My usual pre-Thanksgiving ritual doesn’t involve putting on stretch pants to allow for that last extra bite of stuffing. Neither does it involve watching the Macy’s Day Parade. Instead, before I head over to my grandparents’ house for Turkey Day with my family, I make sure to catch up on the latest episodes of my favorite soap opera, The Young and the Restless. Imagine my chagrin when I found out the actor playing Victor Newman (the resident villain-cum-billionaire) – Eric Braeden – is the son of a former Nazi Party official.
Eric Braeden was born Hans Jorg Gudegast into a Hitler-dominated Germany in 1941. According to the Los Angeles Times, Braeden “saw his father, mayor of his native hometown, imprisoned at the end of World War II as a Nazi party member.” I was taken aback when reading this. If anyone’s ever seen Mr. Mumbles, a.k.a. Victor Newman, at work on Y&R, you’d know that he’s not the most lovable character. Victor has manipulated friends and family for years: his most recent schemes include arresting his daughter on her wedding day to avoid her marrying an undesirable man, alongside many more misdeeds. While Victor is hardly a paragon of virtue, I didn’t expect his real-life portrayer to have a taint on his own name.
In an interview from 1987 with the Washington Post, Braeden shared that he had experienced some hostility to his German identity. He noted, “But someone can become obsessed because of frequent reminders of the excesses of Nazi Germany. . . Unless you have a strong sense of self and history, you succumb to one of two reactions: You become very hostile and defensive, or you become guilt-ridden and overly apologetic.” Obviously, Braeden can’t be held responsible for the terrible choices of his father, family, and countrymen.In the above statement, Braeden is hardly supporting Nazism and does express a rational point of view, saying that, as a German, he cannot make the past the center of his life. However, I would be lying if I said I now look at Victor Newman the same way.
At the same time, Braeden seems a bit too determined to put the past behind him. He observes that, after World War I, most Germans wanted to rebuild their country. “To understand that period, he said, it is important to maintain a ‘sense of what it was like then, rather than viewing it only with the righteous indignation of twenty-twenty hindsight,'” said the Post article. This statement seems to rationalize the Nazi violence committed at this time. It is, indeed, important to understand the reasons behind Germany’s terrible actions at that point: at first, most Germans probably followed Hitler because he promised to revitalize Germany.
Regardless, one cannot detach the causes of an event from its effects. Looking at the reasons for Hitler’s rise to power is important, but no situation – no matter how dire – can rationalize the senseless violence of the Holocaust. Perhaps this is my Jewish heritage talking, but, no matter how much I ponder the causes of World War II, I cannot put myself into a frame of mind that would justify mindless slaughter. Braeden’s viewpoint is understandable, but he can afford the luxury of looking back at German history from that very “20-20” vision. The Jews of the Holocaust didn’t have the same option.
Carly Silver is a senior at Barnard College, Columbia University, majoring in religion and minoring in ancient studies. Originally from Weston, Connecticut, she is currently trying to pay for college by playing the ponies at a Tri-State area racetrack. Her column, Twenty Thousand Leagues From Hillel, appears here on alternating Fridays.
