Destined to Witness

by Hans Massaquoi

  To further discourage air attacks at low altitudes, which enhance the accuracy of bombing hits, the skies above Hamburg were dotted with Sperrballons (barrier blimps) that were tethered to the ground by strong cables capable of slicing through the wings of attacking airplanes. In addition, with the stringent dusk-to-dawn blackout rule in effect, we had to cover our windows with blankets in order to prevent even the tiniest light beam from reaching the streets. Throughout the night, antiaircraft units searched the sky with night-piercing columns of lights. To confuse enemy flyers and to protect the famous Lombards Bridge, which divides the city’s scenic inner and outer Alster basins, the inner Alster was covered completely with camouflage nets while a phony Lombards Bridge was built parallel to the real one.

  Other measures aimed at preparing for what Göring had promised would never happen included gas-mask and fire drills for civilians during which we were required to pass through a large, gas-filled tent while wearing a gas mask and to extinguish a small chemical fire with a fire extinguisher. To reduce the danger of fire following an incendiary bomb attack, Hamburg residents were ordered to participate in a massive program of Entrümpelung (junk disposal). As ordered, my mother and I, like thousands of Hamburgers, cleaned out our attic of unwanted old mattresses, furniture, toys, books, and so on, and deposited them on the sidewalks for removal by government trucks.

  In spite of the massive anti-air-raid preparations, many people shared Göring’s optimism regarding his Luftwaffe’s capability to keep us out of harm’s way and regarded the measures as unnecessary. They soon learned that their trust had been misplaced. On May 18, 1940, an air attack on Hamburg by British Royal Air Force bombers killed thirty-four civilians and with them the credibility of Göring, who henceforth became the butt of many jokes about Reichsmarschall Meier.

  For a while, bombings of Hamburg remained relatively rare occurrences, so rare, in fact, that whenever a building was hit, I and hundreds of other curiosity seekers would rush to the disaster scene to behold with awe the destructive power of an explosive bomb. It was during this lull before the storm that I was informed by Onkel Fritz that his mother, my beloved Tante Möller, who had looked after me when I was a little boy, had died at his home across the street from ours after a brief illness at age seventy-two. The news hurt me deeply, for Tante Möller was truly the grandmother I never had. It was she who, more than any other person, made a genuine Hamburger out of me and who instilled in me a love for the city that I know will endure as long as I live.

  I consoled myself when Fritz Möller pointed out that his mother, who hadn’t spent a single minute in an air-raid shelter, was lucky to have died peacefully in her sleep and thus avoided the escalation of the bombings and the resulting hardships that he felt were sure to come. Fritz was right of course but even he could not foresee the awful extent of his prediction.

  As the aerial attacks and enemy overflights increased, so did the times we were awakened at night by howling sirens. Loaded down like mules with ready-packed suitcases that contained our most prized and essential possessions, my mother and I would join our neighbors and head for the nearest public air-raid shelter, half a block down the street. Unlike the above-ground bunker variety, “our” shelter, which could accommodate about one hundred people, consisted of a heavily reinforced, whitewashed basement beneath the old four-story waffle factory, once the dispenser of delicious waffle scraps, which had long since been closed. The basement was furnished with wooden benches and double-decker, mattressless cots along the walls. Each of its three rooms was equipped with a large air pump through which used-up air could be expelled and fresh filtered air sucked in by way of a manually operated broomsticklike lever.

  As air-raid shelters went, ours wasn’t exactly the most confidence-inspiring from a safety point of view. In fact, we had all but resigned ourselves to the certainty that in case of a direct hit, we’d all be wiped from the face of the earth. But our shelter was the most conveniently located and, we were told, offered “as much protection as we really would ever need.” We were not convinced, but kept hoping for the best while expecting the worst.

  LIFE GOES ON

  Despite our increasingly precarious existence, life in Hamburg went on as close to normal as was possible under the circumstances. This included the observance of certain religious traditions, such as confirmation upon graduation from grammar school. As baptized Lutherans, all boys in my eighth-grade class were expected to participate in confirmation exercises. This was by no means an indication of our community’s devoutness but merely proof of the durability of a local tradition. Spiritually speaking, we kids were impoverished cretins and proud of it. Our Nazi teachers, some of whom advocated a return to Teutonic paganism and the worship of a pantheon of Germanic deities, had conditioned us to regard churchgoing and praying as something strictly for sissies. As a result, most of us hadn’t seen the inside of a church since we were baptized shortly after birth. Yet, in spite of the low esteem in which we held the church, we regarded our confirmation as the most important rite of passage in our lives.

  To qualify for confirmation, our neighborhood Heiligen Geist Kirche (Holy Ghost Church) insisted that confirmands take weekly confirmation lessons in the church rectory after regular school hours and attend Sunday services for an entire year prior to the event. There were about seventy-five boys in my class and a similar number of girl confirmands who met on another day. Although we resented the infringement on our free time, we grudgingly went along with the program, if for no other reason than the fact that our parents left us no choice.

