The Transmission of Hate in Anna Segher’s “The Seventh Cross”

While the normality of life amidst the tyranny of fascism caught my attention in Anna Seghers’ novels, I also noticed how Seghers, in The Seventh Cross, details the ways that youth become indoctrinated into fascism and oppressive political ideologies. There are multiple scenes in The Seventh Cross that involve the Hitler Youth or young men joining the SA and SS, specifically George Heisler’s younger brother Heini. (p. 241)

Early during his escape, George hides in a yard in Buchenau as pair of women do laundry. He overhears them talking, and as the women work on the clothesline, “as SA officer comes out of the house” and chastises them for doing such work with an escapee from Westhofen on the loose. The younger woman tells him, “Oh well, there’s always someting going on. . . . What about the beets? And the grapes, the wine? And the laundry?” Amidst everything, she asks, who will take care of the day-to-day, the quotidian acts of mere existence.

The man runs out of the yaerd in search of George, and as the older woman locks the gate, a group of Hitler Youth, led by her grandson Fritz, approaches. He asks his grandmother to allow the other Hitler Youth to come into the yard and house to search for George, and she denies them, yet they step over her laundry basket and parade through the house, blowing whistles and…