Destined to Witness

  Following on the heel of Goebbels’s appointment came the introduction of the compulsory sixty-hour workweek, the suspension of all holidays, and the closing of all schools. In addition, so-called Etappenschweine (rearechelon pigs) and Drückeberger (goldbrickers), soldiers who had managed to avoid front-line duty by serving in noncombat support units, were reassigned to combat units, regardless of their physical condition.

  As part of the “total war” mobilization effort, the German military high command announced the forming of the Volkssturm (literally, People’s Storm), a compulsory militia made up entirely of rejects—men who formerly had been considered too old, too decrepit, or, like me, otherwise unfit for military service. All men from age sixteen to sixty-five were ordered to report for Volkssturm duty regardless of previous military status classification.

  In keeping with that order, on a nice fall Sunday morning, I trotted to a nearby army barracks that had been designated as Volkssturm induction station. Having long gotten my military ambitions out of my system, I expected to be sent home the moment the first recruiter laid eyes on me. But no such luck. Instead of being told to get lost because non-Aryans were too low on the evolutionary scale to deserve the honor of dying for Germany, an army corporal handed me a beat-up, obsolete-looking rifle and ordered me to join the ragtag-looking bunch of ancient men in civilian clothes who were shouldering ancient rifles like mine.

  The officers and noncommissioned officers on duty were, without exception, much-decorated, seasoned combat veterans. Several wore black eye patches or carried their arms in slings. The senior officer in charge, a young major and wearer of the Ritterkreuz (Knight’s Cross), saluted with his left hand because his right arm was missing. After welcoming us to the Volkssturm, he told us that in order to bring about the Endsieg, we had both the Pflicht (obligation) and Ehre (honor) to defend, if necessary with our lives, our Vaterland, which through treachery at home and abroad now found itself in its greatest hour of need. He then explained that the meeting was primarily an orientation session and that the following Sunday, we would be formally sworn in.

  Much to my disappointment, none of the officers paid any attention to my exotic looks, which in the past had kept me out of military service. Instead, I was marched about the barracks ground like everybody else and given belated instruction on how to defend the Vaterland against the uninvited intruders who were closing in on Germany from every direction. Surveying my tottering comrades-in-arms, most of whom were cursing under their breath or ridiculing the attempt to turn them into combat soldiers, the ironic truth hit me that, my permanent tan notwithstanding, I was without a doubt the most physically fit in the entire group.

  After an hour or so of perfunctory, out-of-step close-order drill, we were divided into small groups and assigned to cadres who gave demonstrations in the use of the Panzerfaust (armor fist), a hand-held grenade launcher that, we were told, was capable of knocking out a Sherman or Stalin tank. All we had to do, an instructor explained, was to wait in ambush until a tank came along and with one press on the trigger, swoosh—the tank and its crew would be history.

  I recalled the remarks of the German army officer who only two years earlier had sneered at me when I told him that I wanted to enlist. Seething with racial arrogance, he had boasted, “Germany will never be so hard-up as to need the likes of you to win the war.” If I needed any more tangible evidence that Germany was down on its ass and about to lose this war, I merely had to look into the mirror. Nazi Germany had clearly and incontrovertibly reached the point when it desperately needed “the likes of me,” not to win the war, but merely to buy itself a few days of time before it would be crushed by the Allied juggernaut. The shoe, I decided, was clearly on the other foot.

  After another pep talk from the major, we were dismissed and told to return the following Sunday for additional seasoning. I decided that I already knew all I ever wanted to know about the Panzerfaust and that coming for more instruction would be a waste of my valuable time. Since nobody had taken down my name or in any way recorded my presence, I surmised that nobody would miss me terribly in the event I didn’t show up the following week. Momentary concerns about the possibility of being hauled before a military tribunal to answer to charges of desertion were swept aside with characteristic youthful bravado. “I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it,” I told myself. Fortunately, my luck held out again and the bridge remained uncrossed.

