My Name Was Five

by Heinz Kohler

  “You got to be really careful about Fritz Wagner. Always walks around with that swastika pin on his chest, a real loyal Party man. Herbert, sorry to say, is the same he always was. Loves to strut around in his brown-shirt uniform. And watch out with Walter, too. He’s still with the Postal Service, but he’s a big fish now. In charge of Germany’s official clock, super-important for the radio and also the Armed Forces. Have never seen him wear the Party pin, but Martel saw a brand-new SS uniform hanging in his closet, complete with fancy hat, skull and crossbones and all.”

  “How are the Nussbaums doing?” my father asked.

  “Have totally disappeared, we have no idea what happened to them,” my mother said. “Perhaps Martel can find something out.”

  “How come? How would she know?” my father asked.

  “Oh,” my mother said, “you couldn’t know. She’s still at the Customs Service, a confidential stenographer now, but the Gestapo took over her division. They’ve focused almost entirely on Jews leaving the country or trying to leave and they use every possible excuse to take away everything they own. Their apartments, their houses, their furniture, their businesses. Often they get them for ‘foreign currency crimes,’ but nowadays they can use dozens of other excuses. Jews can be ‘criminals’ for visiting the movies or the theater—forbidden now—for having pets, for owning radios or cameras, the list goes on.”

  “And if that doesn’t work, they have other means,” Aunt Martel interrupted. “They can tear your fingernails out. Or torture you to death with steel whips and electric drills. Or pump up your belly with a water hose. Oh God, I took the oath of allegiance; I cannot talk!”

  “Well, none of that is news to me, given where I have been.” my father said. “One can also die after being force-fed gallons of castor oil or get shot ‘trying to escape’ or ‘commit suicide by jumping out of a 4th-floor window while the guards were distracted.’ I have seen it all.”

  “Actually,” my father continued, “Jews are only one of several types of prisoners they have at Oranienburg. They also have Freemasons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and real criminals, political prisoners and, most recently, a lot of Poles. Members of each group wear different insignia on their prison garb. Mine was a red triangle for ‘incorrigibles,’ which meant ‘political prisoners’ of one sort or another. But now, they think, some of us can be of use outside. So they have a job waiting for me at Osram’s. Not making light bulbs and such, just working at the payroll office, because I am so good at math, they say. Well, I tell you, no more politics for me.”

  “Thank God,” my mother said.

  -----

  Still, when I said that my grandfather, with the upturned waxed moustache and all, looked just like Hindenburg, my father did have a political story to tell. He’d heard it from someone at the camp, he said, someone who had been on Hindenburg’s staff, and it concerned the puzzling question of why Paul von Hindenburg, the Kaiser’s Field Marshal and hero of the Battle of Tannenberg, in his later role as President of the Weimar Republic, had appointed Hitler as Chancellor. That act had always been an enigma to him, my father said, given the monarchists’ utter disdain for the Nazi brownshirts.

  “But,” my father said, “there may be a simple answer: By 1933, Hindenburg may well have had some form of dementia and, contrary to his public image of strength and wisdom, he may have been weak, senile, and fatally susceptible to the manipulations of those around him, including his son Oskar and Otto Meissner, his chief of staff.”

  “Here’s but one case in point,” my father continued. “Remember that big torchlight parade on January 30, 1933, the day of Hitler’s appointment? Groups of SA brownshirts, Steel Helmets, and SS men marched in a giant circle through the Tiergarten, the Brandenburg Gate, briefly Unter den Linden, right along Wilhelmstrasse, and then past the Presidential Palace and later the Chancellery. By circling the area again and again, the marchers gave the impression of an endless procession, which did not fail to amaze Hindenburg who watched it all from a balcony. Before long, he raised his cane and kept time with the music in the street. Then he turned to a bystander, saying: ‘Ludendorff, how well your men are marching! And what a lot of Russian prisoners we’ve taken!’ Needless to say, Ludendorff, the World War I Army Chief of Staff, wasn’t there, and the Battle of Tannenberg had been fought and won almost 20 years earlier, in the summer of 1914!”

