Nazis, war, and trauma – I learn a lot more about my family history

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1:22Bye bye. How are you? Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Mario Rosenstock podcast, proudly supported by Hum Finance. Now, last week, you may remember, we had Gerry Mullins on the show telling us the fascinating story of Jonathan Swift, Ireland's sort of original satirist, author of Gulliver's Travels, which is still by far the most successful book ever published by an Irish author. We talked about dangerous political commentary that Jonathan Swift weaved into his book, which was a very dangerous thing to do at the time. So he was never able to put his own name to it, to his work during his lifetime.

1:52Today, of course, we have cancelled culture, but back then, people were actually pilloried, tied up to wooden stocks, publicly shamed, and sometimes had parts of their body chopped off. If you haven't heard that episode, be sure to scroll back and check it out now. Gerry Mullins. But once we had finished talking about Swift, we got onto the subject of Gerry's research into the Nazi Party of Ireland. Yes, there was one, believe it or not, back in the 30s. And my grandfather, who was originally German, and was a young German officer, a doctor who fought in the Wehrmacht for the Germans when he was stationed on the island of Jersey during the war, came up in conversation because Gerry had done some research and unearthed some details about my family that I didn't even know.

2:35He said, it's all on the internet, Mario. So this bonus episode contains that part of our chat. It was a real eye-opener for me and a very different time in Ireland. So here we go. Here's Gerry Mullins telling me what I didn't know about my family. One of the things that you wrote in your email to me about as well was it was a connection with my own family that you wrote a book. This is fascinating now. You wrote a book called Dublin Nazi Number One. Yes. Like Dublin Nazi Number One. What's that about? So a good few years ago, yeah, I wrote the book. It was a biography of Adolf Marr. So Adolf Marr was the Austrian man who was brought in here in 1927 to run the National Museum of Ireland.

3:18great archaeologist and it just so happened that 2027 things are fine 1928, 29 they formed a little German colony you know as expats do in every country you know 1930 they're having a great old time the kids were involved 31 32 and then Hitler's elected now Hitler's elected 1933 and they Nazify everything not just everything in Germany but everything in the we call it the diaspora so the little German colony over here became the Nazi Party of Ireland. And the little group that they had for the children, the kinder, the children of these Austrian and German immigrants, which they had formed this little group so that they could stay in touch with their culture and be able to speak German with one another.

4:03That became the Hitler Youth. Hitler Og. Hitler Og in Ireland, yeah. Hitler Og in Eirene. In Eirene. So we had a Hitler Youth group here. And so I'd done all this research and I actually tracked down the Mara kids. they were back living in Germany at this stage and I got pictures from them of their Hitler Youth rallies in Ireland. Did you? So for example there's a house in Bad Brigham that a lot of people listening to the show would have gone to the Gale Tucht in at Hamilton Hall it's called right and before it was a Gale Tucht it was owned by some German industrialists and they used to have their Hitler Youth rallies there they'd go for weekends or they might go for a week over Easter and stuff like that they even had a visit from the British Hitler Youth around about 1936 and Marr who's at this stage director of the National Museum, took them on a cultural tour of Ireland, took them to Newgrange with pictures of the Irish and the British Hitler youth in Newgrange and in Monaster Boyce and places like that.

4:55And they had another Hitler youth rally in Kilmacurra, Kilmacurra Park Hotel, which is now it's in Wicklow and it's now, pardon me the site of the National Botanic Gardens Arboretum. So we have the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, but the Arboretum, which is really if you like a tree museum we'll call it that's in Kilmercurra and that is where they used to have their Italy Youth Rallies as well and so so I tracked down the family and I'm aware of your background, let's talk about your background for a second because you have obviously an Irish grandmother and a German grandfather and they were over the war So my grandfather was in the Wehrmacht and he was an officer and a doctor and he was stationed in the island of Jersey in the Second World War and he met my grandmother who was a nurse from Athenry.

5:48Yeah. And he came back. They went back to Germany so at the war and then came to Ireland. She brought him back to Ireland. And he came back to Ireland and started a surgery here in Ireland and became quite well off and the German doctor, the kind of bit glamorous and all that sort of stuff. But only recently I found out a few years ago that, because I used to be called Dr. Death in school and everything. They used to, in Waterford, they used to call me like the grandson of the Nazi, like any Germans were just called Nazis. Yeah. And I used to kind of be, you know, he's not a Nazi, like he was just in the army, like, and he was a doctor.

