Re:Why Kundera Never Went Home
by kachnuv_ocasek on Thursday August 03, 2023 @05:57AM
(#36983643)
Perhaps, unlike them, Kundera had a sense of shame.
This. I think he was quite affected by it. You do a stupid thing when you are young and naive, it destroys other person's life and you have to live it with it forever.
Re:Why Kundera Never Went Home
by WeylandYutani on Thursday August 03, 2023 @07:49AM
(#36984500)
Germany and many other European countries did have these scandals in the 60s and 70s when the new generation asked uncomfortable questions about what their parents did in the war.
There's an interesting detail around Gunter Grass; he was part of the big literary voices asking the uncomfortable questions, which was part of his success in the 1960s and 1970s. Long after that success, in 2006, he revealed that he was in the Waffen-SS himself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCnter_Grass#Waffen-SS_re...
Re:Why Kundera Never Went Home
by everybodyknows on Thursday August 03, 2023 @10:50AM
(#36986759)
According to his account, the alternative to the SS was a punishment unit:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/06/04/how-i-spent-th...
That never stopped thousands of other artists, politicians, writers, businessmen, and so on having done the same or much much worse. Heck, most of Germany's ex-Nazi establishment continue to not only live in Germany, but to hold positions of power post war, be public intellectuals and so on.