  “Fine, so the old man was befuddled,” my mother said impatiently. “Now let it go!”

  ----

  That night, after we got home, my father showed us the Social Democratic election posters he had hidden underneath a floorboard in our pantry. We all looked at each of them. Then we burned them in the kitchen stove.

  One of the posters showed a workman with a broken back tied to a huge swastika, sort of like Jesus on the cross. “The Worker in the Reich of the Swastika,” the caption said. “Therefore vote List 1. Social Democrats!”

  Another poster foreshadowed the German-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939 by a full decade. It showed a Soviet soldier with a red star and hammer-and-sickle hat. And a dark figure with a swastika on his head and a dagger in his hand. And the caption said: “These Are the Enemies of Democracy! Do Away With Them! Therefore vote List 1. Social Democrats!”

  A final poster was prophetic as well. It showed a frightened mother looking at her five children, grown up and in military uniform. But their bodies had turned into skeletons. The caption said: “Mothers, Is That Why You Gave Birth To Your Children?”

  A Social Democratic election poster prior to the June 1933 dissolution of the SPD:

  Mothers,

  Is That Why You

  Gave Birth To Your Children?

  9. Blackout!

  [February-September 1940]

  The day after my father had come home from the concentration camp, another one of my mother’s sisters stopped by for a visit. Her name was Charlotte, but everyone just called her Lotte. Aunt Lotte lived on our street, too, eleven houses down from us in the direction of the park with the waterfall and the goldfish pond. Her apartment was on the second floor, which meant she didn’t have to climb so many stairs, but it was in the rear house, so she didn’t have a balcony as we did. She always said she’d be glad to climb more stairs in exchange for a better view, but I don’t think she had much time for leisurely rest on a balcony. In fact, she spent every waking minute at her Singer sewing machine, turning the cloth and the patterns delivered to her each morning into skirts and coats by night time, although by then she was more likely to work on military uniforms. The factory paid her by the piece. If she got sick and couldn’t work, she was paid nothing.

  On this day, as I remember it, she came laden with gifts—a winter coat for me, a white shirt for my father, and a silk blouse for my mother. We all hugged her and everyone gave her a kiss.

  “You must be working for Santa Claus these days,” my mother said, admiring her new blouse, “but next Christmas is still ten months away!”

  “Consider it a ‘welcome home’ gift,” Aunt Lotte said. “I know you can all use it and it’s from Liesel, too. She says ‘hello.’ But she couldn’t come; scared to death of what Herbert might say.”

  My parents just looked at each other and said nothing about that subject. I think I told you already, Aunt Liesel was another one of my mother’s sisters yet and she was married to my Uncle Herbert, the brown-shirt man.

  “Maybe you can join us at the Baltic next July,” my father said, quickly nudging the conversation in another direction. “Trudchen arranged for us to use the old apartment at Henkenhagen. Oma is coming, too.”

  “You know, I just might,” Aunt Lotte said, as my mother poured coffee for her. “Four months of hard work and then we can really celebrate!”

  Hard work began the very next day. It was my father’s first day at his new job and he said we could walk together to my school, where he could catch the subway to Spandau. I knew he was right; Mr. Eisler had made us draw maps of the subway lines wh
enever we weren’t too busy revising Germany’s borders to the east.

  It was snowing; so I put on my brand new coat for the walk to school. It fit perfectly and made me feel proud. I wished I could show it off to Dieter, but I knew he couldn’t come. He was still ill with scarlet fever and one could only look at him at the hospital through a pane of glass. My father put on his old raincoat, but he wore a fancy dark suit underneath, with a stiff white collar that my mother had starched and a dark blue tie. He also had shined his shoes till they mirrored his face, but he hid them under galoshes. We had fun walking to my school and even fed the gulls at the canal. We promised to report on the day’s events at supper time.

  Mr. Eisler had wiped clean the old bulletin board, at least most of it, so it looked like this:

  1939

  September 30

  The war in Poland is over! Germany has won!

