Hitler, My Neighbor

by Edgar Feuchtwanger

  We write and draw in our books every day. Fräulein Weikl says I have some of the best handwriting in the class. We write in Gothic script with beautiful joined-up letters, solemn letters. She gives us history and geography lessons. I understand the war better now. I’ve drawn a magnificent eagle, and a Celtic cross, and I wrote “1914–1918.” It looks like a real poster. I’ve made a map of Germany, not forgetting the regions stolen by other countries. We lost the war but at just four against twenty-seven, it was an unequal fight, our enemies behaved like cowards! We talk about it every day. We’ve all copied out tables into our exercise books, giving a tally of our family members killed or injured for the fatherland. A solid line for each man injured, a cross for the dead. There were three columns, one for fathers, one for uncles and one for grandfathers. I had one solid line, for my uncle Berthold. I raised my hand and went to the front of the class to describe how he walked for miles and miles, lived in the trenches, fought day and night without sleep, with shells falling close to him, killing his fellow soldiers. I also said that he thought we should have won the war, and Fräulein Weikl straightened her shoulders, puffed out her chest and smiled, her eyes glistening. Her voice quavered as she told me well done. She seemed proud of me, and I was too.

  I’m really happy at this school. Our teacher’s wonderful. She’s even more beautiful than Dorle, she’s as gentle as my mother and she’s always kind to me. I like looking at her. I think she thinks I’m special. When I copy out work, stick in a picture or color a drawing, she comes behind me and watches over my shoulder. I can hear her breathing. I’m aware of her perfume, hanging in the air around me, and I bask in it. She leans over me and takes my hand to show me how to improve my letters. Her palm is soft against my fingers. Her hair is perfumed.

  The weather outside is beautiful today and sunbeams warm my cheeks as I work. I’ve stuck in a photograph of a horse standing alone by a soldier’s grave. You can see he’s sad because he’s lost his master. I used a ruler to draw a black frame around it, as neat as a real picture frame. That soldier could have been my uncle. Will I die in a war?

  “Germany had to break up her army after the Great War: at one time we had frigates and triplanes, we were the most powerful…but we were betrayed,” our teacher tells us.

  I’ve cut out two photos from the paper and stuck them facing each other, one on each page. The first is of a statue of a soldier. There are flowers strewn at his feet, and military crosses, and banners embroidered with farewell messages from his family and his surviving brothers-in-arms. On the opposite page, edged with lines drawn with a wooden ruler, is an engraving of a cross standing in a huge, bleak field. The grave of a forgotten soldier, lost on that great plain. In the distance are a few isolated trees that look like a line of soldiers. Two mournful pictures facing each other. They’re both gray as the sky on a rainy day. When Fräulein Weikl sees me looking at them, she strokes my hair.

  “Every week,” she tells us, “German workers load hundreds of train wagons with corn, coal and other supplies even though we’re very short of them ourselves. These trains are sent to France to feed our enemies, who are terribly rich as it is. German politicians had to agree to these privations in order to end hostilities. The twenty-seven countries that we fought on our own insisted on these unfair conditions. Our soldiers, who’d suffered so much, were about to win their last battles. Meanwhile, tucked away comfortably in cities, far from the front, lazy, greedy, corrupt politicians capitulated to the enemy and stabbed our heroes in the back.”

  My most impressive drawing is of a swastika above a rising sun. On the opposite page I’ve stuck a photo of Hitler standing in front of an airplane: a girl older than me is handing him some flowers; beside her is a boy my age, looking straight at him. Hitler seems to be smiling, he’s leaning toward the girl, saying something to her. Another girl watches the scene enviously. Behind the children are mothers with the same admiring expression Fräulein Weikl has when the headmaster comes into the classroom and tells us he’s pleased with us. The Führer is wearing a swastika armband. Using my crayons, I’ve done a picture of twenty-five swastikas and a sunrise over the countryside.

  I’m happier at school than at home. My parents are short-tempered, they scold me over the tiniest thing and talk about politics the whole time. When friends come to visit, Mama and Papa are pleasant while they’re around, then the moment they’ve left the questions start: Are they real friends? Can we trust them? Ralph and I ask ourselves the same questions at school: Which of our friends can we trust? Some are not as dependable as they seem!

  Uncle Lion won’t ever return to Germany. Hitler has stripped him of his nationality. All his books have been burned. Soldiers went into bookshops, confiscated them, then piled them up in the street, so many of them they looked like hills. The soldiers doused them with gas and set them alight. Still, Uncle Lion seems to be happy in France, he lives in a hotel by the sea with Thomas Mann’s family. They’ve created a mini Germany. Marcel Proust’s translator, Franz Hessel, the man Ralph’s father mentioned to me, is there with them. Mama wants us to go and join them.

  Mama’s brother Heinrich, who had to sell his villa on the lake after Black Thursday, has also left Germany. He’s in Paris.

  It’s soon to be the vacation! In the schoolyard every morning we stand in rows and have to raise our arms for a long time while we sing the national anthem. Our shoulders get stiff and sore. Ralph has come up with a trick, and we’ve passed it on to the others: we rest our arms on the shoulders of the boy in front. Of course if Fräulein Weikl comes over, we raise the arm correctly. She doesn’t notice a thing and glides past, smiling, patting us amicably for doing so well.

  Uncle Heinrich lent us his chalet for the vacation. Time accelerates when I’m not at school. Almost before each day had begun it seemed to be over, and I had to go to bed. And that was even though the days were long, with the sun waking me in the mornings and not setting till after I went to bed. I went fishing with my father every day, and my mother served up our catches for dinner. Papa helped me build an enormous den. It had a door made of a latticework of leaves and branches, and a roof covered with foliage, which made a rat-a-tat-tat sound on rainy days. I invited my parents in for tea one time. I gave them sweetened lemon juice—I’d squeezed the lemons myself. We carved our initials in the bark of a tree using flints, like in prehistoric times.

  We’re back home now. I was happy to see my friends again and we compared our suntans in the schoolyard. I was whitest of all. Ralph has very dark skin. He’s blond but never gets sunburn. Fräulein Weikl asked us to take turns telling the class what we did during the vacation. I stood in front of the blackboard and explained how you attach an earthworm to a fishing hook, and how to make a cork float. I described the gudgeons we caught in the lake; I drew a sketch to show how to catch the wind in a sail, trim a jib and hike when the boat’s heeling. But I didn’t tell the secret story. I think of it often. I’ve told that only to Ralph, and made him swear not to tell anyone.

  We were having lunch when someone knocked at the door to the chalet. Papa opened up and two soldiers came in. It was the Gestapo. I was frightened they’d arrest us. They asked for our papers, and Mama went to fetch them. Then they asked where the other documents were hidden, my uncle Heinrich’s papers. My parents looked at each other in amazement. The soldiers barged past us and started searching. They inspected every room in the house. They turned over mattresses, emptied canisters of peas, rice and pasta, even jam jars. They rummaged through drawers and wardrobes. They unfolded clothes, turning jacket sleeves and pant legs inside out. They quizzed Mama about her brother, Uncle Heinrich. Mama said she knew nothing, that he’d left without giving an address, but had simply said she could use his house while he was away. It went on all afternoon. When half a sandwich fell butter-side-down on the floor, I put it back on the plate without a word. The soldiers didn’t notice anything, eating their sandwiches in silence, and I was proud of the trick I’d played. Then the nastie
r of the two turned to the other man and said out loud, “These Yids don’t have anything here. Let’s go.”

  They left, my parents didn’t utter a word of comment, and we ate lunch in silence.

  The sun was setting already.

  During break we formed a very tight circle around Thomas, who’s top of the class. He lives next door to Hitler’s personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann. I know the house because I sometimes walk home with Thomas. One time we saw the photographer drive out of his underground garage in his gray Mercedes, a beautiful machine as streamlined as a racing car. So there we all were standing around Thomas in the schoolyard and he told us he’d seen Hitler on Sunday. I said I often saw Hitler because he lives opposite me, and Thomas yelled that he’d seen him closer up than me: Hitler had been tanning himself on a sun-lounger in the garden.

  “And didn’t he see you?” Ralph asked.

  “No, because I was hiding in the bushes by the fence between our two gardens,” Thomas replied. “He couldn’t see me.”

  “One of my father’s cousins saw a lady friend of Hitler’s completely naked,” I said. “The cousin lives opposite her, and she’s always at her window tanning herself, with her little dog by her side. Her name’s Eva Braun.”

  The bell rang and we went back to class.

  Fräulein Weikl talked to us about Hitler again. She told us he wants Germany to leave the League of Nations, the peaceful organization to which countries all over the world have adhered since the war.

  “This League is run by our enemies,” explained Fräulein Weikl. “It’s sucking the lifeblood out of Germany.”

  Then she read the text of the referendum that was posted up all over the city:

  “Do you, German man, and you, German woman, approve this your national government’s policy, and are you willing to recognize it as the expression of your own opinion and your own will, and solemnly to profess it?”

  Mama and I are walking past our local movie theater and the front of the building is covered with referendum posters: Hitler and Hindenburg posing together like Hollywood stars. It’s not a movie that’s being shown in the theater, the place has been transformed into a polling station and a crowd has gathered by the entrance. A cluster of photographers rush toward a couple approaching the door. The man has a mustache, he’s short and pudgy and has a rolling walk, like a spinning top. Trotting along on his arm is a small, older lady, dressed in black and wearing a hat shaped like a flowerpot. Flashbulbs crackle, and the pair step into the building.

  The newspaper is open on the table, and I recognize the picture of the couple we came across outside the movie theater. It was Ernst Röhm and his mother. Röhm is commander of the Nazi soldiers, the SA, who are constantly in the streets these days. Fräulein Weikl told us there are now three million SA.

  I read the newspaper headline: Over 90 percent of registered voters voted “yes” in Hitler’s referendum. Germany will be leaving the League of Nations.

  I pray that Rosie’s Jesus will protect our family.

  * * *

  *Schutzstaffel, which means “protection squad.”

  There came a time when I no longer, as in the first days, wandered blindly through the mighty city; now with open eyes I saw not only the buildings but also the people.

