My Name Was Five

by Heinz Kohler

  But a tiny minority of Lutherans had formed the Confessing Church, which sought to uphold the traditions of scripture, while opposing the “Aryanizing changes” proposed by Müller and his German Christians. Uncle Eddy, it seems, had quickly sided with the new Bishop and hung the swastika flag from his church tower and even behind the altar, right next to the crucifix. He had been rewarded with one of those new cars being built by Ferdinand Porsche and, more importantly, by being made one of several Superintendents of the Church, which had put him in charge of all the ministers in the Magdeburg district. When the war started, he had been rewarded again by being made Captain of the Army. All that had earned him Aunt Martel’s undying contempt.

  But the story got even juicier! On this very day, when my father, all dressed up in his Red Cross uniform, had met Uncle Eddy at the subway station, a disaster had occurred. My father had said “Hey, Eddy! Over here!” and Uncle Eddy, proudly wearing his Captain’s uniform, had had a veritable fit.

  “Is that how you salute a Captain? Show some respect to an officer of the Reich,” he had yelled and then, right there, he had made my father lie down on the sidewalk and do a dozen pushups to teach him a lesson that he obviously needed to learn.

  After that, it seems, they had walked silently to our house, climbed all those stairs together, and then my father had taken off his uniform and thrown Uncle Eddy out! Still, my mother sent Aunt Rachel a Christmas card that year, which I know because I slid it into the red mailbox at the corner myself, but we got nothing back in return, not for Christmas, not for my birthday, not for my mother’s birthday later that spring.

  -----

  On my mother’s birthday, April 6, German troops entered the Balkans.

  “At this very moment,” said Radio Berlin, “swarms of Stuka dive bombers are pouncing like hornets on Yugoslav and Greek airfields and railroads, clearing the path for our tanks, infantry, and parachutists.”

  And, while we were eating breakfast, Dr. Goebbels made another speech:

  “Soldiers of the Southeast Front! Since early this morning, the German people are at war with the Belgrade government of intrigue. We shall only lay down arms when this band of ruffians has been definitely and most emphatically eliminated, and the last Briton has left this part of the European Continent, and when these misled people realize that they must thank Britain for this situation, they must thank England, the greatest warmonger of all time. The German people can enter this new struggle with the inner satisfaction that its leaders have done everything to bring about a peaceful settlement. We pray to God that He may lead our soldiers on the path…”

  My mother turned off the radio. She always did. My father sighed and, as usual, we left together for my school. Mr. Eisler was ready for us. Before long, his bulletin board filled up with the new events.

  1941

  February 14

  Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Africa Corps takes Tripoli and later all of Libya, even reaches Sollum, Egypt

  March 1

  Bulgaria becomes our ally

  April 6

  German forces enter Yugoslavia and occupy it in 11 days

  April 6

  Germans forces enter Greece; cross Metaxas defense line in short order, conquer the Thermopylae, the Isthmus of Corinth, the Peloponnesian peninsula

  April 21

  Over 640 German bombers destroy Plymouth

  May 10

  Over 500 German bombers raid London

  Mr. Eisler lost no time to explain.

  “The British,” he said, “cowards that they are, always let others fight for them: first the Poles, then the Norwegians, then the Belgians, the Dutch, and the French, now the Serbs and the Greeks. But it won’t work. We are on to them.”

  “In fact,” Mr. Eisler continued, “while we Germans have been fighting a Blitzkrieg, the British have engaged in a Sitzkrieg.” [While we Germans have been fighting a lightning-fast war, the British have engaged in a sitting-on-their-hands war.] Apparently, he thought this little rhyme was particularly clever.

  Mr. Eisler also told us that Athens had 1.37 million inhabitants and that Mount Olympus was 2,911 meters tall. Above all, he focused on the war in the Peloponnesian peninsula, the home of Sparta.

  “In ancient Greece,” he said, “Sparta was a serious rival of Athens. The two city states fought the Peloponnesian War from 460-404 B.C. The Spartan lifestyle produced rigorously self-disciplined and self-restrained men. Their diet was austere, frugal, and simple. In the face of danger, pain, and adversity, they were courageous. Oh boys, you should have the Spartan character!”

  We could tell that Mr. Eisler was on a roll. He was swishing the air with the Yellow Uncle and his eyes seemed to be covered with a strange glaze.

  “The noble Spartans, you should know,” he continued, “made up only 10 percent of the population. Other classes, such as the Helot serfs, made up the bulk of the people. For that reason alone, the Spartans had to be strong, which is why they had a strict upbringing. Right at birth, sickly and weak children were weeded out, taken into the mountains to die. Only the healthy and strong ones were brought up. Starting at age 7, they were taken from their parents and educated by the state. They were given nourishing but simple food, as I said before. In summer as well as winter, they got light clothing to wear and had to bathe in the river, regardless of the temperature. Sports and fighting became the main subjects of their education. They sang Homeric songs and rousing songs of war. Once a year, they were taken to the temple and whipped and they had to bear their pain without making a single sound. That made them ready to become good guards for supervising the Helots at work.”

