Destined to Witness

by Hans Massaquoi

  Realizing that before things could change in our favor, Germany would have to lose the war and the Nazi government would have to be driven from power, we knew that our hopes and dreams rested on an extremely long shot.

  ON THE HOME FRONT

  As the war went on and our visits to the shelter became more frequent, the dank and cold basement below the old waffle factory assumed an increasingly important role in our lives. It literally became our home away from home, a veritable social center where neighbors who had only known one another by sight, or not at all, became friends, and where daily concerns about the children, the men at the front, and other war-related problems were shared. While my mother and most adults bemoaned the nightly shelter visits as a frightening ordeal, I looked forward to them because they provided Gretchen and me with the only opportunity to enjoy some sort of a relationship while meeting surreptitiously in one of the shelter’s two pitch-black Gasschleusen (gas lock chambers).

  When I wasn’t with Gretchen, I would shoot the breeze with my new pal Karl-Heinz Bülow, a dark-haired fellow about my age who had a few months earlier moved with his parents a few houses down the street from where I lived. Karl-Heinz was a telephone lineman apprentice employed by the Reichspost (post office). His father, a projectionist at the Europa Palast cinema, was among the first men in the neighborhood drafted by the army. Within a few months of his arrival, Karl-Heinz had acquired a reputation as one of the biggest skirt chasers on the block and, according to persistent rumors that he was happy to confirm to me, he had been looking after the needs of a front-line soldier’s wife until she gave him the boot when she caught him trying to seduce her best friend. Since I was still “innocent,” so to speak, I couldn’t help but be impressed with Karl-Heinz’s precociousness. That’s why, when he suggested that we should get together sometime, I eagerly agreed. Soon we became inseparable, as Karl-Heinz kept me entertained with the freewheeling daring with which he pursued women in particular and life in general. Like many teenagers at the time, he was staunchly anti-Nazi but fanatically partial to military uniforms, which, he insisted, women found irresistible.

  The best vantage point from which to observe the validity of his hypothesis was our air-raid shelter on weekends before dancing was outlawed. In addition to us regulars, the shelter would be packed with uniformed members of the Wehrmacht and their dates. They were the patrons of Café Classen, a nearby club, whose dance revels had been interrupted by the air-raid alert. No sooner had they entered the shelter than the café’s combo would set up and the partying would start all over again. Some of the couples would foxtrot, while others would repair to the darkest corners of the shelter where, to the impotent indignation of the older folks and the envy of Karl-Heinz and me, they would engage in the most explicit kind of behavior short of sexual intercourse. While watching as the young women literally threw themselves at the men in dashing uniforms, we concluded that the fringe benefits of joining the military were well worth it.

  With not much else to look forward to than working seemingly endless shifts and spending the nights in a dank air-raid shelter, we were constantly seeking action—any action—to keep boredom at bay. It wasn’t long before Karl-Heinz came up with an idea. Showing me a bunch of keys he had found among his father’s things, he explained that they were the keys to the Europa Palast and suggested that if I had the guts, he would treat me to my very own private performance.

  After considerable misgivings and, as usual, in disregard of my better judgment, I reluctantly agreed to come along, mainly because I didn’t want to admit to Karl-Heinz that I lacked the courage. In keeping with his plan, we waited until the movie personnel had locked up and left shortly after the last show, at about 10 P.M. We then sneaked up a fire escape that led to the projection booth and Karl-Heinz let us in, after trying out several of the keys. After making sure that my earphones were properly adjusted and that I was comfortably seated in front of one of the large square peepholes that offered a view of the screen on the opposite side of the theater, he inserted a reel into one of several huge projectors and, flipping an assortment of switches, started the film rolling as if he had done nothing else in his life. At the movie’s midpoint, Karl-Heinz climaxed his performance by expertly blending in a second reel on another projector.

  I was impressed but too scared to appreciate his efforts or the film, which I had difficulty enjoying because of a growing sense of foreboding. As a result, the film’s title and content have totally slipped my mind. When the movie was over, Karl-Heinz calmly returned everything to its proper place and, after turning off the lights and locking the door, we left as if nothing had happened.

