Hitler, My Neighbor

by Edgar Feuchtwanger

  Ralph and his new friends ignore me, but they’re just a small gang of idiots. Everyone else still plays with me. I know there are other Jewish kids in school, although there’s nothing to distinguish them. One of them often walks about with his hands behind his back, looking at the ground, like Napoleon; another always hangs around on the school steps, lost in a book, or sometimes he plays alone with jacks or marbles. Every now and then I think my life is sad. Luckily home is wonderful. I adore my parents and Rosie. And Aunt Bobbie too. And the caretaker Funk also, even though he keeps criticizing Germany. I don’t know what my schoolmaster would think of that…Funk spoils me, though, giving me candy, comics, color crayons or elastic bands. He makes paper airplanes for me and makes Rosie laugh. We still visit him when Mama’s not home yet.

  Mama sometimes asks me about our mysterious teas, but I keep them secret.

  No one’s talking to me. When I arrived home, Papa was sitting at his desk, reading the papers over and over. He smiled at me when I came in, then went back to his reading. Mama came home and I gathered from their conversation that Papa’s worried because Hitler’s decided to restore compulsory military service. He read an article about this out loud, Mama looked at me, and I thought she was going to cry. Papa reassured her, saying I’m far too young to be enlisted, and that France is bound to stop Hitler equipping himself with his own army.

  “No one wants another world war,” Papa said.

  Now it’s nighttime. I’ve had my bath and my dinner. I’m in the drawing room with my parents, sitting in complete silence. There isn’t a sound. I feel lonely. Rosie comes to fetch me to put me to bed, and Mama promises to come kiss me goodnight.

  Lying in bed, I’m coming to the end of a book of short stories by Gottfried Keller, The People of Seldwyla.*3 I’ve got to “The Habit Makes the Monk.” In this story, a tailor goes to deliver a suit to an aristocrat in a faraway village. On his journey, the humble tradesman is taken for a nobleman. Instead of admitting his true standing, he puts on his customer’s suit and, through a series of adventures, ends up becoming his own prestigious customer, the man he was meant to serve. Would it be possible for me to stop being a Jew?

  Mama hasn’t come to see me yet, and the sheets are still cold. As I fall asleep, I feel her hand on my cheek. She tucks me in and kisses me. Now I’m dreaming, I think. I dream I can fly through the sky and I’m invincible.

  When I get home from school the next day everyone’s there, sitting in the drawing room. Papa, Mama, Aunt Bobbie, the duke and Funk. I walk into the room and sidle in among them. An engineer is crouching on the floor, adjusting a large mahogany device with the word “Blaupunkt” written on it in gold letters.

  “It’s a radio,” Papa says.

  He smiles at me and I can tell he wants me to smile too. He’s proud. The engineer lifts the radio’s lid. There are lots of wires and two large bulbs. He closes it again and puts the plug into a socket. And all of a sudden there’s a crackling sound, then a voice. Adolf Hitler’s voice.

  “Could you try a different station please?” Papa asks immediately.

  The man turns around slowly, peers into my father’s eyes for a long time and then looks him up and down through narrowed eyes. He swivels back toward the machine and turns one of the Bakelite dials. A fine line moves across the screen and there are strange sounds. The man turns another pearly dial. The crackling stops and I instantly recognize a piece of music: Schubert’s Hungarian Melody, a piece that Mama plays on the piano.

  Since the radio’s been in the drawing room everything’s different. Mama plays the piano less, Papa listens to the news, tuning to Radio Luxemburg, a foreign station with programs in German that discuss our country. Its reporters say the Nazis have arrested people who oppose their ideas and have banned newspapers that criticize them. The foreign papers that my father read to me at the Café Stefanie when I was little are no longer sold here, so we listen to Radio Luxemburg the whole time now.

