Word: grass
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...former trade unionist and Polish President Lech Walesa is the city of Gdansk's most famous son, then its second-most famous progeny is probably the Nobel Laureate German writer Gunter Grass. Grass, of course, was born in Danzig, as Gdansk was known before it reverted to Poland at the end of World War II. And while Walesa became internationally renowned for leading the shipyard strike that led to the formation of the Solidarity trade union and proved to be a decisive blow in the collapse of Polish communism, Grass was honored for his passionate and clear-eyed excoriation...
...when Grass confessed that, as a teenager in the closing months of World War II, he had joined the Waffen SS, Walesa was a prominent critic, demanding that the German writer be stripped of his honorary citizenship of the city. Now, a year later, Grass is being welcomed back to Gdansk with a series of performances, readings and panel discussions to mark his 80th birthday - and Walesa is among those welcoming...
...interview with TIME, Walesa explained his change of heart: Because his own father was killed while fleeing the Germans, he said, he had little tolerance for "that generation." But in figures such as Grass, "we see examples of those who are helping us pass from a hostile period to a period of peace...
...Grass, for his own part, said he was happy to be back in the city of his birth to "spend time with friends." He said he was grateful to the city fathers for being understanding of his troubles, and for deciding to reach out to him despite the criticism he faced in many quarters. "In those difficult days, it was a great help for me," he said Thursday. "I felt cornered and then I got this signal of tolerance and openness from my home town...
...memoir, Peeling the Onion, which was published in Germany last year and in the U.S. this summer, Grass revealed for the first time that, after joining the armed forces at age 16 in the fall of 1944, he was drafted into the SS, the fanatical branch of Adolf Hitler's army -although by the time he took up arms, the war was all but over. (He writes, credibly, that he never actually fired a shot.) Grass's memoir describes in detail the conditions he encountered in the chaotic retreat before the advancing Red Army in the closing months...