Hitler, My Neighbor

by Edgar Feuchtwanger

  We go to see the remains. There’s nothing left of it. Just a great gap. A space where my childhood memories once were. This place is no longer our country, so why don’t we leave? I have no one left to talk to at school. I arrive in the morning and leave in the evening. I study in the classroom, and read by myself in break time. I don’t want to be identified, or even seen. I’m invisible. Ralph and the others don’t notice me anymore. I’m never called to the front of the class. Soon I’ll be transparent, I won’t look the other students in the eye, or the teachers. In gym I used to be fastest at climbing a knotted rope. I’ve deliberately slowed down so I no longer come first. I want to be forgotten, nonexistent, until we leave for real, and go to Chile, Cuba or Argentina, the only countries that accept Jews—on condition we pay for our visas.

  A friend of my father’s, an Argentine diplomat, says we must leave at any price, he says the Nazis and Fascists will take power in every country on the European continent, and soon Jews will be in danger everywhere. The papers are saying that in England the masses are being seduced by the far right too.

  “In that case,” my father replies, “could the United States tip the same way?”

  And this friend with the foreign accent, who rolls his Rs like a Bavarian, who has dropped by my father’s study this sunny afternoon, replies simply:

  “Why not…”

  Hitler has decided that soon every German will have a car. Every Nazi, to be precise. Party members can already benefit from this plan. You have to be affiliated with the KdF, Kraft durch Freude, which means “strength through joy.” This organization is part of the DAF, the Deutsche Arbeitsfront, a state-run body that has replaced the unions disbanded on May 1, 1933—I remember that day, our teacher made us draw a picture, and I have a feeling Mama’s kept it somewhere: it was a swastika in front of a hammer, and it represented Nazism’s superiority over Bolshevism. The KdF arranges almost-free vacations for its members, and twenty-five million Germans have already benefited from this. Not a single Jew, of course. Papa says he’d have to be paid to go spend time in their centers: people are accommodated in big characterless buildings, and they spend their days around undersized swimming pools, roasting in the sun. You even have to join in group gymnastics sessions. The Wilhelm Gustloff, a newly completed ship, has been made available to the organization so that every German can go on a cruise once in his or her life. It’s a liner more than 208 meters long and 23 meters tall—the size of our apartment building. If it dropped anchor outside our house it would take up the whole street. We could meet Hitler on the bridge, halfway between our apartments.

  So the KdF is offering a car to each of its members: a KdF-Wagen. It’s rounded like a beetle and looks like an aircraft. It can transport four people at more than one hundred kilometers an hour and will cost less than 1,000 marks—990 exactly. Hitler himself designed it on the tablecloth in a restaurant, the Osteria, I think; and Ferdinand Porsche, a former Mercedes engineer, put it together to match his instructions. Porsche worked in the United States, where he studied production techniques perfected by Henry Ford, a friend of the Führer’s. Members of the KdF can already open an account and pay 50 marks into it every week. When the contract comes full term, their vehicle will be delivered. They’ll have to add just 50 marks extra for the delivery. By then thousands of kilometers of Reichsautobahnen will have been constructed. The car can have a roof with an opening or can be a convertible. Its revolutionary engine is at the rear of the chassis, and the interior has a quasi-aeronautical design inspired by the cockpit of a plane. We have a sales brochure at home that explains it all. It has a picture of Hitler celebrating the delivery of the first model before a crowd of young men in uniform. There are also pictures of large clean factories and a color image of a KdF-Wagen climbing a twisting mountain road. Sadly, we’ll never have one, because membership in the KdF is forbidden to Jews. What if we left Germany one day? I’d so love to live somewhere else…

  “When Chamberlain takes a vacation, he goes to another country. When Hitler goes for a vacation, he takes another country.”

  My father collects amusing stories about the Führer. He says they come from London—I think he’s making them up. Strangely, I feel as if the sadder he is, the funnier he is. The smaller our world becomes, and the more isolated we are, the more laughter there is at home.

