The Boy Who Dared

by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

  “Halt!” barks a storm trooper.

  Herr Seligmann turns and says calmly, “My windows are dirty. Surely I have a right to wash my store windows.”

  The street grows quiet. The air ripens, smells rotten.

  Helmuth wants to beg Herr Seligmann to stop. But Herr Seligmann dunks the scrubcloth into the bucket, wrings it out, and continues wiping the window. Four snarling storm troopers rush in. They topple Herr Seligmann, batter him, pile blows on him, kick him. He curls into a ball, protecting his head and stomach.

  Helmuth cries out at the thuds of fists, the hard grind of boots against bone, the grunts, the groans, and then silence.

  The Nazis drag their arms across their damp foreheads, looking strangely flushed, exhilarated. They suck on their knuckles and brush the dirt from their uniforms. Herr Seligmann’s rumpled body lies motionless on the sidewalk.

  A sick feeling rises in Helmuth’s stomach. His mouth tastes sour. He glances at the bakery. The window shades are drawn, the store dark, Herr Kaltenbach gone. Helmuth heads down the street. He buys the cake trimmings from a German baker who looks most pleased at all his new customers.

  * * *

  Helmuth hands Mutti the package, and when she peers inside, she notices the trimmings right away. “These are not Herr Kaltenbach’s,” she says.

  Helmuth swallows hard. He tells Mutti about the storm troopers, the boycott, the banners, the painted Stars of David, and Herr Seligmann. The words feel dirty, as dirty as a lie in his mouth.

  “How dare that brown-shirted pest tell us where to shop!” says Oma. “I will shop where I please!”

  “I don’t want you to take any chances,” says Opa sternly. “Do you hear me? I forbid it. This hatred can’t last forever.”

  “And until then?” says Oma.

  Opa reaches for a cake trimming, takes a bite. “These aren’t so bad.” He offers one to Helmuth, but Helmuth shakes his head no. He fears he will throw up if he eats one bite.

  May. A Saturday afternoon. Opa gives Helmuth and Gerhard and Hans money for the movies. They buy their tickets and climb into the balcony seats. They wait for the feature, a western, to begin.

  Helmuth loves westerns. He loves the American Wild West, its cowboys, the gunfights, the fistfights. He loves the feeling of losing himself in the action, the same way he feels when he reads his brother’s Karl May adventure novels, which are also set in America.

  The theater lights dim. A black-and-white newsreel flickers on the screen. The boys and girls stir, restless for the main feature. But the newsreel interests Helmuth. This one shows a huge bonfire that took place in the courtyard outside the university library in Berlin. Students wearing uniforms and swastika armbands are tossing books onto the burning pyre. The books arc, and their covers spread like a bird’s wings as they soar toward the fire.

  “From now on,” intones the narrator, “Germans will read only German books by German authors, books that promote strong, traditional German ideals. We will not have our minds poisoned by Jews and others who promote liberal ideas.”

  In the newsreel the students cheer. All around Helmuth, boys and girls cheer, too, rocking the balcony with their stamping of feet.

  Helmuth feels sickened. He thinks about the Karl May adventure stories. What if the Nazis ban the Karl May westerns, what if they call them un-German because they are set in the American Wild West?

  His stomach in turmoil, Helmuth doesn’t enjoy the movie. He just can’t lose himself in the story. Later, at the flat, he hurries to his bedroom and closes the door. He sits on his bed and stares at the bookshelf. He reaches for his brother’s novels, pulls them from the shelf. He doesn’t want to hide the books, but he fears he must.

  Helmuth stashes them beneath the bed. He finds Gerhard in the living room and sits beside him on the couch. He feels guilty about the hidden books. He knows he’s supposed to honor his country and his leaders, and that means to obey, honor, and sustain its laws. That’s what the Mormons’ Twelfth Article of Faith tells him. But must he obey a law that feels wrong?

  “Gerhard,” says Helmuth slowly. “Is it ever all right to do something you’re not supposed to?”

  “What kind of thing are you talking about? Do you mean something illegal? Breaking the law?”

  Helmuth thinks about that. “Yes,” he says. “Is it ever all right to break the law?”

  “Breaking the law is serious. But God gave us free agency,” says Gerhard. “That means we have the right to choose our own actions. If you choose to break the law to help someone else or keep someone from harm, then it’s justified.”

