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I learned a great deal of history about the Nazis and the people of Germany from Ms. Rosmus. There is a long history and one that should have been uncovered. Having visited Eastern Europe last year, I was most enchanted by Passau. During that trip I was brought so close to my father and the fact he had been a German POW for 14 months. I picked this book up to read about Passau and found a deeply moving and enlightening understanding of German Nationalism and anti-Semitism. I gathered a new understanding of American racism and the deep connection to it and the election of our President Elect.
For 32 years Rosmus has dedicated her life to uncovering anti-Semitism and the Nazi past of her hometown in Bavaria, and to combat the Neo-Nazis in Germany. Nestled along the Danube in southern Germany, Passau is a pleasant tourist destination known for its historic buildings and scenic views at the intersection of three rivers. But for decades, the small Bavarian city suppressed an intimate association with Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Passau is certainly a prime example of a charming town on the banks of the Danube which has to this day denied a very cruel and tragic past. This is a must read for anyone who is interested in the German war machine that systematically swept up millions in their killing machine. The best chapters are the ones that deal with Rasmus’ family history, including what her grandmother did in the Second World War.
About the authors
This book is more about her journey in an abstract sense, a family history and a history of discovery instead of the discovery itself. This was only the second time in my life that I had known my grandmother to write a letter. The first one she had addressed to me, shortly after my move to the United States in the summer of 1994. She knew how important it was to me to see the memorial service become a reality, and so she sat down to write what would become her second letter. He wrote back, saying that he saw no reason not to come together at the cathedral for an interfaith prayer. And the famous Passau organ, he said, had no reason to remain silent for the service.
This reached a pinnacle during the period of post Weimar Republic and WWII. Ms. Rosmus has done a good job giving those of us who did not have to endure what happened some insight as to how it happened.. Just one day earlier, however, things had looked considerably different. So read the final appeal, read by many of the citizens of Passau, on Monday, 30 April 1945, in what was to be the final issue of the local newspaper, the Donauzeitung. Once one of the most powerful publications in the area, it now consisted of just one meager page. And on that day in April, this single page contained a single, final appeal.
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Anna Rosmus was born in 1960 in the pleasant middle-class town of Passau. Aged 20 she began to realise that her hometown had a dark past, and was inextricably linked to the Nazi regime. When she began to investigate what had happened there during the war she met only hostility and a deep reluctance to face the facts. This motivated her to delve even deeper and it wasn’t long before she became a committed activist and has since devoted her life to revealing the atrocities perpetrated in her native town and surrounding area and to campaigning for the commemoration of all who suffered there. Legislative Resolution honoring "the tireless, courageous and often life-threatening efforts... against the acts and effects of racism, bigotry and hatred, remembering the warnings of a tragic and blackened history...to educate future generations" by the State of New York, in October 1992.
These stories also include some horrifying and some touching ones concerning Passau. Connections are made to Hitler, who spent time in the city, as well as to the lingering Nazism of some the citizens. Which means at times it reads almost like two books in one – part city history, part personal history. In some ways, it is about guilt of a country and coming terms with it. But this dual personality at times leaves the reader wondering what the purpose is.
More Books by Anna Elisabeth Rosmus
The appeal was written by Commander Major General von Hassenstein. However, by the time the appeal appeared in print and the people of Passau had a chance to read it, General von Hassenstein had long since completed the arrangements for his death by assassination—that is, his suicide—which was to be carried out in his domicile in a nearby forest. When faced with these facts, I was determined to do anything I could to change the situation in favor of a more honorable form of commemoration. For a ceremony planned for the year 1995, I wanted to find at least fifty survivors of the concentration camps as well as fifty members of the liberation forces.
I do wish that a chapter had been added or the epilogue expanded to address highlights of her life and work in the 10 years since this book was initially published in 2004. The woman who started it, who stars in it, got the idea when she was working as a re-enactor at a historical site (I believe Mt. Vernon) and got asked stupid questions. She even had people try to argue in front of students that slavery wasn’t really that bad of a thing. I wish I would have read this book prior to going to Passau.
