Auf der Flucht. Erinnerungen

Actually, Karasek is not the man I would be interested in. a typical intellectual softie I would have said. He is a softie, but how interesting is his life. The book spawns his time with at the infamous Napola schools – Hitler’s chosen kids for Germany’s “glorious” future, over Eastern Germany after the war and his rise to a “TV star” in Western Germany. TV star in a literature show, funny – isn’t it? His life describes perfectly the dramatic events during and after the war, the big silence out of shame, the economic miracle in Western Germany, the life on both sides of the iron curtain, and the many encounters with celebrities, e.g. he wrote with Billy Wilder on his biography, made features with Woody Allen etc.
Maybe the most interesting part is that he was born in Br¨nn, today in the Czech Republic, was raised in Poland, which was later part of the Third Reich. His had to go through one of the most horrible post war tragedies: the ethnic cleansing in Eastern Europe. Millions of Poles, Germans, Ukrainians etc. were relocated. A third of Germany was taken away, cleansed and populated by Poles which in turn were also expelled from their land. This is the point of departure : “on the run” – the title o the book. His father was clearly a nazi who had to hide his real identity on the run, otherwise he would have been killed. But it is his father. It is all about guilt, freedom, lies, the right to choose, and have a life.
Yes, he is a softie and he admits it but this book is a testimony of a dying era. We need it and it is a good read, the first half of the book even for foreigners.