T HE TWO SLOGANS BEST used between 1919 and 1933 by the rising National Socialist movement were: “With the help of National Socialism we shall rescue religion from the threat of Bolshevism!” and “With the help of National Socialism we shall rescue the family from Bolshevism, which is trying to destroy it!”
They struck home in Germany, appealing as they did to two prime concepts. Even at the outset, National Socialism knew very well what it was about when it frightened the great bulk of the German middle class with the warning that Bolshevism would destroy religion, and so annul all the rights of conscience; that it would tear the family apart and offer up its members to an all-powerful government; that it would deify this monster State in place of religion. The middle-class German, traditionally a religious family-man, listened with horror to all of this. Shopkeeper, caretaker’s wife, married office girl, and well-brought-up society woman — they all agreed to support the National Socialists who desired to protect religion and the family, and who ought to be strengthened in their work.
Hans Schlemm, who in 1933 became Bavarian Minister of Education, published a challenging pamphlet two years before Hitler made himself Chancellor. He called it Mother or Comrade. Here were all the praises of the family as a unit, its rights under the state, and the individual rights of “millions of separate personalities.” And he condemned the “completely automatic, mechanically-functioning ‘mass-apparatus.’ ”
Today we regard with historical curiosity the eagerness of the man, denouncing as “Bolshevistic” the plans and ideas about to be realized in Germany by the National Socialists who later made him their Minister of State. We may replace the emblems with ‘swastika” in this passage by Schlemm, who wrote under the heading “Religion — Family”: “Brutal measures initiated this struggle [against religion]…. The cross and pictures of saints were replaced by the Soviet star, the red flag, the hammer and the sickle…” and we have an accurate picture of the daily battle against religion in Germany. “Of course,” Schlemm continues, “it is impossible to survey the process of destruction to which the family is subjected. But the family as an institution cannot be destroyed until the citadel has been razed which protects that precious jewel: the strong walls of prayer, of faith in God…. On a road of stifled prayers, Bolshevism beat its way into the life-center of the people — the family.”
Again, all we have to do is replace “Bolshevism” with “National Socialism” to have a fairly exact picture. The Nazis recognized, to their own use, that the ideology of the German citizen was fixed by two concepts: “fear of God,” and “family.” Both of these had to be attacked if either one was to be destroyed.
“It is not merely a matter of economical, financial, technical or political measures… or the socialization of goods… oh, no, it is a matter of human dignity as such. The question is this: shall free human beings be transformed into a horde of slaves?”
And, writing these words, expressing this most individualistic, democratic cry of warning, seeing so clearly what the Nazis were preparing (as far back as 1931) —was the Nazi Hans Schlemm.
One of the surprises of the National Socialist Revolution was the speed with which signs and names were altered in 1933, when it was possible to call anything black that, a week ago, had been painted white. “Save the family!” the Nazis had been shouting. “Save religion!” They knew they would have to destroy both. And they came into power, disguised as saviors, and took hold of the German family and religion, hoping to be undetected while they did away with both.
At first, it went smoothly. Nobody was even suspicious in the beginning.
The German people are naturally pious, church-going, giving great importance to family life. They know today that since Hitler came in, something has gone wrong with their churches and families. Ministers were arrested by the hundreds; more peaceful means were used against the home. The word gemütlich (untranslatable, and coming into English for its flavor) can’t be applied very well to today’s German. Gemütlichkeit flourishes in the warmth of the family; and the family is near dissolution.
Today every member of the nation — man, woman, and child — must belong to at least one Nazi organization: to the Party, to a Fachschaft (professional union), a Women’s or Mothers’ Bund (union), the Hitler Youth, the Jungvolk (young people), or to the Bund Deutscher Mädel (League of German Girls). These take all the time left after one’s profession, housework, or school. Even without a deeper reason, it would be impossible for anyone to devote himself to family problems, just for lack of time.
There is a story told in Germany now: the head of a family comes home; no one is in, but there is a note on the library table which says: “Am at a meeting of the National Socialist Women’s Union. Will be home late. — Mother.” So he scribbles an answer and leaves it beside the other: “Going to a Party meeting. Will be back late. — Father.” The next in is the son, who leaves a note: “Night practice. Won’t be home till morning. — Fritz.” Hilda, the daughter, is last, and she writes: “Must go to a meeting of the Bund of German Girls. —Hilda.”
At about two in the morning, the family gets home, to a bare apartment from which everything movable has been stolen; but there is a fifth note on the table: “We thank our Führer. Heil Hitler! — The Gang.”
The break-up of the family is no by-product of the Nazi dictatorship, but part of the job which the regime had to do if it meant to reach its aim — the conquest of the world.
If the world is to go to the Nazis (for no one else, in Hitler’s eyes, is German), the German people must first belong to them. And, for that to be true, they can’t belong to anyone else — neither God, nor their families, nor themselves.
To begin with, the time they used to give to their families was taken from the Germans and placed at the disposal of the State. But this alone could not have destroyed the foundation of German family life. More subtle measures were necessary to touch the spirit. Destruction began only when, within the family itself, mutual suspicion grew great. It was not until father became suspicious of mother, mother of daughter, daughter of son, and son of father, that the family was really endangered. From the moment when no one dared speak, because every word might be reported, every gesture misunderstood and denounced, the family lost its meaning. Life within it became senseless.
