27. Atonement

There is one final piece of my mother’s story that remains.

The newspaper lay open on the kitchen table one morning, brought there by my father and placed with the kind of gentle purpose that marked so many of his gestures in their later years together. He showed my mother the advertisement that spoke of compensation—such a business-like word—for the largest group of foreign victims of the Nazis: forced labourers such as my mother had been, and slave labourers, those interned in POW and concentration camps that also toiled for the German war machine.

It was 2001, and I’d like to think that four years before her death, my mother quietly confronted the ghost of her past. But that’s not what happened.

I’m not sure my mother really cared what was written in the newspaper. Maybe her eyes passed over it the way they might have passed over a grocery store flyer, and I've wondered since if perhaps that was its own kind of victory: the power to regard such things with indifference. At this stage in her life, what preoccupied her was a terminal cancer diagnosis.

My father completed the application on my mother's behalf to the newly created Remembrance, Responsibility, and Future Foundation in Germany which was set up to manage the new fund and the compensation. She signed the form, a silent acknowledgment of a past she never spoke of, and they forwarded it to one of the Berlin-based attorneys overseeing the process. One year later, my mother received a modest sum from the foundation—a few hundred dollars for each of her five years of forced labour in Nazi Germany. The suffering reduced to the mathematics of a calculation: so many months and years stolen, so many dollars in return.

Like many who endured forced labour in Germany during the war and were now scattered across the world, my mother concealed the trauma of her experiences. She guarded the pain, shame, and guilt that lingered. The compensation she received could never suffice; it wouldn't erase the wartime horrors, degradation, and humiliation that came with being treated as subhuman. The acknowledgment and compensation didn't unlock the floodgates of suppressed memories. Nor did they encourage her to share them, especially with someone like me, whom she wanted to protect.

I now realize that at the time, my father must have decided to inquire whether he was entitled to a small pension from the German government for the 27 months he had worked in Germany after the war in the Polish Guard Corps. This move—nothing to do with the compensation set up for forced labourers—was a perfect example of my father's "nothing ventured, nothing gained" attitude; he likely thought it wouldn't hurt to try.

He submitted his request through the same Berlin lawyer, and at the age of eighty-one, to his surprise and quiet satisfaction he began receiving a small pension of a few hundred dollars annually, deposited quarterly into his Canadian bank account for the remaining eighteen years of his life. During my visits to Sarnia, I would often drive him to the bank to check if his small pension had been deposited. I always thought it was because he enjoyed talking to his favourite teller, an Estonian lady who spoke good Polish. I'm not surprised that my father was quietly pleased with his success—a small victory won through a combination of optimism and chutzpah that was quintessentially him.

The story of the slave and forced labourers as distinct war victims is a relatively recent chapter in the annals of Second World War history. For nearly four decades following the war, the topic remained dormant, only gaining traction in scholarly circles during the 1980s. German historian Ulrich Herbert's groundbreaking book, published in German in 1985 and translated into English in 1997 as Hitler's Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany Under the Third Reich, sparked interest in the stories of forced labourers and ignited a debate about their entitlement to compensation.

It wasn't until 2000 that a significant breakthrough occurred. The newspapers covered the complex and, at times, acrimonious negotiations led by Stuart E. Eizenstat, the deputy secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration, and the agreement reached with Germany. The Remembrance, Responsibility, and Future Foundation was established, jointly funded by 6,500 German companies (at this point facing several international class action suits) and the German government, with five billion US dollars set aside for compensation.

This landmark agreement acknowledged the severe injustices inflicted on slave and forced labourers through deportation, exploitation, and human rights violations by the Nazis. An atonement.

At the time of the agreement, it was estimated that one million surviving forced labourers—including my mother—would receive an average of about $2,500 each, while the 240,000 remaining slave labourers would receive $7,500. This payment to forced and slave labourers was in addition to the billions already paid to individuals persecuted by the Nazis for racial, political, ideological, or religious reasons.

An additional $750 million was allocated for educational programs and research on forced labour, including the creation of a website featuring interviews with more than 500 former slave and forced labourers. I spent hours listening to many of the Polish interviews, finding each story unique. My mother’s story may have been largely lost to me, but I did have the stories of others.

The compensation process, while a step towards justice, could never fully address the depth of suffering endured by millions. For survivors like my mother, it was a complex mixture of acknowledgment and reopened wounds. My parents never mentioned the application process. My mother’s silence, even after receiving compensation, speaks volumes about the enduring impact of her experiences.

In the end, whatever had happened to her was so difficult it had to be locked away in a vault and remain shrouded in silence. It appears my parents had a pact, never to mention those difficult years. True to his word, my father not only protected my mother's secret but also dedicated himself to creating a life where she could feel safe and content. Moving to Canada made that possible, offering my mother a fresh start—a chance to redefine herself beyond the traumas of her past. Being a victim would not save or define her.

As I ponder all of this, I wonder if, late at night in the safety of her Canadian home, she was ever awakened by bad dreams triggered by painful memories. But if she was, the next day, she carried on.