My Name Was Five

by Heinz Kohler

  “The terrorists are capable of anything,” they had said.

  When we got to school, we remembered what day it was. The school was decorated with flags, one from every window, and there were nearly a hundred of them. Mr. Barzel called on Thirty-One to recite the story.

  “Our beloved Führer, Adolf Hitler,” he said, “was born in the Austrian village of Braunau on the Inn River on April, the 20th, 1889. When he was a little boy, he shed tears about the senseless boundary line that separated the Germans in Austria from the Germans in Bavaria. He swore that this boundary line would go, that one day all Germans would happily live together in a nation united. Fifty years after his birth, Adolf Hitler's great dream came true. Greater Germany became a reality. But,” Thirty-One droned on, “Adolf Hitler did many other heroic deeds as well...”

  Nobody listened, not even Mr. Barzel. He kept smiling at me. He had been especially nice to me for a week, even told me I could have my lunch in the classroom and that I didn’t have to go down to the yard.

  “Too easy to catch cold down there,” he had said.

  But I knew better. He was still thinking of my mother. She had come to meet me every afternoon with Helmut, but Mr. Barzel kept appearing from nowhere, almost stumbling in his eagerness to catch up with her, and insisted on walking us home. That spoiled the whole fun. Come to think of it, she must have been a very beautiful woman. Men’s jaws dropped wherever she appeared; even I had noticed that. But when Mr. Barzel asked my mother to visit his apartment after school, she stopped meeting me.

  That’s why Dieter and I walked home alone that day, and this time we took the regular route. The city had certainly changed a lot since first grade. Plywood, cardboard, and X-ray film had replaced the glass windows in the buildings across from the school. The big cigarette ad at the corner was half gone. “WHY IS JUNO ROUND?” it still asked, but the answer was missing. And all the tall brick buildings on either side of Stuttgarter Strasse had turned into hollowed-out skeleton houses with black scorch marks on all the walls.

  Except that something was different on that day! While we had been at school, a rare spring snow storm had swept over the city and left a few centimeters of white fluff on all the sidewalks and roads. Even as we stepped out of the school gate, big round flakes of snow were still drifting down like cherry blossoms, sticking to our clothes and the walls of ruins, covering the scorch marks around all the empty window holes, covering the craters and piles of reclaimed bricks, covering the iron railing along the canal that had not yet been ripped out to make guns, and even covering the inscription on the block of cement on which Bismarck’s statue once stood. But I knew what the sign said, I had read it dozens of times on my way to school:

  “We Germans Fear God, But Nothing Else in the World–Otto von Bismarck, February 6, 1888.”

  -----

  We stopped at the center of the footbridge to feed the gulls. They flew down from the black gutted houses along the canal, now dressed up in fluffy white. Their cries mixed with the air raid sirens.

  “A birthday party coming right up,” Dieter said, and I knew he meant the planes. We also knew that there was no need to hurry. The sirens were always early, we had heard the story on the radio a thousand times; the planes were still "over Hamburg, going southeast ..."

  A plane came out of nowhere! It flew low and fast along the canal and its wing tips almost touched the crowns of the linden trees. They had new green leaves, covered with a dusting of snow. I saw red-and-yellow tongues flickering along the wings, bullets stitching their way across the bridge.

  One plane, a burst of thunder, a single cry on Dieter’s lips.

  I saw his head, half gone, half turned into a bloody mess. I saw the flutter of his hand, his body jerk, snow turning red. There was no solid ground beneath my feet, I could not breathe, my mind was numb, my body turned to stone. I couldn’t move; my words, they wouldn’t come. A streak of lightning flashed inside my head, I thought I’d fall, a bolt-struck tree. I shut my eyes, I opened them; I heard gulls fly overhead in raucous rage….

  And the red snow at our feet started to melt and the bridge turned, upside down, right side up; I knew Dieter was lost; upside down, right side, my legs carried me down the steps; faster turned the bridge, and I raced to the corner pub that wasn’t there; upside down, and I passed the acacia tree; faster and faster spun the bridge––till my legs collapsed at my mother’s feet.

