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M/CLOUDY Temp: 51 °F Wind: CLM at 0 mph Monday, August 5, 2002 SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA Cyberchef E The People Golf Job Network Headbone Zone Wellness Connection Movie Times Newspaper in Education Oregon CarZone Outdoor Journal Personals Prime Times Real Estate Tempo A & E TV Times W3 Magazine CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find Everything E SOUTHERN OREGON Destinations Automotive Communities Employment Entertainment Publications Real Estate Recreation Shopping Calendar ABOUT US FAQ What's New Advertise Home Delivery Classified Ad Contact Us Media Kit Jobs @ Mail Tribune Email Story to a Friend July 18, 2002 Former Hitler Youth gives reading Author, who speaks of parallels to modern times, will read from his book at Barnes and Noble this evening By BILL VARBLE Mail Tribune A former member of the Hitler Youth says the United States today reminds him of Germany in the 1930s. Claus Hackenberger Reading Who: Claus Hackenberger What: Reading from "A Long Walk." When: 7 tonight. Where: Barnes and Noble, 1400 Biddle Road, Medford. "There are so many parallels," Claus Hackenberger says. He alludes to the U.S. military presence in trouble spots around the world and to repeated warnings of shadowy conspiracies. And while not comparing President Bush to Hitler, he says the president’s call for Americans to report to the authorities neighbors they suspect of being terrorists reminds him of the paranoia he grew up with. "It’s what we were told in school," Hackenberger says. "It’s absolutely the same." Hackenberger, 75, who lives near Seattle, plans a reading from his book, "A Long Walk," this evening at Barnes and Noble. He describes the book as a novelized autobiography of his life in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and ’40s. Hackenberger was raised a Roman Catholic (he was an altar boy) by his parents and indoctrinated with the Nazi ideology at school. "We were told that Hitler was our father and we would conquer the world," he says. "You don’t ask questions." He says the Hitler Youth seemed much like the Boy Scouts. "I was a proud German youth and sang all those songs. We went to camps and had fun. They did this right, I tell you. "But if a kid spilled (a secret), the parent would disappear overnight." Hackenberger was plucked from school and sent off to war at 16. Captured by Americans in 1945, he was put to work under armed guards in French forced-labor camps in the mines until his escape a few days before Christmas of 1947, more than two years after the war’s end. He became an engineer, and he and his wife and son arrived in 1956 in America, where he became a U.S. citizen. Haunted by demons of the past, he struggled over the years with alcoholism, four failed marriages, money problems and the death of a son. He contemplated suicide. He survived cancer. Since his retirement eight years ago he has written fiction and poetry, sculpted and painted. He lives with his bird, Cheata, an Indian blue ring-collar, in Renton, Wash., and volunteers at the Seattle Crisis Clinic, where he takes hotline calls. He’s been clean and sober for 11 years. He says one reason he wrote the book was to document the indoctrination that German children underwent. He asked his mother many years later why she didn’t tell him what was going on. "Would you have believed me?" she said. Probably not, he says. He sees Auschwitz, where the Nazis murdered more than 1 million Jews and others, as the worst tragedy in human history. Although he writes of unimaginable horrors, in the end, his story is about kindness, survival and forgiveness. He says in order to find peace, he had to forgive the Americans who took him prisoner, the people who put him into camps, his nation, himself. " We must live now," he says. "Yesterday does not count and tomorrow may never come. "Forgiving quiets the past, makes it hurt no more." Printer Friendly Version Email Story to a Friend Subscribe Archive: Click to Search Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright 1997-2002 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy web master feedback A D V E R T I S E R S