  It was not until I was safely lying in my bed and reflecting on our adventure that the full impact of what I had just done struck my consciousness. No matter how innocent and innocuous our intent, the fact remained that I had illegally entered a place of business while taking advantage of the blackout. In wartime Nazi Germany that was a capital offense.

  Mulling over the possible consequences of our misdeed—not the least of which would have been my mother’s monumental disappointment in me—I broke out in cold sweat and vowed never to get involved in a stupid thing like that again. My resolve would be tested soon enough.

  The following evening after returning from work, Karl-Heinz asked me whether I’d be interested in another “private performance.” I couldn’t believe my ears. We had just pulled off one of the most daring capers in the annals of juvenile stupidity, hardly a day had passed, and my pal was hankering for more.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him, “but I’ve already made other plans.”

  But as far as my impulsive friend was concerned, that didn’t fly.

  “I know what’s the matter with you; you’re chicken!” he groused, and walked away in a huff.

  I knew he was right, but I hadn’t the slightest intention of convincing him otherwise. For once I had acted smart, as I was soon to find out.

  That same night, my mother and I were awakened by a commotion across the street. As we looked out of the window, we saw several policemen with flashlights on the same fire escape I had climbed only twenty-four hours earlier. It was too dark for us to make out any details, but I had a good idea of what was going on; Karl-Heinz had been back at his little game and this time he had gotten caught.

  My suspicion was confirmed the next day by Karl-Heinz himself. He told me that after I had turned him down, he asked another pal to come along, and that they were surprised by police who arrested them and locked them up for the night. Luckily, he said, the theater’s owner, a kind old lady, who was summoned in the morning, recognized him as the son of one of her drafted employees and put in a good word for them. The result, he said, was that charges of criminal trespassing were dropped.

  I was happy for Karl-Heinz, but I was not so sure that had I been the one who got caught in the act, I would have been equally lucky and treated with leniency. I promised myself to watch my step more carefully than ever.

  LAST TANGO IN HAMBURG

  Since dancing was the name of the game as far as we swingboys were concerned, the government lashed back by outlawing swing dancing in all public places. Because most young people in Germany didn’t have the foggiest idea what was meant by swing dancing other than that it entailed “wild, Neger-like, sexually explicit contortions and gyrations,” the ban was largely academic. But soon that was to change when dancing of any kind was prohibited. There was, however, a legal way of getting around the rigidly enforced prohibition. Since the Verbot did not include dance lessons, many swingboys and girls signed up for them whether they knew how to dance or not. After taking one beginner’s course, which entailed formal instruction, “advanced students” could sign up for a course without lessons that merely provided an opportunity to practice what they had learned—in other words, an opportunity to dance to their hearts’ content.

  I knew about this loophole in the law and would have liked, like so many of my peers, to take advantage of it, bu
t I didn’t dare, since I was more than certain that I’d be turned down. I could already hear the sneers if I tried to enroll. “You want to dance with our pure-blooded, blond and blue-eyed Aryan women? You must be mad!”

  I convinced myself that I’d be laughed out of the place the way I had been laughed out of other places before, and decided to spare myself the humiliation—until one day my boxing buddy Hans Vollmer suggested that we sign up for dancing lessons. Without giving him my reason, I told him that I wasn’t interested but agreed to come along to take a look at the place.

  The studio we went to was the Arthur Lucas Tanzschule, just a few blocks from my home. When we entered the studio office, a few swingboys and girls were waiting their turn to register. The bald man with the rimless glasses seated behind the desk, we learned, was Herr Lucas, the dance teacher and studio proprietor. When it was Hans’s turn, I was about to step aside, but Herr Lucas invited both of us to take a seat in front of him and handed each of us a registration form. Here it comes, I thought while carefully perusing the form for some embarrassing trip-up questions, such as “Are you Aryan? If not, specify.” But all that was asked was the name, age, address and whether the applicant wanted to take the beginner’s or advanced course. After we returned the completed forms to Herr Lucas and paid a modest fee, he told us that we were duly enrolled students at the Arthur Lucas Tanzschule. There was nothing in Herr Lucas’s demeanor that indicated to me that he considered my enrollment in his course as something out of the ordinary.