  Unlike predominantly Catholic southern and western Germany, where observance of religious rituals had always played an important role in people’s lives, mostly Protestant northern Germany was noticeably less devout, at least in terms of active participation. This was especially true in Hamburg, where most working-class people, although decent and law abiding, were largely content with a noninvolved, peaceful coexistence with God. “Ich lasse den lieben Gott einen guten Mann sein (I let God be a good man)” is how many Hamburgers summed up their aloofness from a divine creator. As a result, Hamburgers, for the most part, came into direct contact with the church only four times in their lives—at their baptisms, at their confirmations, at their weddings, and, finally, at their funerals. While not a native Hamburger, my mother was no exception; she preferred sleeping late on Sundays to sitting in church and taking care of her soul. After a week of backbreaking work at the factory, she felt she deserved the rest. Yet in spite of her lack of enthusiasm for going to church, she believed in God and considered it a foregone conclusion that I should be properly confirmed.

  The man on whose broad shoulders had fallen the improbable task of making God-fearing young men out of us irreverent semi-heathens in twelve short months was Pastor Ottmer, a barrel-chested bull of a man who had no difficulty reconciling his professed belief in Jesus Christ, a Jew, with his fanatical devotion to Hitler, the greatest anti-Semite of all time. An enthusiastic supporter of Hitler’s military adventure in Poland, which he applauded as a justified step to correct old wrongs done to Germany, he never ended a sermon without asking God for continued German victories and the protection and blessing of “our beloved Führer.” According to Ottmer’s theology, Jesus, by virtue of being the son of an “undoubtedly Aryan God,” was only a half-Jew at worst, and demonstrably had inherited none of the undesirable characteristics of his Jewish relatives on his mother’s side. As “proof,” Pastor Ottmer pointed to two large paintings on the rectory classroom wall, one depicting a blond, blue-eyed Jesus as an adult, and the other a cuddly child Jesus who was even fairer and blonder.

  Since confirmation lessons did not involve homework or grades, we confirmands brought an extremely cavalier attitude to our Bible studies and paid only scant attention to Pastor Ottmer’s teachings in class and from the pulpit. That attitude reached its dramatic climax—or, more aptly, low point—during one of the clergyman’s Sunday morning sermons toward the end of the yea
r.

  As usual, some of us had chosen to sit in the church’s balcony, where we were less exposed to the pastor’s scrutiny and thus able to vent our boredom by goofing off in a variety of ways. Some boys simply caught up on sleep, while others played cards or some other game. I invariably read a whodunit paperback. That particular Sunday, for lack of a better idea, a few fellows were busy folding the day’s programs that had been handed to us as we entered the church into little paper gliders that we called Schwalben (swallows). On a signal by one of the boys, they launched their paper missiles from the balcony. It took all the self-control we could muster to keep from bursting out laughing as we watched a squadron of aerodynamically correct paper gliders descend slowly, silently, and in wide, graceful arcs toward the main floor of the church. Although some of the airborne paper missiles came frighteningly close to hitting Pastor Ottmer, the minister kept on preaching as if nothing was amiss. When he had ended his sermon with his usual request for divine protection for “our beloved Führer,” he finally acknowledged the boys’ prank. “I know who you are,” he shouted at the sinners in the balcony with a voice that trembled with un-Christian anger, while the glare from his thick glasses was hitting us like laser beams. “I shall deal with you at the next confirmation class!”

  We had no idea what plans Pastor Ottmer had for the perpetrators, but his display of rage did not suggest to me a Christian inclination to turn the other cheek. But since I had had nothing to do with the impromptu aerial extravaganza, I didn’t give the matter much thought. When we showed up at the next class, Pastor Ottmer read off about half a dozen names, which, to my utmost surprise, indignation, and terror, included mine. Before I had a chance to protest my innocence, he ordered us to come to the front. He then informed us that he intended to make an example of us by barring us from participating in the confirmation exercises, which were only a few weeks away. When I finally spoke up and told him that I had merely been a more or less innocent bystander and had had absolutely nothing to do with the glider show, he told me to take my just punishment “like a man.” Even the corroborating testimony of my story by several of the perpetrators could not sway him to let me off the hook. I remembered my mother’s frequent admonition to stay clear of troublemakers with her favorite dictum, Mitgefangen, mitgehangen (caught together, hanged together). With 20/20 hindsight, I could see that she had been right. Even though I had not participated in the glider caper, I had put myself in the company of goof-offs on the balcony and thus gotten myself into a mess.

  Had Pastor Ottmer told us that he was going to cut off our thumbs, we couldn’t have been more shocked. What were we going to tell our parents, who had prepared for the upcoming event for almost a year? My mother had already bought my dark confirmation suit, the first suit I owned that boasted a pair of long pants. It also was the first suit she bought with newly introduced wartime rationing coupons. What would I tell our friends and neighbors whom my mother had invited to the confirmation feast? Simply that the confirmation was off because I was accused of misbehaving in church?

  While I was desperately trying to think of ways to break the bad news to my mother between some desperate prayers for divine intervention, Pastor Ottmer gave us a stern lecture on the urgent need to rid ourselves of our childish ways, to assume responsibility for our actions and to grow up spiritually. “You may not realize it yet,” he told us thirteen-and fourteen-year-olds, “but your childhood days are over.” After letting us stew for a while in our own guilt and fear, he finally commuted our “excommunication” to an hour of hard labor each day after school, during which we had to keep the church grounds freshly raked and free of paper. He also told us that henceforth, the church balcony was off limits to us. “From now on, I want you right in front of me where I can see you,” he barked. “That is all. Heil Hitler!”