Private homes are not the most important places now — the meeting-hall comes first for the members of the family. Love of the Führer, faithfulness to his State — the Nazis jealously watch over the fulfillment of this highest commandment. The man who takes his home life seriously, spending much of his time there, feeling himself a family man before he is a Nazi, is an outsider. He is suspect. He does not realize that decisive events take place only in the meeting-hall.
Torn between authorities, the Hitler child is pulled by the school and Hitler Youth Movement on one hand, and home on the other. The child feels the duel for the possession of his soul; he hears his teachers’ hidden objection when the Hitler Youth takes too much of his time, he sees his parents’ hidden frown when there is no time for home. But he also notices that the authorities over him are afraid. Fear is the general motive. Grown-ups lie out of fear, and bear false witness against each other. Since they fear even little children, they lie to them.
It is hard to find any connection between this and the heroism they always praise. The child must think: “I don’t know, I’m not afraid at target-practice, with its accidents. But suppose I don’t listen in to Goebbels’ speech? I’m afraid my teacher will know about that in the morning, then I’d be punished. The teacher could denounce my parents. Father could lose his job and be expelled from the Party; that would be the worst thing possible. I am afraid, horribly. And that’s true of my parents, too. And so we do listen to most of Goebbels’ speeches; if, somehow, we miss one, we lie about it. I tell lies in school; Father, in the Fachschaft; and Mother when she goes marketing. We all lie, out of fear.”
The child will only dimly suspect that most people have this fear, although the German populace is glorified as “heroic.” Perhaps parents have it most — the children feel this — for they are held responsible for their children, and at the same time have lost all influence over them.
Lack of time, lack of trust! No, family life is no longer gemütlich. It has lost all tenderness, all the past mutual thoughtfulness; and parental care is dead.
“The lives of all German youths belong solely to Hitler,” shouted Baldur von Schirach, now Reich Youth Leader. If a child asks its mother, for reassurance, “Am I yours?” the mother will have to answer, “No. You belong to the Führer.” And if the father breaks in, impatiently, “Don’t teach the child nonsense, dear… Of course you belong to us,” trouble begins. Something forbidden and punishable has been let slip; a quarrel is the mildest consequence. If the child is too young to go and denounce them, the father must still watch out, servants can hear. Besides, the kindergarten teacher asks what is said at home, and the baby is sure to tell the truth, he is too little to lie.
If the child is a big boy and a member of the Jungvolk or the Hitler Youth, he will rebel with all his might against tenderness. He resents emotion — even his own, which sometimes makes him throw his arms around his mother, and cry. It will destroy him in the eyes of those from whose judgment there is no appeal. He has been taught: “Those who shirk their duties just because they are tired are ‘mothers’ boys.’ Mothers’ boys cry when they are hit. Mothers’ boys run home when it is raining; they are afraid of thunder. They don’t know what a night march or war-play is. If they are tired after their daily work, they do not manage to be fresh and ready for service. Mothers’ boys don’t know the ruggedness of mountains and woods; they do not know dusty country roads, or life in a tent. Mothers’ boys rest their heads on soft pillows and sleep under silk covers. Jungvolk youngsters are hardy.” ( Morgen, organ of the Jungvolk.)
To be a mothers’ boy — ah, that would be the most terrible thing that could happen. So, after marching all day, he clenches his fists, the little soldier; and when his mother tries to give him a kiss before he goes to sleep, he turns his head away. This kiss, he feels, might have cost me my dignity. I might have become soft and affectionate. And he goes to his room, stiffening in the most manly way.
His mother looks after him, perplexed. To pass the time until her husband returns from his meeting, she opens the pamphlet on the table. She catches the word “Mother” and a few lines of poetry:
Upon his breast, shot through, they found
A gray lock with bleached ribbon bound,
And this inscription hung thereon:
“I pray for you, my dearest son.”
And, following this, the editor — Mr. Schlemm again — writes: “The first and last right to a child is of course the mother’s, who has received the child from God and gives it back to Him.”
She puts the pamphlet down and closes her eyes. “Upon his breast, shot through…” “… the first and last right….”
She looks into his room to see if he is asleep; she watches him lying flat on his back, open-mouthed, with a mesh of fine blond hair fallen across his forehead. A little look of pain runs over his face; he was very stiff from all the marching, and his hand, that she did not know was hurt, is bandaged awkwardly.
His mother looks at him, and knows: “He does not belong to me, but to the State, which will send him into war as soon as he is big enough, which has already taken him from me and made him a stranger, which insists that he march and shoot and remember that blind obedience to it counts far more than love to me.” She stands there, motionless and hoping bitterly that he will move, or call out for her. Perhaps he will murmur something friendly, thinking kindly of her in his dreams. But nothing of the sort happens. He sleeps like a log, as if he had fainted. “They’ve overtired him again,” she thinks, and remembers the family physician’s warning — delicate and considerate — against these forced marches. The boy is none too strong. “They’ll kill him in the end,” she thinks.