  Helmuth feels hopeful for a second, because Gerhard is right. God did give him free agency. Helmuth tries to reason why reading a forbidden book might help someone else. He can’t. “Suppose it’s not to help anyone?”

  “If it’s for your own convenience and other people could be harmed, then it’s wrong.”

  Helmuth weighs this answer, tries hard to determine if reading a banned book could harm another person. He doesn’t think so. “What if it’s for your own convenience but no one will be harmed?”

  Gerhard’s voice turns harsh, judgmental. “Then it’s selfish and wrong. You should know better.” He looks at Helmuth sternly. “Are you thinking of breaking the law? You’d better tell me.”

  “I’ve hidden your Karl May books,” Helmuth admits, exasperated. “They’re set in America, and that makes them un-German. I don’t want to burn them, and I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

  Gerhard laughs. “You don’t have to hide them,” he says. “Karl May is Hitler’s favorite author, you know. Hitler likes the Wild West, too.”

  Helmuth didn’t know. He feels much better. But still, he finds Gerhard annoying, the way he knows it all, the way he is so sure of himself, the way he can tell right from wrong as surely as if he were solving long division.

  The morning sun moves higher on the wall. From down the corridor, Helmuth hears footsteps. White-hot fear blazes down his back. The footsteps pass his cell, stop several doors away. The fear turns to cold sweat. It’s not him.

  The rattle of keys.

  A door swinging open. A guard’s voice. “Come with us. It is time.” That’s what the guards say when they escort a prisoner to the low redbrick execution chamber in the courtyard, where the guillotine waits.

  A wailing sets up. “No!”

  Helmuth’s stomach turns. He hears blows, the dull thuds of a truncheon, the kick of boots, the shackling of handcuffs.

  A door slams.

  Sobs. Footsteps. The drag of feet.

  A minute passes. Two minutes. Three.

  Then, in the distance, metal against metal. The guillotine snaps its iron jaws with a clang that rings throughout the prison.

  Silence.

  Helmuth’s insides turn to water. He rushes to the slop bucket, throws up. He drags his arm across his mouth. He kneels beneath the cell window, closes his eyes, and prays for the soul of his neighbor.

  Helmuth believes in prayer, believes in God, has always believed in God, even now doesn’t believe that God has abandoned him but has grown closer. For not one sparrow is forgotten before God. That’s what the Bible says.

  And so Helmuth does not give up hope as he prays, “O my heavenly Father, if it be possible, open the minds and hearts of these people: nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.”

  He feels something. His chest swells. A warm calmness fills him. God is listening, of this Helmuth is sure. He squeezes his eyes tighter, repeats the last words, chants them fervently, asThouwiltasThouwiltasThouwilt, until they wrap around him and the floating feeling comes.

  It’s April 1935, and spring has come to Hamburg. Helmuth hears it in the crackling gray ice floes that drift through the rivers and narrow canals. He sees it in the mallard ducks that bob, bottoms up, in the Alster lake and in the return of the robin.

  Helmuth sees spring in Mutti’s eyes, too. She has a new boyfriend, the tall, dark-haired, mustachioed Hugo Hübe
ner. Mutti stays out late dancing with Hugo, and some mornings when Helmuth awakens, Mutti is humming in the kitchen and Hugo is sitting at their table. He wears his brown-and-black SS uniform with its blue collar insignia that says he’s a Rottenführer, a noncommissioned corporal.

  Before long the Rottenführer is sitting at their table every morning, taking up all the air in the flat. He stretches out, clasps his hands behind his head, elbows wide, and crosses his gleaming black jackboots at the ankles, saying, “The Führer this, and the Führer that.”

  Without asking, Hugo turns in Mutti’s old radio for a new People’s Receiver, the Volksempfünger VE 301. It is a cheap brown plastic radio, with a simple dial and no shortwave so that it only receives German stations. “See?” says Hugo proudly. “The 301 stands for January 30, the day Hitler became our leader. Thanks to the Führer, every German can afford a new radio. All of Germany can tune in the Führer.”