Out of Passau : : Leaving a City Hitler Called Home, Anna E Rosmus, (ebook)
I planned to invite them to return to Passau to give testimony, and to celebrate the anniversary of the end of these crimes against humanity. "ALL COWARDLY TRAITORS WILL BE PUT TO DEATH! LONG LIVE GERMANY! LONG LIVE THE FÜHRER!" So read the final appeal, read by many of the citizens of Passau, on Monday, 30 April 1945, in what was to be the final issue of the local newspaper, the Donauzeitung. In many ways, this is one of the most terrifying Holocaust books. Horrified we look back on the terrors and tortures committed against the Jews under Hitler, but we have some comfort in viewing the guilty faces of the civilians forced to view the sites. Anna Rosmus has spent her life trying to reveal and document the role of the everyday person in aiding the atrocities of the Nazis in her home town of Passau.
There are professional historians and journalists who have written better books on the Holocaust in general, but Rosmus had the unique ability to write about her hometown of Passau, Germany. She obviously has made it her life’s work to dig into documents and do interviews that most of her neighbors would like to forget. On their approach through the Bavarian Forest, American troops first entered the Passau region on 24 April 1945.
She never dreamed her youthful research would be the start of a distinguished publishing career and that her life would be the basis for the 1990 Academy Award-nominated film "The Nasty Girl". Since Rosmus had no knowledge of these and other Nazi affiliations and activities in her hometown, she embarked on her essay project confident that the Passau citizenry would be proud of her findings. She never dreamed her youthful research would be the start of a distinguished publishing career and that her life would be the basis for the 1990 Academy Award-nominated film The Nasty Girl. Passau, Germany, her entire life, yet she was unaware that the father of Heinrich Himmler had once been a professor at the college-preparatory high school she attended or that Adolf Hitler and other prominent Nazi party members had grown up just across the Danube River in Austria. About her fateful decision to expose her hometown's Nazi past. In this volume Rosmus recounts her determination after years of persecution, threats and physical attacks to immigrate to the United States.
This "fame" would, of course, have been severely damaged had anyone pointed out that the factory, which today manufactures cog-wheels, had interned concentration camp prisoners, using them as slave labor to make parts for German tanks. Nevertheless, one day before the American veterans were to arrive, the city of Passau had arranged for a similar event, something they called a commemoration celebration, to take place on 2 May, the day of the occupation of Passau by the Americans. The celebration began at five-thirty in the evening, at the Innstadt cemetery in Passau. Not a single survivor of the various concentration camps and not a single former slave laborer had been invited to participate. Once again, the city held its celebration at the location of the SS graves, where they erected a Hungarian cross, the symbol of the Hungarian SS. In the meantime, a Star of David had been cemented into the ground directly before the gravesite of the SS General Hassenstein. The Jewish community of Lower Bavaria was sent an invitation to formally participate in the celebration, which its president, Israel Offmann, had refused.
Born in Passau in 1960, Anna Rosmus discovered those dark secrets as a teenager—sordid stories of slave labor, forced abortions, and a massacre of Russian POWs. In 1994, she set out to commemorate the forgotten Holocaust victims who had died there, expecting little if any controversy. What she encountered instead was an obstructionist city council, a virulently resentful local population, and an unsettling degree of latent anti-Semitism in a town whose several hundred Jewish citizens had been sent to concentration camps. Eventually the death threats led to her own emigration from Germany to the United States. Anna Elisabeth Rosmus began her life's work unexpectedly at age 20 when she wrote an essay about her hometown during the Third Reich for a national contest.
"Dictators are possible only because of the people who support them and follow their orders." Bravo, sadly, Anna Rosmus. Gives details of the present day cover up of shocking events in city of Passau during Nazi Reich. Anna Rosmus, from Passau, Germany, is the real-life heroine of the 1990 Verhoeven film "The Nasty Girl", who as a teenager, uncovered her hometown's hidden Nazi past. Know that Asmus is respectful and reserved in her descriptions, but that the information by its very nature is stark and painful, even for those of us a hemisphere and decades removed. Thus, expect that you may need to read a few passages at a time. I can't imagine the toll of making these discoveries avout your home, coping with widespread denial, and persisting in bearing witness.
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