6:29And then it emerged, Finn from the Irish History Podcast contacted me and he went, I have some really interesting information about your grandfather. And he said, have you ever heard of a man called Otto Skorzeny? And Otto Skorzeny, for my listeners out there, was Hitler's go-to paratrooper. Yes. He was his favourite paratrooper. He had a Bond villain. He was a Bond villain. He had a big, huge scar across his face. And when Hitler needed to free Mussolini, when Mussolini had been captured, he sent Scorsini in a glider and a load of commandos to free Mussolini and bring him back to Germany. That's how trusted he was.

7:00Yes. And Scorsini was a bad-ass Nazi. Kind of a Tarantino-esque Nazi, almost. And after the war, Scorsini hadn't died. In fact, he was running, fleeing, and looking for places where he could go. And one of the places he came was Ireland. Of course, Ireland would have been in his mind sympathetic to Germans because of the anti-English sentiment. And they threw a big party for him in Clontarf to welcome him to Ireland. This Nazi. And the man who was the TD at the time, a young TD, was Charles J. Hawhey who was part of the welcoming entourage. But anyway, my grandfather, who was part of the German diaspora here, found out about this guy, Scorsaini, and started alerting the media, the Irish Times, Nazi, in our midst.

7:50We should not be welcoming this guy to Ireland. And then he further entreated the Irish government, where he, my grandfather, was given short shrift by the Irish government, who was, my grandfather was told, stay out of this now. We have this well under control. Now, it subsequently emerges that there was a deep strain of anti-Semitism running through the Irish civil service. and that they were perfectly fine to welcome this lad, Skorzeny, into the country. And you stay out of it, Mr. Rosenstock. But what I was really delighted about was to discover that after all the years of me being called the grandson of a Nazi, that actually my father had done a lot of work to try, not only was he on the right side, he'd done a lot to try and alert Irish people to the fact that there's a couple of bad ones in our country.

8:35We need to be aware of them, get them out. This guy ended up trying to buy, at least bought or tried to buy, Castletown House in Kildare. this is in one of Ireland's great houses. That's right. So yeah, so that's my connection with the German. So first of all, just as an aside in terms of your grandmother from Athenry, my grandmother's from Athenry as well. So your grandmother was born in 1917. I think mine was born about three years earlier. But I'd be surprised if they didn't know each other, you know. My grandmother's a Higgins, Josephine Higgins from Athenry and yours is a Keene. But anyway, it's just a small, still is a small town.

9:04I'm sure they knew each other. What I find interesting about history sometimes is to come to the choices that people make, right? And your grandmother's story was full of choices because, obviously, she went out to Jersey, which, you know, was a fair old ordeal at the time to get out there. She was only 19. And then what happened was you're out there in Jersey and World War II started, well, see, it wasn't World War II. It was a bit of a row started in September of 1939. Like, nobody said, nobody blew whistled and said, OK, now World War II has started. It was just Britain declared war on Germany and then they had, everyone said, this will all be over by Christmas and that's what they said about World War I it's all be over by Christmas and then the months wore on and Iran go on well this is history repeating itself history repeating like but anyway so so I tried to I did a small bit of research on your granny I tried to put myself in her shoes so 1940 1939 war declared and she was probably thinking to herself it would be fine this will all be over by Christmas 1940 things got a bit bad and the Brits pulled out of Jersey.

10:11They didn't often give up territory easily but they left and she had a choice to leave at that stage but she decided to stay. And then shortly after was then the Germans invaded. I mean it was just a takeover of the island, you know. And then obviously things got bad. So one of the first things the Germans did was take everybody's radio sets off them. So you couldn't listen to radios. Illegal, you could be heavily punished. And people still did have crystal sets and they still tried to listen in to the BBC and stuff like that. But generally speaking she would have been left in the dark. The only way she could have listened to the radio would have been you were allowed to listen to German radio but I'd say she had no German.

10:53And then in 1940, 1941, then she fell in love with a man, the German doctor who of course is your uncle. My grandfather. Your grandfather. I'm so sorry. But that was a big decision as well because in any occupied country, dating one of the occupying soldiers is a dangerous thing to get involved in. And certainly after the war, there was a lot of retaliation on French women and women in other countries. They had cut their hair and they stripped them and stuff like that, punished them for cavorting with the enemy. A lot of these women had babies. And so your granny, she, that was a risky business she got involved in, you know.

11:32And then he goes back in 1942, back to Jena, I think he had to finish his studies. She goes out there after him in 1943. And again, that's a decision. And I think it's only then that she realized the destruction that the war was having, because Jersey was largely untouched by the war, right? But by the time she got into France, going across there in 1943. But right there at that stage, she was going into the belly of the beast. She was going right into the war-torn Europe, where she had been safe in Jersey. But she obviously made a decision there. I could kind of go and stay with my future husband, the guy I'm in love with.