  Ronnie Olsthoorn, United Kingdom

  A Spitfire ready to attack

  This 1940 version had a maximum speed of 367 mph. Its machine guns–four on each wing–were sighted so that the bullets from all eight converged at a distance of about 250 yards.

  18. The Plot

  [May – July 1944]

  After Dieter’s funeral, my mother kept me home for almost two months. I don’t know how we got away with it, nor do I remember much of what we did. I do remember dreaming up vague illnesses, like headaches and stomach pain–anything but the truth: I simply dreaded crossing that bridge on the way to school. But clearly, my mother knew what was going on. When she offered to walk me to school and back, I returned for the last week before our summer break. Little had changed. Our school was still standing, untouched in a sea of rubble. Mr. Barzel was still there and his bulletin board was brimming with news I had missed:

  1944

  May 9

  Russian forces take Crimean city of Sevastopol

  June 3

  Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, Commander-in-Chief of German forces in Italy, receives the Führer’s permission to give up Rome; American forces occupy Rome

  June 4

  Western allies invade the Le Havre/Cherbourg area of Normandy, using an estimated 10,000 airplanes, 80 battleships, 4,000 transport ships, 2 million men

  June 18

  The Führer orders the Cherbourg garrison to fight to the death; 22,000 U.S. soldiers killed

  June 29

  Lt. General Omar N. Bradley takes Cherbourg, capturing Lt. General Carl Wilhelm Schleiben, garrison commander, along with 30,000 German troops

  June 30

  Two thousand V1 rockets launched against London in revenge

  Mr. Barzel had saved me a newspaper clipping that explained what had happened in Rome. “There was danger that Rome, one of the oldest cultural centers of the world,” the paper said, “would be directly involved in the present fighting. The Führer has ordered the withdrawal of German troops to the northwest of Rome to prevent the destruction of Rome. However, the struggle in Italy will be continued with unshakable determination to break the enemy attacks and to force final victory for Germany and her allies…This year of invasion will bring Germany’s enemies an annihilating defeat at the most decisive moment.”

  I decided to pay more attention to the news over the summer and to make new entries in my notebook, but I only did it once, using a new Pelikan fountain pen Aunt Martel had given me.

  “July 11 Red Army takes Minsk, capital of White Russia; 70,000 Germans dead,” I wrote and then I quit.

  I kept thinking of Dieter and how we had done this sort of thing, but what was the point? And I wondered what had happened to the secret map we had stashed under his bed.

  There was one piece of news, though, that I couldn’t escape. Nobody could. It happened on July 20, 1944, another date firmly lodged in my memory. I even remember the time; it was 18:25 hours, when Berlin Radio stopped Zarah Leander in the middle of her song, Einen wie Dich [A man like you] and made the surprising announcement:

  “At 12:42 hours today, at his East Prussian headquarters of Rastenburg, an attempt was made on the Führer’s life with explosives… The Führer himself suffered no injuries beyond light burns and bruises. He resumed his work immediately and, as planned, received the Duce for a lengthy talk.”

  By 0100 hours that night, the alleged perpetrator, Count Schenk von Stauffenberg, had already been executed and the Führer himself appeared on the radio:

  “A tiny group of ambitious, irrationa
l, and criminally stupid officers without conscience hatched a plot to get rid of me and to eliminate practically the entire leadership of the German army. They are a small gang of criminals who will be hunted down mercilessly.”

  -----

  Men in black clothes emptied buckets of earth on top of me; and, each time, I felt pain in my stomach and my breath went away. It was as if someone had sat an anvil on my chest. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t make a sound. I wanted to open my eyes, but I didn’t dare. I knew they had flowers, tons of flowers, to dump on top of me if I even blinked.

  My mother said I had just been dreaming of Dieter’s funeral, but I wasn’t so sure. I caught a glimpse of memory, like light under a door, I trembled, I whimpered, I felt darkness all around. My mother gave me peppermint tea and said “There, there.”

