In Germany, snow is never pure white, never soft or puffy. Instead, it is a slippery ice, a sly wolf disguised as a newborn lamb. As soon as a child, wrapped in their worthless clothing, entered the unforgiving cold, their small faces turned blue, and their toes numbed into blocks of steel. That is the reality of winter in our small little village up in the Alps.
Yet, inside the houses of caring neighbors, the aroma of Weihnachten filled the air with the warmth usually associated with the kind of bread pulled straight out of the oven. Papas are sitting on their leather chairs watching their miraculously cheerful wives in the kitchen, surrounded by her children, learning how to make a traditional Weihnachten meal.
Der Nikolaus’s goodness would had found its way into the humble house, and shiny wrapped gifts found themselves under the usual Weihnachten tree, the finest tree in the Alps. Candles, flickering on their green stands, shone onto gold and silver ornaments that quite easily could have been real, if it was not obvious how low the price was.
Baby Abigail curled up in Mama’s lap. Laughs echoed from the room of three years olds Jonathan and Nathan. Painting hang on the wall, covered with mistletoe. The wooden roof covered with snow, the peeling paint on the walls, all of the squared exterior disappeared in the Weihnachten season. And I, at four years of age, saw the world as it truly was: a Garden of Eden, at least, at Weihnachten.
At that time, the only war thought of was the World War, remembered in the memories of former soldiers, strict commanders, and once young girls, widows at a much too early age. But now, with Hitler and his Nazis, war has once again entered German’s minds, but this time the war is against Papa and the Jews.
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“From millions of men, one man must step forward who with apodictic force will form granite princes from the wavering idea-world of the broad masses and take up the struggle for their sole correctness, until from the shifting waves of a free thought-world there will arise a brazen cliff of solid unity in will.
“I am that will, that light in a world darkened by the filthiness of the Je-“
Papa turned off the radio, sweat pouring down his face in rage. His dark brunette hair flattened against his head. He wore a water lodged gray shirt and plain brown pants, patched multiple times. The redness of his overlarge ears and nose, the flushness of his cheeks, the wetness of his generous eyes – there was something wrong.
And so, with the high pitched, innocent voice of a child, I asked a reasonable question. “Papa, why did you turn the radio off?” A simple question, to say the least, but Papa’s reaction was extreme, to say the least. What was wrong? Oh, what was wrong with Papa?
He stomped off, without any reason a little kid would understand. It wasn’t the first time I saw the influence of Hitler, and wouldn’t be the last, but it had the greatest effect on me. Why? I still don’t know, but the way a child’s mind works is often left unknown, and so this mystery would always be.
Later that night, long after Papa had gone to bed, Mama and I talked. Though I had not realized it at the time, Papa was home much too early for it to be ordinary. I was only told he had lost his job. Nothing else, but that was enough for such an unusual day in the life of a seven year old.
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Ninety thirty-four was a busy year for Hitler. I was ten then, and as every good boy knew, twelve was the year you became a man. Not one of the wimpy old grumps that called themselves Grandpas, but the strong, tanned man who worked outside with their hammers and saws.
However, no grown-up understood this, and so, instead of building muscle, us boys were forced into true learning, learning concentrating on the destruction of the filthy rats called Jews, in a little area covered by termite eaten wood, and logs long dead, in long rows. It was more of a picnic area than an actual building.
Before then, the term, Jews, was a word like unscrupulous; it meant something bad, but why, no one knew. Yet, from the first day on, we were expected to be trained in the understanding of the gruesome animals taking over the world.
“Jews aren’t people,” was the common reply to questions about Jews. “They’re worse than rats, and produce quicker than cockroaches. They are the weeds, and we are the gardeners, plucking them out to grow beauty instead of ugliness.”
Still, what these creatures were, I didn’t know. That is, until I met Daniel.
The sun was beating down onto the worn out ten, soon to be eleven, year olds. The August air suffocated us, but we couldn’t stop, especially if our mission was as important as the teachers told us. Jews were coming, and we had to stop them, even if our only weapons were wooden poles, and our wall was made of dirt.
Dust blinded us, but as we shoveled yet another pile of dirt, we knew we could defeat the devil himself. Why, the wall must have been fifty feet high, considering how long we had been working on it. Oh, and the weapons were stocked as high as mountains. Even Mt. Everest couldn’t compare to this. That is, according to the small minds of grade school students.
“Dig, children, dig!” the principal cried. “Remember, children, we must fight for the freedom and independence of the fatherland!” And so, we dug.
Everyone, that is, besides a small boy, pushed to the edge of our miniature Great Wall of Germany. Wrapped in rags, hair matted, face hidden in dirt, he was a nobody, a Jew-lover, a person worst than the devil. He wouldn’t dig against the Jews. Maybe he was a Jew. Maybe that was why he wouldn’t dig. Rumors had spread around, and the Aryan race had joined together against the bug wandering in its path.
He wasn’t like us. That much the teachers had hinted at. Somehow he was different, unique, a sight for the Hitler Youth. Though he looked human, he didn’t have a soul. He was an empty bottle, of which they could throw away whenever they wanted. Surprisingly, he never was.