12:04I could stay here in Jersey where I might have some nasty things that happened to me you know but she went out into continental Europe the war-torn continental Europe and I think that's where she saw the destruction for the first time that's 1943 ended up in Jena tried to marry your grandfather and the local guy wouldn't marry them because they said that your granny looked a bit Jewish very much so yeah she looked so Jewish yeah and then she made a smart move in hindsight it's a smart move because Jena where they were ended up on the eastern side after the war in other words if you had stayed in Jena you would have all of a sudden been living in eastern East Germany which wouldn't have been a terribly pleasant place to be but they moved up to Hamburg and Hamburg was western Germany you know it's not much western but Hamburg was getting pounded day and night by the bombs it was a terribly terribly dangerous place to be and but at this stage you're married they kind of married in secret and your father then was born in 46 in Hamburg.

13:09And I'm thinking as well, see, I know you're on the record of having a difficult relationship with your dad and stuff like that. And sometimes people will say that if a woman had a very stressful pregnancy, that stress is carried on into the child, right? And she must have been in a trauma at that stage because Germany, when she was pregnant, she would have been pregnant in 45 and early 46. And Hamburg was getting pounded and after the war there was a famine in Germany about 10 million people in Germany died in the first few years after the war it was it was a massive number right and they were there until 47 I think it was they got out right but those two years you know between 45 when the war ended in 47 they would have been hungry hungry stressful years and you got a baby you're trying to keep you're trying to keep yourself alive and you got a baby so there would have been to me a huge amount of stress coming from your grandmother that may have been inherited by your dad.

14:08It's not for me to say what effect that might have had, but just food for thought, you know. Interesting. And then they got out of there in 47 or 48, Lord Calanon got them out, you know. That's, anyway, he got them out, he got them back to Ireland. And that was a lifesaver because your granddad, if you stayed in Germany, I suppose as a doctor, Germany eventually got right. He probably would have been fine eventually, you know, but Germany was flattened at that stage. It was. Gerry, I didn't know you had all this information about my family. How did you... It's all on the internet. Is it? Yeah.

14:40Wow. Wow. And why were you... Was it to do with your... Adolf Maher and things like that? No. I knew I was coming in to talk to you, you know. All right. But I knew you were... Are you always as well researched when you go in and talk to people? Hi, we're joined now by... We're joined now by Gerry Mullins. Yeah, Brendan, did you know in the 17th century there was the O 'Connor, he was actually a murderer. and what's going on here what's your opinion on Covid you're really well researched the Von O 'Connors of Schlitz and Holstein but that's amazing you've told me loads of stuff I don't know it's all there anyway you know but it's just I mean you are on record there's a few things I said there you're on record the German grandfather and so on yeah so anyway it's just there's all these little choices that your grandmother made and your granddad.

15:34And they could have gone either way. They could have gone left instead of right and everything would have been different. So if I map it back then, sorry, we started talking about the Marr family, right? So I set out to write a book. Actually, I set out to write a book about a Jewish guy called Albert Bender who's this wonderful patron of the arts in San Francisco, the greatest donor of art in the 1920s and the 1930s in California. I ended up doing research on him when I was living in California and in his records, I found all these letters from A. Marr. A. Marr. A. Marr in the National Museum.

16:04And when I figure out who he was, it turns out his first name was Adolf. So the book really was based on 170 letters written in the 1930s between an Irish Jew in San Francisco and an Irish Nazi in Dublin, the National Museum. And poor old Bender, the Jew, didn't realise he was writing to a guy called Adolf, you know. He always wrote to Dear Dr. Marr. And he was sending all this loot, all this... It's usually a deal breaker when we find out we've just been writing to a guy called Adolf. Do not like this, yeah. It just happens to be. Fortunately, there aren't too many of them around anymore. It's not a very popular name for some reason.

16:40There's loads of Noahs and Jacks born last year. Very few adults. It'll come round again. Yeah, yeah. It'll come round again. So anyway, I started researching Bender and then I started researching Mar and then I started talking to the kids and the kids, I said. I mean, these people are in the 70s and 80s. and Hilda, the daughter, had this extraordinary escape because that Marr family, they grew up in Dublin, they went to Wesley College, which is just down the road from here, right? It was in Stephen's Green at the time and they went to, their holidays were at Malahide and Skerries and they learned Galga and all that.

17:14They're Irish kids, you know? But 1939, the family ended up in Germany and that's, unfortunately, they got trapped there and Gustav, the son, ended up drafted into the German army. He ends up in the big operation to invade Russia. Barbarossa. Yes, he ends up in Latvia and Estonia. And Hilda, what they did... There's a story that might be apocryphal about my grandfather tells about Operation Barbarossa. His brother was called Kurt and both of them were doctors. Kurt ended up being a surgeon and obviously they were well educated. They knew that Operation Barbarossa was going to be a carnage. Really?

