My Name Was Five

by Heinz Kohler

  The marching had stopped and my mother took the opportunity to get us to the other side of the street. We raced up the stairs to seek our haven on the fourth floor, but a haven it was not. The Street Warden stood at the apartment door! As we climbed the last thirteen steps, our eyes met his black boots, his brand new brown suit, and then the swastika armband.

  “Inspection,” he said, “let me see your radio, please. Just want to make sure you haven’t been listening to foreigners.”

  He walked right into the living room, checked the setting of the dials and, being satisfied, attached a red warning label.

  “Punishable by death ...” it said.

  “Listen,” he added almost amiably upon leaving, “I strongly urge you to buy the new People’s Receiver. It has much better reception and it can’t get you into trouble.”

  “The hell I will,” my mother said after he was gone.

  -----

  “So he wants you to get the Goebbels Snout,” Mrs. Meyer said later when my mother told her the story at suppertime. “You know why, don’t you? The new People’s Receiver can only receive Nazi stations. You won’t get the BBC no matter how much you twist that dial!”

  My mother gave her one of those looks and asked me and Dieter to go and play in the next room.

  “What’s a Goebbels Snout?” I asked.

  “Never mind,” my mother said rather impatiently, “why don’t you go and show Dieter your new zither.”

  I was glad to oblige because I had been eager for days to show off my latest gift from Aunt Martel. My zither was a beautiful instrument, made of lacquered red wood and silver strings. I had a silver thumb pick as well and I could play all sorts of songs already. My zither, you see, came with dozens of cardboard templates that could be inserted underneath the strings. Then all I had to do was to pluck the strings at the spots and in the order so noted on the cardboard. In no time, Dieter learned to be an expert player as well. Golden evening sun, oh how beautiful you shine was our favorite song.

  -----

  Later, after Dieter and his mother had left to return to their apartment in the rear house, my mother told me never ever to talk about the Goebbels Snout again.

  “Goebbels is a bad man, one of those who took Vati away,” she said. “He talks on the radio a lot and some people look at the radio as his snout. But you must never say so out loud to anyone.”

  Then she put me to bed, but I was too scared to sleep. I thought of my father and of the man who had yelled at my mother in the street. I kept seeing creepy faces grinning at me from amongst the lace curtains. I saw a ghost lurking behind the tile oven that stood in the corner of the room. I put the light on, but my mother told me to put it out and not to touch the switch. And then I heard tinny music in the street.

  Quickly, I got up and parted the curtains in front of the balcony door. Flames mirrored in the big factory windows across the street. I opened the doors, climbed onto the bench, and looked down. A stream of dark figures flowed along the center of the street, with hundreds of torches held high and an eerie sound of drums. I went to get my mother, but she was angry. She put me back to bed–she always seemed to do that in those days–locked the balcony door, closed the curtains, and told me to keep things that way no matter what. The grinning faces came back. This time, they had red, fiery eyes.

  The next morning, when the bell rang at the corner, my mother took me with her to get a new block of ice for our freezer. We couldn’t believe what we saw when we came out of our house. Mrs. Nussbaum’s grocery store had been smashed to bits! The door was dangling from broken hinges. The giant store window lay in a thousand pieces on the sidewalk. Some shelves were lying in the street, too, along with hundreds of cans and boxes and blue paper sacks.

  Mrs. Nussbaum was sweeping up her store window. She was sobbing. We stepped over huge slivers of glass, each one like a sword, past broken chairs, half a bed. Pots and pans floated in a huge puddle of milk on the sidewalk.

  “We have to leave the apartment,” Mrs. Nussbaum whispered to my mother. “They promised it to Lotte Wagner right after the wedding.”

  My mother cried and gave her a hug. She also whispered a lot, but I couldn’t understand what she said. Just then I spotted Uncle Herbert at the door of the pub. He was pasting a big yellow poster to the door. I saw an eagle on it and a swastika. I tried to run to him to see what he was doing and also to get the postage stamps I’d asked him to save for me. But my mother held me back, and he looked right past me anyway.

