Germany’s Traumatized Kriegskinder Speak Out

Summary

Podcast Summary: Germany’s Traumatized Kriegskinder Speak Out

Podcast: The New Yorker Radio Hour
Host: David Remnick (with reporting/interview by Burkhard Bilger)
Guests: Sabine Bode (journalist and author)
Date: May 9, 2023

Overview:

This episode explores the lasting psychological and societal effects of World War II on the so-called Kriegskinder—Germans who experienced the war as children. With insight from journalist and author Sabine Bode and New Yorker staff writer Burkhard Bilger, the conversation traces how war trauma was long silenced in Germany, how families grappled with shame and guilt, and how, only recently, have these stories begun to be told publicly. The episode also delves into Bode and Bilger’s own family histories and examines contemporary efforts in Germany to heal through practices like Familienaufstellung (family constellation therapy).

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining the “Kriegskinder” Generation

• Kriegskinder ("children of war") refers to Germans, like Bilger’s parents, who were children during WWII (00:53–01:00).
  • They occupy a “psychological in-between” space—bearing guilt from the war without responsibility or agency in its atrocities (01:00–01:23).
• Many families avoided discussing wartime roles, especially involvement in the Nazi party (01:23–02:10).

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2. Family Secrets & Discovering the Complexity of the Past

• Personal stories: Bilger relates how he only learned late that his grandfather was a fervent Nazi party member and schoolteacher who initially enforced Nazi policies, but was later exonerated by villagers for collaborating with the resistance (02:10–03:55).
• The discovery shifted Bilger from “guilty embarrassment” to confusion and intrigue:
  • “How could a person be both those things?” (03:54–03:55)

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3. The Breaking of the Silence

• Taboo against discussing German suffering: The trauma of German children was not spoken of for decades, partially due to the larger narrative of German guilt and not wanting to focus on German suffering after the war (04:07–05:54).
• Sabine Bode’s contribution: Her oral histories, starting about 20 years ago, were pivotal in opening up discussion about the Kriegskinder (04:07–05:19).
  • She notes that in the 1990s, “nobody was interested” in stories about German war children, and editors at the time resisted such narratives due to their own generational ties to WWII (05:19–06:14).

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4. How Kriegskinder Spoke About Their Experiences

• Many Kriegskinder told “funny” or adventurous stories—or were completely numb and emotionless, recounting events as if “reading from a telephone book” (06:24–06:57).
• “The numbness remained for many...until they got old.” —Sabine Bode (06:56)

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5. Sabine Bode’s Personal Reckoning

• Bode researched her own family’s Nazi past after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which allowed access to archives (08:40–08:53).
  • She discovered that her father and grandfather betrayed a Jewish relative, leading to his murder at Auschwitz (08:59–09:29).
  • Despite the horror, she described the confirmation as a “relief”—it wasn’t worse, and it corroborated her suspicions (09:36–10:14):
    • “All the relatives lied to me. That was really not nice.” (09:58–10:14)
• A common anxiety for postwar generations: “My God, was my father a mass murderer?” —Sabine Bode (10:23)

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6. Generational Differences in Postwar Experience

• Bode contrasts the experiences of Kriegskinder (born during the war) with Nachkriegskinder (born after):
  • Wartime children grew up surrounded by stressed adults; those born after experienced warmth and were seen as symbols of hope (11:40–12:29).
    • “I was carrying the hope, you know, for a better life.” —Sabine Bode (12:24)

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7. Trauma Stories and Their Long-Term Impact

• Bode recounts a powerful story of a woman who, as a child, missed entering a bomb shelter, was left alone during an air raid, and concealed this trauma for decades (13:18–14:39).
• This woman’s memory problems persisted until late in life, improving only as she reconstructed her childhood (14:44–15:15).
  • “She started to reconstruct her childhood, and...enjoying her age then because...now I’m learning all the time.” (14:44–15:09)

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8. Universal Nature of War Trauma

• Bode broadens the discussion:
  • “It is not only in Germany...We find the same stories in Poland and in Russia...Cambodia...South America. That is a universal issue.” (15:35–16:29)
  • Parents avoid confronting children’s trauma, hoping silence means healing, but unrecognized trauma is hardest to overcome.

