National Post from Toronto, Ontario, Canada • 26

REVIEW NATIONAL POST, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2002 Germany's Titanic' remembered The city of Kitchener, Ont, is revisiting its 86-year-old name change after a new hook claims Horatio Lord Kitchener was a liar and a tyrant Maybe Berlin wasn't such a bad idea? 9,000 DIED IN 1945 Gtinther Grass tells the largely ignored tale of the WilhelmGustloff By Toby Helm and uwe gunther BERLIN Itwasjustafter9p.m. on a freezing night in January, 1945, when Russian torpedoes hit and sank the German cruise ship the Wilhelm Gustloff. It was carrying thousands of German women and children who had rushed to the coast of East Prussia in an attempt to escape by sea from the approaching Red Army. As the icy Baltic waters swelled over the decks, a giant wave swept a baby girl out of her mother's arms. "My daughter Ingrid," recalls Irmgard Harnecker, now 77- "She had just started to walk." Mrs.

Harnecker also lost her sister that night. "It is a long time ago, but it still hurts," she says. Ever since, she has been racked by feelings of guilt that she survived and Ingrid did not. This and many other heart-wrenching stories from the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff have rarely been highlighted in Germany. The 9,000 people who died six times more than in the Titanic disaster were largely ignored by the country's literary elite and to an extent by its historians.

For Germany's post-war generation, it was seen as politically incorrect for Germans to portray other Germans as victims of the war. "Somebody, we thought, had to pay for Germany's incomprehensible crimes," said Anje Vollmer, an MP for the Green Party and vice-president of the Bundestag. But 57 years on, the taboo has been lifted thanks to publication this week of a book by Gunter GUNNAR ASK AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Giinthcr Grass: Long an advocate of German remorse for the war, he is now speaking out about the suffering of the nation's people. bert Worner was born in the ship's hospital. On his birth certificate it says "born on board the Gustloff." His mother had been fleeing homeward in an attempt to marry her fiance before giving birth.

After the three torpedoes from a Russian submarine hit the ship, she went up on deck holding her baby tightly. He wore a green jacket and cap. As she clambered toward a rope ladder leading down to a rescue vessel, a soldier called out, "give it to me, youU get it back right away." The lifeboat then left without her child, and she watched the ship sink. "I thought my child was dead," she said. "I was quaking." Some time later, when she had boarded the escort ship Lion, someone gave her a green bundle, and ever since she has wondered who saved her child.

'SOMEBODY, WE THOUGHT, HAD TO PAY FOR GERMANY'S INCOMPREHENSIBLE CRIMES' By Joseph Brean early a century af-Jk ter anti-German I sentiment and a I hasty, wartime ref- erendum saw Berlin, renamed in honour of British Field Marshall Horatio Lord Kitchener, another episode in the unending controversy over the city's name has begun. A new book published in Australia paints Kitchener Ontario's namesake as a liar and tyrant who ordered his troops to ignore white flags in the Boer War and allowed an innocent man in his command to be executed. Variously lionized and demo-nized by historians, Lord Kitchener led British forces in the early 20th century through Africa, and was eventually named Secretary of State for War under Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith. He lent his face to a hugely successful First World War recruiting poster, which brought in enough men for six full armies by proclaiming "Britons Lord Kitchener Wants YOU." His death by drowning when his ship hit a mine off the Orkneys in the summer of 1916 coincided with growing unease in Berlin, about the effect of the town's name on its economy. The mainly German population was asked by city council to vote on four new names, and it chose to honour Lord Kitchener, a newly minted hero, by 11 votes over Isaac Brock, a general in the War of 1812.

Shoot Straight You Bastards, a book by Scottish-born Australian filmmaker Nick Bleszynski, tells the story of Harry "Breaker" Morant, a well-loved British poet and soldier who served under Lord Kitchener in the Boer War in 1900, and was executed for his role in the killing of eight Boer captives. Mr. Bleszynski, who studied the diaries of the military official who presided over Mr. Morant's case, claims to have proved Lord Kitchener gave Mr. Morant orders to ignore white flags of surrender and keep firing.

He argues Mr. Morant was executed for following the orders of his corrupt leader, who later lied to save himself at the court martial. Mr. Bleszynski was given five years of unprecedented access to Major Robert Poole's diaries, which are held in a library of the University of London. They purportedly show that, although he killed his prisoners, Mr.

Morant was under Lord Kitchener's orders not to take prisoners at all, but rather to shoot on sight, or give summary trials followed by executions. It is impossible to check the diaries against Lord Kitchener's account, since he was notorious for writing nothing down. The book, which takes its title from Mr. Morant's last words before a firing squad, calls on the Australian and British governments to clear Mr. Morant's name.

The accusations against Lord Kitchener give new fuel to a debate that has resurfaced several times since Berlin became Kitchener. Lord Kitchener "was a phony from the beginning of his career to the end," Harry Currie, a columnist for the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, said yesterday. "I don't think he deserves to have anything named after him. He was a charlatan. He couldn't care less whether his soldiers lived or died." Mr.

Currie argues that the vote to change the city's name was unfair, since German residents were Grass, Germany Nobel Prize-winning author. Titled Crab Wak (Im Krebsgang), it uses a mix of fact and fiction to tell the story of the Wilhelm Gustloff, which sank to the Baltic seabed between the Bay of Danzig and the Danish island of Bornholm. Many of those on board were wounded German soldiers. Just 1,200 survived, including 100 children. Publication of Mr.

