Germania 1936
Germania 1936

Periodically, the populace was worked up to a frenzy of overt anti-Jewish actions: loudspeakers were set up in front of our house and the Austrian, and/or one of his acolytes, generally the club-footed Propaganda Minister, Goebbels, would rant and rave for an hour. Thereupon, my schoolmates, the young boys of the "Hitler Jugend" and the girls of the "BDM—Bund Deutscher Mädchen," led by a ne'er-do-well by name of Karl Mohr, paraded in front of our house singing: "When Jew-blood spurts from our knives …"

I was overwhelmed by shock, I was perplexed, as even my first and very best friend, Adi, he of the potato fields, was invariably one of them and sang along. I was allowed to watch, standing on the stoop, and in my child's wisdom concluded that, if Adi could do such a thing, then it was true that absolutely no one—absolutely no one—could be trusted. That very nano-instant of shock arrested for a time any possibility of true friendship with a Christian. Father's take was his oft-repeated "Just don't pay attention. They're dumb. They don't mean it."