How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
[Fajngold] began to administer a daily dose of disinfectants to himself, his whole family, little Kurt, Maria, and me, as well as my cot. […] I learned of whole boxcars filled with carbolic acid, chlorine, and Lysol, which he had sprayed, strewn, and sprinkled when he was still disinfector at Treblinka (33.23).
Fajngold, the Holocaust survivor, has guilt of his own. He's the sole survivor in his family, because he was given the job of disinfecting the gas chambers and sprinkling lime over the corpses. His memories and his guilt destroy him; he hallucinates his family as still alive. His horrible memories, too difficult to recall, get expressed as compulsive attempts to disinfect everything, to make everything go away.
Quote #8
It would never occur to me to see myself as a member of the Resistance on the basis of six or seven disrupted rallies, three or four assemblies and parade marches drummed off stride. The term is quite fashionable these days. You hear of the spirit of Resistance or Resistance Circles (11.2).
Oskar's commenting on those people in the postwar period who call themselves Resistance fighters, just on the basis of a few minor acts of defiance like refusing to black out their windows during air raids. Grass believed that lots of ordinary German citizens downplayed their participation in the rise of the Nazi regime. He once told the BBC that there were so many "antifascists" in Germany after the War that he couldn't understand how it was possible that Hitler stayed in power for so long!
Quote #9
Nor was it true that the party pin was open when I picked the bonbon up off the concrete floor. The pin was first opened within my closed hand. I passed the sticky bonbon to Matzerath, pointed and jagged, so they would find the badge on him, so he would place the party on his tongue, so that he would choke on it […] (32.35).
In his re-telling of the incident when his second father was killed, Oskar admits that he had more of a role in it than he first let on. But he still admits to nothing more than very slight regret. Grass continues his theme about forgetting: Matzerath tried to get rid of the evidence of his Nazi affiliation, but that doesn't save him. It kills him.