Destined to Witness

  Then Egon told me that all across the country, wherever the German military was still in control, special Gestapo commandos were stepping up their efforts to round up non-Aryans they had missed so far. He said that his parents and two brothers and he had been lying low for some time, but if things got too hot, they were prepared to go into hiding at the drop of a hat and stay underground until the Allies arrived. “If you want to, you are very welcome to join us,” he offered. “We have some trustworthy German friends who will hide us and supply us with food until this whole thing blows over. Just don’t be naive and think that nothing will happen to you because the Gestapo hasn’t come for you so far. Think! Why should the Nazis, who know that their time of reckoning has come, leave you and me unscathed to enjoy life and the peace that’s just around the corner while many of them will go either to jail or to the gallows?”

  I was stunned. Egon was making sense. Having been totally isolated from other non-Aryans, I had developed a false sense of security. Egon made me realize that we were all in the same boat, and that at any moment the boat could be sinking.

  Despite my heightened awareness of pending danger, I suddenly felt good, almost euphoric. As long as I could remember, I had always had to face the Nazi menace alone. Except for my mother, I had no genuine allies with whom I could share my secret fears of living in a state whose avowed goal was to destroy me and my kind. Now, for the first time in my life, I had found a true brother, someone who knew from his own experience the terror of being regarded as a subhuman enemy by the highest authority of the state, someone who was as much at risk of being destroyed as I was. All of a sudden I felt a strong kinship with Egon, who only a few minutes earlier had been almost a stranger to me.

  We had reached the end of the park and were entering a wasteland of massive destruction—row upon row of burned-out apartment buildings whose empty shells formed ghostly black silhouettes against the sky. We walked between mountains of rubble in the middle of the street, which, except for the sidewalks, had been meticulously cleared of debris. When we reached the school, which inexplicably was the only structure within miles that had been spared by the bombs, I prepared to turn in and call it a day. But Egon had other plans.

  “You’ve got to come with me and meet my family,” he implored. “We are living in a basement that we fixed up, not very far from here. You would make them very happy if you would meet with them.”

  Somehow, I just couldn’t find the right words to turn my newfound compatriot down and, against my better judgment, agreed to come along.

  We had walked another ten minutes or so through more ruins, past Barmbek’s railway station, when we came to a side street where a narrow path, barely wide enough for one person, had been cleared. Soon, Egon stopped before a ruin that to the uninitiated eye looked no different from the rest. After standing still and listening for a while to make sure we hadn’t been followed, he carefully tapped on a basement windowpane in what appeared to be a prearranged signal. Slowly, a blanket on the inside was moved aside for a few seconds to reveal the outline of a face. Immediately, the door next to the window opened and Egon led me into a totally dark, dank-smelling room that seemed full of people, although I could not make out a single one. After the door closed behind us, someone struck a match and lighted a kerosene lamp. In its dim light I suddenly could see several men and a woman staring at me.

  “This is Mickey,” Egon introduced me, using the nickname I had chosen for myself during my swingboy days. “I’m sure you’ve all seen him around in Barmbek at one time or another.” Then, pointing toward a handsome middle-aged man with wavy, graying hair and an emaciated woman with sallow complexion and huge, dark-circled eyes, he said, “These are my parents, Alfons and Lilly Giordano,” a pianist/accordion player and a piano teacher, respectively. The two young men, one about seventeen and the other twenty-two, he introduced as his brothers Rocco and Ralph. Ralph, whom I also recognized as a Café König regular, told me that he first saw me when we were children and our respective streets were “at war.” He recalled that when we came face-to-face, something he couldn’t explain made us turn around and walk away instead of beating each other up.

