This is my latest autobiographical book. In its back-cover text, written by my friend Jim, we read:
This autobiography is a rare, candid account of male sexuality and coming of age in the late 20th Century. It will be of interest to sociologists. It starts out in West Germany prior to Germany’s reunification, and follows the author’s life later in the UK and the U.S. The author writes of his boyhood, his loving relationships to his mother and siblings, and his early sexual and emotional growth, describing the challenges with a perspective that most adult males choose to forget or brush aside. As such, this book might assist many readers to understand themselves. It is an account filled with both humility and humor.
The author retells the stories of his encounters throughout his life with girls and women with whom he tried to find lasting love and affection, as well as romantic and erotic fulfillment. He also gives his perspective of how girls and women were similarly attempting to find the same with him. Almost all these attempts were foiled by flukes of fate or mismatched personalities. Frustrating as love often is, the message is that he has never given up seeking love.
In addition to providing insights into male romance and sexuality, the book also delves into the problems of modern marriage as well as the challenges parents face who raise adopted children. In this regard, the writer frankly describes the at times shocking issues which he and his wife faced in raising two small, adopted children who had been severely traumatized as toddlers by their biological parents. The way he then describes how he patiently tackled those challenges and helped healing those children will be inspiring for other adoptive parents struggling with similar issues.
The writer ties in all the above issues with his political conundrum. This account does not and cannot ignore post-war politics. The author is a political dissident, though not by choice. He is an historical scholar whose minority conclusions have a bearing on some salient issues of World War Two which still shape modern political discourse. Not only was the writer imprisoned in Germany for his research, but he found out that his historical work haunted him also abroad in Great Britain and the U.S., although his activities were perfectly legal there.
The author also touches on his relaxed, natural attitude towards his body, and how behaviors which were never in issue in Europe could turn someone’s life into a living hell in the U.S. He describes his collision with U.S. laws against skinny dipping (though he was never charged with that offense). His story sadly shows an unhealthy attitude of U.S. society toward the human body. As Rudolf puts it: “I have little tolerance for people who declare the natural state of anything a crime.”
And here now the introduction:
Trauma does terrible things to the human mind. Although the present book is about love in all its many shapes and colors, it also contains references to traumatic events that have shaped the journey of my life. I do not let them dominate this book, but I think it is necessary to elaborate on them here, so the reader understands what is always in the back of my mind.
One main event that tremendously impacted my love life and traumatized me and my wife is told in the chapter titled “Heartbreak, Part 2” (starting on page 139). It tells the tale on how I got thrown under the bus by both the executive branch of the United States as well as its judiciary: I was ripped from my family, thrown into jail, where I received a wrist tag saying, “non-criminal” – which consternated even the prison officials. Four weeks later, I was deported to Germany where the authorities were poised to throw me into prison for a series of scientific studies I had published in prior years. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prevents any scholar from being thrown into prison for publishing scientific studies, but Germany doesn’t have such a First Amendment, and the U.S. government is perfectly prepared to use allied foreign governments to do the dirty work they are prohibited to do in their own country. While the U.S. government cannot abduct its own citizens, non-citizens are fair game to them. My story proves that point.
Many years after my deportation and years as a political prisoner in Germany, I eventually managed to come back home to my wife and daughter in the U.S. On the surface, things seemed to be normal. My wife even stated that I show no signs of trauma. But that was merely the surface. The truth is that my life’s experiences with government authorities have turned me into a paranoid, suspicious and nervous wreck each time I have to deal with any type of government official. When asked by doctors whether I have any allergies, for many years now I have been telling them that the only allergy I have is against government officials. They think it’s funny. But it is no joke.
I remember the last time I went to the local driver’s license center to get my license renewed. The nervosity and dread to go there, expecting to face all kinds of trouble, harassment, denial of service, rejection, even arrest for the-hell-knows-what was constantly in the back of my mind. I was calm throughout the entire process, and walked away with a new license with no issues at all. But in hindsight it is clear that my distrust in any government official has reached truly paranoid proportions.
Starting on page 167 of this book, I tell the story of our adoption of two children from a home where the police were a constant visitor due to drug abuse and petty theft committed by their bio parents. Both bio parents ended up in prison multiple times for their offenses, yet the children were taught by them that they are victims rather than offenders. For these two children, the cops were the bad guys. When I realized this, I set out to change this story. One day, a police car was parked in the church parking lot across the street. I took the kids by the hand and walked over to the police car and started a friendly chat with the police officer evidently taking a break from his patrol duties. The plan was to create a positive experience for these children involving the police. The problem was that, underneath my friendly and calm surface, a volcano of distrust, fear and paranoia was raging as I approached that police car. Was it the children I tried to teach a lesson, or was it me who needed that lesson? Was I even teachable?
I once told an acquaintance who is a fan of Mel Gibson movies (and so am I) that my life resembles the one described in Gibson’s movie “Conspiracy Theory,” only less dramatic and without the pyrotechnical effects – thank God. While Gibsons’s movie comes to an end, my life feels like a serialization of Gibson’s movie. It keeps coming up with new episodes.
