"Don't be misled into thinking you can fight a disease without killing the carrier, without destroying the bacillus. This Jewish contamination will not subside, this poisoning of the nation will not end, until the carrier himself, the Jew, has been banished from our midst."
Adolf Hitler, Speech at NSDAP Meeting, Salzburg, August 1920
What's an Aryan?
We always began our school day by paying homage to the Fuhrer. The rest of the day we studied arithmetic, reading and writing. Then a great day arrived: We were each given a children’s version of Mein Kampf, told to memorize it and be ready to recite. When I held it in my hand I felt as though the Fuhrer had written it just for me. I would make him proud when it was my turn to recite passages from it.
That evening after dinner I asked my parents if they would like to hear me read from Hitler’s great book.
“My stomach is already upset tonight. Read it to your Mutter," Vater growled. He gave Mutter an odd look, stood, put his hat on his head and walked out the door.
“Where is Vater going?”
“You know how Vater likes to take an evening walk.” She began to clear the table, and said, “You may read it to me while I wash the dishes.”
After I finished, Mutter said, “You read well, Helga.”
“Will you help me memorize it?”
“Yes...I will,” she answered slowly. But I could tell it wasn’t something she really wanted to do. I talked to Emma and Agatha the next day about our helping each other. They’d had the same reaction from their parents.
“I thought they would love to hear the Fuhrer’s great words,” Emma said. “But they said the teacher probably meant for me to memorize it by myself.”
“I don’t think our parents know how important his words are,” Agatha said.
“Let’s work together. It’ll be fun."
For the next week we helped each other commit every inspired word to memory, hailing the Fuhrer after every paragraph.
On the scheduled morning, eager to speak Hitler’s amazing words and afraid I’d forget one or two if I didn’t get chosen to recite immediately, I shot my arm in the air, waving it furiously.
“Helga, you look like you might burst if you don’t get to speak. You may be first to come up front and recite.”
When I stood up and walked the few feet to the front of the room I thought my heart would explode with pride. I prayed my knees would stop shaking. I cleared my throat and began to speak, my voice quivering. As I stood in front of the Fuhrer’s photo, speaking his words, I felt a new closeness to him, as though he himself were in the room guiding me. My voice grew strong as I recited. I loved the words, but did not understand about Aryans.
So one Sunday afternoon, when Grossvater, Grossmutter and Tante Alvina, Vater’s sister, were visiting us, all sitting in the living room, I asked Vater if he thought I was perfect.
“Of course you are, Helga, especially when you obey me.” He winked at me.
“What exactly is an Aryan?” I asked.
“My little girl is getting technical. Why do you ask?”
“Because at the Jugend meetings our leaders say we must be perfect Aryans.” I said.
Grossvater stood and crossed the room to the bookcase. He took down Vater’s big black, dictionary. “Let me answer that for you, Helga.” He searched a page. “This is what it says. The Aryan race is a concept in European culture that was influential in the late 19th and early 20th century. It derives the idea that speakers of the Indo-European languages constituted a race.” Grossvater did a slight bow, marched to the sofa, and sat next to Grossmutter.
“Does that answer your question, Helga?” Mutter asked.
I didn’t want to admit in front of everyone that I didn’t quite understand. “I guess. Am I all German?”
“No, you are half Danish,” Mutter smiled. “Luckily you have good Dane in you to sweeten the sour German blood.”
“Oh really, now?” Vater gave Mutter a silly look. “I thought it was the other way around.”
“Well, at least I know I’m not a Jew,” I said.
There was silence for a moment until Grossmutter said, “Helga, why do you say something like that?”
“The Jugend leaders teach us that Jews are devils who cheat us out of our money and never wash.”
For a moment there was silence until Grossmutter said, “Helga, that’s not true. There are good Jews and bad Jews. They’re just people like the rest of us.”
That was the first time Grossmutter had ever told me something that I knew was not true. It made me angry. “Mutter, may I go to my room? I have some reading to do for class.”
“Yes...of course.”
No one said a word as I left the family gathering. I went to my room, leaving the door open enough to listen.
“It’s terrible what they are teaching her at those meetings,” Grossvater said.
“Yes, it is. But what are we to do? If we say anything, she might...”
“No. Not our Helga,” Grossmutter said.
“Just the same, we have to be careful.”
“Let it go,” Vater said.
“Did you know Max Adler’s brother was directed to seek out the Jews and report their addresses to the Gestapo?” Alvina whispered. “He knew the Gestapo would take him, and maybe his family, if he didn’t obey. He told his family he wouldn’t do it. ‘Let Hitler do his own dirty work!’ The next day he hanged himself.”
“My dear God!” Grossmutter’s voice rose to a high pitch.
“The poor man, such a horrible thing,” Mutter said.
“And nothing can be done,” Vater said.
“We’re all helpless!” Grossvater was shouting. "We could have stopped it years ago, but we closed our eyes!”
“Hush, you must be careful,” Alvina whispered.
This news confused me. Why should the man be afraid for his family? I hadn’t heard about the death camps yet. And I wasn’t sure I believed the stories about them or what Alvina said. Everything about my Tante was exaggerated. She was stick thin, over six feet tall in her high-heeled shoes, and wore her hair piled high, always topped by a large hat. She had a way of diminishing me with a raised eyebrow. If she gave me that look, I’d stop talking mid-sentence. When she followed the raised eyebrow with a wink and a piece of chocolate, I would love her again.
She may have exaggerated, but Alvina was a brave woman. She had fallen in love with a married man and given birth to a son. The man, who was Jewish, didn’t know about the baby. Alvina kept her son hidden. She hated Hitler and the Nazis, but she joined the party to make connections and keep her son from being investigated. Vater didn’t ask about her link with the party, but he often said, “My sister has more courage than brains.”
Shortly after the war began Tante Alvina brought a brown-eyed young man in a German army uniform, to visit us. She introduced him as her son Hans. He was quite tall and raised his eyebrows up and down like Alvina.
After they left I asked Mutter about him. “I never even knew I had a boy cousin,” I said. “Why hasn’t he come to visit before now?”
“Never mind. You’re too young to understand.”
Several years later, after the war, when Mutter thought I was old enough, she told me the story. Alvina was eighteen when she met and fell in love with Emil. She became pregnant by him before she discovered he was married. She went to Munich and gave birth to Hans. Alvina kept her son in Munich with friends, visiting him when she could. As he grew older she sent him to boarding schools in England. When the war broke out, Hans left England and came to Berlin to be with his Mutter. He was drafted into the German army, but he escaped harm and the Nazis never discovered his Vater was a Jew.
I’m sure the reason I wasn’t told the story had nothing to do with the scandal of adultery or divorce. It was because Hans was a Jew and Alvina was protecting him from me, his Jugend cousin.