  Once, as I was strolling through the Inner City, I suddenly encountered an apparition in a black caftan and black hair locks. Is this a Jew? was my first thought…

  I observed the man furtively and cautiously, but the longer I stared at this foreign face, scrutinizing feature for feature, the more my first question assumed a new form: Is this a German?

  —ADOLF HITLER, MEIN KAMPF, ON HIS EARLY YEARS IN VIENNA

  Hitler has decreed that Munich will be the Nazi capital. He’s decided to organize an annual celebration called the Festival of German Art. Soldiers have been going around telling the caretaker in every building what we have to do. Our own caretaker, Funk, came up and told us. He lives in a dark apartment whose windows look out onto the feet of passersby. You can see women’s stockings and high heels. Funk and Rosie are great friends so we often drop in to see him on our way back from school, when there’s no one at home yet. We sit in the dining room, he gives me orangeade and I listen to them chat. Funk introduced Rosie to politics. He claims “Rosie” is an assumed name in honor of Rosa Luxemburg. Actually, Rosie really is called Rosie. It just makes a better story!

  Funk is very short, scarcely taller than me, and he knows how to make people laugh. He’s always in blue overalls and seems to be everywhere at once. When you go in through the front door of the building, he’s there. When you get home from school, he’s in the lobby, bucket in hand. He mops the floor, waxes the wooden stairs and polishes the copper of the banister rail and every door handle in the building. He puts out the garbage and brings up the mail, he takes in the newspapers and hands them around, calling out the headlines. He’s always making jokes and teasing Rosie. He knows so much and explains lots of things to us. There are piles of newspapers everywhere in his apartment. He and Rosie talk about Adolf Hitler a lot. Funk knows everything that’s going on in the Führer’s apartment across the street. He knows the make of all the cars, the names and ranks of the chauffeurs and guards. He was in the war and knows everything there is to know about soldiers. He tells us about generals, corporals, brigadiers, uniforms and their stripes, sabers and rifles, mortars, planes and frigates. He says the SA are just music hall soldiers with no weapons or training, and that the French army is the most powerful in the world. On a desk in his study he’s set out several armies of lead soldiers. His favorites are the Napoleonic forces. They’re the handsomest. I like the Grognards best, Napoleon’s Old Guard with their tall black fur hats. They look like circus bears.

  When Funk talks about historical battles, alliances, kingdoms, republics, emperors, kings and queens, presidents and ministers, Rosie rolls her eyes. She’s bored. He stops what he’s saying and gives us hot chocolate and a slice of cake. He tells us the Nazis have ordered every inhabitant in the city to light candles in their windows all week. We start lighting ours the very next day. Our neighbors are all doing it too, and there are flags flying from windows, and standards streaming from balconies. My parents say that all these decorations are in bad taste.

  “It’s like a huge birthday party for a temperamental little king!” my father cries.

  I woke with a start last night. I heard something that sounded like a drumroll in the street: the storm reverberated through my body as I lay in bed, rain spattered against the windowpanes. There was another, still louder noise, the roar of engines. People were shouting and slamming car doors. I recognized the sound of motorbikes, Seitenwagen, which have a sort of carriage on one side, resting on a third wheel; there are more and more of them in the streets these days. I put my head under my pillow and went back to sleep. It wasn’t until this afternoon that I found out what happened in the night. Funk and Rosie talked about it at teatime: Hitler went in person to see Ernst Röhm, the fat man whom I saw going to cast his vote with his mother on his arm. Funk said we really need to be careful now. It’s dangerous for everyone, not just the Communists, even for the Nazis!

  I feel uncomfortable. Something important is going on. The duke and Aunt Bobbie have come down to join us. They’re here with Papa and Mama, all looking at each other but not talking. The curtains are drawn. We can’t see out and no one can see in. Rosie gives me my soup in the kitchen, the door’s ajar and I can see the adults in the drawing room. They’re just standing there. Papa smooths his mustache with his fingers, the duke adjusts his monocle and offers Papa a cigarette, opening his little silver and leather case where the cigarettes are lined up side by side, held in place by a lever on a spring. Mama and Aunt Bobbie have sat down. All four of them are talking quietly. I catch only the occasional word: “Hitler,” “Jew” and “leave.”

  It’s getting dark. The lights haven’t been turned on yet in the apartment, it’s gloomy, Rosie tells me to finish my
soup. She’s added all the things I like: cheese, crispy croutons that are now going soft, even a pinch of sugar to cheer me up. When I go to say goodnight in the drawing room Mama’s eyes are red, and Papa doesn’t even notice me when I kiss him. I take myself off to bed and Rosie sings me a song to send me to sleep.

  We’re in Funk’s apartment. He’s reading out snatches from the newspaper: “Ernst Röhm was mounting a coup against Hitler.” “He wanted to hand power to the SA, who would have plundered Germany.” “It would have been chaos.” “Revolution.” “A bloodbath.”

  Funk knows everything that’s happened. He paces up and down the room, almost jumping. He’s very worked up, gabbling to Rosie.

  “Apparently Hitler caught Ernst Röhm in bed with another man in a lakeside hotel. It must have been a setup.”