  As soon as the introductions were over, the Giordanos literally fell over me, hugged me, and shook my hands as if I was their long-lost brother. It was obvious to me that they hadn’t had any visitors for some time. They fussed over me and showered me with compliments until I blushed. Openly admiring my hair, my teeth, and my complexion, they all agreed that Africans were the real super-race. They bombarded me with questions, mainly about how the “Nazi Schweine” were treating me, what plans, if any, I had to assure my survival, how my mother was coping, and what I thought about the progress of the war. At that point they invited me to a small room in the back of the basement to listen to the latest news. I immediately knew what news they were talking about when I saw Ralph covering his head with a heavy blanket while fiddling with the knobs of a Volksempfänger, a small “people’s receiver.” After a few moments of whistling and crackling noises, I heard the familiar male voice of the BBC’s German-language announcer. At Ralph’s invitation, I shared the blanket with him. We could hardly contain our joy as we heard the announcer report that Soviet troops had freed nearly two thousand inmates in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz, in Poland. Some Soviet troops, according to the announcer, had come within a few miles of Berlin. Following the broadcast, Ralph and I joined the others and told them the good news, which they received with mixed feelings.

  The closer we came to the end, Herr Giordano theorized, the more dangerous the Nazis were getting and the more precarious our situation was becoming. He explained that the family kept their contact with the outside world to a bare minimum in order not to draw unnecessary attention to themselves. “You better act and go underground before it is too late,” he warned, adding that he and his family would be delighted to have my mother and me join them. I thanked him and told him that I would think about it.

  When I finally decided that it was high time for me to go home and get some sleep, the Giordanos implored me to keep in touch and to return soon and as often as possible. After an emotional send-off that matched their welcome, I walked home through the dark wasteland of ruins, filled with a welter of thoughts and emotions that made me oblivious of my desolate surroundings until I reached the school.

  NO ROOM AT THE “INN”

  Following the bombing raid on the Harburg plant and its partial destruction, the plant was closed and I was instructed to report to the Arbeitsamt (Labor Office) for immediate reassignment to another high-priority job. As a less essential worker, my mother was allowed to stay home until suitable work could be found. Under the prevailing Nazi emergency laws, no worker was allowed to quit or change jobs without special authorization from the government.

  The Arbeitsamt directed me to report to a small auto-repair shop in downtown Harburg where, because of an acute and worsening gasoline shortage, government trucks and cars were being converted to wood-burning hydrocarbon gas-powered vehicles. This involved removing the vehicles’ carburetors, installing huge wood burners that looked like six-foot-tall potbelly stoves in the back of the vehicles, then welding gas pipelines from the burners to the engines. The results were vehicles that could be fueled by throwing a few pieces of wood into the burner.

  The shop, headed by a wizened little man who rarely left his tiny, cluttered “office,” boasted a crew of eight, most of them Italian prisoners of war, and two German auto mechanic apprentices who somehow had escaped subscription by the Wehrmacht. The Italians, sensing that the end of the war, and thus their return to their homeland, was imminent, kept the shop reverberating with O sole mios and all the familiar arias from Verdi and Puccini while turning out as little work as possible. There was an immediate affinity between the sons of sunny Italy and me. One of them, a handsome Sicilian with glistening jet-black hair and a complexion that was even a shade darker than mine, was instructed by the boss to show me the ropes.<
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  Nino not only showed me the ropes, but before the day was up, he had added to my already substantial vocabulary of Russian, Polish, and French four-letter words and a fair number of Italian ones. While the work was not particularly challenging to me, I liked my new job a lot better than the old one. Its congenial and relaxed atmosphere compared favorably with Meister Erdmann’s grumpy bullying.

  On my second morning on the job, we heard a high-flying aircraft overhead. Sensitized about any activity in the air, we all looked up but did not see a plane. Instead, we saw what looked like a cloud of confetti descending toward earth. As the cloud came closer, the confetti grew larger and larger until it took on the form of thousands of leaflets that lazily floated toward us. Apparently, an enemy aircraft had penetrated Harburg’s air space at an extremely high altitude without triggering the usual alarm.

  It was widely known that the reading and disseminating of enemy propaganda leaflets by civilians was a capital offense. But impulsively throwing caution to the wind, several Italians and I dashed out of the shop and picked up some of the leaflets that had landed in the street. They were covered with small type on both sides. The only thing I could make out at a glance was the bold headline that proclaimed DER KRIEG IST VERLOREN (The War Is Lost).