  For some days now there’s been talk of invading Czechoslovakia, where Aunt Bella lives. This foreign country that borders Austria—which is now Germany—is home to half a million German-speaking people of German origin, descendants of German workers brought in by Bohemian kings in the last century. They mostly live in the Sudeten and Carpathian Mountain regions. Hitler, who’s Austrian by birth, deems them to be entirely German, just like himself, and this view is shared by members of the Czech Nazi Party. “On the weekend, when Daladier might like a spot of camping, Hitler goes in for a spot of campaigning,” my father remarks when he reads in the papers that Hitler’s now calling for Czechoslovakia to be annexed in order to “liberate the Germans in the Sudeten Mountains from Czech oppression.”

  “Look, darling,” my father jokes, “our friend Adolf is going to play the same trick as he did with Austria. Konrad Henlein, the puppet leader of the Patriotic Front of Sudeten Germans…Oh, no, I beg their pardon, they must have changed their name: the German Sudeten Party, it sounds more peaceful! Yes, so Konrad Henlein, the Sudeten Nazi, will call for his region’s independence in the name of self-rule for the people, and our dear Adi will immediately mass his troops along the Czechoslovakian border. Now he need only to threaten the world with all-out war and he’ll be able to cross the border and his blood brothers will welcome him with open arms and bouquets of flowers like some messiah. That’s what he did with Saar, the Rhineland and Austria, he’ll do the same with Sudeten, the Carpathians and then all of Czechoslovakia, and it’ll be Poland next, and maybe the Netherlands, France, and—who knows—why not the USSR or the United States? Hitler’s a pacifist: and the proof is that he’s not starting wars, he’s protecting German populations. He doesn’t invade countries, he annexes them. Unarmed, because they’re handed to him on a plate. No point fighting, he just has to open his mouth for people to comply with his whims. He’s like a spoiled child who gets his own way by rolling on the floor screaming. So it’s bad luck for anyone over there who’s not a “pureblood” by birth…the Communists, the democrats, homosexuals, the sick, Romanies and, of course, Jews—it’s prison for all of them! The purification started in Vienna, and it’s going on all the time in Munich, and in Dachau concentration camp.”

  “But Dachau can’t hold the whole population of Europe!” Mama points out. “That’s enough of that, you’re talking nonsense. And you’ll frighten Bürschi.”

  “I’m just joking, my love. You’re not frightened, are you, my little Bürschi?”

  I bury my face against him and he puts his arms around me. I think of Aunt Bella, who thought she was escaping danger by moving to Prague. In Berlin she proudly showed me her passport and encouraged me to convince my parents we should join her.

  “We were right not to immigrate there,” says my father, as if reading my thoughts. “We’re safer right under his nose. His genius is so far-reaching he’s forgotten to look out of his own window. If he only knew!”

  Everything happens as my father has predicted. Konrad Henlein’s paramilitary forces relentlessly victimize the so-called non-Aryan population in the Sudetens and clash with the regular army. Hitler announces that German troops will cross the frontier to establish some order, his mind is made up about that. France and England, both allies of Czechoslovakia, ought to announce war on us if the Wehrmacht ever sets foot on Czechoslovakian soil. Instead, France’s Édouard Daladier and England’s Neville Chamberlain come to Munich to listen to the Nazi arguments, hoping for an honorable compromise, or at least an acceptable one. The American president, Roosevelt, calls for peace.

  “Anything but war, that’s all they can think of,” my father exp
lains to my mother. “But Hitler wants war. And he’ll have it one way or another. It’s there in black and white in his book.”

  Chamberlain tests the water with a quick preliminary visit and is received at the Eagle’s Nest in Berchtesgaden, just a few hours from here, up in the mountains that we see from the lakes in summer. After a walk through the Alpine scenery and a vegetarian lunch, the British dignitary came away having secured nothing but unpleasant remarks: Hitler was in a sullen mood, the diplomats reported.

  “He must have treated him like a little pen-pusher,” my father translates, and laughs as he adds, “or maybe even like a Jew. Who knows?”

  Once back in London, and having consulted his French counterpart, Neville Chamberlain agreed to return to Germany for further negotiations. The two men are here now, on the corner of our street.

  “Benito Mussolini was invited to join the masquerade as well,” Papa muses, “as if he was one of the negotiators.”

