents that through the research. an example that might interest your audience just for, its historical value is that, I found my grandfather's denazification document. I don't know whether, uh, you'll know, your audience is aware, but the allies after the war demanded that everybody who had anybody who had been a member of the Nazi party needed to be denazified and they, um, had five categories for it. Chiefly responsible, incriminated, less incriminated, fellow traveler and exonerated.

My grandfather was exonerated, which was a huge relief for me, while at the same time, I knew it brought up a whole other question. What is our political responsibility? Right? There is a responsibility there, but even though he was never active and he continued to treat Jewish patients, I have that all from that document, there is a responsibility and again, something from my stay here. And my experience here, uh, kept echoing in my mind, Martin Luther King Jr. In his letter from Birmingham jail, said something to the effect I'm paraphrasing. We don't only have to repent the vicious deeds of the bad people, but the terrible silence of the good people, right. That really in a way leaves no one out of political responsibility and at the end of the book, I'm trying to pinpoint more of what exactly was his responsibility and his guilt in this, even though he was exonerated. yeah, I mean, that's, that's a lot, it historically to that Hitler, my grandpa joined in 1933, just as Hitler became chancellor and he came to power legally. This was not an insurrection or coup or something. He came to power legally and at first he presented himself so moderately that's one other thing I learned, you know, only knowing that Hitler, you know, the way we usually see him in the beginning. He talked about religious values and bringing back family values and wanting only peace, even closed to speeches with amen.

I mean, he was a different person. So the outset, he clearly wasn't. He had written Mein Kampf years ago. So, you know, one could find out what he really was, but the way he presented himself and my grandfather was politically a bit naive so well at, anyway, I go into all of this, this thing.

Heather Murphy: Yeah, and I've read some of what you've written out on blogs about that, and I'm sure it's in your book as well and I think that'd be really beneficial whether people had. family that lived in Germany during that time, or, I mean, so many people, even outside of Germany were affected by the war to understand more what was going on in history at the time and not just our little bits that we kind of get looking backward. I think that goes for both on those national things and with our ancestors. 

Gabrielle Robinson: Yeah. I mean, a question I often get is where it can it happen here. Right. Because Germany, after the end of the first world war was in really bad shape, you know, first of all, people felt humiliated that they were given the sole guilt for the war, which now historians disclaim completely. They say it was a, you know, unfortunate cooperation of all the, parties, in Europe and even the United States, but there was this huge inflation, where at the height of it a loaf of bread cost 100 trillion marks. And by the time you got to the store was even higher. Yeah, no, it was just crazy. And it wasn't just that it was such a financial situation. It really upset all values, right? The people who had saved, lost everything. So people who did crazy speculation suddenly could be millionaires overnight. You know, it just upset the whole social system.

Plus the unemployment was over 40% unemployment and so much unrest. Also the communist party was very strong, particularly in Berlin, but in the parliament as well. And the Weimar Republic just wasn't strong enough to do anything against well. The gangs of Nazis fighting the gangs of communists.

There were SS and nations. It was a violent place and here came Hitler and I think to a certain degree, my grandfather thought that he was the only one. Maybe he could stand up. So the country and, and sort of get us back on track, in '32, just the year before he was appointed, Germany had five election and none of them conclusive.

They have to keep doing new. And I mean, it was a mess. So then I say can it happen here clearly, all autocrats are very share a lot of characteristics, right? The ruthlessness, the spreading of lies and propaganda suddenly hit levels. I mean, from the get-go. There was nothing but propaganda and lies. There were no more newspapers.

I was only, that was, if you listen to the BBC, you could be condemned to death for it. I mean, they've really, really concentrated on getting just their message up in fact, so much so that William Schrier, who was a journalist there and had access to other media and other information at times said, I felt affected when you just hear one message constantly, the end don't know anymore what's right or wrong.

uh, so they do that. They are violent and they share a lot of traits that we see in totalarian leaders anywhere. But what I keep hoping that will save the United States from anything like that is that we have a democracy that has been established, you know, and this all its faults and frayed this, but for centuries, right?

This Germany Weimar was the first democracy they ever had. And there were still so many people who wanted the Kaiser back, right. They wanted, uh, the imperier dressings of, of Germany and so on. So they had no experience with democracy. 

Heather Murphy: Yeah. So what was one of the big things for you personally, one of the big takeaways that you got from going through this project for yourself?

Gabrielle Robinson: Oh, you ask such good questions. yeah, I mean the first lesson was, I think there's two. the first one starts with, I realized the tremendous impact, the 20th century had on my grandfather's life. Right. The way disruptive beyond belief, he served in the first world war. Then he served in the second world war.

His only son died. He lost his practice and his home and his son-in-law, my father. I never knew my father. My father died a few months after I was born. So the 20th century history had a huge impact on him, but then I reflected, well, you know, in a way that goes on generation after generation and history still has had an impact on me.

So that was one lesson and actually an interesting, thing. I've talked a lot with Jewish, people who have to deal with even more horrendous Holocaust survivors or grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. And they are effected in a fairly similar way to me, having this aftershocks of the Third Reich. In fact, one scene that was maybe the most emotional and humbling is the reception of my book by the Jewish community. I have given talks in synagogues. I've got standing ovations in synagogues. I've talked in the Jewish Federation. They have been just amazing in their response. I was asked, for example, to light the seventh candle at the Holocaust Memorial service.

