by Heinz Kohler
Poor widow Bolte, the sequel said, had no choice but to make the best of a bad situation. She decided to get at least something to eat for herself and her little white Pomeranian who had become the only companion in her lonely life. But while she was in the cellar, Max and Moritz climbed on the roof and, like anglers in a boat, managed to pull up all four roasts, right through the chimney, with a fishing rod. When Mrs. Bolte reappeared, her roasting pan was empty and her dog looked at her with big eyes. There she lost it and beat the poor dog to within an inch of his life! Up on the roof, Max and Moritz laughed and laughed.
And then there was tailor Bock who used to walk across a wooden footbridge every day. Max and Moritz sabotaged the bridge with a saw and the old man fell into the icy water and became dreadfully ill. That story brought us to teacher Lampel, who loved to smoke the pipe. Max and Moritz filled it with gunpowder, which made it explode, destroying the teacher’s house and giving him near-fatal burns.
Dieter and I were just about to study the story of widower Fritz (who was permanently robbed of sleep after he found his feather bed filled with giant bugs), when my mother discovered us. She was very angry.
“There is enough cruelty in this world! I don’t want you to read this dreadful book,” she said.
“Give it to me; it goes right into the kitchen stove.”
“But you told me it is wrong to burn books,” I said and that made my mother angrier still. I think that was the first and only time she took the carpet beater to teach me a lesson. But it didn’t hurt, because, unlike Mr. Eisler, she hadn’t made me pull down my pants. In any case, all was forgotten soon and by nighttime we were friends again.
I lay in bed, thinking of my father. I figured he wouldn’t have liked the Max and Moritz book either. He had always insisted on being kind to older people, teaching me to offer my seat to them in the trolley car or the underground, just as he did himself. He also had always tipped his hat when passing them in the street, but I rarely wore a hat and only had to smile and say ‘hello.’
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On sunny days that summer, Dieter and I traveled around town. Our mothers had said it was all right; we were old enough.
“Just take the streetcars or the buses,” they had said, “and stay away from the S-Bahn and the U-Bahn for now.”
That didn’t make much sense to us. Did they imagine we would jump on the tracks and get electrocuted? Still, we complied, although there were times when we were sorely tempted to get somewhere fast via the rapid electric train, known as the S-Bahn. And we were equally eager to try our luck with the U-Bahn, the name of which, in my view, made no sense either, given that the underground had above-ground, elevated sections in some parts of town. In addition, restricting us to streetcars and buses hardly made us safe. Our mothers never knew what we learned from the other boys, like standing on the streetcar running board as it approached its next stop, jumping off early, and hitting the ground running. That was considered a very manly thing to do, but we ended up face down on the cobblestones more than once before we had perfected the procedure and in those instances the wheels rolling by our heads could look pretty scary.
Talking about things scary, one day, when Dieter and I were hanging out at the dairy store, we overheard people discussing an “aerial mine.” It hit the place like an earthquake, they said. But they hadn’t seen it themselves; they had just read about it in the paper. So Dieter and I decided to have a look. We knew how to get there. For 10 pfennigs we could pick up the Number Six at the corner, ride all the way to the Cologne Station, take the next trolley to the zoo, and we would be there. Not that we cared about the zoo, at least not on that day, but the bombed-out department store was right next door. We’d been there with our mothers.
The conductor yelled at us for trying to board at the rear, pointing to the sign at the door: “Exit only.” He yelled at us again when we didn’t have the right change, and pointed to the sign over the window: “Proper change only.” But he didn’t scare us because he looked funny. His face was pink with sunburn, but he had big white circles around his eyes, apparently where sunglasses had been.
“What's the matter with you?” he asked. “Don’t they teach you to read anymore? Your teacher ought to call on the Yellow Uncle!”
We knew then that it was hopeless to ask for a book of ticket stubs for our games. The square in front of the Cologne Station was busier than usual. Trolleys and buses came from all directions, honking horns and ringing bells and snaking their way through crowds of shoppers in the open-air market. They sold carrots and cabbages, sweaters and socks, herrings and hotdogs, and flowers, flowers, everywhere. All the vendors yelled at the top of their lungs, trying to catch the attention of every passer-by.
