nerd’s eye view

They just fade away

January 9, 2006 – 12:44 am | by nerd's eye view

Heinrich Harrar died at the age of 93 yesterday. Most of us know him as the Brad Pitt incarnation from that very pretty movie, Seven Years in Tibet. The movie glosses over Harrar’s ties to the Nazi party, but this article in the Times of India calls him an ex-Nazi right up front in the headline.

Harrar was kind of a poster boy for the goals of Nazisim, a bold, strong, acheiver. He’s quoted in the Times UK as saying that his association with the party was “an unfortunate episode.” The article also suggests that without the backing of the Nazi party, he wouldn’t have acheived the success that made him so famous as a moutaineer. The Times article is a pretty good read if you’re interested in the kind of hairsplitting that goes on when any public figure associated with the Nazis gets dragged in to the light of day.

Harrar’s comments are strikingly familiar to those of the new Pope, who states that he never took part in combat or fired a weapon during his time with the Hitler Youth. “Participate or get a gun to the head” is a common response to questions about past ties to the Nazis. Harrar seems to have been opportunisitic in his party associations, Ratzinger, just too weak to resist.

I would hope that faced with such a terrible force of hate, I would have the strength to fight, but I can not say. (Mind you, I’d not have had the chance to resist. They’d have packed me on train, pronto.) Still, I don’t doubt that the nation of Austria will heave a globally audible sigh of relief when the last of the Nazi generation dies. You can bet that they are sick to death of answering questions about their past. Even folks who had nothing to do with the Nazi party, who were born into a whole other world, who have Turkish neighbors and visited the concentration camps in grade school, get an exasperated look on their faces when asked about the past.

The complicated semantic machinations remind me of an old dinner party companion, a veteran womanizer who made us all laugh with this story: Even if your woman walks in on you and there you are, naked in bed with someone else, deny, deny, DENY. No, it’s SO not the same thing. But denial in the face of facts is, well, denial in the face of facts.

To Austria’s credit, she’s finally coming around. The goverment - at long last - settled their Holocaust claims. I picked up a magazine the other day that plugged the Jewish history musuem in Hohennems. There’s an exhibit down in Graz (I’m looking forward to seeing it) about 500 years of Jewish history in Burgenland. I won’t say I never see or experience racism, but I will say it’s the exception. Nazis are an indelible part of Austria’s past, but they are not her future.