Hitler, My Neighbor

by Edgar Feuchtwanger

My father doesn’t want to go to Palestine. It’s a warring country, he says. Life there is hard. The Arab population is worried by this influx of boatloads of families and thinks these Jews would do better to stay in Europe. Extremists among them ransack shops set up by new immigrants or kill them in the streets, as the Nazis do here. The Jews and the Arabs both have dreams of founding their own country there—and yet Palestine belongs to neither of them, it’s still a British protectorate. Many people have visions of creating an independent nation for Jews who can no longer live in Europe, but neighboring countries are against it. If the English ever granted the Jewish nation the right to exist, its neighbors would declare war on it. Jews are known as Yahud over there, and they’re not allowed into the old city of Jerusalem without risking being stoned. My father thinks the situation will soon be far worse in Palestine than it is in Germany.

  “At least we’re in Europe,” he says. “We can still live among ourselves. We Feuchtwangers are German, whatever they may say, and we have been since 1555!”

  My father’s told me about our family history: in 1555 my forefathers were driven out of the village of Feuchtwangen, to the north of the Danube, and they moved to Fürth near Nuremberg.

  “But we were already here before that!” he adds with still more passion. “We’ve lived in Germany for more than four hundred years. This madness will blow over like all the others that we Feuchtwangers have survived!”

  It’s already a year since Papa celebrated his fiftieth birthday. I sometimes think about that evening as I fall asleep. All his friends came: the Bernheimers, the Siegels, and every family member who lived in Germany, Aunt Lilly, Berthold, Aunt Bobbie, the duke, and lots of other guests whose names I didn’t know. Writers, musicians, people of all ages. The men wore tuxedos, and the women evening gowns. I was dressed like a grown man with a bow tie around my neck. The whole evening reminded me of parties at my cousins the Bernheimers’, when my parents used to dance amid confetti, to the sound of a band. On those special nights I would fall asleep in Ingrid’s bedroom, lulled by music and laughter. For Papa’s birthday, though, I was allowed to stay up till midnight with Beate, who was also there. Her parents looked happy. Her father had only a scar on his cheek as evidence of when he was assaulted in 1933.

  Beate and I played at making cocktails for the guests. In the kitchen we poured the dregs from all the glasses into clean glasses, and offered them to the adults, inventing all sorts of fanciful names for these concoctions. I remember one man in particular, he was rather red in the face, unsteady on his feet, and he kept coming back for more.

  “Make sure you remember this evening, Edgar,” he said, looking me right in the eye.

  I thought he was going to cry. My mother appeared and took him off into another room, laughing brightly. Their voices blended with the tune that the band was playing. Before going up to bed, I looked out of the window: the lights were on in Hitler’s apartment. He seemed to be alone.

  I think I understand what the tipsy man was trying to say. That evening might prove to be the first and last big family party of my life.

  My father has stopped going to the office because they’ve done away with his job. He doesn’t go to Café Stefanie either, the place on Kaufingerstrasse where I sometimes went when I was little, and we’d chat with Uncle Berthold, whom I called Bubbi. I remember Bubbi being unconcerned, saying Hitler wouldn’t be dangerous. My father no longer goes to Café Heck with its green gardens where Hitler himself once greeted my uncle Lion and Bertolt Brecht. I think back to the days when Rosie and I used to go all the way to Thomas Mann’s house to drop off the precious books my father loaned him. It was summertime, I can still picture the dragonflies and butterflies. One time I felt thirsty along the way, and I was allowed to drink straight from the neck of a flask filled with grenadine cordial.

  Uncle Lion, Bertolt Brecht, Thomas Mann and so many others have left Germany. Why are we still here?

  On a sign hanging outside a store I see the words “No dogs or Jews.”

  Papa hardly leaves the house at all anymore. He now works from his desk at home, running a Jewish paper, the Bayerische Israelitische Gemeindezeitung. Late into the evening, I hear his big fountain pen scratching across paper, and I can smell his eau de toilette filtering under the doors, all the way to my bedroom. A secretary sometimes comes to note down letters he wants to send. Papa works the whole time, from morning till night, and whether or not anyone’s coming to the house, he still dresses as he did when he went out to the office: gray suit and vest, white shirt and a tie. My mother slips silently behind him to bring him a cup of coffee. It reminds me of Rosie, who used to bring him cookies on a silver tray when he was entertaining his writer friends.