  I can now follow the achievements of my favorite sportsmen. The Germans are definitely best at everything. Rudolf Caracciola has an Italian name but he’s German and he wins every motorcar race with his Mercedes-Benz W25B. He’s an incredible man. His right leg is five centimeters shorter than the left since his accident in Monaco, and he walks with a stick. His wife was killed in an avalanche last year. He’s returned to racing and, thanks to Mercedes, he’s now faster than his Italian rival, Luigi Fagioli. Hitler ordered the new car for him himself. Thank goodness, because in previous years Caracciola had to drive Italian ones that were nothing like as good! I hear on Radio Luxemburg that this week he won the Tripoli Grand Prix in Libya, in the middle of the desert, by the Mallaha salt lake. I so wish I could have been there among the Bedouin to watch! I picture the desert sand on Caracciola’s face, his car powering along at top speed, the roar of the engine, the cloud of smoke on the horizon, pennants waving in the crowd. Last year he reached 311.9 kilometers an hour in a specially streamlined model.

  The champion came to Munich in person to deliver Hitler’s Mercedes-Benz 770, the gorgeous black car I can’t take my eyes off in the street outside our house. Our Führer has announced that he will build Autobahnen all over Germany, and people will be allowed to drive faster on them than on the Italian autostrada. I really hope so!

  The Germans are best at everything. Berlin will host the Olympic Games next year, and our sportsmen will easily win the most medals. I’m sure of it.

  The nasal voice on Radio Luxemburg has announced that France has put up no opposition to Hitler’s rearmament. This week the Führer unveiled the prototype of a new warship with a low tonnage, which means it gets around the size limit imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. Even so, it will have far greater firepower than our old ships. The republic’s army, the Reichswehr, is to become the Wehrmacht, and Germany will develop its air force, the Luftwaffe, and its navy, the Kriegsmarine. France isn’t opposing that either. England has signed a treaty authorizing the development of a German naval force. My father purses his lips, my mother asks him to switch off the radio.

  We haven’t gone for a vacation this summer because my father’s traveling to Palestine to visit his sisters. My parents are planning to move there so he’s on a reconnaissance trip. I’m getting ready for when we go there: in my room in the evening I study a map of the region, and read descriptions of its cities in the encyclopedia.

  During the day Rosie takes me to the public swimming pool. I’m now so good at swimming that I’ve decided to train for the Olympic Games. I don’t know which games, nor for what sport it will be, but I exercise the whole time: I do fifty push-ups in the morning, I run around the outside of the park, and I swim freestyle. I’ll be ready soon, people will cheer me on in big stadiums! I’m also doing a lot of reading. I love Adalbert Stifter’s stories, romantic fables, like Gottfried Keller’s. My favorites are the ones in his collection Bunte Steine (Colorful stones), which describe rural life.

  I particularly like Rock Crystal*4, a story about two children who get lost in the snow on Christmas Eve. The whole village sets out in search of them. They’re found just in time, before they die. I enjoy being frightened by it, imagining running away across Germany, alone with only a small dog for company, a few belongings in a bindle, walking through towns and villages, going deep into forests, climbing mountains, building log cabins, making Indian canoes and paddling along rivers all over Europe, traveling upstream to the great capitals: Paris, London…

  When Papa comes home from his trip to Palestine, I hardly recognize him he’s so tanned. He returns laden with gifts from him and his two sisters, Henny and Medi. He tells us all about it. Henny lives in a large villa in Talpiot, on the outskirts of Jerusalem. She’s separated from her husband, Jacob Reich, but they get along so well that they’re now inseparable friends. Medi, my father’s youngest sister, lives in a little village near Rehovot to the northeast of Tel Aviv. Her husband, Hans Oppenheimer, is a doctor who tends the poor. Papa says they’re “gentle idealists
” and “Zionist socialists.” They have dreams of building the perfect Jewish state there.

  “Like Germany for the Germans?” I ask.

  Mama takes me in her arms but doesn’t answer. Then my father uses a map to show us the places he visited: Italy, Rome, Florence, Naples, the crossing to Palestine, arriving by boat in Haifa, then on to Jericho, Jerusalem…He enjoyed his trip and says his sisters are happy there. All the same, he’s made up his mind: we won’t be going there. Life’s too difficult and he’s afraid I wouldn’t have a good education. And, anyway, he doesn’t know what we’d live off. Eventually, Mama’s face breaks into a smile, and she runs him a bath. He says there’s nothing better than coming home. He turns on the radio and Mama stiffens…

  “Not the news, don’t worry, darling,” Papa whispers.

