Synopsis
The Burden of Hitler's Legacy is Alfons Heck's incredible story of serving the Nazi regime, and the bitter disillusionment he suffered as the Germany he loved was battered into oblivion. Only in the waning days of World War II, did he begin to learn of the terror and cruelty that would come to characterize the Nazi reign. And only after years of soul-searching would he begin to accept the role that he had played. This complelling story complements and expands on Heck's autobiography, A Child of Hitler, in which he describes his childhood and life as a member and high-ranking leder of the Hitler Youth. The final chapters of the book introduce us to Heck's relationship with Helen Waterford, author of Commitment to the Dead and a survivor of the Aushwitz death camp. These two met in 1980 and formed a truly unique partnership. Heck and Waterford gave presentations side-by-side to audiences at more than 300 colleges and universities. The final chapter repeats many of the questions audiences would ask and Heck's answers. His openness provides much insight into the how's and why's of the Holocaust.
Review
In this sequel to his first autobiographical work, A Child of Hitler, Alfons Heck continues his story, but with the overarching aim of demonstrating that Germans themselves, and most notably the young people, were also victimized by Hitler's madness. With great sensitivity and narrative force, Heck recounts how he, as a youth with Jewish friends and anti-Nazi family members, was nevertheless transformed into a Nazi fanatic like so many of his peers. He does a wonderful job of interweaving his personal narrative with that of general historical events, so that one can fully appreciate the paradox of his rising in the ranks of the Hitler Youth, ultimately to be decorated by Hitler himself, precisely at the time Germany was going down to defeat. From that last moment, as Heck tells it, he undertook a personal quest to understand the forces that led to the disaster and to his own transformation. The book reveals how Heck began to find and, eventually, reached a broadened historical self-consciousness in the wake of Germany's ruin; in short, it describes his evolving and personal denazification. This book is to be applauded for its refreshing candor and trenchant insights, even if sometimes thoughts and feelings attributed to -the young Heck seem to be retrospective inserts by an older and more mature person. It makes for absorbing, even chilling reading, as one sees again the electric magnetism of Hitler and how it came to be institutionalized by the Hitler Youth, resulting in teenage power run amok. Heck immigrated to Canada, then to the United States, where for the last seven years, he has appeared at community forums, universities, and media events, frequently with Helen Waterford, a Jewish holocaust survivor. The last chapters portraying the often hostile reactions to their joint appearances and the kinds of questions and answers they have received underscore the enormous difficulties contemporaries still have in confronting Nazism. Was Heck equally a victim as was Helen Waterford? In the final analysis, that is the burden of this book. --Independent Publisher
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