Author fails to close book on Nazi past

BERLIN - Germany's most celebrated living author has been told he should hand back his Nobel Prize for Literature after his admission he once served in Adolf Hitler's notorious Waffen SS force.

But Gunter Grass, 78, who has been hailed as a moral authority and an outspoken anti-Nazi for decades, responded angrily to the criticism yesterday, insisting: "This is definitely an attempt by some to turn me into a persona non grata."

Grass shocked Germany at the weekend by disclosing for the first time he had been recruited to the infamous Nazi unit at the age of 17 in the closing stages of World War II.

"It had to come out finally," Grass said, trying to explain why he had kept silent for more than 60 years about his membership of an organisation that played a central role in the Holocaust.

The author of The Tin Drum, which won him the Nobel Prize in 2000, had previously insisted that his wartime activities had been limited to service as an anti-aircraft auxiliary.

Yesterday, Grass said his autobiography, Peeling the Onion, due to be published next month, had finally given him an opportunity to face up to his Nazi past.

"Only after I had decided to write about my early years did I find the literary form in which to express myself. I had to ask myself how I was able to follow this ideology in such a naive way and why I asked no questions," he said.

But former Polish President Lech Walesa, as well as senior figures in German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Government, joined a growing chorus of criticism aimed at the writer.

Wolfgang Boernsen, a cultural spokesman for Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats, said: "Gunter Grass has spent his whole life setting high moral standards for politicians. It's about time he applied those standards to himself and renounced all his awards - including the Nobel Prize."

Walesa, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, demanded Grass renounce his honorary citizenship of the Polish seaport Gdansk, where the author grew up and where his award-winning Tin Drum is set.

Walesa, himself an honorary Gdansk citizen, said: "I don't feel good in this kind of company. If it had been known that he was in the SS, he would never have been given the award."

But the author's most savage critics were his German contemporaries. Joachim Fest, a renowned Hitler biographer, described Grass's sudden disclosure as "completely incomprehensible".

"I simply don't understand how someone can elevate himself to the position of moral conscience of the nation on Nazi issues and then admit that he was himself deeply involved. I wouldn't even buy a secondhand car from this man now."

- INDEPENDENT