  Sometimes he travels to different provinces for a few days. He comes back with presents, little porcelain figurines, sliver cups, or glass balls with snowflakes swirling inside them. He gives conferences in surrounding towns and always comes home in a good mood and full of hope for our community.

  “No need to set up a nation in Palestine,” he says. “Nations and nationalism are a curse, they lead to wars. At the other end of the scale is the human spirit, a spirit of humanity and fraternity, along with culture and knowledge, ideas, thought, music and painting—they know no borders. So the Jews no longer have the right to vote in Germany? Neither do non-Jews because they can vote only for the Nazi Party! At least we Jews can’t be their accomplices.”

  My father opens envelopes with a silver paper knife. He writes letters by hand and sends me out to post them. I run along the street and slip them into the mailbox before the last collection. He gets hold of every edition of the government’s newspapers and lets me read them. I’m outraged by the party newspaper, Völkischer Beobachter. The worst is Der Stürmer, run by Julius Streicher. One headline proclaims in giant letters, THE JEWS ARE OUR DOWNFALL, and hideous caricatures depict perverse-looking, stooped characters with hooked noses. The Jews are accused of wanting to provoke war in Europe or to steal all the money in the world, particularly in Germany. Four hundred thousand Germans buy this paper every week.

  When I look in the mirror I don’t see a hooked nose. I don’t look like the pictures in the papers. I often think of before, when I was young. I’m twelve now, and I feel so old. Back in the day I was invited to birthday parties. I remember Ralph’s party…Does he still like Marcel Proust? Ralph and I wanted to be Spartacists when we were little, we lent each other our favorite books, we wanted to travel the world on camels. No one at school talks to me anymore. The others all discuss the Olympic Games, saying Germany will win everything. On June 19, Max Schmeling beats the invincible Joe Louis at Yankee Stadium in New York and wins back his title as world champion. They say the Aryan conquered the “Negro.” They say that the gymnasts Konrad Frey and Alfred Schwarzmann, who fought in the Great War and are now seen as representatives of the superior race, will avenge the German people in the Games.

  I’ve stopped wanting Ralph to change his mind and be my friend again. It’s too late. I’m going to live in my own little world, like my father.

  I’m preparing for my bar mitzvah: in the evenings, straight after school, I go to the temple, where Rabbi Glaser teaches religious chants in Hebrew.

  Rabbi Leo Baerwald prepares me for the ceremony in Munich’s large synagogue. The Nazis have painted swastikas on the pillars that frame the front door. Inside, though, it’s a whole different world, calm and peaceful. I like it when children sing with the adults; the younger voices blend with the big booming sound from the grown-ups, it’s like angels coming through thunder. They sing in Hebrew and I don’t understand a thing, but the music wraps itself around me and transports me. Rabbi Glaser always greets me with a smile, and I join in with the others. I try to decipher the words, pretending to understand them as I sing from memory. I look around, remembering that my father had his bar mitzvah in this same place. He used to put his book and prayer shawl under a bench near the holy ark where the Torah scrolls are kept. I sit o
n that bench sometimes and think of him. There are fewer than nine thousand Jews in Munich, just 1.2 percent of the population. When the voices grow louder I look down at the floor to hide the tears rolling down my cheeks.

  Rabbi Leo Baerwald gives us theology lessons. Today he’s asked me to accompany Rabbi Wise, an American, back to his hotel from the synagogue. Rabbi Wise doesn’t speak much German and doesn’t know the city. We walk in silence. His American suit is more elegant than those worn by passersby and there’s nothing to show that he’s a rabbi. He’s not wearing a kippah, just a hat. It’s a broad-brimmed hat—a Borsalino, one of my friends told me. I’m happy to be walking along the street with an American. I wish I could go and live there. Apparently there’s no school uniform, and children are served milk shakes in drugstores, and people eat pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast, and pupils can take sandwiches to school in little metal boxes. Maybe one day I’ll take a boat to New York, where Rabbi Wise lives. He walks quickly, slightly swinging his impressively broad shoulders. I copy him. All of a sudden he stops and shouts something in English. He’s pointing at a tram but I don’t understand what he’s saying. People stop and stare at us; two uniformed soldiers on the opposite sidewalk have slowed down and turned to look at us. Gesticulating to make himself clear, Rabbi Wise asks what’s written on the advertising poster on the tram.