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9. Familienaufstellung: Group Therapy and Family History

• Description: Family constellation therapy is popular in Germany; participants act out family histories in a group (16:29–17:55).
• Purpose:
  • Sometimes new memories or insights emerge; it helps start a process but is not a “cure.”
  • “War doesn’t end when the weapons are silent, but war does infect narrow relationships...” —Sabine Bode (18:35–19:05)
  • Therapy often results in emotional outpouring (“crying and mourning”), which can be necessary for those starting to face their family’s past (18:55–19:15).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“How could a person be both those things?”
—Burkhard Bilger, on reconciling his grandfather’s wartime actions (03:54)

“The numbness remained for many of them until they got old.”
—Sabine Bode, on Kriegskinder’s emotional suppression (06:56)

“All the relatives lied to me. That was really not nice.”
—Sabine Bode, about the family’s silence regarding their crime (09:58)

“My God, was my father a mass murderer?”
—Sabine Bode, on the postwar generation’s haunting anxiety (10:23)

“I was carrying the hope...for a better life.”
—Sabine Bode, on being a Nachkriegskind (12:24)

“It is not only in Germany...that is a universal issue.”
—Sabine Bode, on war trauma’s international relevance (15:35)

“War doesn’t end when the weapons are silent, but war does infect narrow relationships...”
—Sabine Bode (18:35)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Kriegskinder definition and family guilt: 00:53–01:23
• Bilger’s grandfather’s complex history: 02:10–03:55
• When Germans began discussing trauma: 04:07–05:54
• Sabine Bode on numbness among the war children: 06:24–06:57
• Bode on discovering family’s betrayal: 08:59–09:29
• Relief in confirming family history: 09:36–10:14
• Generational differences (Kriegskinder vs Nachkriegskinder): 11:40–12:29
• Story of trauma and memory loss: 13:18–15:15
• Universality of war trauma: 15:35–16:29
• Familienaufstellung and emotional healing: 16:29–19:15

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Conclusion

This episode offers a raw, deeply personal account of Germany’s slow reckoning with the trauma of its wartime generation. Through Sabine Bode’s pioneering oral histories and Burkhard Bilger’s family inquiry, it reveals how unspoken trauma finds its way across generations, and how speaking—finally—can begin the process of healing. The lessons, as Bode notes, apply far beyond Germany: the legacy of war on families, memory, and society is a painfully universal story.

Transcript

[Sabine Bode]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

[Burkhard Bilger]

A co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

[David Remnick]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Burkhard Bilger's writing for the New Yorker has covered a wide, wide landscape, from rodeos to cave exploration, from Mars to Southern food, music, neuroscience, almost everything on Burke's long list of stories. Every page contains a kind of universe. But over the last few years, nearly a decade, Burke has been researching a subject much closer to home. He's been looking at the history of his own family. He grew up in Oklahoma, the child of German immigrants. And his new book is about their generation, and it's called A Memoir of War, Conscience and Family Secrets.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Well, my parents are both what you call Kriegskinde, as you say, so they were born in 1935.

[David Remnick]

What does that mean, children?

[Burkhard Bilger]

Kriegskinde means children of war. And that means that they're in an interesting spot psychologically. They were very young children during the war and they carry, I think, the guilt of the war within them, but at the same time, they aren't responsible for anything. So this is kind of your in between two.

[David Remnick]

There's no question of agency.

[Burkhard Bilger]

There's no question of agency.

[Sabine Bode]

And.

[Burkhard Bilger]

And so it was something they talked about, but they didn't really go into detail about. My grandfather was in the Nazi Party, and my mother would acknowledge that, but we would never really go into any detail about it.

[David Remnick]

Burke, I have to tell you that even now, it's a startling thing. I remember when we were editing this piece and the pictures started appearing. There was a picture of your grandfather in the obvious uniform. And it was startling for me to put together this guy who I've worked with now for years, and I have great affection for and enormous regard for as a writer. And then there's his grandfather in a Nazi uniform. Tell me a little bit about him and how you think about him and how I should think about him.

