Rushdie says Gunter Grass’s SS service ‘forgivable’

In a Twitter exchange, Indian-British writer Salman Rushdie defends Gunter Grass’s SS Waffen service, a day after the German author died.

A Twitter user asked Rushdie: “Do you think joining the Waffen-SS is ever forgivable? Genuine question.”

He replies: “He was 17 & conscripted; ashamed of his youthful sympathies; re-made himself into the great literary scourge of Nazism. So: yes.”

Rushdie also says it’s “absurd” to call Grass a Nazi.

.@neiloosh He was 17 & conscripted; ashamed of his youthful sympathies; re-made himself into the great literary scourge of Nazism. So: yes.

— Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie) April 14, 2015

Grass' shame about his youth:yes, should've revealed it sooner,but the books reveal the man.Absurd to call the author of TheTinDrum a Nazi.

— Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie) April 14, 2015

.@neiloosh Grass always said he came from a milieu in which Nazism was thought to be correct. He made himself an artist by rejecting that.

— Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie) April 14, 2015