by Robert Martens

"...[I]t still seems as though nothing can top the Titanic, as if the Wilhelm Gustloff had never existed, as if there were no room for another marine disaster, as if only the victims of the Titanic could be remembered, not those of the Gustloff" (63). In his compelling novel, Crabwalk, German writer Günter Grass asks why the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, the greatest marine disaster in history, is unknown to most of the world. Russian U-boat torpedoes sank it in 1945, killing about 9000-10,000 people. The Gustloff and its convoy were loaded far beyond capacity with German refugees, Mennonites among them, who were fleeing the atrocities of the advancing Soviets in the waning months of World War II. To be sure, the ship listed a fair number of military personnel among its passengers. Most who died, however, were women and children. The sinking of the Gustloff has been ignored primarily for ideological reasons: it was a ship under the command of German fascists. Paul, the narrator of Crabwalk, feels compelled to resurrect this story. "...I still feel uncomfortable with anyone who has one thing, and one only, on his mind..."(71), he says, indicating his dislike of ideology of any kind, and the novel goes on to reconstruct the tragic history of the sinking.

The book's premise is that Paul was born either on the Gustloff or a rescue ship on the night of the sinking. His overbearing mother, fascist son, and he himself are captives of this story, and Paul seeks, by retelling the incident, to free himself from the past. "But I'm still not sure how to go about this: should I do as I was taught and unpack one life at a time, in order, or do I have to sneak up on time in a crabwalk, seeming to go backward but actually scuttling sideways, and thereby working my way forward fairly rapidly?" (3) With its seamless interweaving of real events and fiction, Grass's book reads almost like a memoir. In fact the first half of the novel focuses primarily on the history leading to the sinking, and on the three men most closely linked to the tragedy.

Wilhelm Gustloff, born January 30, 1895 (the Nazis were to seize power, coincidentally, on January 30, 1933), was an organizer on the far right anti-elitist wing of Hitler's National Socialist party. In 1936 he was assassinated in Davos, Switzerland by David Frankfurter, a German Jew who claimed he acted on principle. The third individual in this triad was Aleksandr Marinesko, the hard-drinking Soviet U-boat captain who ordered the firing of torpedoes on the Gustloff on January 30, 1945. It is a fascinating history that seems random and yet somehow mysteriously connected.

The Wilhelm Gustloff, named after the German "martyr," was christened in 1937 with Hitler and party stalwarts in attendance. It was a wonderfully constructed cruise ship, designed to relieve the stress of party members through sea vacations, and intended to do so classlessly, with rich and poor, connected and unconnected, mingling on all decks. During the war the Gustloff was utilized as a military ship, and finally as one of many boats leaving Poland with desperate German refugees on board. On the night of January 30, 1945, Marinesko ordered the firing of four torpedoes on the Gustloff, which quickly sank. Ironically, the torpedo painted with the inscription, FOR STALIN, misfired. How many died that night will never be exactly known. "The numbers I am about to mention are not accurate. Everything will always be approximate. Besides, numbers don't say much. The ones with lots of zeros can't be grasped.... This raises the question, to which no answer can be hoped for: What does one life more or less count?" (162)

With the telling of this history, the novel is more than half over. Paul is urged to write his own story by "the old man," never named, but probably Günter Grass himself. Paul is then further compelled, within the frame of the narrative, to pursue the story when he discovers a website devoted to the "martyr" Wilhelm Gustloff and the sinking of the ship. To his horror, he learns that the webmaster is his son, Konrad. An online debate takes place between Konrad and an individual who uses the pseudonym David, after Gustloff's assassin, David Frankfurter. Paul, ignorant of his true father, attributes his aimless journalist's life to fatherlessness, disconnection. And perhaps for this reason he is unable to create a relationship with his son, and to prevent the ensuing tragedy.

Konrad is living near Schwerin, Gustloff's birthplace, with Paul's mother, who provides no moral compass for her grandson. Paul compulsively returns to Schwerin, in order to attempt an understanding of his son's behaviour. He visits the largely destroyed monument built by the Nazis to commemorate the murder of Gustloff (the monument to Lenin, however, is still standing!), but neither his trip nor his dispassionate research on the sinking of the ship are capable of saving his son. On April 20, Hitler's birthday, Konrad meets with "David" and fires four shots into his body, as David Frankfurter had done years ago.

"Must this story keep repeating itself?" (225) Does history bind or free us? David Frankfurter spent some years in prison, then moved on to Israel, where he served as an official in the Ministry of Defense. Aleksandr Marinesko did not receive the honours he thought he deserved for the sinking of the Gustloff until after his death; in fact, the Soviets, possibly somewhat embarrassed by the mass deaths of women and children, temporarily exiled him to Siberia. And on the fictional side of Crabwalk, the characters confront history without being changed by it. Paul still drifts through life, unable to find a moral centre. His mother remains a controlling medusa, and Konrad continues with the "coherent insanity" (208) of fascism. "It's the evil that needs to come out" (228). The novel ends with a cry of despair: "It doesn't end. Never will it end" (234). So is there any point to remembering the past? Although the narrative of Crabwalk ends inconclusively, the underlying feeling of the novel is a prayer for coherence, for completeness. The characters may arrive nowhere, but the reader does not. The remembrance of things past in Crabwalk provides a sense of meaning within the whirlwind of history.