Facing the past to liberate the present

[Music]

when you think of the past

where does it lie i’ve always thought of

it as

behind me done known past

until i noticed it was interfering with

my present

after years of inexplicable feelings and

symptoms

i’ve come to understand that just like

we can inherit

the physical or character traits of our

forebears so we can inherit their

unresolved traumas

or wrongdoings that these don’t simply

go away

that they remain among our roots like

wounds

festering in the dark and then erupting

into the present as they seek resolution

my story is one of many stories emerging

from the long

shadows of violent conflict not a

conflict that i myself experienced but

one

that has nonetheless shaped

and harmed me i must have been about 10

when i first noticed that it wasn’t

normal to have a german

second world war general sitting among

the family photos

to me he was just my mother’s father a

face

under a peaked cap with a with a eagle

on top

it was at one of my parents parties we

had a drill for the arrival of the

guests

my younger brother would open the door

i’d take the coats

and my sister would hand them a glass of

sparkling wine

but on one occasion one of the guests

followed me into the room with a

photograph

and she emerged looking horrified and

muttered to her husband

bit tactless of yuta to have a nazi

sitting on her desk

nazi well i knew nothing about the

second world war then

to me germany was all good it was exotic

sweets and candles on

christmas trees i also didn’t know my

grandfather

he had died a week after i was born and

was rarely mentioned except as a

phenomenal athlete who nearly qualified

for the berlin olympic games

and then after the war as a broken man

who smoked 70 cigarettes a day lighting

one

from the stub of the last however

i always felt that we had met that our

paths had crossed

him on his way up and me on my way down

and at the point where we crossed he

handed me a baton

i had no idea of the weight and

significance of this baton

at school i became more aware of

people’s disgust towards the germans

i hate the germans the only good german

is a dead german

bloody crowd at first i tried to defend

them

not all germans were nazis but after the

1979

tv series holocaust i couldn’t

i too felt disgust but

it wasn’t as simple for me hating the

germans meant hating

half of who i was i think that’s when

guilt or maybe it was shame crept into

my soul

and began to derail me i felt

tainted like i belonged to the other

side

the evil enemy of the war films

i became angry and aggressive and

argumentative

and naughty until i was expelled from

school

as a young adult i did what probably

many of us do with

uncomfortable feelings i try to suppress

or escape them through food drink

drugs danger but ultimately

addictions are a dead end

i then began to withdraw into increasing

isolation and depressions

it got very dark at times

i could feel my potential and

sense my future but i couldn’t reach

either of them

it was as if something kept on pulling

me down

every time i tried to skip or fly you’re

bad

you don’t deserve to be happy you have

to atone

but what had i done that was so wrong

nothing in my life no doctor or

therapist could account for the problems

i was facing

in the end i felt so guilty that i

actually put myself

into prison and what’s more i felt

completely at home among the guilty

and broken of society

i spent years in prisons in germany and

england teaching prisoners art

and helping them to work through their

crimes and issues

what i didn’t know was that i was

actually learning the skills

to work through my own the art room

became a safe space for men to lower

their defenses

paint and color gave them a non-verbal

language to feel

and articulate their feelings

being listened to without judgment

help them talk about what had been

unspeakable

i saw how behind the violence and the

crime

so often lay trauma fear

shame i learned how to condemn the

crime without condemning the person

the prisoners saw my work as or

described it as

hauling one prisoner after another out

of the pit

into which they’d fallen but it was

unsustainable

because ultimately i was doing for them

what i needed to do for myself

the turning point came when the past

collided

with my present i just turned 40 when i

saw

the film downfall about hitler’s final

days

at the end i couldn’t stop crying my

boyfriend was bemused the war was over

hitler was dead what was there to cry

about

but in me the past was still very much

alive

when i got home i googled my

grandfather’s name

and the first thing that came up was a

photograph

of the moment of his surrender to the

americans

in may 1945 in northern italy

he looked smart dignified even

standing in his double buttoned coat

between an

american colonel and a translator

i’d never seen this photo before but

like a key to a trapdoor

i knew i was now on a hot trail to

uncovering the source of shame

that had plagued me it lay among my

roots

and they were embedded in nazi germany

and the second world war

using the same tools as the prison work

i now had to call my grandfather out of

the dark pit

into which he had fallen i became an

archaeologist shoveling shoveling away

the topsoil of denial

shame pain and silence to get to the

what lay beneath buried and forgotten

to understand my issues i had to get to