  Our apartment is like an antechamber for the conference. Newspapers are spread open over my father’s desk. There are pictures of Adolf Hitler in his double-breasted jacket and Nazi armband, Benito Mussolini in military uniform, Neville Chamberlain dressed like a city banker, and Édouard Daladier in a pin-striped gray suit, the four of them gathered at the Führerbau in Munich. Also present are Hermann Göring, an imposing figure in white ceremonial dress, his marshal’s baton in his hand, and Count Ciano, freshly appointed as the youngest foreign affairs minister by his father-in-law, Il Duce. That was the day before yesterday, Thursday, September 29. They signed a peace treaty that night.

  “Remember that date,” Papa tells me, “like January 30, 1933, when our neighbor became chancellor. Remember September 30, 1938, Bürschi, remember it all your life, the day France and England abandoned Czechoslovakia to the Nazis.”

  Shortly after midday the next day, Hitler invited Neville Chamberlain to tea at his home. The vast procession of cars dispersed in a blast of engine sound, like a great flock of black eagles taking flight. For me it was just a day like any other, a dazzlingly sunny Friday afternoon in the fall. I was walking along the opposite sidewalk on my way home from school while our Führer treated the aging English statesman to a visit of our street. Next they stopped at the Brasserie Bürgerbräu, where Hitler gave his first speeches, then in front of the Feldherrnhalle, where his attempted coup was quashed in 1923. Hitler acknowledged the monument with a brief gesture like a priest making the sign of the cross before a crucifix. Mussolini had already returned to Italy in the night and Daladier, who had declined the invitation, was flying back to Paris. And our life simply picked up where it had left off.

  After the conference of September 29, 1938, while Chamberlain and Daladier were being “welcomed home as heroes,” our Reich swallowed up the Sudetenland and grew overnight by thirty thousand square kilometers and three million inhabitants. This period of peace, the “Peace of the Third Reich,” would last a thousand years, according to Hitler. At noon our troops took possession of these new territories. On September 30 Poland took control of the Czechoslovakian town of Teschen and of the Zaolzie region. On November 1, Poland invaded the northern territories of Spisz and Orava. On November 2, Hungary annexed further Slovak territories, Upper Hungary and sub-Carpathian Ruthenia. In three months Czechoslovakia lost forty thousand square kilometers and five million inhabitants.

  Here in Munich signs have appeared on the doors of public premises saying: “No Jews.” Jewish shops are identified with a Star of David painted in red, and then their windows are smashed.

  On November 7, a young man attacked the Nazi diplomat Ernst vom Rath, in Paris. The assassin was a German Jew called Herschel Grynszpan. In a letter to his uncle he claimed he had “committed this act so the whole world would hear him.”

  Today, November 9, there’s much pomp in Munich surrounding celebrations to mark the aborted putsch of 1923: the SS are parading through the streets all over the city. But Ernst vom Rath has just died, despite intervention from Hitler’s personal physician. His death is announced on the radio, and the sounds of shouting, explosions and breaking glass reach us from the street. The sky glows orange through the night.

  My mother is silent. Papa is ashen. The telephone never stops ringing. In a tentative shaky voice, Papa tells my mother what various callers have told him:

  The Herzog-Rudolf Synagogue is in flames. Jewish shops marked out with the Star of David are being looted. And this is happening all over Germany: in Marburg, Tübingen, Cologne, Leipzig, Esslingen, Treuchtlingen…In Vienna in Austria, they’re burning synagogues, desecrating cemeteries and killing Jews. They’re beating women, children and the elderly. We must leave.

  “But how can we, Luidgie, my darling, how can we? Look outside, they’ve gone mad. And where would we go?”

  “We’ll see about that tomorrow. Let’s turn out the lights, draw the curtains, lock the doors and go to bed. We’ll leave tomorrow.”