  It’s an ad for the newspaper Der Stürmer. THE JEWS ARE OUR DOWNFALL it proclaims, and there’s an image of a hideous old man with a hooked nose and clawlike hands. I can’t translate it into English. I don’t speak his language.

  The soldiers cross the street toward us.

  “Quick, quick!” I say in English. It’s the only word I know. I learned it from the Mickey Mouse Magazine that Rabbi Wise brought for the children at the synagogue. Only now does he see the soldiers. We turn around and dive into the crowds. I don’t mention the incident when I get back, not to Rabbi Leo, or to my parents. If someone comes to arrest us, I’d rather no one knew it could be my fault.

  I like learning, and I have good grades. Papa’s proud when he signs my school report, which identifies me as an “Israelite.” The school stamp is of a large Nazi eagle. The whole city is smothered with swastikas, particularly since the Olympic Games.

  The Games took place in Berlin, as planned. France threatened to boycott them, but in the end Léon Blum’s government canceled nothing. And yet Blum is a Jew and Hitler had said that German sport was the preserve of Aryans. Opponents of the Nazis wanted to organize their own games in Barcelona, but things have taken a turn for the worse in Spain: with support from Hitler and Mussolini, General Franco now uses cannons to bomb republican towns on a daily basis. So the alternative games were canceled and Spain will soon be yet another Fascist state. Meanwhile, Hitler welcomed athletes from all over the world to the Games in Berlin. They all honored him with a Nazi salute, which is identical to the Olympic salute, with one arm stretched toward the sky. One of the boys at school said it was a sign from God. The Aryan gymnasts Konrad Frey and Alfred Schwarzmann won every event in their discipline. Germany came away with the most medals, eighty-nine as compared to fifty-six for the United States. Leni Riefenstahl is making a film, Olympia, to honor our gymnastic heroes who “dominated the world.” I’ve decided not to see it when it comes out.

  Standing alone in the schoolyard while everyone else discusses and replays the exploits of our Aryan athletes, I take consolation from the fact that a foreigner, Jesse Owens, won four gold medals right under our neighbor’s nose, to his infuriation. The fastest man of all time isn’t German. He’s American. And he’s as black as the black of a Nazi swastika.

  In a short time I was made more thoughtful than ever by my slowly rising insight into the type of activity carried on by the Jews in certain fields.

  Was there any form of filth or profligacy, particularly in cultural life, without at least one Jew involved in it?

  If you cut even cautiously into such an abscess, you found, like a maggot in a rotting body, often dazzled by the sudden light—a kike!

  —ADOLF HITLER, MEIN KAMPF

  Dorle has run away. She’s disappeared. Aunt Lilly called from Berlin, and for two days now Papa’s been calling friends in Lausanne, in Switzerland, where my sister was at boarding school. No one knows where she is. She was meant to go home to her mother for the vacation and instead of catching the night train on Friday evening, she vanished. The telephone rings nonstop. My father’s gone silent. He wanted to buy a train ticket to Switzerland but Mama reminded him that without a visa he won’t be allowed across the border. He crumpled up a piece of paper in his fist and flung it in the trash.

  My father eats his breakfast in silence. His slicked-back hair has gone gray. He still wears a three-piece suit, a matching tie and pocket square and perfectly polished shoes. He purses his lips when he notices something missing from the table. He sets the table more and more frequently to help Mama. A Jewish au pair has replaced Rosie. She’s almost the same age as Dorle. Just a little older: twenty-one. Since my father stopped working we have less money, so we give her accommodation and some pocket money in exchange for help around the house. Luckily, I don’t need babysitting anymore. Unless I need watching in case I run off like Dorle!

