Let’s be clear before we go any further. I’m telling you: don’t just go and feel sorry for him. Lukas’s tears, all that emotion after he’d heard my story, it was all bullshit. In fact, as you’ll find out in the rest of my story, he’s the one who reduces people to tears.

He didn’t keep his promise. He kept on calling me Skullface, even though I’d asked him to stop. I hate that nickname, especially when I look like an angel. The other morning—a few days before we left Kalish—I went to find him, to have it out with him. I lashed out at him, ready to tear him to pieces, punch his lights out again. But he just laughed. All he did to parry was give me a few smacks, as if he couldn’t be bothered tackling me. It was humiliating. I could easily have got under his skin, forced him to fight, at the risk of being torn to shreds—he’s got his strength back and would have had the better of me—but I didn’t force the issue. Not because I was frightened. I’m not frightened of anything. But so I wouldn’t get to Potsdam with a smashed-up face. That would not have been a good look.

Just to get back at him for insulting me, I called him a dirty Jew. This time I hit home. He was not at all amused. His expression suddenly changed to one of belligerence, and he called me a son-of-a-bitch-whore. That didn’t bother me, because it’s true.

The Potsdam Napola.

It’s magnificent, mindbogglingly spectacular. Words fail me. Kalish was a dump in comparison.

The school is outside the city, so the students can’t have contact with the outside world—our activities have to remain secret. The buildings are surrounded by a huge park, which is enclosed by a wall. Inside, there are lawns, landscaped gardens, flower beds. Before its creation in 1933, the Napola was a psychiatric hospital with two thousand beds. Raus!—move out patients! In came young people of sound mind and body, to live in the fifty-odd buildings. As well as the living quarters, there are sporting facilities (for team sports, as well as an Olympic swimming pool, a horseriding school and stables, a gymnasium, running tracks, athletics ovals), a carpentry workshop, a horticulture workshop, greenhouses, a shooting range, and even a farm. All of which means the Napola can be self-sufficient. The old barn has been turned into a garage for cars and motorbikes, and the chapel has been transformed into a function room. Good move. Herr Rosenberg, one of the creators of the Reich, is opposed to Christianity because it’s an Eastern religion. So, no more Kapelle! I’m happy about that because I still have very bad memories of the Kalish chapel and those warden bitches. Lukas will be pleased, too; first because the wardens put him through the ringer; second, he won’t have to pretend to pray in Latin.

The whole place is so enormous that I don’t know where to look. I can’t wait to see inside. Right now, we new kids are assembled in one of the courtyards in front of the central building that houses the dormitories and classrooms. On either side, two towers add to the aura of invincible power about the whole place—it’s like a Prussian castle, or better still, a fortress. I can tell we’re going to have a marvellous time here: when we leave we’ll be big and strong. True members of the master race!

Lukas hasn’t said a word since we got here. He seems impressed, too. We’re both standing to attention, next to each other.

Doctor Ebner enrolled us as brothers and Volksdeutscher, ‘pupils of the German nation’. He’s done exactly what I asked him at Kalish, when Lukas wasn’t yet Germanised. He’s reverted to the true date of birth of ‘my big brother’ and chosen Potsdam so we wouldn’t be separated, as it’s the only Napola that combines primary and secondary classes. In order to endorse our enrolment, he provided the director, Obersturmbannführer Schmidt, with two green racial-fitness certificates, so that we didn’t have to go through the selection process like the other new arrivals. No trial period for us. Doctor Ebner has gone out of his way for us: he made a point of listing Lukas as a Germanised Pole, otherwise he wouldn’t have been allowed in here; he would have been sent to the Napola in Alsace.

I can’t believe the things I’ve told you. A Jew with a racial-fitness certificate! At one of the most prestigious Napolas in the Reich! Needless to say, from now on Lukas will be like a tightrope-walker, balanced high above the void: the slightest false step and it’ll all be over for him. Right now I’d rather not think about it.

But I hope he understands how lucky he is. While the director is giving us a welcome speech and explaining the rules and organisation of the school, I elbow him. ‘What do you reckon?’ I whisper. ‘Isn’t Germany amazing to have built something like this? Were there schools as good as this in your country?’

‘In my country, we didn’t kill off the sick to make a clean sweep of the place.’

His voice is cold, dispassionate, and he keeps his eyes on the director. Lukas is referring to the ‘relocation’ of the previous residents. How does he know about that?

Noticing my quizzical expression, he smirks and bends down to mutter in my ear. ‘Don’t you know what happened to the patients who were here before?’

‘Of course I do! They were “relocated”.’ I quickly explain the meaning of the code word. ‘Relocate’, meaning to kill.

Lukas turns to me and gives me one of his hostile looks. His smile gone, he chews on his lips and frowns, a deep furrow on his forehead. I can tell he wants to give it to me, to get back at me. But he holds off, regains his composure. ‘So, Skullface, do you know exactly how they were killed?’

No. I don’t know precisely. And do not call me Skullface any longer!

‘They were put into trucks. Then the trucks were locked up. A big hose was attached to the exhaust pipe and lethal gas was pumped into the truck. The poor bastards were asphyxiated. It took a while, quite a long time. They tried to fight their way out, banging on the doors. In vain. From the outside, the trucks looked like huge cooking pots, shuddering, vibrating as if they were full of boiling water. It was a slow, horrendous death.’ He enunciates each word: drops of poison trickling into my ear.

He spoke deliberately slowly, to give me time to properly imagine what he was describing. Then, as if nothing had happened, he stood to attention, perfectly straight, proudly staring ahead, whereas my shoulders were slumped and my legs had turned to jelly.

Bastard! Just like him to ruin my arrival here, my special moment. I don’t respond at all, even though I really want to put him in his place. Anyway, they soon separate us: Lukas goes off with the students from the secondary school, and I leave with those from the primary school.

My dagger of honour.

I’ve got it, at last.

I was so excited, so proud, when the officer presented me with it. And it feels so good to have it on me, right here, slipped into my belt. From now on it will be a part of me, not just my uniform but my body, as inseparable as my arms and legs. It’s gorgeous. Twenty-five centimetres long. The hilt is nickel-plated. The haft is decorated with Nazi insignia, an enamelled diamond shape. The upper and lower sections are red, the cross-sections white, while the central swastika is black. The flat of the blade is engraved with a motto: Mehr sein als scheinen (‘It is better to be than to seem’).

As one, my new buddies and I raise our right arms enthusiastically and recite the oath: The future of Germany and of our beloved Führer is henceforth the focus of all our energy. We belong to him today, tomorrow and forever.

Our voices are high-pitched, shrill, which is normal given our youth—some of my buddies are only five—but we’re so loud the walls around us seem to shake. It’s giving me goosebumps.

When silence falls again, however, I’m gripped by fear. The silence will be shattered by screaming, won’t it? Or by gun shots? Some sort of panic as a result of an incident in the secondary school? I can picture Lukas refusing to take the oath and screaming out loud and strong: The destruction of your fucking Germany and its fucking Führer is now my sole purpose in life. He can go and get fucked, today, tomorrow and forever! I can just see him spitting in the face of the officer who presents him with his sword. In a nutshell: I can see him slipping from his tightrope and falling into empty space.

I listen, keep my eyes peeled, and look around furtively.

Nothing. Everything seems normal. Lukas hasn’t made a scene.

The timetable at the Napola is almost the same as at Kalish; nothing has changed in the slightest for me.

6 a.m.: Wake up, exercises in our underwear, whatever the weather.

6.45 a.m.: Shower. Every day. (At Kalish the shower was weekly. At least here the dormitories don’t stink. Well, not too much.)

7 a.m.: Everyone in uniform. Roll call and Flaggenparade (‘raising the colours’).

8 a.m.: Disciplinary action for those being punished.

8.30 a.m.: Classes begin.

12.30 p.m.: Lunchbreak. We eat during a reading; that is, the section leaders read aloud extracts from the writings of important people in the Reich.

1 p.m.: Politics class. The teacher gives a commentary on the same extracts and we learn some of them by heart.

2 p.m.: Physical activities for the Jungvolk, paramilitary activities for the Jungmannen. (It’s so great—we have about fourteen hours of sport a week!)

4 p.m.: Maintenance of the school and of our own personal property. One group has to clean the dormitory, another the showers, while a third group has to sweep the classrooms. Of course, there are official cleaners, but these chores teach us to respect the premises and keep them completely hygienic. Household and farm duties, as well as manual labour, are all part of our education.

5 p.m.: Supervised homework.

6.30 p.m.: ‘Lowering the colours’ and roll call.

7 p.m.: Dinner.

7.30–8.30 p.m. for the young ones, 9.30 p.m. for the older ones: Free time. Evening gatherings. A teacher reads out loud—again!—from more texts. Or else we do collective criticism or self-criticism. Twice a week another teacher gives us a commentary on the military situation.

Before bed there’s an inspection of the dormitory and of our gear. Once we’re in bed, there’s an inspection by the unit chiefs. We have to be lying properly on our backs, our hands clearly outside the sheets.

Let’s be clear about this topic: why hands outside the sheets? At first I had no idea, and just did what I was told. But it’s so we don’t ‘masturbate’. As I had no idea what this was, I asked. It means ‘to caress your dick’. Apparently it feels really good. Maybe I’ll try it one day, but not right now. Because the punishments are terrible. The teachers tell us that if we caress our dicks we’ll have shocking mental problems later: we’ll become homosexual, have a pink triangle stuck on our chests, and we’ll be interned in a concentration camp. If we caress our dicks we will also end up with ‘deviant sexual behaviour’: that is, we won’t be able to have sex with a woman and have children and make a family home like every good self-respecting German. So that’s why it’s forbidden to put your hands under the blankets, even when it’s cold. Otherwise you spend the night standing up. (And it’s very cold in the dorms: the central heating is only turned on in a few rooms, and hardly ever now, given the lack of coal.) For the same reason, it’s forbidden to put your hands in your pockets. If, during morning inspection, a student is found to have holes in his pockets, he is punished. (Holes are proof that you’ve got to your dick through your pockets.)

Still, I’d like to try it, at the risk of getting punished. But that means I have to try not to fall into a sleep so deep it’s like death. All the more so because the day doesn’t necessarily end at lights out. Twice a week, at 10 p.m., there are ‘night-time exercises’.

I’m surprised how, Polish or German, Aryan or not, we’re not that different. For the most part, my buddies are just like the ones I had in Kalish. They have the same faults, especially the five-year-olds. It’s hard for them to get up at 6 a.m. on the dot to go running for forty-five minutes when it’s raining cats and dogs or snowing. And hard to get dressed in a rush for roll call and Flaggenparade. Hard not to fall asleep in class. Hard during afternoon exercises to jump into a net from the second floor or to throw themselves off a diving board without knowing how to swim. Hard to clean toilets that the big kids have purposely soiled beforehand. Hard to endure corporal punishment, being quarantined, the night marches, solitary confinement…So there are a few escape attempts. All failed, of course. At night in the dorms there’s a lot of snivelling and sobbing.

But, as our section leader—a Jungmann aged twelve, because here the ruling principle is that youth educates youth and youth is educated by adults—says, once these little brats have forgotten Mummy and Daddy, everything will be fine.

Of course. It always comes back to the same issue. Parents. Such a pain in the arse. At least it is for the little ones. Because once you grow up inside the Napola, you end up separating yourself from your parents. Most of the Jungmannen don’t go home anymore for holidays, or, if they do, they come back denouncing their parents to Obersturmbannführer Schmidt for defeatism or pessimism.

I have a lot of advantages over the students in my class. First of all, I don’t have parents. Because I’ve never been cuddled or cosseted by a mutti, I don’t miss that pampering. Also, because of my time at Kalish, I’ve had a taste of corporal punishment and still have the marks on my back from the whipping I copped when I wanted to protect Lukas. When it comes to my Draufgängertum, the quality all the teachers try to detect in the new recruits, I’ve been putting it into practice for a long time. So, walking over an abyss on a ladder? I’m up for it! Hand-to-hand combat with my buddies? I’m always the winner.

Very soon I’m considered a sort of gifted child and the teachers decide to change my placement. I go from level two to level four. Now I’m hanging out with children aged from nine to ten. I’m proud of this promotion.

But I’m not the only one in this position. One day, to my surprise, I find out that Lukas has been promoted too. He went from level eight to level nine. Him! The Pole, the…(Sometimes I don’t dare utter the word, even in my head, in case someone hears me.) Despite his…what shall I say?…handicap, he too is considered a gifted child. He’s coping. He’s coping perfectly well.

But how? I’d like to know, but I’d have to be able to see him, speak with him. And that can’t happen. Although other older brothers visit their younger brothers in the afternoon, often during the hour set aside for looking after our personal effects, or during the free time before bed, not him. Nothing. Nichts. He never visits me. He never even sends me a note. So ungrateful! Sometimes I glimpse him at the end of the dining hall or when he’s leaving for drills with his group. He’s changed a lot. He’s got bigger and more muscly. His blond hair, in a crew cut, is now golden. He has a glowing complexion and his eyes—no more dark circles or the wild stare that gave him wrinkles around his eyelids—are a mesmerising blue. He carries himself even more proudly and is handsome in his uniform. Handsome when he salutes, his arm as straight as a truncheon. Handsome when he clicks his heels. Handsome when he calls out loudly Heil Hitler! And he knows it. And he plays on it. You’d think, through his promotion, he was out to make a whole generation of faggots!

He’s made himself some friends, two in particular, with whom he trains all the time. They’re the sons of officers holding important jobs in the government. The tough guys. Lukas, Gunter and Herman are always as thick as thieves, and are now nicknamed the Three Musketeers. They strut around, laughing, making fun of the others. Or worse. The other day they had a go at a guy in the study hall: they ripped up his notebooks, beat the hell out of him, yelling insults that he was an intellectual. Incidents like this are dreaded in the Napola. They’re feared far more than the teachers’ punishments. Precisely because the teachers approve of them, claiming they contribute to ‘self-selection’, ‘self-purification’. That way the weakest are eliminated.

I know about the incident because Herman has a brother in my class—whom he looks after. He comes to see him at least twice a week. He even dared to call me Skullface in front of my buddies. No need to ask where he got that from. I had a fight with him and ended up in quarantine: I was forbidden from talking; I had to eat by myself in the dining hall; and the rest of the time I had to stay in the dorm. All because of Lukas.

I don’t get it. He seems to be in his element at the Napola. And yet…