Finding one's roots is a pastime for curious genealogists. But for Nora Krug, it meant laying to rest fears that her family was complicit in World War II atrocities. In Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home, she shares her trip back in time, to the very streets her grandparents shared with Nazis.
"Heimat" means homeland, the place with which one identifies. Krug's is elusive, and she determines "the only way to find the Heimat I've lost is to look back." In this scrapbook-style memoir of drawings, photos and ephemera linked with short passages chronicling her quest, Krug imparts a sense of immediacy that reflects her trepidation. Was her grandfather Willi a Nazi? Why didn't anyone speak of the war as she was growing up in the German region where her family had lived for generations? Krug avoided questioning, and her aunt advised when she traveled, "Just say you're from the Netherlands." Twelve years after she came to the U.S. for college, Krug confronted the guilt of her heritage: "Not even marrying a Jewish man has lessened my German shame."
Krug returned to Germany to excavate her family's past, piecing together sometimes contradictory information through interviews and archives, including a military file untouched for two generations. As she turns pages, readers may hold their breath in empathy: What will she learn, and will it ease her guilt and secure her Heimat? --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco