After breakfast we marched to our classrooms in the usual military formation as a symbol of strength and unity. Once in our classrooms, we found our seats and looked ahead attentively as usual. Although the invasion had changed everything in Germany, it was like our school was in a bubble, since the teachers did not discuss the events of the morning. Rather they carried on with the school curriculum as if nothing had happened—they apparently hadn’t received instructions from Berlin to talk about the invasion—or perhaps they had been told not to talk about it. In either case, as the school day went on, I felt like I was living in a parallel universe—an escalating war and a school that sought to close itself off from what was really happening in the world, like we were in a bunker, closed away from the world for our own protection.
Chapter 5
Slovakia
In early winter in 1943, when I was fifteen, several boys from our school were selected to go to Slovakia, formerly a part of Czechoslovakia, to test our independence and strengthen our leadership skills. Our mission was to help to train some younger boys from different schools in Fuerth, a town near Nuremberg in Franken, a state in southwestern Germany. Each of us was assigned to work with a group of boys and their teachers.
To get to Slovakia, I traveled by train with the other boys from the Adolf Hitler Schule to Bratislavia, the capital of Slovakia, which meant the head of our school trusted us to do this now that we were older. This once-independent area of Slovakia was dotted with small farms with only a few acres of land. It had been under German control since the beginning of the war, and it would remain thus until the war ended in 1945. Normally, the fields would be full of rye, oats, potatoes, and grazing animals; however, since it was the dead of winter, the land was covered with snow and the animals were in their barns to keep warm.
Once we arrived at the Bratislava train station, we saw about eight groups, each with a dozen boys, who were about ten years old. They all wore brown school jackets and black slacks, and each group was accompanied by a teacher and his wife, who wore civilian clothes. The teachers smiled broadly as they came over to greet us—probably happy to have a break in their routines and get away from their schools and the depressing atmosphere of war-torn Germany.
The teachers shook hands with all of us, as the leader of the teachers, a little older and sterner than the others, introduced the boys. “These are your charges who you will help train,” the leader said. “We are all delighted to meet you. From here we will go to Lubochna, a small town in the nearby Mala Tatra Mountains, which will be well protected from the fighting in the war.”
Then the teachers, the students, and we boys transferred to the train to Lubochna. We spread out through one of the cars, and I grabbed a window seat. As we sped along through the winding countryside dotted with pine forests, I marveled at the beautiful snow-covered trees and hills, with mountain peaks reaching up to the distant clouds.
Along the way, one of the teachers explained the reasons for the trip. “You young men from Sonthofen have been sent here to develop your leadership skills, and our boys have been chosen to be your pupils in this exercise.” We never asked why these particular boys had been selected, and we never found out. Whatever the reason for the children and our being there, our role was to teach and mentor them.
Once we arrived in Lubochna, the teachers led us in a line onto the station platform. But the line didn’t last for long. Once we were all there, the boys from my school and our younger charges broke loose from the line and headed out to the street, like geese suddenly set free from their cages, and I followed along. The teachers could merely gape after us, helpless to do anything as we charged away, perhaps because they were unprepared for anyone to defy their authority and race away like that.
Within minutes, we were racing through the town’s winding cobbled streets, and we ran to the marketplace in the center of town. It featured a central square area, surrounded by small shops selling everything from jewelry and dresses to hardware and home goods. There were doctors’ offices, butchers, bakers, a tailor shop, and a shoemaker among the many shops.
Then, at the far end of the square, we saw it—a chocolate shop carrying the delicacies we hadn’t seen in Germany in years! They were displayed in the window, a mix of marzipan pigs, chocolate-covered cherries, blocks of chocolate with nuts and fruit, nougat, and chocolate hazelnut pralines. The chocolates were enticingly displayed with gold boxes and ribbons, and the marzipan pigs were in a small wooden farmyard.
We charged across the square to the shop, eager for sweets. Anything chocolate was especially appealing, since we had seen barely any candy, cakes, or cookies made of chocolate for over four years, since the war began and the Nazis instituted extreme food rationing. Anything considered unessential, like chocolate, was verboten. But here in the marketplace, it was like a dream come true to see so much chocolate.
We crowded around the counter at the front of the store, and eagerly handed our pocket money to the shopkeeper, as we pointed to different types of candy. In turn, the shopkeeper smiled broadly, as he wrapped up the larger chocolate pieces, poured the small chocolate candies into bags, and handed them to us. It was as if he understood the depth of our longing and was pleased that he could so easily satisfy it.
Eventually, the teachers found us in the shop and told us, “Come, you must follow us. We need to take you to the hotels where you will be staying.” The teachers gathered us together to form a line behind them, and we followed them to the hotels where we were staying, near the marketplace. As the head teacher explained, “You will each be staying in different hotels with your own school group.”
We followed as instructed, until the head teacher led our group from Sonthofen and the twelve boys assigned to me to our small hotel, the Villa André, which was a half-timbered rustic country inn. Once inside, the head teacher led us to the check-in desk, where he got the keys to our rooms. “A bathroom is at the end of each floor for all of you to share,” the hotel manager told us as he signed in our group. I could see by our teacher’s frown that the teachers were probably not used to shared bathrooms, though we boys were very used to sharing bathrooms in our dorm rooms at school.
Once we were checked in, the teacher and his wife led our group to the hotel rooms where we would be staying. Our rooms were on the second and third floors, above the living room, dining room, and kitchen. They had an inviting, homey look, with cheerful print curtains and big feather quilts and pillows on all the beds.
At each door, our teacher called off the names of the boys from a roster that indicated which boys would be in each room. Initially, he assigned four boys to each small room, about eleven by twelve feet in area, where two sets of bunk beds were in each room, so that the twelve boys were in three rooms. When we got to my room, I was delighted to discover that I would be the only one there, so for the first time in years I had a room to myself. It felt like heaven to be finally alone, after so many years of sharing a room with two or three other boys.
We quickly unpacked and went to bed early that first night, so we could get an early start in the morning for the classes the boys would be attending. Meanwhile, the other boys from my school led their own groups to other hotels, since each of us was assigned to teach and mentor a different group of boys.
Becoming a Leader
One of my jobs was to wake the boys in my group at six a.m. and make sure they made their beds properly and took showers. After I woke up myself, I went to the room of each boy, calling out, “It’s time to get up! Get ready to go to your classes!”
I could tell the boys were not eager to wake up so early after their exciting day of traveling and exploring the marketplace. But I knew I had to get them to their classes on time, so I told them each again. “Come. Come. You must get up and get ready now. And make your beds and take a shower.”
As each of the boys got up, I supervised them to make sure they made their beds properly and took a shower. Then I led my group of boys to breakfast, where the teach
er, his wife, and I sat at either end of a long table and the boys sat at either side. Each place was set with a placemat, fork, spoon, and knife, and the boys sat quietly, waiting for breakfast to be served.
Moments later, a waitress wearing an apron and a white cap came by with a tray laden with bowls of oatmeal, as she would each day. She placed a bowl in front of each person, since everyone normally ate the same food.
The teacher immediately objected, telling the waitress, “This is not right. Oatmeal is not a fit food for adults. It’s fine to give to the children, but I want my usual bread, sausage, and eggs.” The waitress looked at him, flustered and surprised. “But this is the breakfast I was told to serve.”
The annoyed teacher got up and headed into the kitchen, where he found the cook, wearing a long white cook’s apron and a white hat. The cook stood beside a large pot of oatmeal and stirred it with a long spoon. He looked up from the pot as the teacher rushed toward him and protested loudly, “I want you to cook me some bread, sausage, and eggs.”
The cook merely looked at him steadily. “I’m sorry, but this is all we have this morning.” Eventually, the teacher returned to the table, frowning with disappointment, and quietly ate from his bowl of now cold oatmeal, as everyone sat silently at the table. No one dared say anything to him, afraid of unleashing his anger, which seemed to be boiling like the once sizzling oatmeal.
After breakfast, at about nine a.m., the boys had classes with the teachers in a large room set aside to be a schoolroom. Originally, the room might have been used for wedding receptions, local meetings, or family feasts, but now each room had rows of benches and tables, so it looked like a classroom. As in primary school, the teacher for each group taught all of the subjects. In each class, lasting for about an hour, the students studied math, German, history, and geography. Meanwhile, I sat in the back of the room and quietly observed the classes.
When the lessons were finished, around one p.m., I met the boys in the hotel dining room for lunch. A typical lunch consisted of soup, meat, usually chicken or pork, and potatoes. After lunch, I took the twelve boys assigned to me outside to the snow-covered garden behind the hotel and led them in playing different games—soldiers, trappers, cowboys and Indians, and cops and robbers. These were games that the boys were already familiar with, having played them all their lives, as did children around the world. I still found these childhood games fun, though I was now fifteen, and soon would be expected to devote myself to more serious activities.
Yet, for now, besides enjoying the games, I especially enjoyed building snow castles with the boys from the deep banks of snow that covered the ground. As I guided them, they brought big clumps of snow to add to the castle, so it rose higher and higher from the ground. Some boys even molded towers and turrets at the top of the castle. After building each castle, the boys and I stormed it by throwing snowballs until the castle collapsed, after which they built another one, and we stormed it, too. I also liked the excitement of charging the castle and seeing it fall, as I joined in the fun with the boys. All of these activities were such a relief from the strict order of Sonthofen.
On those days when it was too cold for games, I marched the boys through town in a small formation of four rows with three boys in each row. I led the group as if I were heading up a small army battalion. As we marched along, people on the streets looked at us and waved, and I felt a thrill of exhilaration as the leader of this small troop behind me. In hindsight, it seems like this was a way in which the military helped to instill this sense of leadership in soldiers, as they moved up the ranks, leading larger and larger troops behind them.
At the end of the first of these marches, I said to the boys, “This is a chance for you to learn firsthand about another country and its people. You should be polite and kind to the Slovaks. You should be polite to the shopkeepers. You should say please and thank you when you go into their shops.”
I also taught them a number of Slovak words, such as saying “nastach,” which is Slovak for hello and is a word used to greet anyone in any circumstance. The boys would repeat the word proudly as they met people in the streets and in shops.
I felt free and gleeful playing games with the boys and leading them on these marches, because they seemed so happy, and their joy was contagious. It was quite a contrast to my experience at the Adolf Hitler Schule, where I felt so unhappy, where I was often alone and felt very much the outsider. But here I felt a new acceptance. I was someone who fit in and could be a leader of others.
Later in the afternoon, back inside after thawing out from the cold, my job was to teach the boys in my group about the Nazi Party’s role in developing a greater Germany. Using my own experience as an example, I described what we had learned in the Hitler Jugend about Hitler’s life and the party’s program. I especially enjoyed this opportunity to teach and lead others, since for the first time, I was on my own as a teacher and had no one observing me in the classroom, though I had a list of topics with a description, so I could tell the boys about each one. I told the boys about Hitler’s youth, his rise to power, his service in World War I, and how he had suffered from gas poisoning. I told them how Hitler had escaped an early attempt on his life, and now he wanted to lift Germany from poverty and ultimately rule Europe.
Yet, while I obediently stood in front of the students giving the first lesson as instructed, I noticed that the children seemed inattentive. They looked around the room and shifted restlessly in their seats. As a result, I did not think that the children should have been sent to Slovakia to receive this special instruction. I thought the lessons were boring, since they just spilled out fact after fact about Hitler and the party, much like an academic book for a much older audience. Also, I felt the boys were too young to really understand a Nazi Party platform.
Since I thought the boys unready for this political understanding, and since I personally was disillusioned by the party platform, for the second class, I pulled out a book of Grimm’s fairy tales I had brought along. I told them, “Now I have a special treat for you,” and began reading “The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was.” It’s a story about a boy who went out to deliberately face fear and thereafter could understand the nature of fear. It began, “Deep in the woods the boy saw a big black dog, which he thought was a bear. Then he saw an old man with a rucksack, running from tree to tree. The old man shook the trees, and collected the pine cones that had fallen.”
After reading the story, I had the boys talk about the story with me. After one boy summarized it, I asked each boy, “What experiences did you have with fear, and how did you deal with it?”
I found the boys’ responses very instructive. One boy said, “Sometimes I think there’s a monster in my closet.” Another said, “I’m always afraid my daddy will be killed in the war.” Another said, “My big brother is old enough to go to the army. What if someone shoots him?” I was especially taken by the way many of their fears were about the war and how it might affect them, so I found this a very valuable discussion in a time of war.
I followed with “Hansel and Gretel” and other familiar tales. After I read all of the stories, I told the boys, “Now I’d like you to imagine these stories as theater plays. I’d like you to volunteer to play different parts, or I can choose who will play what.” For the most part the boys picked the roles they wanted, and I interceded in case of a dispute. “Now I’d like you to copy your own parts out of the book, so you can learn your lines,” I told them.
The boys copied their lines, and when they had finished copying them, I explained, “Now I’d like you to make up some additional dialogue to add to the script. The book only includes a little dialogue, but to understand the story and make a play we need more.”
After we assigned the roles and the boys created more dialogue, we worked on turning one story at a time into a produced play. Some of the boys decided they wanted to create the sets for the plays, so they joined together to form the crew and made crude sets and
props from whatever they found lying around. They piled up books to make walls, and pushed together desks and tables to make the insides of houses. For costumes, they used rags from the kitchen, and they contributed extra clothes from their rooms. I was delighted to see them become very creative, once they were given the freedom to express themselves.
Then the boys threw themselves into their parts, and began playing scenes with each other. They passed their scripts around, memorized their parts, and played off each other, just like actors might in a real theatrical production. I enjoyed being a director and seeing the play develop. From time to time, some of the teachers stopped by and watched us rehearse. Fortunately, no one in authority protested my staging plays instead of teaching Nazi ideology. I thought it a little odd at the time, expecting any minute that one of the school authorities would come in and protest that the boys shouldn’t be doing this, that they should learn to become good Nazi followers. But no one did.
Once we were finished staging the play, some of the boys created programs describing what the play was about and who was in it, and they designed invitations to attend a performance in a few days. The boys took great care with their handwriting as we made the programs and invitations, to make the performance seem very special and professional, even though the performance would be in the same classroom where we rehearsed.
Then I sent all the boys to the hospital to invite the soldiers who had been wounded and were recuperating in the village hospital. The students also went around the village passing out programs to invite the villagers. The response was very enthusiastic, since everyone knew and loved Grimm’s fairy tales. Several dozen soldiers and villagers came, along with other German school groups, and many people brought their children. Most of the villagers spoke some German, which was the language used in the performance, and even those who didn’t know German could easily comprehend what was going on, since the tales were so well-known.
From School to War: Growing Up in Hitler’s Germany (Contemporary Nonfiction) Page 8