18:01Yeah. In advance? They knew, well, they knew there was going to be heavy losses. Oh, right. Yes, yes, yes. You know, I mean, the German high command may have been confident of ultimately getting a victory, but they knew, the people in the know knew that they were going to shed heavy losses. And the story goes, anyway, that the night before they were meant to be posted to the barracks, George, Kurt was meant to be posted, and George and Kurt went out and got drunk. And George smashed his arm up with a medical dictionary so he could... Smashed up Kurt's arm. Kurt's arm so that Kurt could... Couldn't go.

18:33Could get out of it. Wow. Yeah. Wow. And he did get out of it. How did Kurt spend the war then? I know that he saw out the war and I know that he came to Chile after the war. Wow. So he was one of these kind of German diaspora who went to South America. and God forgive me but being a white German out there of course he would have done been part of the shall we say the ruling classes or whatever right but he ended up making bloody fountains for Pinochet oh god you know so they're all like you know working for each other yeah and so he ended up building like fountains and stuff and you know we know what a monster Pinochet was absolutely absolutely but anyway so we never never saw that sort of side of the family again like you know because they just sort of split from Limerick to South America George came to Limerick and and Kurt down to Chile Kurt's side of the family went down to Chile that means you got first cousins in Chile I do yeah and actually funnily enough my son Dash who was obviously because he was 13 and 14 and 15 a few years ago and he was there like all over the Instagram going I think I found all your cousins On Instagram And they were all Reaching out to him And everything Looking at the pictures of them I was going Jesus they're pure Rosenstock Is that right?

19:59Their heads on them The high foreheads The deep set eyes The Rosenstock jaw Absolute spits of Rosenstock The whole lot of them Is that right? Yeah yeah The genetic heritage Has been clean and pure I was like Do you know When I was first born I was the first born grandchild right in the family my grandfather George who was living in Germany at the time came over to Dublin to Waterford where I was born and he came over to to to see his first born grandchild and he was like he looked like Bismarck at this stage right big long sort of blonde grey hair big handlebar moustache tall trench coat doctor yeah came over and he just came over for a couple of days and he just came over and he reached into the Moses basket and he went yeah yeah fine German head.

20:52And that's our Mario. Fine German head. That's all he was interested in. German head. When you write your autobiography that'll be the title, you know. A fine German head. A fine German head. My story, Mario. And he was so kind of sort of aloof and paternalistic as well, you know. He was one of those people who were very difficult to talk to. Nice enough man. Right. But very austere and withdrawn. Yeah, yeah. Patriarchal kind of. Yeah, I suppose he was of his time. Oh, very much so. Of his nationality. Very much so, very much so. And he probably had a lot of scar tissue as well from the war and everything, like all the Germans did.

21:34I think so. You know, I mean, especially as a thinking person. Yeah. And an educated person. And he was a bit of a poet and a writer himself as well as being a doctor, you know. So they would have had a lot of funny thoughts about the war, you know. Yeah. I mean, that whole generation lived lived in absolute, you know, with guilt and shame for many, for so many years. And even nowadays, the posture of the German government when it comes to anything to do with Israel, for example, is so supine. It is. You know, they refused to ever say anything about Israel because of the Holocaust. Yeah, it's misplaced loyalty.

22:14Yeah. You know, I, when I was writing about Hilda Marr, it's an extraordinary story. I can go into it now in a second, if you like. But I remember telling, I was talking to this girl one night at a party with this lady from Austria. And I said, oh, you're from Austria. You know, I found this family and they're from Austria, from Germany and Second World War. And they got out of Berlin just in time before it all collapsed. And they got out here and all that sort of thing. It was an extraordinary story. And she was kind of unimpressed. And I didn't understand why. and I said, you know, do you not find that very interesting?