  “Even Spartan women were tough,” Mr. Eisler concluded. “When Spartan men left for war, the women pointed to their men’s shields and said: ‘With it or on top of it!’ They wanted them to return victoriously, with shields in hand, or be brought back dead, lying on top of their shields, but having fought to the last drop of blood. Oh, how much we can learn from Sparta!”

  -----

  When I told my parents about the Spartans, they were not impressed.

  “That asshole,” my father said and my mother told him not to use that word.

  Then we listened to the BBC, as usual, under the feather bed. The top story was a great surprise. Rudolf Hess, after Reich Marshall Hermann Göring second in command to the Führer, had taken a Messerschmitt 110 and flown himself to Scotland! Berlin had already replaced him with Martin Bormann. In the meantime, the Royal Air Force had attacked the U-Boat docks at Bremen and Hamburg….

  On the next day, Radio Germany confirmed the story. Said the announcer:

  “On Saturday, May 10, at about 6 P.M., Party Comrade Hess took off from Augsburg for a series of flights from which until today he has not returned. A letter that he left behind unfortunately indicated, by its incoherence, symptoms of a mental derangement that permits the inference that Comrade Hess became the victim of hallucinations. The Führer immediately ordered the arrest of the adjutants of Party Comrade Hess who alone knew of these flights and, knowing of their prohibition by the Führer, did not prevent or immediately report them.”

  That was also the day on which my father got a written order to appear at the Berlin headquarters of the SS! By 0800 hours the next day….

  My mother said I didn’t have to go to school that day and we just sat on the balcony and waited for my father to come back. We played “One-Two-Three.” Our right fists went up in the air; then, almost faster than the eye could blink, our fists came straight down, went back up, and down, up and down in perfect unison, while we chanted “one, two, three!” But the last time down, the shape of our hands could change, and that would determine who won. If my mother kept her fist, but my hand turned flat, I would rejoice, for “paper can wrap up a stone.” If my mother made a V, but I kept my fist, I also won, for “stones sharpen scissors.” If my mother made a V, but my hand was flat, she was the winner, for “scissors cut paper.”

  “One, two, three,” we yel
led---my hand a little bowl, my mother making trembling fingers pointed to the sky. “Water beats fire,” I roared, and I thought of my father at the Baltic Sea.

  He looked ashen when he came.

  “They wanted me to volunteer for the SS!” he said. “Put me in a room with a bunch of other guys, thanked us for volunteering and got ready to swear us in. ‘Wait a minute,’ I said, ‘I’m not volunteering for anything; I was ordered to be here.’ There was that long silence. ‘My God, hush,’ whispered the guy next to me, ‘do you want to be shot?’ But the man in charge was not perturbed. I was just the right age and just the right height, he said. ‘Why not give it some thought?’ But it was just a cruel game. I will never put on that black uniform, and he knew it.”

  My mother gasped and started to cry.

  “They even gave me a second chance to volunteer,” my father said, “and I fully expected to be shot when I said no again, but they wouldn’t waste a bullet on me, had a much better idea. They need men to clear mine fields and get rid of duds. I was just made for it, they said. Needn’t wear a regular army uniform, needn’t carry weapons, can even spend three weeks in school: Crossen-on-the-Oder, six hundred hours, day after tomorrow.”

  “So it’s a penal battalion and for the duration,” he said, embracing my mother and me at the same time. We all cried.

  -----

  “Do you think Eddy had anything to do with this?” my mother asked.

  None of us knew the answer to that one, but my mother kept me out of school for a while and, two weeks later, we went to see my father. A soldier sat in the train with us. He had had a leave in Berlin. I looked at the medal pinned to his left breast pocket. It was an oval silver badge with a steel helmet at the top and below that were crossed swords, rimmed with oak leaves.

  “It’s a medal for having been wounded,” he said when he found me staring at him.

  “And having survived it all,” he said to my mother. “That’s a hell of a lot better than having met a hero’s death, killed for Führer and Fatherland.”

  “I wished they’d shut up,” he said, pointing to a group of Hitler Youth in the next compartment. They were singing Lili Marleen, the popular soldiers’ song we always heard on the radio. But they weren’t singing it as well as Lale Andersen did. She was my favorite singer. I loved her deep voice….

  The Oder was the widest river I had ever seen. My mother and I sat on a big stone near the bridge and waited for my father. Tanks and big guns kept crossing the bridge; a group of boys in rags threw stones at them.

  “Must be Polish,” my mother said.

  Under the bridge, a tug boat came into view; then long, flat barges loaded to the brim with coal. I had counted eight of them by the time my father appeared at the center of the bridge. He waved his arms wildly, and we ran up to meet him. The boys threw stones at us.

  My father couldn't walk very well. He took off his boots. His feet were wrapped in bandages, and he took those off, too. His feet were dark brown.