know the truth

about my grandfather from the start i

vowed i wouldn’t look away from the

truth i wouldn’t reject

or blame or judge

i just wanted to understand

i asked my family in germany questions

i looked through photo albums i read

hundreds of my grandfather’s letters

i made art i researched nazism and the

little known history of the losers

i watched hours and hours of devastating

footage refusing to look away like so

many had

and then in quiet moments

my mother’s wartime childhood traumas

bubbled to the surface the bombs

her flight from berlin trauma

untreated sits like frozen fragmented

feelings

in the body cut off from the hole

it causes a person to go numb or be

hyper alert unable to regulate their

emotions

but it’s not enough to know the facts

the harm has to be felt in order for it

to be

integrated i found i could feel most by

traveling to significant

locations standing on the earth

breathing the same air i found

i could access the memories lingering

there

i stood on the same spot that my

grandfather stood

in italy where he surrendered i traveled

to the homes he’d lived in

visited the artillery school that he’d

headed and the prisoner of war camps

in which he was held i visited sites of

atrocity

monuments and museums dachau

auschwitz and then i traveled across

russia

with my 75 year old mother following in

the footsteps that my german grandfather

had marched with his division in the

massive invasion

of 1941

facing the truth of what happened on the

eastern front

was one of the hardest darkest parts of

my research

the sheer scale of death destruction

and devastation i started out

hoping that my grandfather as a member

of the internationally respected vermont

would be one of the good germans

but then i recoiled at some of his

military

soldier attitudes and then i’d soften

again as a gentle poet flowed through

his pen

my heart sank when he fell for the toxic

propaganda

and ached when he felt bound by his

duty and military oath to obey

and then soared when he refused

was i allowed to feel any pride in his

unbelievable bravery stamina

and skills like british

or other countries are able to feel for

their

military relatives as i

felt my way into my grandfather’s

situation

the easy familiar black and white

narratives of

good bad perpetrator victim

winner loser became more nuanced

as i stood in my grandfather’s shoes

i saw myself reflected both good things

and bad things i

came to realize that nothing

absolutely nothing i might find out

about him

could hurt me as much as not knowing had

i realized that whatever i found

it wasn’t me i didn’t do it it wasn’t my

baggage i was just carrying his

and knowing that gave me the courage to

dig even deeper

until i struck gold the truth that would

liberate me

i discovered that my shame

was in fact his shame the shame of his

downfall

from revered and decorated general

to reviled prisoner loser

outcast both he

and germany had lost their honor the

very thing he valued most

to varying degrees we all carry

unprocessed

traumas and wrongdoings from the past

whether familial societal or historical

they sit in our unconscious untold

stories

waiting to be told resolved

neuroscientists psychologists

geneticists

are all uncovering the mechanisms of

transgenerational

transmissions and showing how they

contribute

to the epidemics of addiction

depression violence and isolation

how they trigger the rage of

unacknowledged suffering

that erupts onto our streets in protests

or violence how they perpetuate the

systemic injustices

of slavery colonialism and racism

and how they shape attitudes and

policies to everything from the

environment

to education to wealth distribution

i will never know all the traumas my

grandfather

suffered or inflicted nor how he felt

he was found not guilty at his trial but

when he was released

in 1948 by the british he was an

emaciated

and broken man he ended up selling

yo-yos

from door-to-door i don’t know

if you can apologize or forgive or ask

for forgiveness

on behalf of somebody from the past

though i’ve done those things

many many times what i do know

is that by facing the darkest shadows of

nazism

and the second world war i was able to

step

out of them by getting to know

and understand my grandfather’s story

i was able to free myself of it

i am deeply grateful to him for this

profound

journey and that’s why i’m standing here

today

because to me it seems obvious our roots

don’t just run backwards to our

ancestors

but forwards to our children and those

who come after

and if those roots are severed or

wounded

or in any way what we hand on will

also be impaired

so do we want to continue to

drag these wounds into the future limp

forward patching them up and then

handing them on

to future generations like a baton

or can we find the courage compassion

and curiosity to create safe spaces

for uncomfortable stories to be told

to be heard to be understood

shared and healed

i stand here today with my grandfather

in the hope that telling our story

will encourage you to look back into the

shadowlands

of the past and embark on your own

journeys

of discovery and liberation

so that we can all move forward

lighter and better equipped to face and

meet the challenges of the present

and release the potential and realize

the potential

of the future thank you

[Music]

you