  MISTAKEN IDENTITY

  During the fall of 1944, more and more people in Harburg, which so far had been spared the fate of Hamburg, were plagued by fears that time was running out and were bracing for the worst. With most German industrial cities in ruins, I found it harder each day to believe that Harburg would be spared indefinitely. Before long, events justified my skepticism.

  One bright afternoon while I was replacing a section of leaky steam pipe, the wailing of air-raid sirens interrupted my work. The warning sent me and everyone else in the factory to the underground air-raid shelter on the premises. There, welcoming any reprieve from the mandatory ten-hour daily work routine, the workers relaxed and chatted until a voice on the air-raid intercom system announced that a large contingent of heavy U.S. bombers was headed straight for Harburg-Wilhelmsburg. Soon, the conversations ended and tense silence pervaded the bunker. I reflected that, luckily, my mother should be safe and sound in Hamburg since the kitchen staff left early after cleaning up the kitchen and cafeteria following lunch.

  Suddenly, through the droning of hundreds of bombers, the whining of the first bombs became audible. Next came a series of deafening explosions that were followed by violent, earthquakelike tremors. To me, the scene was only too familiar. Somehow, I felt strangely detached and calm, almost as if certain I would not be harmed. For most of my fellow workers, on the other hand, the massive day raid constituted their baptism of fire.

  Contemptuously, I studied the cowering plant executives, all futilely trying to hide the mortal fear that had taken hold of them. What had happened, I wondered, to Hitler’s arrogant master race of only a few years ago—especially their leaders? Meister Erdmann, normally all callousness and sarcasm, huddled pitifully in a corner, barely able to control the shaking of his limbs. Similarly, the plant’s general manager, the haughty, white-haired arch-Nazi who not long ago had threatened to report me to the Gestapo unless I became more cooperative, was reduced to moans each time a bomb hit nearby.

  Also seated among the group of cowering plant big shots was the plant Pförtner (gatekeeper) whose real name was Zervat or something like that, but whom everybody called Cerberus behind his back, after the mythical three-headed monster dog that guarded the gate of Hades. Zervat had come honestly by the contempt in which he was held by the rank and file. A fanatic Nazi, with an ever-present party button in the lapel of his neat black suit to prove it, he never smiled or mingled with any of the employees and delighted in literally lowering the boom on workers who were a split second late. When that happened to me once, he ordered me into his tiny station where he dressed me down for neglecting my duty to aid the war by being punctual, then threatened to report me to the personnel department for disciplinary action should I ever be late again.

  Seeing some of my tormentors squirm with fear had a strangely modifying effect on whatever pangs of fear I experienced myself. For a moment, I had the perverse wish that a bomb should hit the plant above and put it out of commission, thus helping to hasten the end of the war.

  I was not to be disappointed. Only moments later a deafening detonation and a bone-jarring quake that shook the shelter occupants out of their seats or off their feet left no doubt in my mind that my wish had been granted. The explosion knocked out the electricity, leaving the bunker in complete darkness. Once the earth stopped shaking as the bombings ceased, someone managed to open an exit door and the people, severely shaken but uninjured, scrambled up the stairs that led to the factory yard. I had difficulty hiding my glee over the sight that awaited me. The building that had housed the muc
h-hated machine shop had been transformed into a huge mountain of smoldering rubble. I remembered that somewhere deep down under that vast pile of bricks, there was a locker containing a pair of shoes, a shirt, a jacket, and slacks that belonged to me. But my personal loss could not dampen the joy I felt over the U.S. airmen’s work of destruction.

  With the vitally important machine shop out of commission and most of the workers in a state of shock from the harrowing experience, management announced that everybody could go home and to report for work again the following day. In my case, going home was easier said than done. The destruction of the machine shop and nearby streetcar rails presented me with a big problem—how to get back to Hamburg? There was one immediate recourse. I decided to take my chance and walk to the Harburg Hauptbahnhof, in hopes of catching a Hamburg-bound commuter train.