  “Iodine,” he said, “The doctor put both of my feet into a pail of it, and that’s only the end of the story. Wait till you hear the beginning.”

  He stretched his feet into the waters of the river.

  “There is this lieutenant, you see, who runs our detonator class. One day, he asked whether anyone present could play the piano. I raised my hand. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘you can go to the railroad station and help carry my piano. It’ll come with the morning express. I want it in my house by noon.’ But he didn't like the way we did it, using the army van. ‘I said carry my piano,’ he yelled. Are you too tender-footed to walk? I’ll teach you to walk!’ And I’ve been carrying the meals up to the crew on that mountain once a day ever since, and that’s a three mile trip one way. Good for lots of blisters if the boots don’t fit. And the doctor cures everything with iodine."

  My mother burst into tears and my father hugged her.

  “Maybe it won’t be so bad,” he said. “I might even be put to work in Berlin, defusing unexploded bombs.”

  That remark made my mother cry all the more.

  “There, there,” my father said, stroking her silky hair. “You should see how they treat the other guys! Some of them are said to be deserters, others are officers ‘in disgrace.’ They make them walk around the yard with a sign ‘We will redeem our guilt with our blood!’ And they are scheduled to be ‘mine sweepers,’ which means marching through minefields in front of everyone else, but the SS will escort them from behind and be ready, they say, to shoot anyone who might have the inclination to bolt.”

  “At least the war in the east is over,” my mother said with a sigh.

  A loud wail behind us made us turn our heads. There was that woman, all dressed in black, just a few meters away from us. She stood in the water up to her knees, her arms stretched out wide. She was staring at us as she spoke:

  “I saw the seven angels which stood before God; and to them were given seven trumpets.

  The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth; and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.

  And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood; and the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.

  And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers and upon the fountains of waters; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.

  And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise.

  And I beheld and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitors of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!”

  Hitler's very own: A member of the SS in his black uniform. The SS = Schutzstaffel (Security Squadron) was founded in 1933. Long before it took on its murderous activities, the original 120-man squad focused on the Führer’s personal protection and on ceremonial duties. The caption says:

  Germany Wake Up!

  Every German Man Can Now

  Volunteer for Admission

  to the SS Lifeguard Squadron ‘Adolf Hitler.’

  Details Are Available at Every Police Station.

  11. Cemetery Plants

  [June-December 1941]

  Let me tell you about life in Berlin after we returned from saying good-bye to my father. I remember how annoyed Mr. Eisler was about my long and unexcused absence. Naturally, he promised to note that fact in my grade report. In retrospect, that was a small price to pay. Although we didn’t know it at the time, we were not to see my father again for fully five years. As for Mr. Eisler, he urged me in no uncertain terms to catch up with the bulletin board and to learn all I could about the “glorious conquest of Crete by our brave paratroopers.” Or else. I did my best, but I needn’t have. As it turned out, Mr. Eisler forgot to examine me about Greece, because new events during the first week of summer turned everyone’s attention to something else entirely. One Monday morning in June, our bulletin board read like this:

  1941

  May 20

  German parachutists conquer Greek island of Crete

  June 22

  German Armed Forces launch Operation Barbarossa: 3 million men enter the Soviet Union along a 3,200 kilometer front, reaching from the Arctic to the Black Sea

  Army Group North under Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb is to secure the Baltic coast and capture Leningrad

  Army Group Center under Field Marshal Fedor von Bock is to take Smolensk and Moscow

  Army Group South under General Gerd von Rundstedt is to co
nquer the Ukraine and Caucasus

  Given the non-aggression pact with our friend Russia, the latest entries made no sense, but Mr. Eisler explained.

  “It is a preemptive strike,” he said. “That means the Russians were about to attack us, but the Führer spoiled their surprise by attacking first. Once again, the British tried to make others fight for them. For weeks, those Jewish Anglo-Saxon warmongers have goaded the Russians into concentrating lots and lots of troops on their western borders. This forced the Führer to establish a counterforce by withdrawing troops from France, where they might have been used to fight the British.”

  We got the point, but my thoughts were elsewhere. I thought of my father and our last meeting with him by the banks of the Oder.

  “At least the war in the east is over,” my mother had said.

  -----

  We didn’t know it then, but by the time our school closed for summer vacation, my father was already being marched through the minefields of the Ukraine, clearing the way for the regular troops. With SS guards right behind him, he certainly couldn’t have expected ever to see us again. Meanwhile, Dieter and I were once again inseparable, trying to have fun. When it rained, which was often, we met on our balcony and studied Dieter’s new Max and Moritz book, written and amply illustrated by Wilhelm Busch. It pictured the lives of two boys, about our age, who spent every waking minute playing pranks on people. Sadistic pranks it seems to me now! Once they came across an old widow whose livelihood depended on three egg-laying hens and a rooster. So Max and Moritz tied four pieces of bread to a single string and tossed it to the animals. Naturally, the chickens tried to eat the bread, but ended up gagging on the string and died miserably tied to each other, wings flapping desperately.