We had trouble finding the trolley to the zoo, because we were lost in a sea of benches and people, umbrellas and multicolored tents. When we got to the Number Nine, the driver yelled at us, too.
“Enter at the middle, you raving idiots! Can’t you read?”
He closed the front door right in the face of an old lady who had wanted to get out.
“Jesus Christ, what took you so long making up your mind?” he asked. “Want me to be stuck here all day? If you can’t walk, why don’t you stay home?”
He jerked the trolley and sent everyone reaching for the leather straps.
The conductor was red in the face, not from the sun though, and he yelled at us, too, for not having bought tokens.
“This trolley takes tokens only. Says so right in front, can’t you read? Stupid idiots! Your mothers ought to spank your butts raw.”
"And what are you complaining about, you old witch?” he said, elbowing his way toward the white-haired lady at the front door.
“Missed your exit, did you? Makes my heart bleed! But let me tell you: You had your chance, what are you trying to do? Hold up the whole enterprise till sunset? Why don't you find a nice cozy spot in the cemetery where things aren’t so hectic? You can feed the cemetery plants–from below!”
The people in the car laughed. But by then I was scared. I thought of my grandmother and wished we had stayed home. And I thought of all the things my father had said about being polite and kind.
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The bombed-out department store looked like nothing we’d ever seen. The whole front was gone, and we could see all the floors at the same time. The building was like a giant’s doll house, blue walls above green walls above pink. We saw the shoe department on the second floor, and the X-ray machine where we always looked at our toes. It was swaying in the wind, ready to tumble down momentarily. The toys were right above, some of the display cases dangled on the edge. There was a lot of rubble on the top floor, and it hid everything that might have been there before. More rubble lay on the sidewalk, and a torn poster that said: “Hush! The enemy listens in.” A dog kept sniffing around our legs and a policeman told us to move on.
“It’s the glass roof, that’s what did it,” one of the workmen said, “reflects the moonlight. How could the pilots miss seeing it?”
On the way back, we ran into the most amazing thing. One of the major avenues, the Charlottenburger Chaussee, had been completely covered with camouflage netting, reaching from tall poles on one side of the street to similar poles on the other. The netting contained thousands of fake fir trees, way above our heads; we figured it was done to confuse enemy airplanes, just like the netting over gooseberry bushes is designed to keep away birds.
akg-images, London, United Kingdom
And we were right. As our trolley passed the Column of Victory at the Tiergarten, we noticed even more of this foolishness: the golden goddess at its top had been painted a dull brown. “To keep enemy pilots from navigating by famous landmarks,” a woman said when she saw us staring at the scene.
“You should go and look at the lakes at Staaken,” she added. “They’ve been completely covered with wooden rafts that look like houses from the air. On one lake, they are even building decoys of all sorts of well-known gover
nment buildings! It’s fun to watch.”
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When we got home, someone was pasting a new sign on the phone booth next to the trolley station. “FOR ARYANS ONLY!” it said. Across the street, workmen were tending to the little park, tearing out perfectly good pansies and replacing them with geranium plants. They also put notices on all the benches: NOT FOR JEWS. And the Wanselow kids were playing “Crete” in the middle of the street. They had little canisters, which shot objects into the air like a rocket. Each one went right up to the level of the third floor, unfolded a green parachute, and gently floated to earth, like our hero soldiers who had taken Crete.
Sometimes the Wanselows aimed their canisters right at old Mr. Joseph who was dozing in front of the pub, dressed in his usual Viking costume with a cap that had horns on the top. He always woke up with a start, and the Wanselows howled with laughter. They tried to shoot Dieter and me, too, but we made it into the hallway before they could set their aim.
I went back down with my mother to help her queue for food. She stood in line at Meyer's vegetable store around the corner; they had a new shipment of potatoes and fresh fruit. I stood outside the bakery next to the pub and waited for the daily quota of bread. It was made of rye and there were crisp buns made of wheat. On this day, the lines were short, and I reached the door in a few minutes. I read the sign above the handle.