  It grinds Helmuth’s stomach, the way Hugo makes all the decisions, as if he is the father. He decides what Mutti will make for breakfast and dinner and asks Helmuth if his homework is done. And now Hugo has even decided on the radio. Helmuth cannot understand what Mutti sees in a man like Hugo, but Hugo seems here to stay.

  And stay he does. By 1937, Hugo has moved in with them, and one morning, he announces in his booming voice that the flat is too small. There’s not enough Lebensraum — Hitler’s favorite word — for living space. “All Germans need Lebensraum,” Hugo says. “I have found us a new flat, Emma. We’re moving.”

  And just like that, Mutti packs up everything — the dishes, the pots and pans, the uneven chairs, the brown wooden table, the worn armchair, the scratched-up black oak table lamp, the two wooden bedsteads. They move to a first-floor apartment at Sachsenstrasse 42.

  Helmuth misses the comfort of his grandparents next door, their quiet flat where he doesn’t feel as though he’s holding his breath, where he can escape to do his homework in peace. It’s different for Hans and Gerhard. They’re old enough to bicycle with their friends to Cuxhaven on the North Sea where they camp overnight and dive for mussels that they cook on the beach.

  But Mutti is happy, happier than Helmuth ever remembers. She sings as she puts away the dishes, stacks the pots and pans beneath the sink, polishes the furniture. Her eyes glow as she tells Helmuth that everything will work out just fine, that Hugo wants to be a father to him.

  “Wait and see,” she says. “We will marry, and when we do, Hugo will adopt you. You will be his son.”

  The thought turns Helmuth cold inside. “I’m twelve, going on thirteen,” he says. “I don’t need a father anymore.”

  “Every boy needs a father,” says Mutti.

  “Gerhard and Hans do just fine without one,” says Helmuth. “And so do I.”

  “Just promise me you’ll give Hugo a chance,” says Mutti. “He wants what’s best for you.”

  A sensation of unease rises in Helmuth’s stomach, swims about. He doesn’t like Hugo. He resents his presence in their flat, but he can’t tell Mutti no, and so he says yes, for Mutti’s sake.

  * * *

  In 1938, Helmuth graduates from primary school and starts at the Oberbau, the middle school at Brackdamm. On his first day, Helmuth carries his satchel into the classroom and sets it on a desk near the window. The schoolroom is plain, but the wall paint is fresh and the wooden floorboards newly oiled and the desks worn. The room feels well-lived-in.

  A bright swastika flag hangs above the teacher’s chair. Brand-new textbooks sit, stacked on the desk. The other boys file in, most wearing Hitler Youth uniforms. The classroom grows noisy, and Helmuth feels lost in the din. He doesn’t know anyone, so he prefers to stay off to himself, to take it all in.

  Suddenly the classroom door slams shut, and the room falls silent. A short, trim man with fashionably slicked brown hair walks crisply to the front. He has wide shoulders and muscular arms. He turns on his heel and faces the class at attention, like a soldier.

  The boys leap to their feet. They shoot their hands forward and cry out, “Heil Hitler!” It never feels right to say “Heil Hitler” instead of “Good morning,” but it’s the rule, and so Helmuth follows.

  The man raises his dark eyes to look at Adolf Hitler’s portrait, as if invoking the Führer’s blessing over his class. He then lifts his arm nonchalantly, a bored wave it seems, and returns the Hitler salute.

  “Be seated,” he says and then he introduces himself as their new teacher, Herr Vinke. “An exciting year awaits you,” he says. “Never has there been a more exciting time to be young and to be a student. Thanks to the Führer, you will learn the new thinking in Germany.”

  He thumps the textbooks with his knuckles. “The National Socialist educational program surpasses anything of its kind in history. You see, my boys, the reality is this: It is your job to shape the fate of our Fatherland.”

  Herr Vinke picks up a stack of books and passes them out. “We will begin our study with the unlikeness of men,” he says.

  This makes Helmuth squirm inside, the same way he squirms when Hugo laughs over cartoons that depict Jews in an ugly manner.

  But the lesson isn’t about race. It’s about the different mental and spiritual traits of men, traits such as courage and honor and duty. These are questions that Helmuth has often pondered at night when he lies in bed.

  Helmuth grows more interested and listens intently. “For some, courage and loyalty are nothing but great stupidities,” says Herr Vinke. “They would rather be live cowards than dead heroes.”