  “I saw you talking to that woman,” Uncle Herbert said to my mother. “Do it again, and I’ll have to turn you in. Aryans and Jews don't mix.”

  “Nor do we,” my mother said icily. She looked him right in the eyes.

  -----

  “That’ll be 20 pfennigs,” the iceman said loudly. But I also heard him whisper to my mother. “They’ve just picked up Mrs. Meyer,” he said under his breath. “Called her a Bolshevik. That damned red scarf of hers.”

  As we turned back, my mother read Uncle Herbert’s big yellow poster on the door. About all the great deeds Adolf Hitler had done:

  Bit by bit

  Adolf Hitler

  tore up the dictates of Versailles!

  1933

  Germany withdraws from the League of Nations!

  1934

  The reconstruction of Army, Navy, and Air Force is begun!

  1935

  The Saar is brought home!

  The military sovereignty of the Reich is recaptured!

  1936

  The Rhineland is fully freed!

  1937

  The war guilt lie is solemnly extinguished!

  1938

  Austria is annexed to the Reich!

  Greater Germany becomes a reality!

  Therefore all of Germany acknowledges

  its liberator Adolf Hitler

  All say: Yes!

  “Poor Liesel,” my mother said to the iceman. “Imagine my sister being married to that monster! And thanks for the information. I’ll check on Dieter.”

  When we got home, my mother turned on the radio, just in time for a special report from Munich. “We, too, in Munich,” the announcer said, “have given world Jewry the kind of reply it deserves. The synagogue has been burnt to the ground! Jewish stores are closed! The most impudent Jews have been arrested!”

  “Those bastards,” my mother said. It had become her favorite word.

  “Here in Berlin, too,” the radio continued, “the murderous deed of that 17-year old Polish maggot, Herschel Grynszpan, has not gone unanswered: the Fasanenstrasse Synagogue has been destroyed; so have been the stores and homes of many others of those bloodsucking Jewish spiders who live among us, yet fail to respect the new order in our land. Let there be no doubt…”

  My mother turned off the radio. She told me to play on the balcony that day; she would get Dieter to stay with us until his mother returned. But I wanted to go along to get him, and she took me.

  Mrs. Richter was sweeping the stairway, as always.

  “Heard they are going to pick up the old people next,” she whispered. “You know what they say: They who do not work, neither shall they eat.”

  I thought of my grandmother. And in my bedroom that night, six rows of fiery eyes pierced my chest….

  But I was lucky, in a way. I was too young. I didn’t know at the time about the mental agony that my mother and her Jewish friend must surely have endured in the days after Crystal Night, after thousands of Jewish stores had been destroyed, nearly two hundred synagogues torched, and tens of thousands had to make a terrifying choice: Hand over all possessions to the state and emigrate or live a life wherein art exhibits, cinemas, concerts, and theaters were forbidden, where licenses to drive, practice medicine or law were revoked, and where nobody knew what other kinds of evil would strike next.

  Directive!

  Reich Minister Dr. Goebbels announces:

  “Last night, the justified and understandable outrage of the German peopl
e about the sneaky murder of a German diplomat in Paris by a cowardly Jew was vented in wide-ranging ways. Actions of revenge against Jewish buildings and stores were carried out in numerous cities and towns throughout the Reich. Now, however, I issue a strict directive to the entire population to cease and desist at once all further demonstrations and actions, of whatever kind, against Jews. The ultimate reply to the Jewish assassination in Paris will be given to the Jews by way of legislation or, possibly, executive order.”

  6. The Yellow Uncle

  [January 1939]

  Although I didn’t know it at the time, the rather hypocritical directive issued by Dr. Goebbels was quickly followed by all sorts of new restrictions for the Jews of Berlin. They were forbidden to enter the government district and the fancy western suburbs; they were banned from concert halls, movie houses, and theaters; and their presence in such public places as the broadcasting tower and various sports arenas was made illegal. Indeed, as I later learned, even half-Jews, quarter-Jews, Jews married to Gentiles, and “war-decorated” Jews lost their previously special status. But, as you can well imagine, none of this affected me; I had an Aryan passport.