One such new episode started in early 2022, when the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a declaration that I felt was squarely pointing at me personally: this declaration, introduced by Israel and Germany, appeals to the entire world to join them in their efforts at doing anything possible to suppress or ban any opinion that disagrees with the orthodox narrative on what exactly happened to the Jews during World War II. That U.N. declaration is a crass violation of the principle of freedom of speech as it is enshrined in the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Preamble and Article 19). What matters here, however, is that the effects of that declaration seemed to prove me right, because within days of adopting this resolution, all essential services of the publishing outlet I was running were cancelled.
I told my daughter Natalie back then that I feared some personal repercussions as well. My paranoid mind was set, looking for hints and clues to get triggered.
That event came about in the summer of 2022, triggered by my unusual habit of working out in public parks during the very early morning hours. People insist that hamsters have to get into a cage and run on the spot in a wheel, if they want to get some exercise, rather than exercise in nature. And why shouldn’t they, since humans apply the same prison mentality to themselves, insisting that people have to go into concrete bunkers they call “gyms” in order to get their exercises by running on treadmills getting very fast nowhere.
That one morning, some people saw me working out, or so they claimed later. I didn’t see anyone while working out. Only later, after I had heard some noises that made me check whether there is someone else present in the area, did I see some people standing around in the distance. They were too far away, and it was too dark to distinguish who they were. I tried to walk over to them to talk to them, but for reasons not comprehensible to me at the time, they ran away, and evidently called the police. Seeing no reason for something like that to happen, I simply continued with my workout, wrapped up my routine, and once done, started to pack up my gear to walk back home. That’s when I was suddenly engulfed by the light of a police car’s search light. What the… Not much was supposed to happen after that. The police officer in charge told me that I wasn’t supposed to be in that park at that time, because a sign somewhere says that night-time presence is prohibited. A citation for trespassing was all that was to come of it.
However, a few weeks later, I got mail from the authorities, telling me that things had been escalated from citation to a third-degree misdemeanor. During the preliminary hearing end of September 2022, a lady stepped into the witness stand who I had never seen, met or spoken to before (unless she was one of the indistinguishable people in the distant dark that morning, which is impossible to tell). She “identified” me as the person present that morning – what a mockery! Then she claimed, among other things, that I had tried to go after her by running aggressively toward her on this particular morning. That false testimony gave the prosecution the opportunity to escalate the case to a felony of attempted assault. The district attorney did not do this during the preliminary hearing, but from past experience I know that, if the case allows for such an escalation due to evidence already presented, then the prosecution might choose to wait with this escalatory step until the trial itself, so that the defense is unable to sufficiently prepare for such a new charge.
Then came all the paranoia triggers that set me off: the prosecutor wanted me arrested right there and then, because of my alleged long history of dodging governments hunting me all over the globe for publishing iconoclastic academic research results on the fate of the Jews during World War II. The prosecutor perversely mischaracterized these academic pursuits as evil secretions of a deranged mind. I am sure he has never read a single line of what I published about that topic, and he probably never will, because he thinks he knows it all. Higher powers have enlightened him with truth and knowledge, hence learning and gathering information, are unnecessary.
During his rant about my decades-long alleged international dodging of justice, the prosecutor accurately listed in chronological order the countries where I had been over the years: Spain, England, and the U.S.
Note that all I ever published is perfectly legal in all of these countries, so why call it “dodging justice,” when I did nothing illegal there?
Moreover, how did he know the exact sequence and names of the countries where I had been? He could have obtained that knowledge only because the Department of Homeland Security must have briefed him about my immigration history, or so I concluded. You see the conspiratorial mind at work here. I instantly concluded where all this was coming from, and what it was aiming at: framing me for crimes not committed, and then expelling me out of the country. The classic U.S.-American way of circumventing the First Amendment: They cannot prosecute me for my peaceful writings, so they instead misportray me as a criminal, who everyone agrees needs to be thrown into prison, and after his release expelled for good.
The judge’s reaction to this venomous mischaracterization of my activities as a dangerous person was swift and comprehensive. He ordered to put me in shackles, modern style: a GPS-tracked brace was to be put on my ankle, and I was to stay in my home until the trial was over. I had 48 hours to report to the courthouse to be equipped with this device.
When I told my wife of the outcome of this preliminary hearing, her reaction was the same as mine: It was a deja vu experience of what we had gone through back in 2005, when I was arrested and deported the first time. Back then, I let the arrest happen, because I trusted in the system to set me free. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice… not going to happen, my wife and I decided.
I used the time granted me by the judge to disappear without a trace, not even telling my wife what my plans were. Between October and mid-November 2022, I was actually living with the friend of an acquaintance in Ontonagon, Michigan. I was so freaked out during that time that I chose to sleep not in that friend’s home, as he had offered me, but in the attic of an empty, deteriorating house he owned a few houses up the road. It is in this cold and dark space where most of the present book was written between October 16 through 29, 2022. During the final weeks of my stay in Ontonagon, I got even suspicious of that place, and moved into the abandoned, unheated second-floor area on top of a local restaurant, just because nothing linked me to the (supportive) owner, and because I could use his restaurant’s free Wi-Fi signal.