  Helmuth reflects on those words. He knows he’s loyal, but he wonders if he is also brave, if he has what it takes to be a hero.

  Herr Vinke continues, “Others, however, cannot live without honor and prefer death to cowardice. They want their death to stand for something.”

  He picks up a large, scrolled print. He unrolls it and holds it out for the class to see. Helmuth is intrigued by the sinking ship, by the drowning sailor who clings to the naval flag, by the debris floating about. Even as the sea rages around him, the brave sailor keeps the flag safely above him and the water.

  “This painting is called Fulfilling His Last Duty,” says Herr Vinke. “It illustrates one’s duty to raise high the flag, to never let it fall. This is what it means to be a good German. A good German is loyal. Honorable. Brave. Courageous. Willing to sacrifice himself for his country.”

  Helmuth knows these things. He knows that a good German puts loyalty and self-sacrifice ahead of all personal interests. But there is something about the drowning naval soldier that bothers Helmuth. He raises his hand to speak.

  Herr Vinke calls on him, and Helmuth stands. “Wouldn’t it be better, sir, to grab a piece of the floating wood even if it means letting go of the flag? This way, you might live to fight another day for your country.”

  This enrages Herr Vinke. He pinches his lips shut for a long moment, and when he finally speaks, his words are clipped and cutting. “Sit down! You have completely failed to understand a soldier’s duty! The greatest honor for any soldier is to die for his country rather than to let the flag fall. For the flag represents the Fatherland — and if the flag falls, Germany falls! Is that what you want?”

  “No, sir,” says Helmuth. He feels embarrassed and confused.

  “You are a troublemaker. I should mark this down in your Party record book, but I will not. Instead, you have earned the class an extra homework assignment.”

  Herr Vinke announces that the class must write a five-hundred-word essay with the title, “Adolf Hitler, Savior of the Fatherland.”

  Helmuth’s classmates cast angry glances at Helmuth as they snap open their notebooks and copy down the title.

  Helmuth tries to make sense of what just happened. He opens his notebook, dutifully copies down the assignment as anger swells inside him. Anger that Herr Vinke misunderstood his question, anger that Herr Vinke now thinks him a coward. Anger and humiliation beat inside Helmuth with a pulse all their own.

 
; * * *

  That night Helmuth sits at the kitchen table, feeling dark, chewing on his pencil. His paper is blank except for its title and opening sentence.

  It wasn’t fair, the way Herr Vinke twisted Helmuth’s question, the way Herr Vinke made the whole class suffer. Now the entire class is angry at Helmuth — and who can blame them? Helmuth could kick himself for raising his hand, for asking that question.

  Hugo Hübener comes up from behind. He rests his hand on Helmuth’s shoulder, startling him. Hugo’s hand feels gentle but strong. Hugo leans over Helmuth’s shoulder and reads the first sentence out loud. “God has blessed our Fatherland by giving us Adolf Hitler.”

  He squeezes Helmuth’s shoulder in approval. “A good start, my boy!”

  Helmuth cringes. He hates it when Hugo calls him “my boy.”

  “His homework mocks God,” says Gerhard matter-of-factly. He doesn’t look up from his physics book. Now seventeen, Gerhard has begun classes at the Technicum where he studies electrical engineering. He’s seldom home anymore, since he also works at the MützenFabrik, a factory that makes stiff military hats, the kind with the visor in front. The long hours and hot, smelly work make him tired and cross. Helmuth wishes his other brother were at home, too, to say what he thinks. But Hans is a shipbuilding apprentice at the dockyards, and Helmuth rarely sees him at all.

  “God and country go together,” says Hugo.

  “They do,” says Gerhard. “But that essay isn’t about God and country. It makes an idol out of Hitler. And anyone who makes an idol out of a leader mocks God.”

  “It does not mock God!” says Hugo. “The Fatherland is a gift to us from God. And God has blessed the Fatherland by giving us a leader like Hitler, who has the strength and resolve to lead Germany out of this mess. You should honor your country, and that means honoring your leaders. Doesn’t that church of yours teach you anything?”

  Helmuth feels anger rise inside at Hugo’s biting remark. Hugo isn’t a Mormon. How dare he criticize their church! Hugo doesn’t even go to church. Not even when Mutti pleads.