  I couldn’t wait to read the rest of the good news, but as soon as I had stuffed the leaflet into my pocket, I was startled by the booming voice of a man who from about a block away was warning us not to touch the leaflets. Turning around, I saw a wildly gesticulating Amtswalter in his brown uniform running toward us.

  Suddenly, panic gripped me as the gravity of what I had done began to sink in. I knew that I was in mortal danger if the Nazi caught me with the leaflet on my person. It occurred to me how utterly stupid I had been to hand the Nazis the rope with which to hang me. How did I always manage to get myself into such life-threatening situations? But it was much too late for self-incrimination or regrets. I knew I had to act fast or I was literally dead meat. Quickly returning to the shop, I raced to the washroom, where I locked myself in a stall. Without bothering to read the leaflet, I tore it into tiny pieces and flushed them down the toilet. No sooner had the last piece disappeared in the gurgling vortex of the commode than I heard the agitated voice of the Nazi ranting and raving in the shop. He was shouting at our boss that he had seen at least two of his Makaronifresser (macaroni eaters) pick up forbidden leaflets and insisted on conducting a search.

  In the ensuing commotion, I slipped out of the washroom and, unnoticed by anyone, mingled with the rest of the crew. At the order of the Nazi, our boss had all of us line up and one after another step forward and empty our pockets. I was terribly worried that Nino, whom I had seen picking up a leaflet, might not have had a chance to get rid of it in time. When the Nazi ordered him to reveal the contents of his pockets, Nino stalled by telling him, “Ich nix verstehen,”—broken German for “I don’t understand”—which was the standard reply used by POWs whenever they didn’t want to cooperate.

  “I’ll make you verstehen!” the enraged Nazi shouted at Nino. But Nino continued to play stupid, thereby causing the Nazi to lose what little composure he had left. At that point, our boss intervened, telling Nino that refusing to cooperate would have the most serious consequences. When Nino finally complied, he did so with an insolent grin that grew wider and wider as each pocket he pulled inside out turned up empty. When Nino offered to drop his pants, the Nazi told him to shut up and to get out of his face.

  I let out an inaudible sigh of relief. There was no doubt in my mind that Nino had picked up a leaflet, but I couldn’t figure out how he had been able to fool the Nazi. When it was my turn to be searched, the Nazi looked at me intently while insisting that he was quite certain that I was “one of the Italians” he had seen picking up leaflets. Emboldened by my knowledge that I was “clean,” as well as by Nino’s brave performance, I looked straight into the Amtswalter’s eyes while pointing out to him that he was wrong on two counts. “I’m not an Italian, but a German,” I told him in the best German at my command, “and I never touched a leaflet.” With that, I pulled out all of my pockets to prove my point.

  The Nazi looked at me incredulously, but offered no further challenge. Before leaving in visible frustration, he told our boss to keep an eye on his “lying and treasonous Italians.”

  Later that afternoon, long after the Nazi had left, I ran into Nino in the washroom. “Du lesen Deutsch?” he demanded to know in broken German.

  “Of course I read German,” I replied.

  “Then you read to me.” With that, he shoved a familiar-looking piece of paper into my hand that I immediately recognized as one of the leaflets that had almost gotten us into a world of trouble.

  “Where did you hide it when the Nazi searched you?” I demanded to know. Nino pointed to his crotch.

  “Right here.” He laughed.

  At first I couldn’t make up my mind as to whether to laugh with him or chide him. “Suppose the Nazi had asked you to drop your pants as you had offered to do, what would you have done?” I asked.

  “But he didn’t” was Nino’s laughing reply.

  After making absolutely sure that we were alone, I read the leaflet to Nino. In substance, it stated that the war had moved into its final phase and that the inevitable Allied victory was imminent. It told Germans about the futility of their resistance, since it only prolonged their agony, and assured them that they had nothing to fear from the occupation forces.