  The beginner’s course for which Hans and I had signed up was for three months of two-hour lessons each Sunday afternoon and Wednesday evening. Our class, which was held in a huge hall, consisted of about two dozen young fellows and an equal number of girls ages eighteen to twenty-five. I had been prepared for some giggles from the females, but to my surprise, not one of them paid me any undue attention, thus relieving me of my greatest fear. If any of the fellows had acted uncouth toward me, I would have been prepared to respond in kind, but had a girl started ridiculing me, I would have been helpless.

  Before starting his first class of instruction, Herr Lucas had us take seats on two facing rows of chairs, girls on one side and boys on the other, then lectured us on dance-floor etiquette. Most of his tips for proper gentlemanly comportment, with which he tried to impart a touch of class to us mostly blue-collar types, were pearls thrown before swine. They barely went into one ear before they had exited the other. We especially ignored, and frequently violated, behind Herr Lucas’s back, his stern instruction as to where not to put our hands and what not to do with our knees and thighs while dancing. It seemed to us that Herr Lucas had entirely missed the point of what dancing was all about. Another of his cardinal rules of which we frequently ran afoul required that we walk, instead of stampede like a thundering herd of elephants, across the dance floor in order to ask the girls to dance. There was method behind our madness. It hadn’t taken us hopeless male chauvinists very long to learn one important verity: those who arrive last must take what’s left; and what’s left invariably were the girls with the least sex appeal. Since class rules required the girls to accept male partners on a first-come-first-served basis, they did not enjoy the freedom of picking and choosing, or altogether avoiding an undesirable partner.

  Herr Lucas, it turned out, was an excellent instructor and I caught on fast. Before I knew it, I had mastered the first dance on the lesson plan, the English waltz, and in quick succession became proficient in dancing the tango, the polka, and, finally, the foxtrot, which became my favorite. Being among the better dancers in the class kept me from being reduced to wallflower status whenever Herr Lucas announced “Damenwahl (Ladies’ choice)!” It was years before I heard of the stereotypical notion that all blacks have rhythm and can dance. But my experience seemed to bear out the stereotype. Hans Vollmer, having not a single drop of African blood to call his own, had a considerably harder time than I making his feet move according to the beat of the music. It took near-superhuman effort on both Herr Lucas’s and Hans’s parts before he managed to get the hang of the most basic steps.

  While some of us swingboys had heard that the jitterbug was the number-one dance craze in the States and were anxious to incorporate it in our own repertoires, we had never seen it danced because of the wartime ban on American films. Consequently, we used our imagination and put our own spin on the foxtrot in hopes of recreating what we thought was the jitterbug. The result was a bewildering hodgepodge of movements and steps that, as I realized years later while watching authentic jitterbugging, resembled the jitterbug about as much as the minuet did. But since we had no role models by which to judge our performance, we “jitterbugged” to our hearts’ content behind Herr Lucas’s back, and in the process proved beyond a shadow of doubt that ignorance is truly bliss.

  One Sunday, just as Herr Lucas was demonstrating some new steps, the main door to the dance hall opened and in poured a contingent of about twenty Hitler Youths. After ordering to stop the recorded music, their leader took the floor and announced that there would be a brief haircut check. While his people checked the emergency exits and the men’s washroom for would-be escapees, he and a subordinate marched slowly along our row of chairs. I wasn’t particularly worried about flunking the haircut inspection. Instinctively I felt that this time far more was at stake.

  Judging by previous run-ins with these uniformed zealots, I feared that they would challenge my very presence in a place that provided me, a non-Aryan, with physical contact with Aryan girls. I had gotten to know my enemies only too well. Not letting the HJ leader out of my sight as he moved closer and closer, I noticed that when I had come within the scope of his peripheral vision, he did a double-take, then zeroed in on me. “What do we have here?” he demanded, as if confronted by a rare species from the animal kingdom. “What in heaven’s name are you doing here?”