  And so I entered school on January 1, 1939, a date that may strike you as odd. The selection of that particular date, a holiday in the rest of the world, was in itself something of an omen. It was a portent of the Teutonic compulsion for “perfection” that we first graders were about to meet and that was to pervade our education in the years to come. Starting off our schooling on the second day of the year was just not an option. That would have indicated a lack of seriousness, insufficient rigor, and a quite unacceptable degree of slovenliness, worthy of Struwwelpeter himself!

  I remember it being a cold and sunny day. There was no snow on the ground. When I surveyed the world from our balcony, as I did every morning, I noted the beauty of the morning sky. The sun was just rising in the east; the western sky was covered with parallel bands of wispy clouds turning pink. In later years, while studying to be a pilot, I would learn that such clouds consisted of windblown ice crystals and were known as cirrus radiatus. On that day, however, I didn’t know that, nor did I have time to consult the Book of Clouds that Aunt Martel had given me for Christmas. Before I could even open my storage box and reach for it, my mother pulled me from the balcony to get dressed. She helped me put on the garter belt and the long woolen stockings that all boys wore in those days and then a sweater and above that the brand-new sailor’s suit that I had been eyeing in the closet all week. I adjusted the cap with all the colored ribbons. It had the name of a famous ship on it, Bismarck. I admired myself in the mirror and strapped the big leather satchel to my back. It was stuffed with abacus and spelling book; sponge and drying cloth; pencil and tablet of slate. I slung the smaller satchel over my left shoulder, though not before checking that the right kind of sandwich was inside. Nothing but liverwurst would do.

  Dieter and his mother were waiting in the hallway downstairs. Yes, she was back, not a Bolshevik after all! Dieter wore a new outfit, too: Bavarian leather pants and a heavy white shirt to fight off the cold. He had a large Edelweiss flower in the middle of his chest. He looked just like the little man in the weather house standing in our living room. This small replica of a typical Bavarian house featured two open doors and was actually a barometer. A tiny man would come out of one door to forecast rain, but a tiny woman in a pretty red dress would come out of the other door to predict sun. Come to think of it, she looked just like Dieter’s mother on that sunny morning, red scarf included! Mrs. Meyer adjusted the scarf she always wore, and off we went.

  We already knew the route: Five houses to the right; turn left; straight to the footbridge and across the canal; left along its southern edge; turn right at the second bridge. And there we were. “Stuttgarter Strasse 35-38,” the sign said. Two four-story buildings dominated the lot, each made of red brick and each surrounded by an 8-foot cast iron fence, painted black. There were giant iron gates, too; each had another sign, “People’s School #19, Berlin-Neukölln.”

  We passed the first structure. It was for girls and had only women teachers. As instructed, we left our mothers behind at the second gate. Then we went into the second building which was for boys and where only men could teach. The front door was about ten times taller than a normal door, which was thrilling and also intimidating. Instantly, two big boys appeared. They wore familiar brown shirts and swastika armbands, and they marched us across acres of polished floors to the third-floor room of Mr. Eisler. They said he would be our teacher for the next three years.

  Mr. Eisler sat behind a desk on a platform. He checked off names and assigned seats as we came in. In front of him stretched ten rows of church-like pews. They were made of heavy oak and rose towards the rear of the room. This reminded me of the movie theater at the Treptow observatory to which my father had always taken me. Here the seats were numbered as well. “One” was in the farthest row and “Sixty” in the nearest, diagonally across the room. A large portrait of Frederick the Great looked down upon us. It hung across from the row of cathedral-sized windows. Each window had its own set of iron bars.

  A bell rang, three times, slowly, as if it was about to fail. Mr. Eisler stood up. He was very tall and looked like the picture on the wall, except that the medals were missing. He opened a closet behind his desk and took from it a yellow bamboo cane. He slapped the top of his desk twice and made an ominous swish through the air.