  Alone in my room, I can’t get to sleep. I lie in my bed listening to shouting in the street and watching my bedroom curtains flushed orange by the blazing sky. I fall asleep at last and have a nightmare: someone’s knocking at our door. No, I’m not dreaming, it really is our door that they’re hammering. It’s here. They’re here. The Gestapo are at our apartment. They’ve come for my family. They’ve come in. They’re in the drawing room. It’s still dark outside. I can hear them. Their voices are curt. I hear my father’s voice. And my mother’s. Mama and Papa are frightened. I hear men shouting. Yelling at my parents. They open the door to my bedroom. Soldiers. In uniform. They turn on the lights. My mother’s in the drawing room. Where’s Papa? He comes out of his bedroom. He’s dressed now, flanked by two men. He comes over to me, takes my head in his hands, kisses me. They take him away. They’re arresting him. They’re arresting my father.

  “Don’t worry, Bürschi!”

  He told me not to worry.

  They’re going to kill him. No, I mustn’t worry. There’s no point. It won’t change anything. They won’t kill him. He’s gone now. We’re alone. His voice has gone, the noise has ended. I want to see him. I want him to be here. I don’t want him to die. I don’t want to die. Why us? I want to open my eyes, to wake up. But, sadly, this isn’t a dream. It’s real life. They’ve arrested Papa. They’ve put my father in prison. They’ve taken him away.

  The next day, they came back to take the books from his bookshelves. My mother asked whether they would be putting the books in a safe place too.

  “What else is there for you to take from us now?” she added.

  They looked at us, and I regretted what Mama had said. They didn’t even close the door when they left.

  Two days already. I’ve stopped going to school. They’ve arrested Uncle Fritz, Papa’s brother. His wife, Aunt Erna, who has the same first name as Mama, is with us now. Mama’s comforting her.

  “More than twenty thousand Jews,” she sobs, “more than twenty thousand arrested in Germany and Austria. What are they going to do to them?”

  The days drag by in silence.

  Five days. No news.

  November 16. Nothing. Aunt Erna and my mother have decided to make preparations to flee. There are rumors that Jews’ assets are to be confiscated. A dealer comes to inventory the valuable objects in our apartment. The next day the same old man comes back with two removal men to take everything my mother hands over to him. He points out ornaments and items of furniture to the packers with a withering tilt of his chin. They take our paintings and silver. The old man leaves wads of bills for my mother.

  “They’re just trinkets,” he says. “Count yourself lucky. If you knew the things I took from the Bernheimers, a whole different story! And I didn’t pay them much more than I have you!”

  A week has gone by. We have no news of my father. We’ve received new identity cards by mail. They’re special papers for Jews. Every Jewish man now has to add the Hebrew first name “Israel” to his name, and for women it’s “Sarah.” My name’s now
Edgar-Israel, my father is Ludwig-Israel, and my mother is Erna-Sarah.

  Fritz and Papa are imprisoned in Dachau camp. Mama discovered that today, and went there with Aunt Erna. Over the gates to the camp are the words “Arbeit macht frei,” “work sets you free.” They weren’t allowed in but they left a parcel of provisions for Fritz and Papa.

  It’s now ten days. Mama cries a lot and I’m not allowed out of the house. Aunt Bobbie does our shopping for us. The curtains are drawn the whole time so we live in darkness. Outside it’s snowing. I pull the curtain aside slightly and watch the snowflakes swirl in the street. In the evenings the lights are on in Hitler’s apartment.

  I played piano this afternoon.

  Two weeks. Fourteen days and fourteen nights. Nothing.

  December 1. Twenty days. I play piano with the mute pedal on so as not to make too much noise. I’m alone in the apartment, and I mustn’t open the door to anyone. Mama’s gone out, she’s gone to ask for help from a former author of my father’s, Dr. Wilhelm Grau, a member of the Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany, who runs the research department for the “Jewish question.” In 1934 he published a study on the Jewish community in Regensburg. It’s dark now. She’s still not home.

  The door opens at last.

  Her eyes are red.

  “He said there’s nothing he can do.”

  Aunt Erna came over again today. There are more than eleven thousand prisoners in Dachau.

  It will be Christmas soon and we’ve had no news of my father for four weeks.

  I stayed home alone again all day today. Mama came home exhausted. She spent the day visiting all sorts of administrative offices but didn’t achieve anything.