When I first visited Germany in 1986, two of my best friends had died from AIDS in San Francisco just weeks before. I had come on a pilgrimage to discover my heritage and insure I would not be on my deathbed counting unfulfilled dreams. I brought with me the memory of my grandmother singing "Stille Nacht" to me as a child. My very strong but innocent American sense of what it means to be German immediately created problems. The very core of my beliefs about human nature, good and evil, and life and death were about to be challenged in ways I never dreamt possible. As an American I had a detached sense of the Second World War. I would soon discover that this conflict had left scars on the German population that were still not healed.

Over the years I came to understand the complexities of the German culture and its people. As an outsider I struggled with the overwhelming power of the system and rules that many in the world saw as "the German Problem." As a German American I struggled to get beyond my naive American belief that all humans are essentially good. I tried to get in touch with what my German friends called my dark side. They warned me that to keep it a stranger is the most dangerous thing one can do! Because of my German roots I believed I had a responsibility to understand what had happened and to be a part of assuring it never happened again. I wondered what I would have done had I been there. I wanted to believe I would have been part of the resistance. I wanted to believe I would have died for my principles. The more I talked with people the more I was unsure exactly what I would have done!

Many of the old women described how they woke up each day hoping that the nightmare was over. Each day they told themselves that someone was going to rise up and save them from the Hell they were descending into. In fear, they turned their backs on the suffering of their neighbors and denied that their own people were capable of such atrocities. Then one day it was too late, because the knight in shining armor never came to rescue them. Those in power had reached a place of absolute power. Without boundaries their atrocities became even more grotesque. Those who nurtured the dark side of human nature set upon the masses and no one was safe. And everyone wished they had stood up against it in the beginning, before it was too late.

I wanted to help those who had secrets to say everything that was forbidden to say, because I knew that would be the true healing. Many of those I interviewed told me they would never say what they revealed to me to Germans in Germany. That is why I titled my book, "Speaking into the Silence."

For all of the Germans I love and for my grandmother I hope that this work can be a small part of the healing.