  The air attack had left a scene of widespread devastation and an eerie silence had settled over Harburg. Still deafened from the pounding of the bombs and choking from the dense smoke that covered the area, I stumbled over smoldering debris, past burning buildings, uprooted trees, and twisted streetcar rails. With the utmost care I avoided the many cables that the bombs had unearthed, which were coiled like angry snakes, ready at a touch to discharge their lethal voltage. I tried hard not to look too closely at the grotesquely charred and mangled corpses that were scattered all about. The thought struck me that only a couple of hours earlier these corpses had been living, breathing human beings, like myself. My thoughts about the fleeting nature of life were interrupted when a scream pierced the silence.

  “There’s one of them!” a female voice shrieked. Screaming hysterically at the top of her lungs, a woman of Valkyrian proportions pointed straight at me. “There’s one of the murderers!” she continued. “Kill that American swine! Let him find out how it feels to burn alive!”

  Summoned by the woman’s screams, people came running from every direction to investigate. Within minutes, I was surrounded by an angry, cursing, and wildly gesticulating mob.

  At first, I was at a total loss as to the meaning of the commotion. Then, looking down on the welding goggles around my neck, my grease-splattered blue coveralls, and—more to the point—my brown hands, the ironic truth hit me. They were mistaking me for a black U.S. pilot who, they believed, had bailed out after his plane had been shot down.

  I felt like laughing and telling everybody what a bunch of jerks they were. But I thought better of it, realizing that my situation was all but comical and that if there was a joke, the joke was definitely on me. Enraged over the destruction and casualties around them, the people were in no mood to listen to reason, certainly not when the facts, as they saw them, left no room for any other conclusion.

  Fueled by the Valkyrie’s constant screaming and urging “get it over with” by throwing me into one of the burning buildings, the mob’s mood grew uglier. I sensed that the point had been reached where the slightest provocation on my part would trip my adversaries’ collective hair-trigger nerves and turn them into an uncontrollable lynch mob. A look at their hate-distorted faces underscored the hopelessness of my predicament. I realized that to my captors, I represented a convenient scapegoat on which to vent their pent-up, impotent rage at their aerial tormentors. All that stood between me and a horrible death at the hands of my own countrymen now, I realized, was their deeply ingrained sense of obedience. At least for the moment, they still seemed reluctant to act without the command of a leader with authority. How long that reluctance would last, I did not dare to guess.

  At the very height of my distress, I received a reprieve from quite an unexpected source. Just as the human wall around me grew more dense and more threatening, it parted and admitted a strapping police lieutenant. “Quiet, everybody, and back up to the other side of the street!” he shouted, his right hand suggestively resting on the holster of his huge service pistol. Conditioned to respecting uniforms, the people immediately obeyed. I breathed a sigh of temporary relief while wondering on whose side of the law the officer would turn out to be. After carefully examining my blue Kennkarte—an ID card all Germans were obliged to carry on their persons at all times—and finding it in order, the lieutenant relaxed his heretofore official demeanor and eyed me with unconcealed, almost fatherly kindness. “So what’s the matter with you?” he demanded. When I told him what had happened to me at the plant, he soon became convinced that, my brown skin notwithstanding, my unadulterated Hamburger dialect was unmistakably homegrown.

  “They’re a bunch of hysterical idiots,” the lieutenant said with a nod toward the crowd across the street. He got no argument from me.

  “Now let’s see if we can’t get you home,” the lieutenant said while flagging down an already overcrowded Hamburg-bound bus.

  “How are you fixed for bus fare?” the lieutenant demanded.

  When I told him that what little money I had carried that day had been left in the locker that was destroyed with the plant, the officer reached in his pocket and handed me the necessary change.

  “I want you to make sure this young man gets safely to Hamburg. I am holding you responsible,” the officer instructed the driver of the bus.