  1940

  All that empty space on the board, however, was short-lived. In the course of that spring, Mr. Eisler drew our attention to the north and west on his giant map and the board quickly filled up. First, Mr. Eisler introduced us to Denmark and Norway, our neighbors to the north. Like Poland, he painted them yellow too. Then he told us how Britain and France were setting out mines in the North Sea near Denmark and Norway, which kept poor Scandinavian fishermen from catching those wonderful herrings we all so loved.

  “To protect the neutrality of these friendly neighbors and to get rid of those mines,” Mr. Eisler explained, “the Führer had no choice but to send in our navy and our troops.”

  That evening, I proudly showed my father that I could spell Scandinavia and neutrality and my father was proud of me, too. He told me what he had done, in turn.

  “Each Friday,” he said, “I stuff paper bills and coins into little brown envelopes and hand them to the workers. There are over 600 of them. Just like Aunt Lotte, they are paid by the piece. Except the new Polish workers. They live in a dormitory, right at the factory, and they are paid nothing.”

  I knew about the Poles; I had seen them at the bakery store. They wore jackets with a big P on the back and the baker wasn’t allowed to serve them until all the Germans had been taken care of. Just a few days ago, my mother had again been yelled at by someone when she said to a Polish woman “Go ahead; you were here first.”

  My father explained how he might figure the money going into an envelope.

  “Seventy light bulbs sprayed red, times 5 Pfennigs a bulb, comes to 350 Pfennigs or 3.50 Reichsmark.”

  And that remark got my mother started with the multiplication table. Before many days had passed, I knew that 3 times 4 equaled 12, that 7 times 5 was 35, and that 12 times 12 came to 144.

  “Won’t Mr. Eisler be surprised when he tries to teach me multiplying in the next grade!” I thought.

  My father also told me why his new workplace was called Osram.

  “The base and filaments of light bulbs,” he said, “are made of a thin metallic alloy, consisting of osmium and wolfram, two corrosion-resistant metallic elements. Together with the bulb itself, which contains a vacuum, this alloy produces a perfect glass-to-metal seal, regardless of the high temperatures a lighted bulb might take on.”

  Then my father helped me spell and write all the fancy words in his story, which reminded me of Mr. Eisler who was always doing the same thing.

  -----

  Back in school, Mr. Eisler took the occasion of the latest military advances to teach us about Germanic poetry.

  “Just as the Führer intervened to protect the Danes,” Mr. Eisler said, “so have other Germanic heroes throughout history. Consider the splendid saga of Beowulf. This 8th century warrior delivered the Danish King from a man-eating monster, called Grendel, which had appeared for many years, night after night, striding out of the moors to ravage the King’s palace and carry off his warriors. Indeed, Beowulf had to overcome Grendel’s grandmother, too. She lived in a deep lake and tried her best to revenge her grandson’s death. Eventually, Beowulf himself became King of the Geats, another Germanic people related to the Danes. After a long and happy reign, he had to fight a dragon to save his people, but he was wounded by the dragon’s poisonous fangs and died. His body was burned on a great pyre.”

  “So you see,” Mr. Eisler concluded, “glory can be achieved only through fearless courage. Beowulf’s was a heroic age, full of great thoughts and great deeds. Just like ours.”

  Luckily, Mr. Eisler was able to provide current examples right away. To protect their neutrality, the German Armed Forces have now entered Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg, he told us, and Mr. Eisler wasted no time to paint them yellow on his map.

  That night, when we listened to the news at home, Dr. Goebbels explained.

  “Britain and France have dropped their mask,” he said. “In the life-and-death struggle thrust upon the German people, our government does not intend to await an attack by Britain and France inactively, allowing the war to be carried through Belgium and Holland onto German soil.”

  Before long, Mr. Eisler turned our attention to France, where another Blitzkrieg was underway. On the large wall map, we followed each move by the German heroes who led the campaign, General Gerd von Rundstedt, General Fedor von Beck, and General Ritter von Leeb. And we added crucial new data to our own maps: Paris had 2.85 million inhabitants. The length of the Loire was 1,020 kilometers, that of the Rhone only 812 km, and that of the Seine a mere 776 km. And the highest point in France and even the entire Alps, was called Mont Blanc, some 4,810 meters tall.

