Summer, 1940, Regensburg, Germany
Upon arriving in Germany, I took a taxi to my Uncle’s house. But, my Uncle didn’t live in a house, he lived in a mansion. It wasn’t a “normal” mansion, as a horrible camp surrounded it. The taxi dropped me off, and I carried one suitcase and my record player up to the compound’s gates. These were my only worldly possessions and the record player was the one that my mother had given me for my sixteenth birthday.
The gates were made of wrought iron, and were guarded by two men with machine guns. I felt very unsettled as I approached a man sitting at a desk, positioned in the middle of the half-open gates. Dressed in a Schutzstaffel soldier’s uniform, he resembled a clerical worker, with spectacles that kept sliding down the bridge of his nose. He looked up at me—glaring at me as he pushed the spectacles back up onto his face. His beady eyes looked me up and down.
He then asked, “Are you Jewish?”
“No, I am not, and what kind of question is that, anyway?”
He lost his clerical appearance as he stood up and looked down on me.
“Well, you look like a fucking British pansy with that long hair of yours and your Anglophile zoot suit. I need to see your papers.”
I nervously obliged, taking out my paperwork and handing it to him.
Upon examining it, he said, “So, you are an American?”
“Yes, I am and …”
“That explains your insolence. Your country is full of Jews and Jew lovers. Why are you at my gate?”
“Because I live here. I …”
He lost any resemblance to his previously innocuous demeanor.
“Then you have been lying to me and you are a Jew. An American Jew, even better. I will teach you a lesson, you fucking son-of-a-bitch.”
He started to approach me swiftly, leaving his perch behind the desk.
“No, I am not Jewish. I am Erich Beck’s nephew. I was told he lives here.”
He halted, and looked at the papers in his hand, “Beck. Charles Beck,” he said vapidly.
“Yes, yes, that’s right—and Erich Beck is my Uncle.”
His eyes showed his thoughts, his anger transforming into wide-eyed fear.
“I am so sorry, sir, I hope that you can forgive me. I, I didn’t know who you were. May I have the privilege of escorting you to Obergruppenführer Beck?”
“You mean my Uncle?”
“Yes, your Uncle. May I carry your bags for you?”
I wasn’t angry at him. I was shocked at the entire situation. I didn’t understand the preoccupation with being Jewish or not. I knew the Nazis disliked Jews, but I hadn’t realized their hatred ran so deep.
He led the way into the compound and I immediately smelled a stench. It smelled of dirt, sweat and desperation.
I saw the Jewish residents all around me with Stars of David stitched to their clothing. They were working or milling about, looking nervous—and as we passed, they all looked at the ground, averting their eyes from us.
One man did look me in the face. He was the only one, and I remember him because he had a cleft palate. He looked at me with absolute hatred; I looked nervously up at the SS guard, who led the way. I instinctively knew the rules of the place and was worried for the man. What if the guard noticed him staring at us, what would he do to him?
But the guard didn’t notice and kept leading the way during a several-minute walk past the open yard and the old decrepit buildings to our right. He led me to this grand house—this mansion that stood on a hill overlooking the miserable place. The guard opened a door and motioned for me to go ahead of him. He followed behind and closed the doors, locking them, and I wondered whether he was locking people out or locking me in.
He then led me down a narrow hallway to a door that opened into a ballroom of sorts.
“Where are we going? Where is my Uncle?”
“He will be down momentarily.”
“What, you haven’t even called him and I am to wait in this ballroom?”
It was strange to me, to be told to wait in this ballroom with a piano covered with a much-needed dust sheet because of disuse. The room was dark and looked deserted. This whole compound was disturbing, and this ballroom was creepy. I knew ballrooms, and they were supposed to be bright, well-lit and beautiful places.
The SS guard said, “He said when his nephew came that he wanted to meet him here.” He shrugged. “Look, please stay here and I will let him know you have arrived.”
I obeyed. I looked around me and noticed behind the stacked chairs that there was a light switch. I went over and flicked on the light, which immediately sent an electronic humming light across the entirety of my vision. It halted the onslaught of gray light that had previously been inhabiting the room with gloom.
The place didn’t look so bad to me anymore. Now it instantly reminded me of Mother and dancing and music. I went over to the piano and took off the sheet covering it—throwing it on the floor. I wiped the seat clean of dust with my hand and then roughly rubbed my hands together to clean them. I sat down at the piano and opened the fallboard to expose the keys. I threaded my hands together and cracked my knuckles. I wanted to play, I ached for it and the song that I intended to play was making the pads of my fingers sensitive with anticipation. I placed my fingers on the correct keys without thinking—about to play the first note.
“Charles, how have you been, my boy?” someone said, speaking English to me for the first time.
I looked up and saw my Uncle in his fancy uniform. He was obviously a high-ranking official with his collar badges and other trinkets that adorned his uniform. He had a smile across his face that seemed genuine. I didn’t know him at all, I had never met him.
“Charlie, I go by Charlie,” I said in German; I spoke it fluently.
“Ok, Charlie it is then. Charlie, welcome to my home. I am impressed that you speak some German.”
“I speak it rather fluently, my mother made sure because, because of my heritage—that I knew it and was tutored in it. Anyway, thanks for taking me in.”