  “Jawohl, Herr Leutnant,” the bus driver replied. “Come aboard, young fellow.”

  Before complying, I thanked my good Samaritan who, in turn, wished me “Hals und Beinbruch” (neck and leg fracture)—a German expression for Good luck. As the bus pulled away, I heaved a sigh of relief, keenly aware of the hate-filled eyes of the crowd that followed me until I was out of sight.

  It was not until quite a while after the war that I came to fully appreciate the mortal danger in which I found myself when the police officer came to my aid. Although they were never mentioned during the German war-crimes trials conducted by the Allies, there were hundreds of reliable reports about some of the most gruesome atrocities committed by German civilians and German military personnel, especially Waffen-SS, against black U.S. soldiers, including airmen who were forced to bail out over Germany or German-occupied territory. Efforts by some concerned eyewitnesses to bring the perpetrators to justice failed, partially because it became practically impossible to identify and locate the culprits and partially because of official apathy.

  THE GIORDANOS

  Early in January 1945, while returning late one night after watching a movie downtown, I got off the commuter train at Friedrichsberg station, then headed for the school that for more than a year had been my and my mother’s home. I walked briskly along a footpath that wound gently through Eilbeckthal, a large, dark, and deserted park. Suddenly, I heard footsteps approaching from behind. While I had no particular reason to anticipate an attack, I was mentally prepared for one. In fact, I would have welcomed an opportunity to put my boxing skill to work in self-defense. As I looked over my shoulder and strained my eyes in the dim light cast by a thin sliver of moon, I could make out the outline of a man.

  I slowed my pace to let the stranger catch up. As he walked beside me, I recognized a young fellow about my age, of stocky build and with thick horn-rimmed glasses. Immediately, I realized that I had seen that fellow many times among the swingboy crowd at Café König. The recognition was mutual.

  “I know you,” said the fellow. “You used to hang out at Café König. I’m Egon Giordano.”

  “I remember having seen you, too,” I replied. I introduced myself and we shook hands.

  “Want a cigarette?” Egon asked.

  “No thanks, I don’t smoke.”

  While Egon lighted a cigarette, we resumed our walk, nostalgically recalling the good times at our favorite neighborhood hangout before it was razed by bombs in 1943. Inevitably, our conversation turned to the war.

  “It won’t be long now and these goddamn Nazi swine will be finished,” Egon announced wistfully.

  I was struck by the hatred in his voice, but didn’t respond. Although I harbored similar sentiments, experience had taught me to keep my opinions and my negative prognosis to myself when talking to peopl
e I had no particular reason to trust. When Egon noticed my reticence, he laughed.

  “You don’t have to be afraid of me,” he assured me. “I thought you knew that I am a Jew.”

  On hearing the word Jew, I recoiled. I had all the sympathy in the world for Jews, but felt that because of my own precarious situation I needed being seen in a clandestine-looking meeting with a Jew like I needed a hole in my head.

  “No, I had no idea you were a Jew,” I finally replied. “What made you think I knew?”

  “I thought everybody at Café König knew,” he responded.

  “Then how come you don’t wear a star?” I probed suspiciously.

  “Well, I’m actually only half Jewish. Half Jews don’t have to wear the star of David as do full Jews,” Egon explained. “My mother is a full Jew and my father is a German-born Italian.”

  Even a half Jew, I thought, was too close for comfort for me. What if some Gestapo patrol stopped us? They would never believe that our meeting had been a pure coincidence. I could already see the newspaper headlines: JEW AND NEGRO HANGED FOR TREASONOUS MEETING IN PARK DURING BLACKOUT.

  Seemingly unaware of my discomfort, Egon continued the conversation. “I don’t know whether you know it, but I have it on good authority that all of us non-Aryans, including you, are in imminent danger of getting wiped out,” he confided. “The Nazis have known for some time that their game is up, that the war is lost, that they are finished, kaput. But they are determined not to go to their graves alone, but to take with them as many of us as they can get their hands on.”