“Jews and Foreign Workers will be served only after all others,” it said. “By order of the Municipal Government, City of Berlin.” Unlike all the other signs I had seen that day, this one was made out in the old German Sütterlin script.
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Later that summer, we went back to school and I found myself with a new teacher. His name was Mr. Barzel and, just like Mr. Eisler, he wore the Party badge in his lapel. He didn’t have a large map, but he did have a bulletin board, which was empty when we arrived. In fact, it stayed empty for the rest of the year. But Mr. Barzel had lots of pictures on the wall where the map should have been. There was a snapshot of the Graf Spee being scuttled in the South Atlantic. And there were photographs of famous soldiers. I saw General Heinz Guderian, Field Marshal Walther von Reichenau, and General Erich von Manstein—all heroes of the Russian front, he said.
Beyond that, we didn’t hear a word about the war at all. Mr. Barzel was much more interested in the history of art. Before it was time to go home for Christmas, he had taken us to Egypt, as far back as 4,000 B.C., then to Greece (1,000 to 200 B.C.), to Rome (200 B.C. to 500 A.D.) and on to Byzantium (500 to 1,000 A.D.). We had learned to draw pictures of Egyptian burial chambers and pyramids and temples. We had drawn Greek columns–Corinthian, Doric, and Ionic–and Greek vases and crosscuts and ground-plans of basilicas and cathedrals built over the course of a thousand years. I liked Constantine’s Basilica the best.
Yet I missed the news. The Street Warden had come and exchanged our radio for the People’s Receiver. Ordinarily, it cost 35 Reichsmark, but we got it for nothing. So we couldn’t listen to the BBC the way my parents and I had done underneath the featherbed cover. But Dieter was still with Mr. Eisler and I borrowed his notes when school let out for Christmas. He had copied only a piece of the bulletin board, like this:
1941
September 19
German forces take Kiev; capture or kill 665,000 enemy soldiers
December 7
Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; destroys 6 U.S. battleships, 188 aircraft, and 2,000 men
December 11
Germany and Italy, as allies of Japan, declare war on the United States
I also copied a few additional facts that Dieter had gleaned from Mr. Eisler, crucial stuff, all of it: New York had 7.89 million people, Chicago 3.62 million, and Los Angeles 1.97 million. Jointly, the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers were 6,418 kilometers long. Mount Whitney was 4,418 meters tall.
Just about then, around Christmas time, the Street Warden put up signs at the entrances to air raid shelters, saying “Jews and Foreign Workers Not Allowed.”
“These people shouldn’t mix excessively with the German race,” the Street Warden said. He reminded us of a January 1, 1941 decree that all Jewish men had to add Israel and all Jewish women had to add Sara to their ID card names. “Together with the yellow star, that will make them much easier to spot,” he said. “And look for the big letters the foreign workers have on their backs. You can’t miss them,” he added.
“That’s so cruel!” Aunt Martel said to my mother. “You realize we now have 300,000 foreign workers in Berlin? I’ve seen the paperwork; they work in all the factories: at Siemens, Telefunken, and Borsig; at DMW [Deutsche Waffen und Munition = German Weapons and Munitions], at Auto-Union and Dornier, you name it. They build locomotives, mortars, tanks, airplanes; yet are considered expendable, it seems! It’s cruel as well as insane.”
But she didn’t say it out loud; as usual, the sisters were whispering and giving each other that knowing look. But Dieter and I had already noted foreign workers everywhere. The Street Warden was right; they were easy to spot by the large letters painted on the back of their jackets. B stood for Belgium, F for France, H for Holland, P for Poland, and, most recently, R for Russia.
We had also seen the consequences of the new September decrees: Jews aged 6 and above were made to wear a big yellow star on their clothes, the Star of David, “on a black background, affixed to the upper part of clothing,” which made them conspicuous as well. Aunt Martel said they had special ration cards, too, stamped with a J. These cards were only good for a limited list of items and certain hours of the week, usually Fridays late.
