“When I first saw the camp and the underground tunnels of the V2 factory that it had supplied with slave laborers (some 20,000 of whom died) […] the shock of grasping the size of the distortion perpetrated by von Braun and his American apologists was so strong that trying to convey the nature of the falsehood suddenly seemed futile. [They] covered up the place’s horror or maintained that being involved with the V2 was different from being involved with the slaves–that science was above society, in largest terms. Who would believe this without seeing it? Germans might cover it up to save their necks, but why would Americans help them? One falls back on Aristotle. But the way out of this bind ultimately came from the people most damaged by the camp. On that raw grey Thuringian spring day, as the old French Resistance fighters –who had been imprisoned by the SS at Dora, wired in the brutal tunnels and somehow survived–climbed down the steps of a tour bus that had brought them back to the camp’s drab entrance of commemoration ceremonies, children of the current citizens of Nordhausen silently handed each of them a white rosebud. I shall never forget the men’s faces as they struggled to appreciate the gift. They all held onto the roses. There is something going on here that is bigger than flying to the moon, I thought to myself.” — Wayne Biddle in DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, Wernher von Braun, the Third Reich and the Space Race (W.W. Norton, New York 2008)
Recent Comments