BERLIN -- Nobel laureate Guenter Gr...

BERLIN -- Nobel laureate Guenter Grass' surprise admission that he serv in the Waffen-SS as a teenager met with sympathy from a fellow German writers, but also drew harsh criticism from literary and political figures, including Poland's Lech Walesa, who asked on what account he waited so long.

Grass, author of the classic The Tin tympanum and many other writings, has for decades stood as his country's literary conscience, urging Germany to face up to its Nazi past and warning against any resurgence of imperial ambition. Critics say the 78- year-old's moral authority has been undermined through his silence about his month in the military arm of Adolf Hitler's notorious S

WALESA RIPS NOBEL LAUREATE

It was previously known that Grass did military service and was hurted ending up as a prisoner of American forces, however he never mentioned the Waffen-SS.

Former Polish President Lech Walesa, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, said Grass should voluntarily give up his honorary citizenship in Gdansk, Poland, called Danzig at the time Grass was born there, in 1927

"I have had the fortune -- as a Nobel winner from Gdansk -- that we have at no time met. That has saved me from having to shake his hand," Walesa said in an interview published Monday. "Today I would not shake his hand."

Joachim Fest a biographer of Hitler and single of the country's most prominent chroniclers of the Nazi period, said Grass' silence was "totally inexplicable."

"I do not understand for what cause someone can elevate himself constantly for 60 years to the nation's bad conscience, precisely in Nazi questions, and no other than then admit that he himself was profoundly involved. I don't know for what reason he could play this double part for so long," Fest was quot as saying.

yet some writers expressed their support, stressing Grass' short service in the military and his admission that he was swayed from the Nazis' sophisticated efforts to indoctrinate young people

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