It still brings goosebumps when I think about that. and then I hope this is this, the first lesson I hope that people will think about the impact history has has on their lives too, extrapolating from my grandfather's story. 

But the second thing is in a way what this Jewish community. demonstrated something emotionally is to have empathy. you know, I know one reviewer wrote, I never thought I would feel, have empathy with a Nazi, but the story made him feel empathy for someone who is so radically different from him. This was a guy, and that we have empathy and understanding for people of totally different backgrounds, totally different opinions and so on.

And I think that would be so important and treat each other with tolerance and this compassion. I would think that is for today, also a particular, take away, I hope from this book,

Heather Murphy: Yeah. I think that's one of the things that people can take away, especially from doing memoirs or different writing their own family histories, even if they never have a published, is that you really get to know somebody that you have a little bit more compassionate on, little more willingness to get all that you can about the story rather than just making judgements about them. 

Gabrielle Robinson: Right. And certainly I learned, you know, I had known my grandfather sort of a pillar of strength and knew everything and did everything. And here I saw him as a, at his weakest at the point of almost total physical and mental collapse. So it was a whole different in a way more intimate relationship to my grandfather.

But that's why I think that your podcast is so important to you because you show people the importance of history and the past on our lives that they can learn from it. And it doesn't have anything to do, whether they publish or not, as long as they write and kind of have an inner conversation about that.

I liked the quotation from James Baldwin where, he says, history is not the past. It is the present. We are our history. 

And I think your podcast is sort of based on that. So congratulations.

Heather Murphy: Well, thank you. Cause that's that's. My goal is because some people, especially with situations like yours, they have these hard things in their past and they do what your mother and your other family members did. And what you did for awhile is you just try to ignore it, but that doesn't mean that the effects aren't there. How did things change for you once you stopped ignoring the past and you decided to face it? 

Gabrielle Robinson: Well, it got me onto a whole different level, you know, partially through the research, all the things I found out that I've never known, it got me to see everything in a very different perspective. That was important. And it got me to understand my grandfather better and it got me so many memories, that really I had lost, you know, I was writing about his death in 1955.

You know, I was still living with him. At first I wrote, you know, the typical thing. Oh, you know, I would never see him again and so on. And just the somewhat cliche things one writes at first and then in the process of writing, because that's what I would like your listeners to think. Just keep on writing.

Don't worry about correctness or anything or where it goes. Just write. You'll be amazed at what. Come to you, maybe even while you are grocery shopping or, you know, doing something totally different. But suddenly came to me, was the image of the gloves with the bent fingers. When he came home. He had came home from treating people in an old folks home in the evening, and he rushed up to his bedroom to collapse and that's where he died.

But, and he did not. put his gloves away. He was very orderly. He would have usually done that. So they were lying at the bottom of the stairs and the fingers of the gloves were sort of bent and looking rigid and dead. And I remember now that for a long time afterwards, that sort of became the, my image of his death. And I sort of saw it and dreams and things, but I had not thought about it or remembered it, you know, for over half a century.

Heather Murphy: Yeah. So that sounds really interesting that as you were learning more about your grandfather, it sounds like you're also kind of learning and remembering more about yourself and your own story. 

Gabrielle Robinson: Right, right. And to your own place in all of this, right. You know, this is, you're all part of this, this, uh, ever evolving history.

Heather Murphy: Right. That's intertwined with every member of your family and they have impacts on you and you have impacts on them and you can't really understand yourself without understanding those other people.

Gabrielle Robinson: Absolutely. Absolutely. 

Heather Murphy: Well, are there any more words of advice you would give to someone wanting to. 

Gabrielle Robinson: but encouragement, I think, um, and to see. Um, the importance of telling your own story, not only do you preserve history, and as we all know, knowing that sort of history, both, family, and larger history is so important for our understanding of ourselves, but as we mentioned earlier, right, it's also, if it's a difficult past or difficult issues, it also helps you to deal with them and to overcome them.

And finally, and I think that is really the power of telling your stories. It fosters empathy. If we see the struggles of somebody else, even though they are from a different country, different culture, different age, everything, it triggers our empathy. And that is so important these days. So keep on writing. Don't worry at first about how it all hangs together or what you do. Just keep on writing and doing research along with it.

Heather Murphy: Well, thank you for sharing your enthusiasm for writing our stories and preserving our family past and kind of fitting ourselves into history even when it's hard. 

Gabrielle Robinson: Yes, but, uh, I think your podcast, does a great service there.

Heather Murphy: Oh, well, thank you very much. And I will have in the show notes, links to your website and your page, if people would like to get a copy of your book or your other books, which you have written. 

Gabrielle Robinson: I love to help other folks, you know,

Heather Murphy: And especially if people have family in Germany, especially, but also with just the writing.

Gabrielle Robinson: that's right. And you know, the blobs on the back of my book. Not odd, but, uh, half of them are from people who have written their own memoirs, but about their Jewish family. 

Heather Murphy: Okay. 

Gabrielle Robinson: So there's a real, kind of a synergy between all of us.

Heather Murphy: Well, that's a wonderful, well, thanks again for, for sharing your experiences. 

Gabrielle Robinson: Thank you, Heather. Thank you for inviting me.