Today I had an email from a friend just back from Vienna where he had visited a mutual friend and was just reporting on her state of health and her good wishes. She is a lady in her late 80's whom we lived very close to some long time ago. She is the only
person I have ever met or even heard about that admits she was totally mesmerised by Adolf Hitler - everybody else appears to have hated him from the very beginning! She was born in Vienna and stood out on the street all night long waiting for his visit, wearing her Hitler Youth uniform with pride. I asked her one day how she felt when the war ended and she said she felt was disgusted, shocked, disolusioned and deceived and felt she could never trust her own judgement again. 'Why do you think I never married nor have any close friends?' she said.
She was in her early twenties when the war ended and had a breakdown in mental and physical health lasting for the next 10 years or so and still found it all too easy to break down into floods of tears whenever she thought of the war years so part of the plan to spend a time in England was to try and feel at peace by getting to know some Brits.
She did make friends of sorts with quite a few Brits and went as far as she was able towards friendship. She said she could not believe in a God who would allow all the terrible things to happen and she could not attend church.
She loved music and played it constantly as she read her books and every morning when I passed her door I heard her playing the same music and on asking her what it was she told me it was Schubert's German Mass (I came to love it too and it always reminds me of her)
and every single day she played the Zum Sanctus -
Heilig, heilig, heilig, ...Heilig ist der Herr!
Holy, holy, holy.....Holy is the Lord
Methinks you gave yourself away there dear Leibet.
No comments:
Post a Comment