  But the high point of our year came just before we left for summer vacation.

  “Paris has fallen!” Mr. Eisler exclaimed.

  I so remember the day! There was wild rejoicing in the streets of Berlin. Church bells rang for 15 minutes. Flags were put out for three days. The 218th Infantry Division marched through the Brandenburg Gate. And Mr. Eisler got a new teaching device. He put up a large white screen in front of his map, placed a projector on his desk, and got ready to show us a movie!

  We saw German tanks cross the bridges of the Seine and columns of German troops march down a tree-lined Champs Elysées and past the Arc de Triomphe. Then, in the forest of Compiégne–at the very spot where Germany was so humiliated after World War I, Mr. Eisler said–we saw General Wilhelm Keitel of Germany and General Charles Huntziger of France sign a truce!

  Mr. Eisler was all too eager to elaborate. The French Armed Forces under Marshal Henri-Philippe Pétain were being disarmed, he said. Except for a southern portion, much of France was to be occupied by our troops. The French were to surrender all war materiel, gold, and foreign exchange, and they were to deliver coal and other raw materials to Germany.

  As I left our classroom, grade report in hand, I cast a last look at the bulletin board. It seemed to have filled up in no time and looked this:

  1940

  April 9

  German Army–supported by 1,000 aircraft and cruisers Blücher, Gneisenau, Karlsruhe, Königsberg, and Scharnhorst–enters Denmark and Norway, controls both countries by end of month

  May 10

  German Armed Forces enter Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg

  May 15

  German Air Force destroys Dutch city of Rotterdam; Holland capitulates

  May 18

  General Gerd von Rundstedt’s tanks pierce French lines along 100 kilometer front in Ardennes plateau; surprise move nets 12,000 prisoners

  May 22

  German forces reach the British Channel, trap 500,000 enemy troops in Belgium

  May 26

  British Expeditionary Force initiates retreat across Channel from Dunkerque

  May 29

  Belgium capitulates

  June 10

  Italy enters war on German side, attacks southern France

  June 14

  German Armed Forces occupy Paris!

  General Ritter von Leeb attacks Maginot Defense Line from rear

  June 23

  Truce signed with France! French F
orces disarmed!

  That evening, my parents made a big tent with our feather beds, placed the radio under it, and got the war news in their own way. According to the monthly summary by the BBC, broadcast in German, the British had sunk the German cruisers Blücher, Karlsruhe, and Königsberg during their Norway invasion. In addition, some 99 aircraft had attacked the industrial Ruhr basin on May 15, making this the first British air attack on Germany. Waves of British fliers had bombed Aachen on May 22, battling hundreds of Messerschmitt fighters. The British had captured Narvik, Norway’s iron ore port, on May 30. Another first had come on June 21 when British bombers reached the Potsdam/Berlin area, a feat never achieved before....

  I instantly thought of Frederick the Great and his beautiful Potsdam castle, Sans Souci. And I thought of all the pretty birds nearby on Peacock Island, which we had visited with Mr. Eisler. But the news continued.

  On June 23, the very day France was defeated, the Royal Air Force had bombed the Krupp steel plants in Essen and the harbor in Bremen and had seriously damaged the German battle cruiser Scharnhorst off the Norway coast…In conclusion, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and General Charles de Gaulle urged the free French forces to continue resistance…

  My father turned off the radio and changed the dial to the Deutschlandsender [Radio Germany], where Uncle Walter announced the time once a day and every day. Precise to the second. But I wasn’t worried about time. My report card had given me a 1 for punctuality, which was the best grade one could get. Fifty-six had gotten a 5, which was the worst grade and indicated the fact that he was always late. Naturally, he got acquainted with the Yellow Uncle just before school let out. But, as I said, I wasn’t thinking about time right then. I was worried about the little red label that the Street Warden had put on our radio a long time ago when my father wasn’t even there. My father saw me looking at it.