Grass's work has caused a sensation in Germany, where it has been hailed as a turning point in the way the country views the fate of millions of its own citizens who died in the war. Die Welt said it was ironic that Grass, a left-winger, was the man to have broken the mould and ended the silence. "The expulsion of Germans from eastern territories was one of the greatest taboos of post-war history, strictly shielded by left-wingers like Gunter Grass," the newspaper said. "Now it is him of all people who returns to the subject of the collective consciousness is Germany becoming normal?" Der Spiegel magazine placed a headline "The German Titanic" on its front page as it delved in this week's edition into stories of human tragedy from the fateful night. In doing so, it has helped to propel the Wilhelm Gustloff disaster to the forefront of national consciousness.

The magazine relates how, on Jan. 29, the day before the disaster, a boy named Eg- Grass's fictional heroine, a pregnant girl who manages to clamber aboard a lifeboat where she gives birth to a baby boy, is based loosely on another true story from the night of Jan. 30, 1945. The narrator in the book talks of Germany's post-war reticence to talk about such suffering. "Nobody wanted to hear about it, not here in the West and not at all in the East." For decades, Grass, now 74, had led the charge of the left-wing intellectual establishment who wanted the emphasis to be placed firmly on German remorse.

In 1990, the year of German reunification, he said: "Whoever thinks about Germany at this moment should not forget Auschwitz." More recently he began to stress the need for a counterbalance, the necessity for the nation to speak of its own suffering. He talked a few years ago of how disturbing it was that there had been "no room in Germany to commemorate" those Germans who died as a result of Allied bombs and in the mass flight from the East. The Daily Telegraph PHOTOGRAPHER NEW SERVICE "Glaring but somehow jellied eyes" was how author J.B. Priestly described Lord Kitchener. Others have been even less kind, such as the author of the new book Shoot Straight You Bastards, who calls him a liar.

ogist at Wilfrid Laurier University. "We have to assume that the people who changed the name to Kitchener had a respect for him as a figure on the world stage, and we have inherited his name, and we should take as much pride as we can in it It doesn't come down to civic pride, it comes down to respect for a generation that tried to do its best." The unveiling of the portrait "wasn't without its controversy," said current Mayor Carl Zehr, adding that he is "not embarrassed by an old, old reference to any particular individual. regalia, framed in oak, was set to be mounted atop a staircase in the new city hall. Lord Kitchener's detractors alleged that as a incompetent, un-trusted and devious field mar-shall he had established "concentration camps" for civilian Boer captives, and argued that as a British citizen he had no place in the mainly German city. Supporters argued that civic pride and solidarity trumped the unproved allegations.

Former Kitchener mayor Richard Christy who eventually did see the portrait mounted after the debate was quelled, in in 'We have inherited his name, and we should take as much pride as we can in it' with such a prominent portrait in their new city hall. "Christy only lasted one term as mayor, he was defeated, and in some ways people like to make gentle fun of the pretensions that he tried to bring, and some people were openly, I won't say contemptuous, but were openly chuckling at this sense of trying to install Lord Kitchener as a great historical figure," Mr. Hayes said. He said debate about Lord Kitchener will probably continue, with one side citing his prominence and the need to preserve local heroes, and the other dredging up Lord Kitchener's alleged crimes. In the local press, Mr.

Currie will keep up the fight to pull Kitchener's name off official letterhead and road signs, since in his opinion Lord Kitchener came by his honours falsely, had no loyalties, and was eventually shuffled out of cabinet for incompetence. His views are partly supported by the historical record. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once wrote about Lord Kitchener that "he had flashes of genius but was usually stupid," and J.B. Priestly wrote after meeting him that "the image I retained was of a rather bloated purplish face and glaring but somehow jellied eyes. A year later, when we heard he had been drowned, I felt no grief." Today in Kitchener, home to a famous Oktoberfest festival of German beer and sausage, a section of city hall prominently bears the name Berlin Tower.

National Post jbreannationalpost.com I I "3 intimidated out of voting, and votes were accepted from soldiers who lived elsewhere but were stationed in the area. (Voter turnout was only 7.) "What had become a thriving, industrious centre of German-Canadians, proud of their dual heritage and fiercely loyal to their adopted country, was turned into a hate-mongering city of mobs which destroyed property, dragged German-Canadians through the streets, beat them, and made them ashamed of their language, their customs and their culture," Mr. Currie wrote in an editorial, arguing the city should be renamed Berlin. The editorial fired up debate 10 years ago, when a six-by-five-foot portrait of Lord Kitchener in full 1996 is sympathetic toward the Kitchener family line. After paying a "delightful" Easter Sunday visit to the Kent estate of the current Lord Kitchener, an elderly gentleman named Henry, Mr.

Christy invited him to visit Kitchener, to see the portrait of his ancestor. He says the accusations that Horatio Lord Kitchener lied and gave orders to kill surrendering troops are unfair, even if they are true, because they hold Lord Kitchener to 21st-century sensibilities. "Those were the military tactics of the 19th century, on both sides, as atrocious as they may seem to us," said Mr. Christy, now a sociol- "It's history, and it happened we're concentrating on branding the name Kitchener because it happens to be our name. We are not contemplating changing it," he said.

"You pick a name. McCarthy, Churchill, whatever, whatever. Each of them has their own idiosyncrasies I think you have to differentiate between the story of Horatio Kitchener, as it is being developed currently, from the city of Kitchener." Local historian Geoff Hayes, a professor at the nearby University of Waterloo, said Mr. Christy may not have reflected the wishes of the largely German population by honouring Lord Kitchener The Wilhelm Gustloff, seen in this undated photo, was sunk on the night of Jan. 30, 1945, by a Russian submarine.

There were 1,200 survivors..