22:45You know, and she kind of goes, you know, every German family has had that experience. I forgot that because we don't have the same, I really don't feel we have the same over in this country but every German family, you're talking about the guilt, fine, but before that you had the trauma and you had the destruction. I mean, to live in Germany in those days, first of all, you had a very oppressive regime. I mean, just because the Nazis were in charge of your country doesn't mean that you're a Nazi. Then you had the war which was a trauma for everybody the chances are you lost close friends and relatives in the war you probably lost all your property then as I said there was mass starvation after the war you were trying to eke out a living in a country that nobody had any sympathy for and all those factories were bombed, some of his territory a lot of his territory was gone and you were kind of trying to come out of that and eventually by mid 50s, 60s Germany was in a pretty healthy state but you still got all that memory deep within you your granddad would have come over here and he has all that going on he's living in this strange country with all these Irish people some of whom refer to him as a Nazi and not realising the complexities of his particular relationship with the regime and he used to cure people as well as in he was a doctor but he used to cure people he used to get the job done and he developed a kind of a reputation for being a wonder doctor almost a kind of miraculous doctor and of course the truth of the matter was much more prosaic he wasn't a miraculous doctor he had access to far more sophisticated drugs coming over from Germany so he was getting the equivalent of whatever strong neurofen or paracetamol and all this stuff people were leaving with no pain and anything and he had proper access to the because Germany was still at the forefront of scientific Bayer and all these oh obviously so he was getting parcels of drugs which would have been the modern drugs none of which would have existed in Ireland and people were going I feel fantastic after Dr.

24:48Rosenstock I'd like to go back and see him tomorrow so he had plenty of stuff available you know he was eventually this is a more convocated story but he was eventually actually run out of Limerick by by fellow doctors who were annoyed at the amount of business he had been generating. Really? Yeah. And in a very, I have to say, very Irish kind of begrudging way, they kind of ganged up against him and kind of, through various different means, none of which I haven't time to go into here, they made life very difficult for him and he ended up going back to Hamburg. With your granny? Or did she stay?

25:36She stayed, yeah. and he ended up going back to Hamburg and he spent the rest of his life there and did he practice in Hamburg or did he retire he did he practiced all his life there wow with all that going on I'd be fairly austere as well if I was in that situation yeah fuck these Irish yeah and yeah brilliant listen we're going to call it quits there Gerry thank you so much what an interesting conversation if anybody is still listening at this stage in the podcast this conversation was brought to you by Gerry Mullins who wrote me an email simply about Jonathan Swift and it's 300 years since Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver's Travels and how he was such an important satirist and of course that's what I do and then he brought this incredible story about Germany and Adolf Marr and the Hitler Youth in Ireland and Dublin Nazi number one his book and he has a show that's going around Ireland at the moment and it's called Jonathan Swift Savage Indignation it's a stage show and a musical and where is it on in June?

26:40Hoth Castle Hoth Castle. Hoth Castle and is it going somewhere after that? Well probably I mean coming out October and November is the 300th anniversary so I'm sure we'd be performing somewhere probably Will we stay in touch with me and try I'd love to come and see it if it's anywhere within my various parameters Yeah and brilliant lovely to meet you I thought I might leave you with a poem Yeah okay great because because I've nobody else to share this with back when I was a young lad I learnt this poem in school right so I just thought I'd recite it to you because it might be special to you, you know.

27:10Fwi mar a cail an mwail moor macken like Gabriel Rosenstock. Oh. How the big quail lost his weight by Gabriel Rosenstock who, your uncle who died last, this month. Fwi an mwail moor fi brougham. The big quail was sad. Taim he wad ro rau am. I'm too fat. Och, och a caun. Huig an sceil o haun go town. The story went from wave to wave. Ro rau am anna, ro rau am. a djerne heis galair. Too fat was he? Too fat, said Oudafish. Coa hoan agus an fawn of Beirnard ríev con dinair. Is there any wonder because he's always eating us at dinner time? Coa rígi loam a coiradja feic níl incha anan. Help me friends, I'm not able.

27:53An mách an seach caille. Taim coal ag sin. Taim coa fawn. I'm not able to lose this weight and I'm so weak and I'm so sad. I'll cut to the final verse. A xa djerne, glach sí truaddo. In the end they had pity on him. Fian cretar buck di bain. The old creature, the old eejit was in pain. Agus heen cheet go Bermuda, the fish all went off to Bermuda, is feen mael moor leis heen and they left the whale on his own. So he lost his weight because they starved him. They all went off to the thing. And it just sounds amazing. There's your Uncle Gabriel. He's writing about fat shaming and food limitation back in the 70s.

28:30Os gael ga for Irish kids. My word. Thank you so much, Gerry. my uncle Gabriel died a couple of weeks ago and we were all very sorry to see him go and he was a great man and wrote so many books and contributed so much to our culture as Irish people and to the Irish language was loved and will be missed greatly by his family and myself and all who knew him for being a terrific character. Thank you Gerry. My pleasure, thank you And my thanks to Gerry Mullins for coming in and telling me about Jonathan Swift and my family. My thanks, of course, to Hump Finance, proudly supporting the Mario Rosenstock podcast.

29:14Talk to you again for our regular scheduled episode later this week.

29:31Islandда.