[Burkhard Bilger]

My grandfather was a schoolteacher in Aufing, in a little village in Germany. And he was in his late 30s when the war started. And he was a fervent Nazi party member. And at a certain point he sent to a village in Alsace called Bartenheim as part of the German campaign to re educate these young French students and turn them into good Germans now that they were part of the German Reich. But the fact that he was a Nazi didn't really come into our family conversations until I was late in my teen years. And my mother always talked about it as she had been sent there, but she never talked about what he did. And I think she herself, even though she'd written her dissertation on the German occupation in France, she never looked into that history. And so it was kind of this.

[David Remnick]

Blanket, because it was unbearable for her.

[Burkhard Bilger]

I don't know if it was unbearable. I think she was scared about what she would find out. She was scared to look into that hole. And then finally, late in the day, after she'd handed in her dissertation, she went there and she discovered actually that there was more to the story, that he had been a fervent Nazi party member, but then he had eventually collaborated with the head of the resistance in the village, and there'd been a trial or an investigation for a trial, and eventually had been exonerated, and the villagers had kind of come forward to defend him. So it suddenly became a much more complicated story. And I went, I think, from having this guilty embarrassment in my family history to having something that intrigued me and confused me, like how could a person be both those things?

[David Remnick]

At what point did this taboo start breaking up in Germany and started talking about the war in traumatic terms? When did Germans feel that this was even possible?

[Burkhard Bilger]

It's only been in the last 10 or 15 years. I mean, people often talk about how it really began with the work of Sabine Borre, who did a lot of interviews with Kriegs, kinda, and has written three books of oral history about them.

[David Remnick]

She's a historian or psychologist.

[Burkhard Bilger]

She's a journalist by trade and married to a psychiatrist. And she put these books together and they kind of broke into the box. And I asked her how she got onto this big subject and what drove her to.

[Sabine Bode]

Started more than 20 years ago in the Balkan War. You know, TV showed the children suffering. And one day, as I'm a journal myself, so what about the German war children? Must be. They were now getting pretty old or not. Why I never heard about them. Why did I never hear how they coped with that fate? You know, what kind of silence is that? And at the beginning I thought, well, that's an interesting story for me. I worked at the radio station at that time for the audience, and nobody was interested.

[David Remnick]

That's the journalist Sabine Abode, talking with our staff writer Burkhard Bilger. We'll continue in a moment.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Was there a fear? I mean, I know that there's. There's a resistance to talking about German trauma and German suffering during the war, because of course, the Germans inflicted so much suffering, suffering on the rest of the world during the war. Is that why the radio station wasn't interested back then, do you think?

[Sabine Bode]

Yes. And at that time, all the editors in the radio stations or in the newspapers or the people in charge, they belonged to that age group. So I had to wait for a change of generation that people said, oh, yeah, that's interesting. Why don't you make a piece for me that's about my parents.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right, right. So what was your first experience going out and trying to collect stories from Kriegskindel, asking them about their experience during the war and so forth?

[Sabine Bode]

Well, there was one thing, the way they spoke. It was either, oh, it was a funny time. We had a lot of good times, and it was a lot of adventure. And they tell all those stories. Actually, some stories were really funny, I must say, or it was completely without emotion, you know, like somebody is reading something in a telephone book. The numbness remained for many of them until they got old.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right, right. I want to ask you a little bit about your own background. I mean, you had done some of your own research into your family history and war history as well. Right. Was that one of the things that led you into this field?

[Sabine Bode]

No, I had it already done when I did it, and it helped me because I had my personal peace with my family story.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Do you mind talking about that a little bit? How did you start your family research and what did you know when you started?

[Sabine Bode]

Well, I knew my father was a Nazi. I knew my mother was a Nazi. Everybody knew because they talked like Nazis almost until they died. There were these people who said, well, the way I talk about that time, everybody thinks like that, but they just don't dare to say that anymore. My father felt like a hero in a way that he was so courageous to say what he thought. And, yeah, nobody actually, nobody stopped him as far as I remember as a teenager. It was very embarrassing for me. Yes.