  I’m not too sure that Nino understood the fine points of the leaflet, but he was noticeably pleased with what I read to him. “Mussolini kaput,” he beamed. “Soon Hitler and Goebbels kaput, too, and soon Nino go home to Italia.”

  We concluded our conspiratorial meeting by my tearing the leaflet into tiny pieces and disposing them via burial “at sea” in the john.

  Several days later, shortly after our lunch break, the familiar sound of sirens interrupted our work at the shop. As a precautionary measure, the boss instructed one of the apprentices to take the company truck and get the hell out of Harburg, while the boss drove his own sedan. We workers had the choice of either piling onto the back of the truck or taking our chance in a nearby public shelter. Remembering the last raid on Harburg, we opted for a ride on the truck.

  We had barely reached the outskirts of Harburg when we heard the angry droning of what we later learned were American B-17s overhead. Within seconds, bombs were pounding the ground all around us. As soon as the truck came to a halt, we jumped off and threw ourselves on the shaking ground. When the first wave of planes had passed and I dared to raise my head and look around, I noticed several people hurrying along the street. “Where is the next public air-raid shelter?” I shouted.

  The people looked at us and, without bothering to answer, continued on their way. After following them for several blocks, we came to a familiar public air-raid shelter sign. By the time we reached the shelter’s entrance, we heard a second wave of planes overhead. Glad to have reached relative safety in the nick of time, we were about to scramble into the shelter behind the other people when the air-raid warden blocked our path. “Where do you think you are going?” he demanded rhetorically. “We don’t have room for Ausländer (foreigners) in here,” he informed the three Italians and me while letting the two Nordic-looking German apprentices pass. I was certain that the “rule” he cited was his very own invention, but nobody spoke up in our behalf. On the contrary. Behind the warden I saw the menacing faces of other Germans, obviously daring us to force our way inside. There were several German soldiers in the crowd. One look at their hate-filled faces and their pistols convinced me that it wasn’t wise to challenge them.

  With a terribly final-sounding clunk, the warden shut the heavy steel door of the shelter in my face, and as if that had been the signal, the bombing resumed. Under the circumstances, the best we could do was lie prone and tightly pressed against the wall of the shelter. As the ground began to shudder under the impact of bombs while
bomb fragments whined and zinged all around us, I could see Nino next to me finger his ever-present rosary while mumbling over and over, “Madonna vera! Madonna vera!”

  Like the first attack, the second raid lasted only a few minutes, but when it was over, we all felt that we had aged a few years. As soon as we had recovered a bit, we walked back to the truck, which, to our relief, was standing unharmed where we had left it. There, we waited for the return of the two apprentices. When, after many detours around massive destruction, we finally returned to the shop, we had another surprise—most of the shop was gone. Fortunately, this time the locker that contained my clothes had been spared. After changing and saying goodbye to Nino and his countrymen, I caught the next train to Hamburg, never to return.

  Riding home and reflecting on the destruction of my two workplaces within three days, I was struck by the notion of possessing some weird kind of inverted Midas touch that turned everything I came in contact with to rubble. In a more serious vein, I could not help but ponder the pileup of narrow escapes during my relatively brief sojourn on earth. Should I be angry at fate for getting me into more than my share of tight spots, or should I be grateful for coming out of them essentially unscathed? After years of indecision, and with the benefit of hindsight, I now lean heavily toward gratitude.

  MAX ROEPKE

  The following day, I dutifully reported to the Arbeitsamt in Hamburg for reassignment to yet another job. After the official pulled my files and studied my qualifications, he told me to wait just a moment. “I think I have something that fits you to a T,” he told me, then left the room. When he returned, he was followed by a tall, heavy-set man with a ruddy complexion and an even more ruddy nose that to me indicated an affinity for Schnapps. He was dressed in an expensive camel-hair coat, the kind that ordinary Germans hadn’t been able to buy since the beginning of the war.