A letter written by Günter Grass to an Israeli college sheds new light on the time he spent as a member of the Waffen SS.
He writes that "the SS will be a mark of Cain for me from now until the end of my days".
The letter was written in October after Netanya Academic College withdrew the offer of an honorary degree, which they had been discussing with the Nobel prize-winning author, and was published yesterday in the Israeli daily Haaretz.
The publication in August of Grass's memoir, Peeling the Onion, which contained the revelation that the novelist had served in the SS, ignited fierce controversy. Netanya college immediately informed Grass he would not be granted the degree, suggesting that he should explain himself in a public letter.
In it the writer blames his joining the Waffen SS on his "stupidity".
"Due to my stupidity in those days and the ignorance of which I am guilty," he explains, "I admired the Waffen SS as an elite unit."
He also recognises the "sort of wounds the SS symbol, the term SS, reopen in the memory of many of the inhabitants of Israel" and asks that "the whole history of my upheaval-filled life, since the time I was 17, and all of my activity as a writer and an artist and an involved citizen in my country be acknowledged as a counterweight".