[Burkhard Bilger]

I mean, what kind of things did he say when you say, the way he spoke, what kind of things would he say that were classic old Nazi thoughts?

[Sabine Bode]

Yeah, well, what they all said, it wasn't all bad, you know, what Hitler did. He should have stopped earlier. Something like that. He wasn't quite sure if the Holocaust happened or not. At least not to that extent. Not with these millions. He just couldn't believe.

[Burkhard Bilger]

And so then you thought you wanted to look into his own history during the war or his father's history, or what did you then research after that?

[Sabine Bode]

Well, since it wasn't much, they told us, and after a while, but I was only able to do that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, because only then we had access to the archives we needed.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Do you mind talking about what you found? What the background history was that you discovered?

[Sabine Bode]

Well, he and my grandfather betrayed a Jewish relative. He was the husband of the wife. Sorry. He was the husband of the sister of my grandfather. He tried to hide as a Jew. And my father and my grandfather together helped the Gestapo to find him. He was murdered in Auschwitz.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right. So what was it like to discover that? Could you describe the moment when you found that evidence in the archives, how that felt?

[Sabine Bode]

I tell you, it was a relief because I thought, oh, something like that, in way of that he was not a mass murderer. So what it did, it did confirm me in what I always suspected and what I carried with me and said, well, listen. Yeah, yeah, okay. That's the way it is. That was him. And all the relatives lied to me. That was really not nice. That was not nice to think that over, that he kept silent. And my mother's. Well, that is easily to understood. But all the relatives did the same.

[Burkhard Bilger]

So you had always suspected that he had done a war crime, but you'd been afraid that it would be something even more terrible than what he did?

[Sabine Bode]

Yeah, yeah. My generation born after the war or at the end of the war or in the 50s, we all thought that was our main fear. My God, was my father a mass murderer?

[Burkhard Bilger]

I mean, when you say it's a relief, it's interesting. I know when I was researching my own grandfather's history, which is ambivalent, I mean, there's evidence that he'd hid almost courageous things during the war. And then obviously he was a Nazi party member and was in occupied France. He must have also countenanced terrible things or allowed things to go by, if not participate in. I don't know.

[Sabine Bode]

You know, we all come from these families. Oh, why do you always put questions? You don't know anything. Keep quiet, keep silent. Da, da, da, da, da. Yes, but your insight still has these questions. And then after a while you say, oh, I was right. That's a very good feeling. I was right. Yes.

[Burkhard Bilger]

You and your brothers are very slightly apart. I mean, they were alive during the war. You were not. Could you talk a little bit about that? What was the difference between being a Kriegskind to being a Nach Kriegskind, as you would be called?

[Sabine Bode]

I guess the main thing is when there were very small children, when they were just born in the first 1, 2, 3 years, they had parents and they had an environment of adults which felt Stressed all the time, you know. Whereas me, I belong to the generations with the lowest rate of newborn. I must say, when my early remembers is, you know, I walk out the house and I may be three years old or two and a half, and every adult, which beats me, stops, says, hello, how are you? Sabina, Nice to meet you.

[Burkhard Bilger]

They were just so happy to see children.

[Sabine Bode]

Yes. I was carrying the hope, you know, for a better life.

[Burkhard Bilger]

You know, it's funny, that's very much my first memories, strong memories are being five years old. We moved to Germany, to Karlsruhe, when I was five in 1969. And my mother would take me on her shopping rounds every day and every store we went to. The shopkeepers were so kind and they would give me a candy, a gummy bear, or they would give me a piece of German sausage or, you know, and it was that same. There did seem to be this hunger for youth and innocence and children in Germany even later.

[Sabine Bode]

Mm.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Can you tell me a couple stories from people that really stuck out for you, that people told you about the kind of trauma they experienced or stories that might have things that happened to them that might have traumatized them during the war?