  And we listen to music. An exuberant tune with trumpets.

  “But this is jazz!” exclaims Mama, smiling. And Papa kisses her on the lips.

  It was the very next day, I think, that we heard the terrible news on the radio. It was in the evening, just before my dinner.

  During the big annual Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg—the one filmed by Leni Riefenstahl—Hitler had announced that with immediate effect, Jews would not have the same rights as everyone else.

  I wondered whether that would apply to me too.

  * * *

  *1Der heilige Berg.

  *2Triumph des Willens.

  *3Die Leute von Seldwyla

  *4Bergkristall.

  Among them there was a great movement, quite extensive in Vienna, which came out sharply in confirmation of the national character of the Jews: this was the Zionist.

  It looked, to be sure, as though only a part of the Jews approved this viewpoint, while the great majority condemned and inwardly rejected such a formulation. But when examined more closely, this appearance dissolved itself into an unsavory vapor of pretexts advanced for mere reasons of expedience, not to say lies.

  —ADOLF HITLER, MEIN KAMPF

  Rosie’s not there when I come out of school today. My mother is instead, standing very upright behind the nannies. She’s wearing a fur coat, the one that’s so soft I like to bury my face in it and slide my fingers through it. Ralph’s chauffeur is waiting by the Rolls-Royce but Ralph doesn’t get into the car straightaway, staying to chat with Thomas and Hans. All three of them wear Nazi badges on the lapels of their jackets. They look at me, stare at my mother, and whisper to each other. What are they saying? That she’s a Jew? That she looks Jewish? Has a hooked nose? It isn’t hooked, she’s more beautiful than the other women here, more elegant. And yet I’m embarrassed, I’d rather she weren’t here.

  Hjalmar Schacht, the minister of economics who was photographed with my parents at the congress in Zurich in 1928, has tried to demonstrate that Jews cannot be completely excluded from the economy. Others have suggested establishing precise categories so that we know once and for all who is a true Aryan—and who isn’t. At the moment everything depends on the grandparents’ religion. If you have at least three grandparents of Jewish faith, you’re fully Jewish. If you have only one or two, you’re a “crossbred” Jew or a “half Jew.” The Germans have invented a word for this, Mischling, which means “of mixed blood.”

  To find out who you are, you have to find your grandparents’ baptism certificates.

  Ralph and his gang taunted a friend called Heinrich whose parents had lost their own parents’ certificates. They called him a Yid. The next day his parents managed to find the missing documents, and Heinrich coolly ignored Ralph’s gang until they came to apologize to him. They’ve been inseparable ever since and spend the whole of break time comparing their swastika badges.

  It’s easy in my case. All my grandparents are Jewish—which means my whole family is. That much is clear. Well, not quite. My father’s first wife, Dorle’s mother, was Catholic. Does that make my sister Jewish like me? I go to Papa’s desk and consult the tables that were published in the newspaper before Christmas. It looks like a family tree and it’s very difficult to work your way through all the complicated rules. Only two of Dorle’s grandparents are “full” Jews, so she could be seen as a “crossbred” Jew, a Mischling. I talk to Papa about it and he says I missed a small asterisk that refers back to the first article in the paragraph: “A person is Jewish if born of an extra-conjugal relationship with a Jew, as defined in article one of paragraph five,” in other words “who is descended from at least three grandparents who are racially full Jews,” which my father is.

  “But she’s not from an extra-conjugal relationship!” I protest.

  “She is because we’re now divorced,” my father replies. “I’m no longer married to her mother.”

  So my sister’s a Jew like me.

  This time it’s my father who’s misread. Another condition is tacked on at the end of the article. In order to be Jewish, Dorle would have to have been born after July 1, 1936—so she’d need not to have been born yet, given that it’s only January 1936. So Dorle isn’t a Jew, then. She’s a Mischling, a “half Jew.” And I’m totally Jewish.

