Hans Fritzsche at Nuremberg
Hans Fritzsche at Nuremberg
When I’m awake, two forces in me struggle.
One asks why I contributed to this
System. The second one insists that I
Could not have known of these atrocities.
But when I dream, I only feel the second.
I look up from my mother’s lap; she soothes
Me with her gestures; then she looks away.
I worked in propaganda, as you know.
For those ten years, I painted black and white.
The Allies did the same. In fact, their hate
Was such as we would never dare in Germany.
Fans wrote me thousands of approving letters;
Quite a few were from Americans.
I favored bringing Jewish influence down,
Until proportionate to their percentage
Of the larger population.
Ideals can be blinding. We observed
American democracy, and saw
The rich controlling what the public thinks.
Thus, a dictatorship was deemed permissible.
The danger you face here, in making false
Judgments, is that their falseness will be felt,
And germs of repetition will be kept alive.
They will say, I suppose, that it is not
How many Jews I saved that is at issue.
Hans Fritzsche was tried for war crimes at Nuremberg, and found not guilty. He died of cancer in 1953.
This poem is part of the series Interviews With Vampires.