“Say not a thing about it. You are my nephew even if I haven’t had the opportunity to get to know you. If anything, this will allow me some time to do that before you go off to university.”
“Yeah, I guess Mother’s death will allow us that time,” I said, testing his friendly demeanor, probing for some sympathy.
“Well, I wasn’t happy to hear of your mother’s death,” he said with a Cheshire cat-like grin.
“We haven’t seen each other for many years and even then it was for such a short time. I won’t lie to you and tell you I grieve her—but I am certain you do and I am sorry for that. Any untimely death really is sad.” His cat-like grin evaporated into a stern face.
His words were, if not sensitively kind, at least respectful. But when his grin left his face, I saw a cold glare in his eyes that showed they were made of steel, there was a lack of warmth. That coldness gave me slight shivers down my chest and arms. I didn’t like him and I had only just met him. I was trying to figure out what game he was playing. Why the warm words if his face was going to extinguish any warmth conveyed by them? What could be the purpose? I was contemplating that when he encouraged me to play a song.
“Charlie, play something for your Uncle, hmm? You were just about to play when I interrupted you and I am sorry for that because I really would enjoy hearing you play a song. You see, I am a great lover of music and have an appreciation for …”
The pads of my fingers were still lightly resting on the keys and they started moving as if someone had inhabited my body, and the melody played from my soul. The song my mother and I always danced to when I was a boy was what my fingers chose to command the keyboard play. My eyes closed, and I imagined her and I dancing …
“The Dipsey-Doodle” came out, and I hummed and then sang. I imagined my mother. It transported me and I was dancing with my mother. I was a boy again, and she was patiently leading me—showing me how to move to the music and to feel it inside of me. Teaching me to let the music lead me.
I was awoken from my lovely trance by a very loud, slow clap. I opened my eyes and my fingers paused mid-note, lingering on the keys as the music abruptly exited the room.
My Uncle had clapped the music away and was continuing to clap louder and louder—as he smiled wider and wider and his eyes became so wide that I was suddenly very frightened of him. He then stopped clapping and extracted a cigarette from a silver case that he had pulled out of his pocket; he proceeded to light a match and puff the cigarette to life. His demeanor became more subdued as if slightly tamed by the nicotine. He was leaning on a pillar within reach of me sitting on the piano bench.
He could tell his strange display of false admiration unsettled me.
He said, “You really are a talented musician. A beautiful voice and you have the ability to make the piano come alive. There is only one problem really with your talent. It isn’t the talent at all really—it is the content of what you are playing and the implication that has on what is going through your mind.”
He abruptly stopped talking and grabbed my wrist with great force and bashed my hand down hard onto the keyboard. It hurt a little and frightened me as an ugly sound was born into the room.
He raised his voice, “That is a better sound than what you played. It is more abstract. It is a sound at least not of niggers and Jews. The kikes are bad enough here in Germany, nephew. I am trying to teach you something so you need to look at me before I get angry and slap you upside your addled, American head. Yes, that is right—look me right in the eyes—directly.”
His grip on my wrist began to hurt as it became tighter and was on the bone. I twisted, but he had a vice grip on me like a set of handcuffs; the more you moved, the tighter the grip became.
“I want you to understand that I know this is not your fault. You are American and you have been influenced by that country which everyone knows is controlled entirely by Jews. Jews aren’t human and neither are their nigger cousins. You are Aryan and you will learn to use this talent of yours to play music made by Aryans. I will ensure it because you are talented but by God you will not embarrass me by playing this monkey music … not my nephew.”
He let go of my wrist and smiled gently. But a gentle smile from him looked like a sarcastic smirk.
“Do we understand each other?”
“I am not to play American swing music anymore.”
“Correct answer, though I would call it animal music, nephew. And your hair is too long. You look either homeless or like a fucking Jew with a haircut like that. Like you are emulating them. You will cut it off—tomorrow morning—do you understand me?”
I could tell it would be extremely unwise to question him.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Oh no, now I have frightened you. My apologies, Charlie. Really, I am sorry. I want you to be upstanding, I know that none of this is your fault—not at all. Please call me Uncle—I much prefer it and think it more respectful, actually.”
“Yes, Uncle.”
He butted out the cigarette by crushing it out on the floor with his heel after a last drag. He then spoke, simultaneously exhaling, “And those clothes have to go, too. I will have one of my men supply you with new clothes tomorrow. Those British teenage rags will not do. The British think us barbarians, but that is because they are weak. They allow their youth to dress like homosexuals as you are dressed now. The music you played is more pernicious than your dress, as it tricks you, that is what Americans do, they trick you into thinking you are free when you are being controlled by Jews.”
Switching subjects abruptly, he said, “I have state business to attend to. I will have a man show you to your room and in two hours I expect you to be downstairs in the dining hall, adjacent to this room. In a suit I have provided for you—hanging in your room. Your aunt sent your sizes to me, upon my request, so not to worry on the fit. I don’t care what you do with that zoot suit you are currently wearing. You aren’t a monkey and you will not dress like one now that you have entered civilization. I will see you shortly, nephew.”
Oddly, he came up to me and tussled my hair, before he left, like I was a little boy. I think he meant it to show some form of awkward affection.