There was something about that, that refusal to leave, that draw me to him. He knew something no one else knew. He believed something different then the crowd. Little Daniel Cohen, with the puffy nose, the mud brown hair, and the chocolate colored eyes, was a mystery I had to solve.
I knew where he lived. Everyone knew where he lived, but the thought of going there without a basket of eggs, rocks, and snails horrified me. And so, as a cowardly twelve year old, I left before dawn to find the truth.
His family was poor, even compared to the poverty often found in our little village. The one-room hut was falling apart after twenty years of used, yet they liked it. They liked the holes letting in wind. They liked how all the beds were shoved to one corner while the stove was on the other. They liked it.
And yet, there was a stranger fact. Daniel Cohen knew me. He knew who I was, who my parents were, and what I was most likely to do in almost every situation. There was a detailed report on me, and every other child in the village. He knew us all so well, and yet, not one of us had ever talked or even looked his way unless it was to bully him, but he still knew them.
Sometime during the visit, Daniel showed me the book. Mein Kampf, Hitler’s personal diary. “Listen,” he told me, and so I did.
“…The Nazi party should not become a constable of public opinion, but must dominate it. It must not become a servant of the masses, but their master...
“…Germany will either be a world power or will not at all…
“…All the human culture, all the results of art, science and technology that we see before us today, are almost exclusively the creative product of the Aryan…
“A folkish state must therefore begin by rising marriage from the level of a continuous defilement of the race and give it the consecration of an institution which is called upon to produce images of the Lord and not monstrosities halfway between man and ape…
“…The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew…”
“Stop! Just stop!” Daniel stared at me as I screamed like a lunatic, but he had to stop. The way he read it, with hatred in his voice and murder in his thoughts – he destroyed the beauty of the book.
I left, planning to never go back and unfortunately, I never did.
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The first time I saw a Nazi soldier up close, I was lying in bed, still half-asleep. It was December 5, at four o’clock in the morning. A storm was brewing outside, but I hardly noticed.
All I could see was the soldier’s face. It was blank, as if it was only a mask he could easily pull off. He held me by my hair, just barely touching, and dragged me off.
“Owwwwww!” He stared at me. He stared and laughed, as if my pain was funny, like burning an ant with a magnifying glass.
The front door hung open. Screams filled the air outside, but the soldiers didn’t care. They didn’t care that Abigail was crying, or a baby was dying in the cold as we were pushed down the mountain.
Papa’s eyes were wide with fear, but not with surprise, as though he had realized this would happen, as if he planned for it. Everywhere, people with brown hair and brown eyes and wide noses were being taken down the mountain, to the nearest train station if what was happening was like anything else they had heard.
Brown eyes… Brown hair… Wide noses… Papa was Jewish, along with almost half of the small little village.
Shock is hard to explain, but when you have felt it, you know what it is. If anything, I was feeling shock. We were going to a work camp, where it was likely Abigail would die, and maybe Jonathan and Nathan. They were too young, much too young.
Another thought came. We were animals. Animals! I had been taught Jews were animals and had no souls, yet, I had a soul, I was a child of a Heavenly Father. I was Catholic, yet I was leaving my home because I was a Jew.
What was happening to the world?
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We could see the train for miles. At the bottom of the Alps, there was only yellowed grass extending in a flat plane. A few trees were scattered around, but mostly there was nothingness, spreading out to even more nothingness. Mama had described this to us before, but until we had seen it ourselves, we could never believe her. I wish we still disbelieved her.
I tried not to look around, but it was impossible. A man, who had started out so strongly, with his shoulders proudly up, was now crawling, blood seeping out of his hands and knees. His eyes looked at nothingness, useless balls. He wouldn’t make the last mile, that much was for sure.
A mother tried to warm her baby, its face white, wailing at the beginning, was now silent. The small shawl covering it clearly was not enough. Was it dead? As soon as I thought it, the woman burst out with fresh cries. She could do no more to help her dear little babe.
A young boy carried his even younger sister. Often, he had fallen, and now both were covered with snow. They had gotten farther and farther behind, and by now, they were most likely lying under a tree dying.
What had any of these people done to deserve walking for miles in snow? What had they done to deserve to die? At last they had reached the trains, and what was there? Cattle cars.
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Two days. I had been stuck in a cattle car for two whole days. There are so many people, I can’t even budge. Pee covers the ground, and everyone’s pants are soaked. I can barely breathe, and the stink is terrible. Even if there was food, I wouldn’t had been able to eat it. A person had died, and the poor souls around her were still holding her up, involuntarily.
If this was the treatment they were given, how bad would it be at the work camp? Would we be crammed into tiny rooms, sleeping side by side, maybe even sleeping on each other? Would we be given next to no food?
What would it look like? Would it be in a valley of desert, with the sun killing someone every day? Would there be cement boxes for living in, hundreds of them stacked together? Or maybe just wooden ones falling apart, killing people in their sleep?
Whatever happens, it won’t be good, and it won’t going to be easy. That much was certain.
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