Since I did not show up at the courthouse in York, PA, within 48 hours to have my ankle brace set, my wife and I expected the police to show up at our Pennsylvania home within days. I prepared my wife for this, instilling in her that she and our children all have the right to remain silent, hence should not say a word about anything to the police.
But no one ever showed up. In fact, no arrest warrant was issued. It was as if no one cared. What was going on?
When I did not show up at the arraignment roughly a month later, the judge had no choice but to issue a bench warrant. Yet again, no one ever showed up to look for me, let alone arrest me. Why?
In the meantime, the German Consulate General in New York informed me that my application for a new German passport was about to be declined due to criminal investigation pending in Germany for copies of my book on “The Chemistry of Auschwitz” which had been sent to several German recipients. The German government was sure out to get me. But for now, I was out of their reach. Subsequent access to the German files revealed that there had been 14 arrest warrants out for me, all for mailing copies of said book to German addressees. Eleven of those warrants had expired by mid-2022, while one was not being pursued. This left two active ones, one of which had been issued by a Munich district attorney in 2020. In the spring of 2023, he had this arrest warrant expanded to encompass all of Europe, not just Germany. As my lawyer and I could read from their email exchanges we managed to get copies of when getting file access, these German officials discussed whether I am in trouble with the law in the U.S., hence might lose my status there as a permanent resident, thus might try to sneak back to Europe. They were casting their net far and wide in order to catch me, should I try.
In mid-November, I left Ontonagon, just as the first snowstorm of the season was moving in. I drove southward to Austin, Texas, to drop in at an old friend from Germany who had immigrated to the U.S. several decades ago. She was pleased to see me, yet not happy to hear that I wasn’t just passing through, but rather was a homeless person with no idea what the future holds for him. In long talks, she convinced me that leaving the U.S., which I was seriously contemplating at that time, was a bad idea. The U.S. Constitution was still the best protection for me, she argued. Moreover, after having spent roughly a quarter million dollars in lawyer fees in my decade-long struggle to get a green card, it would be foolish to throw this privilege away. I should instead fight for retaining my status as a permanent legal resident. It took many weeks of longwinded discussions for me to finally realize that she was right.
Toward the end of January 2023, my friend had to leave for an extended stay in Germany with her parents, so I had to move on, as she did not want a purported fugitive as a house sitter. But where could I go?
Around this time, a retired law-enforcement officer just a four-hours’ drive away from Austin purchased an entire set of 48 books I had published over the past two decades. I reached out to him, and he gladly invited me to stay at his home. What better place is there to hide from the police than by staying with the police? But that wasn’t even the issue. His friendly relationship with the local sheriff eventually revealed to him that no one had been trying to arrest me because no one wanted to arrest me. The local police found out in June of 2023 who and where I was, and in September they let my host know that I wasn’t going to be arrested, because no one in Pennsylvania had an interest in pursuing this case. It was time to crawl out of my hiding place and face the fact that no one was out to get me.
In late October, I decided to become pro-active about my pending application to have my green card renewed. I had filed that application in the summer of 2022, but had heard nothing since. Because I needed either a valid green card or an extension letter for my old, expired card to get a Texas driver’s license, I filed an application for such an extension letter. Just one business day after filing this application, I got a phone call from the Department of Homeland Security, Citizen and Immigration Services – the same authority that had arrested and deported me in 2005. When I realized who was on the other end, my reaction was swift: my hands got cold, my heart rate increased, and I broke out in cold sweat. I felt like I was staring in the face of a monster ready to devour me.
The DHS guy told me that they had pulled out my green-card renewal application, granted it, and sent it over to production, so I should get my new green card within a few days in the mail. He asked me for my current address to make sure that they had the correct mailing address on file, and that was it.
No one was out to get me.
I hung up the phone, shell-shocked but also enormously relieved about what just happened.
A few days later, the green card arrived in the mail, valid until 2033.
Past traumatic events really messed up my head and made me overreact in such an extreme way that it completely upended my entire life.
But how could I know that neither prosecutor nor judge meant what they said? Or did they, and local law enforcement in Pennsylvania was sabotaging their efforts? Or did the lying witness have a change of mind and refused to testify in court, making the case collapse? I may never know.
The fact is that I faced the collapse of my social existence. I got ripped away from my family, and I knew very well that this was the death knell for my marriage. My love life with my wife, my kids, my pets, and even some of my relatives was in total shambles. While I have written several accounts of my intellectual journey through this troubled life – see in the back of this book foremost the entries on Hunting Germar Rudolf and Resistance Is Obligatory – I have never given an account of the other very important facet of my life that defines just as much, or maybe even more, who I am as a human being.
This book is meant to fill that void. It gives the reader a comprehensive look into my love life. My love to my parents, my siblings, my crushes and girlfriends, my wives, my children, and my pets. Love touches many things, and I’ll try to cover them all. Let the readers judge for themselves what and who I am when it comes to love.
Germar Rudolf
October 16 through 29, 2022
updated throughout 2023 and early 2024