  At this point, the usually mild-mannered Herr Lucas stepped forward and demanded that whatever the HJ leader had to say, he should say it in the studio office next door. When the HJ leader complied and we three were alone, Herr Lucas produced several documents, which he handed to the brownshirt.

  Identifying himself as a member of the NSDAP (Nazi Party) and of the N.S. Kulturkammer (Nazi Chamber of Culture), he told the HJ leader that he was a veteran of World War I, during which he had attained the rank of captain and was wounded and awarded the Iron Cross, first and second class, for valor. “I deeply resent having my competence questioned by your inferences that this young gentleman does not belong in my class,” he bristled. “In case you don’t know, this young man’s father was an officer in General Lettow-Vorbeck’s colonial forces in East Africa and served with highest distinction.

  “I want you to know that you will hear about this when I get through talking with certain people who are very interested in learning about your kind of irresponsible and intrusive behavior.”

  Duly impressed and humbled by what he had just learned, the HJ leader apologized profusely to both Herr Lucas and me. “Nichts für ungut (No offense meant),” he repeated several times before clicking his heels and rendering the Heil Hitler salute. By the time we returned to the dance hall, some of the HJ had rounded up several swingboys they had targeted for free haircuts. “Let those comrades go,” the leader countermanded his subordinates, then assembled his troop and beat a hasty retreat.

  Following the incident with the Hitler Youth patrol, I looked at Herr Lucas with different eyes. Instead of the slightly comical figure I had seen before, a man who with his rimless glasses and pudgy face could have been Soviet Foreign Secretary Molotov’s twin, I now saw a man who fearlessly stood up against racial intolerance. Except for a brief moment after the incident, when I thanked him for coming to my aid, we never discussed again what had happened on that Sunday afternoon. As a result, I never found out whether he had knowingly made up the story of my father’s serving in General Lettow-Vorbeck’s army or whether he had heard that story somewhere and believed it to be true.
All I know is that the story and the way he presented it did the trick of keeping that obnoxious Nazi off my back. During subsequent months, when Hans Vollmer and I were enjoying advanced dancing courses, we never saw another Hitler Youth patrol.

  A FAREWELL TO VIRGINITY

  The fact that we were fellow sufferers forged a tight bond between us apprentices at Lindner A. G. While I was on very good terms with all of them, I was especially close to one, a lanky blond second-year Stift (tack), as apprentices were nicknamed, by the name of Walter Bauer. Walter lived on a small farm in a rural part of suburban Langenhorn, where his family raised chickens and pigs. With war food rations becoming smaller and smaller, he would often slip me a huge, homemade sandwich to ease my insatiable appetite. In turn, I would help him with some difficult task whenever his machinist skills left him in the lurch. The fact that he was a Hitler Youth member never seemed to hurt our friendship.

  One day Walter arrived at work visibly upset. When I asked him what had happened, he swore me to secrecy, then confided in me that he had gotten himself into a pickle. He said that he and a friend from a neighboring farm had been literally caught with their pants down by a policeman as they were masturbating each other in the countryside. After taking them both to their respective homes, the cop told their embarrassed fathers that he could have their boys prosecuted under Germany’s antihomosexual law, but that he would give them a break. He then lectured the fathers on what, according to prevailing conventional wisdom, he felt they should do to make “real men” out of their wayward boys and to prevent them from becoming permanently schwul (gay).

  The upshot of all this, Walter explained, was that his father, after raising holy hell with him, ordered him never to get near the other boy again. Then, following the cop’s advice, his father had given him ten marks with the instruction that the next time he felt his sap rising, so to speak, he should go to a Puff (bordello) and get himself squared away. Walter said that, as far as his sap level was concerned, he was way overdue for a squaring away and that his homosexual encounter happened merely because he didn’t know any cooperative women, not because he was gay. Since he had never before been with a hooker or, for that matter, with any woman, he wondered whether I would mind coming along for moral support and, maybe, have my own sap level adjusted.