  We’ve had news of the runaway. She left with a boy, a French-Swiss boy called Duvoisin. We’re having breakfast and Papa looks so sad. Slices of brioche toast are neatly lined up in the rack on the white tablecloth; steam coils upward from the spout of the silver coffeepot, which stands beside the little milk jug. The raspberry jelly wobbles slightly in the jam pot. Boiled eggs sit waiting to be broken open. Mama’s buttering toast fingers for me. She pours me some apple juice and tells me to break into my egg before the yolk hardens. And Papa keeps saying that what matters is Dorle’s happiness. He only hopes Monsieur Duvoisin will be kind to her.

  We’re listening to the news. The whole world seems to be becoming Fascist. Anastasio Somoza García is now president of Nicaragua. He’s a dictator, like Hitler. Spain’s Francoists are still fighting the republicans. Franco’s allies the Italians invaded Ethiopia in 1935 and deposed the negus, Haile Selassie. The Italian leader, Il Duce, Benito Mussolini, is to construct a road over a thousand miles long, running along the Mediterranean from Tunisia to Libya. Emperor Hirohito of Japan is forging ahead with his invasion of Manchuria in China. He’s appointed a Fascist prime minister, Kōki Hirota, and has recently signed an anti-Comintern pact with Hitler. Meanwhile, in Europe, Britain and France said nothing when in 1936 our troops occupied the Rhineland for the first time since the Great War. The Belgians are worried because this territory is next to their frontier. Germany now has 1,600 aircraft, almost as many as the USSR, which has 2,500, and more than Italy and France. The French president, Léon Blum, has opted to borrow five billion francs to build 1,500 planes before the end of next year. Here in Germany, congressmen in the Reichstag have renewed Adolf Hitler’s full power for the next four years. Thank goodness the Americans aren’t Fascist yet. President Roosevelt was reelected last year.

  “He’s not doing anything for us, though,” Papa says. “Come, Bürschi, hurry up, you need to get to school.”

  “But do you think there’ll be a war, Papa?”

  “Don’t you worry. Go on, off you go, my boy.”

  His hands shake when he pours the coffee. He cut himself shaving this morning. He has more and more little beads of blood on his face, sometimes he misses a few hairs on his cheek. He’s been suffering with stomach pains for over a year. He blames the deficiencies in the kosher food his parents used to feed him. I give him a hug and run off down the stairs.

  It’s cold outside. You can’t walk along the sidewalk outside Hitler’s house now because there are barriers and, behind them, soldiers standing to attention, watching the Mercedes cars in the street. I recognize the guards because I pass them every day, but they don’t notice me, an invisible little Jewish boy. I’ve been walking past this building all my life, and I watch them closely. I imagi
ne what it must be like being Hitler. I wonder what he eats for breakfast. I see his shadow pass behind a window frame. He hates us. He hates me. Without even knowing I exist.

  My classmates at school have joined the Hitler Youth. All except me. Well, except us, the Jews. And that’s a good thing! Enrollment is compulsory for the others once they turn ten. There was a time when I liked their grand uniforms; now I think they’re grotesque. I hear groups of them chattering in the corridors and the schoolyard. All they can talk about is Hitler, and they jeer at the rest of the world, at the French and the English, the Russians and Communists, blacks and Americans. They don’t often mention Jews. Perhaps they don’t dare when I’m around? After school I can’t wait to get home or to my bar mitzvah classes.

  Last week a friend saw Hitler across the street from the synagogue. He was having lunch at Osteria, his favorite restaurant. He had his back turned but looked around briefly, and my friend recognized his mustache. There were other people at the table, wearing forced smiles. I walked past Osteria yesterday evening, as I left my bar mitzvah class. I’d just been studying the legend of David and Goliath. For a moment I pictured myself going into the restaurant and felling Hitler with a stone hurled at his head from a catapult. I walked on, with my hands in my pockets and my nose buried in the collar of my coat, and went home. I smiled to think he doesn’t know who I am. He didn’t know that, while he was dining out, a Jewish child was praying he would die—his neighbor who watches him every day and who might well outlive him, the son of a Jew who has no right to work but lives quite happily, the nephew of Lion Feuchtwanger, who continued to defy Nazism from exile in France—the Republic of France! I, Edgar, known as Bürschi, son of Ludwig the editor, nephew of Lion the writer, student of Rabbi Siegfried Glaser, I loathed him with all my might without his even realizing it. I scampered home, laughing, whistling and singing. Happy.