Web Letters: The Strange Silence of Günter Grass

Hello: The article about Gunter Grass and his recent confessions to having been a member of the SS is an interesting one. I believe him when he says he did not commit any crimes, because I think he is essentially an honest man. You can't be such a great writer unless you have such a capacity. Like many Germans, he was caught up in the Nazi machine and paid a price for his involvement. At any rate, I do not think that his admission to having been in the Waffen SS is any less shocking than Alexander Solzhenitsyn's confession to having raped a German woman when he was a Russian soldier. Solzhenitsyn has written about this with great honesty and a feeling of guilt and shame. Both men were present at a time of enormous suffering and destruction, and survived to become two of the greatest writers ever to win Nobel Prizes.

Paul Brooke

North Vancouver , British Columbia, Canada