[Sabine Bode]

The strongest one I had, and it's about a woman, and she practically the whole war, she was lit in. She was sitting in the air raid center. That was a harbor city and it was bombed from the beginning to the end of the war. I mean, it was incredible what she said that one day she missed the shelter because she wasn't fast enough running to school. And then the alarm came and she wasn't fast enough, and the doors of the bunker was closed. And then she was there alone, completely alone. You can't believe it. And in that bombing, and she said afterward, I never told anybody because I was scared they would tell me, why didn't you hurry up? And at the same time, her mother was a person. She wanted her to be a happy child. And she said, sometimes, why can't you be happy? You know? And this woman had had a handicap, developed a handicap, and only very late, I think she was more than 70. She realized that that came from her war childhood. She was so forgettable. She was so extremely forgettable. She forgot everything, good things, bad things.

[Burkhard Bilger]

It was her short term memory that she like, her recent memory and long term both.

[Sabine Bode]

And then she. She started to reconstruct her childhood, and it was quite a process. And what happened? The long term memory got better and the short term memory got better. And she was enjoying her age then because she said, you know, I Love learning. And it was always hard for me to learn because I couldn't keep things in mind so well. And now I'm learning all the time.

[Burkhard Bilger]

I mean, what do you think? I mean, there's certainly people who will say, why should we care about German suffering in the war? Again, there was so much terrible things were done by Germans. Why should we care about the suffering of the Kriegskindl? What do you say to them? What do you feel about that?

[Sabine Bode]

I say, sorry, it is not only in Germany. I think we find the same stories in Poland and in Russia. We find them in Cambodia. We find them in South America. That is an universal issue. Of course, it varies from the history, from what happened, what kind of atrocities, how many victims, how many perpetrators. Okay. But parents cannot bear the thought that they were not able to protect their children. They're happy when children never mention that again, you know, then they think everything is fine. We have a strong resilience. Everybody of us has, I guess, or most of us have. But when you don't know that you are traumatized, then it is hard to overcome.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right, right. Let's talk a little bit about Familienaustellung, this type of group therapy. I mean, I was fascinated to discover how pop. This type of group therapy is in Germany. And it seems to be. I mean, I'll quickly describe it. It's a type of group therapy that people often use to explore their family history. And what you do is you spend a day or two in a room with 10 other strangers, and each of you takes turns talking to the therapist for a while and talking about what you're feeling, what your problems are, and a bit about your family history. And then the patient chooses strangers from the room to represent family members from their history. And those strangers then proceed to kind of almost channel the spirits of those people they've been asked to represent. They have dialogues. They suddenly have memories of things they did during the war. And often new information arises that they'll say, oh, I can sense that. That I was, you know, I was molested by Russian soldiers during the war, they might say. Or these new things come up. And it's become very popular in Germany. And it seems like a way in which people often explore the past when they can't discover the things they wanted to discover in the archives, or their parents didn't tell them what happened.

[Sabine Bode]

I don't know if it is a therapy, you know, it may be an initiation to start. Yes. My mother, for instance, had a brother, and he died in the war the last day she hardly ever talked about him. And it was her dearest brother, that kind of thing that I sometimes call the ghost of the death. Yes. It is not something which you can solve with that. It can help you to start to get interested in your family story. I don't believe in healing by that. I believe in healing, I think is a long process. I mean, war doesn't end when the weapons are silent, but war does infect narrow relationships, you know, that is why so many people of your age group are visiting for me in Austelung and some of them wish that this is, you know, you get out and you are free. That doesn't work, but it starts. I don't know if it's the one you attended. It was the same. There's a lot of crying, there's a lot of mourning. And that is helpful.

[David Remnick]

Sabina Bode talking with the New Yorker's Burkhardt Bilker Burke has just published the book A Memoir of War, Conscience and Family Secrets. I'm David Remnick and that's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks for listening and see you next time.

[Narrator/Producer]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbass of Tune Yards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrato and Louis Mitchell. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Breda Green, Adam Howard, Kalalea, Avery Keatley, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell and Gofen Imperial, with guidance from Emily Botine and assistance from Harrison Keithline, Mike Kutchman, Michael May, David Gable and Meher Bhatia. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.