  When I woke up, Aunt Martel had come; she was talking to my mother. As usual, they were whispering, but I heard some of it.

  “I’m going to quit this job,” Aunt Martel said. “I simply can’t take it. I gave them notice yesterday. Lucky I am not a man or they would send me into the Russian swamps with Arthur. Hell, I don’t care; they can just find another confidential stenographer.”

  When I stirred, they changed the subject.

  “Aunt Martel has the day off and she’ll take you to Kranzler’s,” my mother said. “A little outing will do both of you a world of good.”

  I liked the idea. We had gone to Berlin’s favorite coffee house before, although it had been quite a while. They would probably serve Black Forest cake and, perhaps, even whipped cream. They might also have Schiller locks, shaped like the locks of hair worn by the people in history books: British judges, French philosophers, and German poets. These white, brittle pieces of sweetness were almost as good as chocolate hussars. But even if the café should be out of locks, it would surely have Americans–those saucer-shaped pieces of cake with black chocolate frosting on one side and white vanilla coating on the other, a vivid reminder, Mr. Eisler had once said, of the mixture of black and white people in America. I always wondered where the Red Indians fit in.

  Aunt Martel liked the coffee they served, even though it was now made of roasted barley.

  “What happened to the chocolate hussar?” I asked after we sat down. “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, it’s all right,” Aunt Martel said. “I should have just given it to you last Christmas, I should have. It’ll just burn up one day, along with all the rest.”

  “I was engaged to Walter when he gave it to me,” Aunt Martel continued. “Before the war–the first war–Walter was a customs man, too, you know. We worked in the same office. He brought in the smugglers, and I took it all down; the questions, the answers, even the hearings in court. He was a good man; he couldn’t have hurt a fly, but then the war killed him.”

  As if she needed to prove the point, Aunt Martel fished a piece of paper from the depths of her pocket book.

  “Look here,” she said, “I still have the citation he got for his wounds.”

  I unfolded the paper, turned yellow over time, and read it.

  “Certificate of Ownership,” it said. “In the Name of His Majesty the Kaiser and King, the Medal for Wounds Suffered in Battle, rendered in black, is hereby awarded to Lieutenant Walter Henle, born November 19, 1880 at Schweidnitz, Silesia, now of the Royal Prussian Infantry Regiment Nr. 52 at Alvensleben, 9th Company. Signed in the field, July 28, 1918, Steinkopf, Lieutenant Colonel and Regimental Commander”

  What could I say? I had heard of Schweidnitz. That’s where grandma was born as well. And I knew something else. As Mr. Barzel had taught us, Schweidnitz was also the birthplace of the Red Baron, officially known as Baron Manfred von Richthofen, who buzzed World War I battlefields in his red Fokker triplane and downed a record 80 enemy aircraft in the process. That made him the war’s top fighter ace. Just like Aunt Martel’s Walter, he, too, had died in 1918, but I decided not to mention any of it. The steel cables in front of the café were making a racket again, and Aunt Martel looked up. There were tears on her face.

  “We were going to be married, you know. Twenty-five years ago this month. Any day now, we’ll meet again.”

  “Will you walk to school with me this fall?” I asked suddenly. “I don’t want to walk alone anymore.”

  “Sure,” she said; and she looked just like my mother. “A little walk each morning will be good for me and, besides, I like to feed the gulls.”

  “I don't want to feed gulls,” I said. “Not ever.”

  “I didn't think,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.”

  She took my hand, and she looked just like my mother.

  “Walter and Dieter, they are together now, just as we are. They’re in a much better world, I am sure.”

  We watched the traffic outside. A man opened the door with a loud noise, and the wind came in and picked up our napkins.

  “Attention! Attention!” he said. “The would-be assassins of our beloved Führer, Adolf Hitler, to wit Brigadier General Ludwig Beck, General of the Infantry Friedrich Olbricht, Colonel Claus Count Schenk von Stauffenberg, Colonel Albrecht Knight Mertz von Quirnheim, and First Lieutenant Werner von Häften, have now been executed. Heil Hitler!”