  “This,” he said decisively, “is the Yellow Uncle. If need be, he will teach you everything a first grader should know. Here is lesson Number One: You are to be quiet unless spoken to by me, quiet as a mouse. Is that understood?”

  No one said a word, but one could hear the clanking of the radiators.

  “Lesson Number Two: You are to stand at attention when spoken to and whenever I enter the room. Is that understood?”

  “Atten–tion!”

  We jumped to our feet, fast learners all.

  “Good, you got the point,” Mr. Eisler said.

  For the rest of that morning we stormed through the picture pages of the spelling book: From the cow that said “moo” to the cat that said “meow”; from the duck that said “quack-quack” to the dog that said “bow-wow.” We raced through half the animal world, from neighing horses to roaring lions, from squeaking mice to croaking toads …

  All that was easy for me; my mother had already taught me to read. Dieter was not so lucky; he got stuck a lot. The school bell rang in the middle of the farmer’s yard.

  “Atten–tion!” yelled Mr. Eisler; and, two abreast, we were marched down the granite stairs to the yard behind the school. The boys in uniform showed us how to merge with the boys from the other grades. We formed a single circle and slowly moved around the walled outer edges of the yard. I thought of the second-hand of the grandfather clock at home, and its fluorescent tip going around at night. And clockwise our endless circle moved, two abreast, silently. I thought of the horses and zebras in the circus. They had moved with similar precision. Presently, our trainer appeared.

  A teacher entered the center of the moving circle and, with a bullhorn, gave permission to eat. A thousand hands opened five hundred leather satchels, but a thousand feet hardly missed a step. The bullhorn teacher helped us walk the proper way.

  “Left, Two, Three, Four---Left, Two, Three, Four---Left,” the bullhorn blared.

  Once we got it right and knew how to march, we were also told how to eat.

  “Just like the Führer, you should eat lots of flour soup and always, always eat 12-Grain Bread,” the bullhorn roared. “It’ll keep you healthy and give you rosy cheeks. Tell your mothers when you get home!”

  ----

  When we returned to class, Mr. Eisler stood at the door with his yellow cane. A couple of well-aimed slaps hit the calves of the last two boys marching in.

  “A lesson from Frederick the Great,” Mr. Eisler said. “Never be last!”

  There followed a whirlwind of activity. Mr. E
isler had a question for each of the sixty of us, allowing about two seconds apiece for an answer. If the answer was correct, we were assigned another seat with a lower number; if the answer was wrong, we got a higher-numbered place to sit. Our names were not involved.

  “Thirty-one,” Mr. Eisler said, pointing the cane toward the boy in that seat, “read page five.”

  And Thirty-one jumped to his feet, grabbed the spelling book and read something like: “Croak-croak, quack-quack, meow.”

  “Good,” Mr. Eisler said, “you are Twenty-two.”

  And fifteen seconds after it all started, nine boys, named Twenty-two to Thirty, moved over one seat, making room at one end, while filling a gap at the other. But not everyone was as lucky as Thirty-one.

  “Seven,” Mr. Eisler said, pointing the cane at him and dangling a stop-watch from a silver chain, “repeat after me: Fisher's Fritz fetched fresh fish fast; fresh fish Fisher's Fritz fetched fast. Go!”

  But poor Seven mumbled: “What?” and Mr. Eisler announced triumphantly: “I knew it: You look stupid. You are Fifty-nine. And tape back those ears of yours: They stick out.”

  Boys with runny noses, pimples, and bowed legs were moved toward the front as well, along with others who could not spell “bow-wow” or who drowned themselves in “Four Vienna washer women washing white vests.”

  I was so glad my X-legs had been fixed.

  When everyone was seated “scientifically,” as Mr. Eisler put it, he called upon the entire front row of “proven misfits”:

  “Fifty-five, six, seven, eight, nine, Sixty, Atten–tion!” he yelled. “Step out! About-face! Down with your pants; underpants, too. Bend over your desks!"