English Original
A few years ago, as her father was succumbing to dementia, journalist Lucinda Franks discovered a small box in his dilapidated apartment. Beneath mysterious maps and crumpled foreign banknotes, she found a military cap adorned with a Nazi insignia: an eagle, a skull and crossbones, and a swastika.
Franks knew little about her father's WWII service and had long sensed he was hiding something. "Was my sphinx-like father presenting one character and living another?" she writes in her memoir, My Father's Secret War. When she pressed him, he refused to speak, citing a decades-old pledge of secrecy.
After years of investigation and conversations with her ailing father, Franks pieced together his story. Fluent in German, he had been a spy and occasional assassin. The Nazi cap was part of his disguise as a Waffen SS member, worn the night he infiltrated a Gestapo headquarters, killed a guard, and sought files listing people wanted by the Nazis.
Near the end of his life, he finally explained why he kept the hat: because of the "death's head" insignia. "I never wanted to forget who these German soldiers really were."
中文翻译
几年前，在父亲即将被痴呆症吞噬之际，记者露辛达·弗兰克斯在他破旧的公寓里发现了一个小盒子。在一些神秘的地图和皱巴巴的外国钞票下面，她找到了一顶军帽，上面装饰着纳粹标志：一只鹰、一个骷髅头和十字骨，以及一个卐字标志。
弗兰克斯对父亲在二战期间的服役经历知之甚少，但一直感觉他在隐瞒着什么。她在回忆录《我父亲的秘密战争》中写道：“我那如斯芬克斯般神秘的父亲，是否展现着一副面孔，却过着另一种生活？”当她追问时，父亲以一份数十年前的保密誓言为由，拒绝透露。
经过多年的调查以及与病重父亲的漫长交谈，弗兰克斯拼凑出了他的故事。他精通德语，曾是一名间谍，偶尔也是刺客。那顶纳粹帽是他伪装成武装党卫队成员的一部分。他戴着这顶帽子潜入盖世太保总部，杀死一名警卫，并寻找纳粹通缉人员名单的文件。
在生命即将走到尽头时，他终于解释了保留这顶帽子的原因：因为那个“骷髅头”标志。“我从未想忘记这些德国士兵的真实面目。”