  I wish I’d been born in the old days, when my father was young. I’ll never be allowed to marry a Catholic, whereas he was free to marry Dorle’s mother. If we were caught walking hand in hand we’d be condemned to death for “betraying the race.” I remember Arabella and the picnics we used to have together by the lake when we were little. We were just children but I really think I loved her. I often think of her, her blond hair, her pretty nose and green eyes. I wonder where she is and what she’s doing. I’d like to see her again. Her mother comes to the house sometimes, she comes to see Aunt Bobbie. And Dorle? She won’t be allowed to love whomever she chooses either. If a non-Jew asked for her hand in marriage—and she accepted—they’d have to get special authorization, and her husband would immediately become a Mischling himself, as would any children they had. Who’d want complications like that when for three years now Jews have been denied the right to be doctors, civil servants, news editors, musicians or lawyers? When I go to my dentist, the one I share with Adolf Hitler, the pretty girl with the blond hair and the beauty spot next to her full red lips is no longer there. She was probably Jewish. And what about me? What sort of job will I do and who will I marry?

  My mother’s waiting for me outside school then. Instead of Rosie. And Ralph and the others are staring at her.

  “Why isn’t Rosie here, Mama?”

  “Come, sweetheart, I’ll explain.”

  “No, Mama, tell me. Why isn’t Rosie here? Why didn’t Rosie come?”

  Mama doesn’t answer. She’s holding my hand too tightly and frowning.

  “Shush!” she scolds. My throat constricts and my eyes sting. The others are watching.

  I walk on ahead, on my own. I can hear my mother’s footsteps behind me, and the boys sniggering. I start to run, tears trickling down my neck.

  I hurry along the familiar route, past the House of German Art, the Nazi Party headquarters, Röhm’s villa, Heinrich Hoffmann’s, Hitler’s apartment, I see our building, climb the stairs as fast as I can, ring the doorbell, Papa lets me in, I bulldoze past him, call Rosie, she’s not in the kitchen, or the drawing room, or my bedroom, her room’s empty, I scream her name, run back downstairs, ring Funk’s doorbell, he opens up.

  “Where’s Rosie? Where’s Rosie?” He takes me in his arms and hugs me. I cry softly.

  The Nuremberg laws forbid Jews from employing staff with “German blood” if they are younger than forty-five. Rosie loves me and I love her. Yes, she has German blood—as I did once, before the Nuremberg laws.

  I’m a Jew now, just a Jew, nothing but a Jew, nothing else.

  All of us are just Jews now, and Rosie’s not allowed to live with us anymore.

  So I’m a Jew then…and the others hate me.

  I want to go live in Palestine so that I’m not alone. Papa and Mama talk about it a lot. They gather information, and read specialized books and newspaper articles tha
t Papa obtains from new acquaintances. I listen to their discussions, and look through the books and magazines that they leave open on the desk. I read that this year sixty thousand Jews emigrated from Germany to Palestine, which has one and a half million inhabitants. Many of the new arrivals are from Germany: the German Nazi Party and the Jewish Agency for Palestine have reached an agreement to encourage this migration, which started in the late 1800s. Families from European countries come together and set up colonies on plots of land bought from the surrounding Arab villages. They grow oranges, which are easy to export. These communities are like villages in the South of France, or like the sovkhozes in the USSR, where many of these immigrants originated. The young women wear their distinctive low-cut tunics and baggy pants; the men, vests, short pants and peaked caps. Life is overseen by a governing body of seven people, who are elected every year. People work from 5:30 till 11:30 in the morning and 2:00 till 6:30 in the afternoon. No one receives a salary: the colony provides for everyone’s needs, not forgetting cigarettes for smokers and instruments for musicians. Every individual has two weeks’ paid vacation, and the colony provides them with the money they need for their trip. There’s very little organized religion. And each village has a central building where children are raised communally by professional nannies. I wish I were over there and not here.