  “You know what?” Aunt Martel said, changing the subject with fierce determination. “They’re having a new production of Hansel and Gretel across the street. Someone turned it into a musical. Let’s go to the theater!”

  And so we did. Outside, the sun had just set and the wind was blowing hard. The anti-aircraft blimps in the sky were struggling to escape the steel cables holding them to the ground.

  -----

  In the middle of Act II, the sirens wailed and everything came to a halt. Spectators, musicians, and actors alike followed the white-and-blue air raid shelter signs to a huge bunker in the ground. That much I remember, but the rest of that night, and how we got home, is something like a blur. I do remember being shocked to see all the actors up close. They had looked so lovely on the big stage; yet they seemed positively grotesque when we came face to face. I had never seen theatrical make-up before!

  I also remember leaving the theater in search of the subway station, but then, suddenly, we seemed to stand at the edge of a cliff, ready to fall into a bottomless pit. Nothing had prepared me for the scene we encountered out there in the starlight–not the lieutenant in the train, not even Dieter on the bridge. How could anything be worse?

  We were coming face to face with the fact that the possibilities of horror had not yet been exhausted. We saw a house in flames and helmeted firemen and soldiers in SS uniforms and Hitler Youths, all of them busily hauling corpses to the middle of the street, stacking them up, two, three, and four layers at a time, many of them charred beyond recognition, some reduced to half their normal size like some of the mummies I had seen in the Egypt exhibit near our school, others looking almost untouched, but overcome, perhaps, by carbon monoxide in some closed cellar nearby, but rapidly stiffening even then and beckoning us for help with claw-like hands….

  We stood in silence, our hearts beating in our throats, smoke stinging our eyes, our hands clutching for support. And we stumbled and tripped over soft yielding bodies with torn clothes, trying not to step on faces, blinking away a flood of tears…

  And around the corner, just next to the U-Bahn sign, there lay a figure, all doubled up, in a pool of liquid that was still feeding small bluish phosphorous flames. I saw a wedding ring glimmer on a charred hand.

  akg-images, London, United Kingdom

  After an air raid

  19. Buried Alive

  [August – September 1944]

  In the summer of 1944, when I was in the 7th grade, we got a new teacher whose specialty was logic. On his very first day of school, Dr. Neumann drew a graph on the blackboard like this and presented us with a puzzle:

  “Given an equal-sided triangle with base B and height H,” he said, “I want you to find the largest possible second triangle–such as the shaded one here–that
fits into the original triangle in such a way that its peak is found at the center of base B. Describe the shaded triangle’s base b, height h, and area a in terms of B and H.”

  “It’s just a matter of logic,” he said reassuringly. “You have until tomorrow to find the answers.”

  I did find the answers [b = ½ B and h = ½ H and a = (B H) / 8], but I was considerably less certain about another puzzle Dr. Neumann asked us to consider in the coming weeks. Oddly enough, it involved the bulletin board, which looked unlike any of the other ones we had seen:

  August/September 1944

  Western Front

  1) General Dietrich von Choltitz, commandant of Paris, is ordered by the Führer to destroy the city as Western Allies approach; instead he surrenders it

  2) Radio Berlin announces: General Charles de Gaulle, President of the so-called French Committee of National Liberation, upon entering Paris, said: ‘France will take her place among the great nations which will organize the peace. We will not rest until we march, as we must, into enemy territory as conquerors.’

  3) British troops occupy Belgian port of Antwerp and capital city Brussels

  Eastern Front

  1) 38,000-member Polish Home Army, under Lt. General Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski, stages uprising in Warsaw

  2) After victories in the Baltic states and the Ukraine, which have pushed German troops out of the last Russian town, Russian armies occupy Rumanian capital Bucharest, then Bulgarian capital Sofia, and are racing towards Hungarian capital Budapest