  Glad to have been spared the unthinkable, we walked out of the rectory in a state of euphoria, as though we had been given a second lease on life. Having come so close to the brink of disaster, I promised myself to heed Pastor Ottmer’s advice and from now on stick a little closer to the straight and narrow path of righteousness.

  A few weeks later on a bright Easter morning, following a long confirmation sermon by Pastor Ottmer, I was marching in a long procession of boys in brand-new dark suits and fresh haircuts who were approaching the altar from one side while a similar procession of girls in crisp dark confirmation dresses was approaching from the opposite side. Alternately, a boy and a girl received a blessing, a handshake, and a confirmation certificate from Pastor Ottmer. I knew that my mother was in the audience, but I was unable to locate her in the packed church. When it was my turn to step forward, I noticed that people in the audience, which was made up largely of relatives and friends of the confirmands, were craning their necks to get a better look at me. “Bless you,” said Pastor Ottmer without any warmth, as he mechanically shook my hand. I had the distinct feeling that it had taken all of the Christian charity he could muster to treat me like any other boy.

  APPRENTICESHIP

  Four years earlier, when Herr Grimmelshäuser, my fourth-grade teacher, had informed me that—in spite of my excellent grades—I could be admitted to neither the Realschule nor the Oberbau, the German equivalents of high school, because I was a non-Aryan, he in effect told me that the door to a professional future for me was forever shut. Under Nazi rule, secondary and higher education, while free of charge, was restricted to those pupils who not only showed the greatest promise during their elementary education but who also were members of the Hitler Youth. For pupils who, for scholastic or other reasons, missed the boat, there were only two remaining alternatives: the skilled trades, by way of a three-year apprenticeship, or low-paying, unskilled labor for the rest of their lives.

  Seeing me barred from a distinguished professional future hurt my mother more at the time than it did me. From the moment she had discerned in me a love for tinkering and using my hands while I was still a little boy, she had envisioned a future for me as a university-trained engineer. But after seeing that career path blocked, she resolved to help me become the next best thing to an engineer—an expert Schlosser (machinist), a trade open to me through the apprenticeship route. German apprentices at the time received no salary, only a token weekly allowance of Taschengeld (pocket money). This meant that my mother would have to support me financially for another three years. When I told her that I couldn’t let her do that, she didn’t want to hear a word I had to say. “You are going to apprentice, and that’s that,” she insisted. “But if it makes you feel any better,” she added, “you can pay me back when you are rich.”

  Buoyed by youthful optimism, I told her that we had a deal.

  Quite a few of my classmates were not as lucky as I. Although some of their parents were far better off financially than my mother, who was barely able to make ends meet on her meager factory pay, they refused to make further sacrifices after their kids left grammar school. Unlike my mother, they insisted that their sons go to work immediately and help earn their keep, thus condemning them to life as unskilled laborers.

  A few months before eighth-grade graduation, we were sent to a downtown office of the Arbeitsamt (Department of Labor) for vocational counseling. This was one of the most crucial junctures in our young lives, since failure to hit it off with an all-powerful counselor could mean having one’s career choice nixed or winding up in a backward sweatshop. Mindful of that, I had considerable anxiety about my approaching meeting with my assigned counselor, a Herr von Vett. By the time I knocked on the door to his office, I was a nervous wreck. When a voice ordered me to come in, my heart skipped a beat. Seated behind the desk was a blond, middle-aged man of erect bearing, but all I could see at the moment was the telltale black SS insignia of dual lightning bolts in the lapel of his civilian suit. This could only mean that the man who held my future in his hands was a member of the Nazis’ fanatically racist elite organization. I immediately braced myself for a humiliating, Wriede-type lecture on t
he necessity of keeping Jews and other non-Aryans from infiltrating and subverting the trades. But the lecture never came. To my great surprise and consternation, Herr von Vett gave me a friendly wink and invited me to take a seat. After carefully perusing my school records and nodding his approval, he asked me whether I had brought with me something I had made, as we had been instructed. Apprehensively, I unwrapped a small ax I had forged at Eugen Braun’s blacksmith shop. “You made this ax all by yourself?” von Vett asked, noticeably impressed.

  “Yes, sir,” I replied, and explained how for most of my childhood I practically had the run of a neighborhood blacksmith shop.

  “You can be of great service to Germany one day,” von Vett suggested.

  I thought I hadn’t heard right or that von Vett had lost his last marble. After all the putdowns I had endured in the past, his suggestion that I could play a positive role in Nazi Germany seemed to border on the ludicrous. But von Vett seemed serious. He predicted that one day, in the not-so-distant future, Germany would reclaim its colonies in east and southwest Africa. When that happened, he said, there would be a great demand for technically trained Germans who would go to Africa and train and develop an African workforce. “With your background and as an expert machinist,” he explained, “you would be ideal for such an assignment.”