On one such Friday, when the streets were obviously teeming with foreigners and Jews, I went shopping with my mother. Suddenly, out of the side of my eye, I saw something falling from a window across the street. People screamed. I heard a thud. She didn’t move. She wore a long, white nightgown, and I saw her white hair turn slowly red and then her gown.
My mother grabbed me and took me home. I was scared and it felt as if my heart wanted to come out of my throat. In my bed in the dark, I heard red fire trucks hose down red cobblestones. I heard Mrs. Meyer whisper:
“You just watch it, the elderly will be next. They were going to take her to Moabit, you know.” And I heard the voice of the streetcar conductor: “Cemetery plants ... cemetery plants ... cemetery plants.”
An illustration from Wilhelm Busch,
Max and Moritz,
a children’s book glorifying cruelty
directed against the old and weak.
12. Magicians
[January-July 1942]
It was the last day of 1941. That’s when my mother took me to my grandmother’s place to celebrate New Year’s Eve. All we had to do was walk down to the canal, feed the gulls, follow the footpath along the canal for a kilometer or so to the Glogau Bridge, and find Number 33 on the other side. Aunt Martel and Aunt Lotte were there, too, having just returned from the year-end service at the Martha Church down the street, and we all got quickly busy preparing for the New Year.
My grandmother put up colorful streamers and balloons, but she let me hand out the funny-looking pointed hats. Aunt Lotte took a moment to comb out the fringes of the rug, then spread out the Tarot cards on the living room table so she could read our futures. Aunt Martel collected a bunch of lead soldiers from the chest of drawers in her bedroom—the bottom drawer to be exact––to pursue the same goal in the traditional way. Near the hour of midnight, we would melt the soldiers and then each of us would pour a bit of melted lead into a pot of cold water where it would instantly freeze into a shape from which our future could be known. Clearly, it was just a matter of logic to interpret the meaning of those little chunks of lead. I had done it before. I would do it again.
My mother called me into the kitchen to help her with the doughnuts. She had already made the dough and, after I had sprinkled the table with a generous amount of flour, she rolled out the dough in the form of a large square. I then cut pieces from it, spooned a hea
p of raspberry jelly onto the center of each, and rolled my little pieces into balls. In the meantime, my mother brought a pot full of oil to a boil and we carefully dropped the jelly-filled balls into it, a few at a time. Eventually, I gave each of them a dusting of confectionary sugar and our feast was ready to be served!
While my grandmother was heating the cider and my mother helped Aunt Lotte with the Tarot cards, I retrieved my American Indian book from Aunt Martel’s chest of drawers. I had left it there the last time we were there, along with all kinds of accessories. I loved Karl May and the stories he told about the Wild West. And I always pictured myself as Old Shatterhand, having adventure after adventure, and smoking the peace pipe with Winnetou, the famous Apache Indian chief. As I learned many years later, my adoration of Karl May was shared by many, including Kaiser Wilhelm II, Albert Einstein, Franz Kafka, Albert Schweitzer, and even Adolf Hitler who urged his troops to emulate the noble warriors depicted by May. Just imagine, those books sold over 100 million copies in the German-speaking world alone, making May (1842-1912) perhaps the most popular author in German history–and all that despite the fact that he was a con man, writing his books in jail, while claiming to recount his own experiences in American places he had never seen. Somehow he made Winnetou a German national hero! But I digress.
On that New Year’s Eve long ago, holding Karl May in my hands, I thought of abandoning my grandmother’s pointed hat in favor of my Indian headdress. But I decided against it. For one thing, my colored chicken feathers were hardly worthy of the noble Winnetou whose outfit derived from the mighty eagle. More importantly, I had been warned not to wear Indian outfits anymore. Dieter and I had often played cowboys and Indians in the street, dressing up in turquoise jewelry and pretending to drink firewater, but the Street Warden had told us in no uncertain terms to stop all that whooping and dancing. He had even threatened us with jail.