The dark room hardly looks like a playroom. The boy is ten. But where are the toys, the Indian feathers, the games and story-books, full of adventure and spellbound princesses? The titles that catch the light from the door are those of the books read during the long “Comrades’ Evenings”:
Aviator’s Nest in the Elder-Bushes, Life Stories of German War Aces, The Infantry Marches On, The Book of German Colonies for the Young, Peter, the Soldier-Boy, and Sister Claire at the Front.
She had to give him these books. She remembers it only too well — and his answer, when she asked whether he enjoyed them. “Of course,” he said, with his angry look, “what else is there to read?”
Well, what else is there? And his playthings: maps, a short dagger, a little dangerous-looking revolver, a few tin soldiers, a bust of the Fiihrer, a gas mask. Gas masks have just been distributed among children, and the boy has been having fun with his. He did frighten her with the ugly thing; she found him, his face covered by the gas mask and its trunk, lying on the floor one day as though he were dead. When she ran up to him, fearful and calling, he jumped up and laughed. “What nerves you have, Mother! What in the world will you do when the serious things begin to happen?” he cried, and, swinging the gas mask, went out.
She stands there, unable to walk away from her little sleeping son. What odd children, she thinks, what curious, strange children! He was five when Hitler came in; now he knows nothing but Hitler’s world that has swallowed us all. Can he like it? Can he enjoy living like this? But none of the children know any other way. They don’t play; they don’t understand what playing is. All their imagination is made use of to one end: war and conquest.
She has to. conceal these thoughts. No one must suspect them. Sink them, send them deep and secret down! But, as a matter of fact, they can be found among the high lords. Baldur von Schirach, for example, writes: “The toy-store keepers have complained to me that these babies have no desire for toys. They are interested exclusively in tents, javelins, compasses, and maps. I cannot help the toy-store keepers, because I too firmly believe with the Pimpfe (Juniors — a new German word) that the time for playing Indians is definitely past. What is a trapper in the American Wild West, compared with our standard-bearers?… Take a look at the ten-year-old Pimpf. See how he marches in front of the band, holding his banner. Compare him with the child of pre-war times. What a tremendous change!”
These proud words written by the Leader of the Reich Youth are the judgment from which there is no appeal. Parents are out-moded authorities.
One boy’s family tried to recall their child. They gave him a birthday party, with ordinary, normal, “civilian” presents: a paintbox, a picture puzzle, a shining new bicycle — and lit twelve candles on his birthday cake. How they looked forward to that party! And it went off like a political conference. Six boys had been invited, and five of them came right on time.
“Who’s missing?” the mother asked.
“Can’t you see?” said the boy, “HE’s missing — Fritzekarl!”
“What a pity!” she answered. That it should be just Fritzekarl! Two years older than her son, he was the leader in the Jungvolk, and his presence at the party was of great importance. If he did not appear, it was a sign of disfavor; the whole thing would be spoiled.
The boys, in their Hitler Youth uniforms stood around the birthday table, not knowing quite what to do with the toys. The bicycle pleased all of them, with its bell (which they took turns ringing) and its rubber tires, which were so hard to get nowadays, and which the father had finally been able to obtain after using all of his contacts in the Party, paying a high cash price, and emphasizing the fact that this was a wheel for a boy, a Jungvolk boy, and not for a girl who would never go to war! Now it stood there, complete with instructions and a copy of the German Cyclist, saying: “Boys on bicycles must try to remember the names of towns, rivers, mountains and lakes as well as the material and type of architecture of bridges, etc. They may be able to make use of this knowledge for the good of the Fatherland.”
The bell rang, and the son dashed to the front door. A sharp voice came through, crying “Heil Hitler!” and the five boys at the table turned on their heels as the answer came in a voice already breaking, “Heil Hitler!” Their superior officer was received with the “German salute,” five hands raised, great composure, solemn faces. Solemnly, Fritzekarl gave the host his birthday present — a framed photograph of the Leader of the Reich Youth, Baldur von Schirach, with a facsimile autograph! The son clicked his heels as he received it.
“I wish to speak to your father,” Fritzekarl said curtly.
The mother answered in her friendly voice, “My husband is not free just now—he’s upstairs working.”
Fritzekarl attempted to keep the note of military command in his shrill young voice. “Just the same, madam, I should prefer to speak to your husband for a moment…. In the interest of your son.”
His manner was correct, in spite of his tone. He bowed slightly to the mother as he finished his masterful little speech.
“Fourteen years old!” she thought, “but the mechanism of power backs him up, and he knows it.”
The son was blushing violently. “For goodness’ sake call him!” he said, stepping toward his mother.
The father came down at once.
“Heil Hitler!” cried Fritzekarl.
“Heil Hitler!” repeated the man. “What can I do for you, Lieutenant?”
“Pardon me,” says Fritzekarl, who doesn’t get the joke, and retains his martial stare, “but your son was absent from our last practice exercises….”
“Yes, I know,” the father interrupts at this point, “he had a cold.”
“It was at your suggestion that he absented himself,” Fritzekarl continues, his voice breaking and going hoarse over the phrase, “You wrote me some sort of excuse, to say that he was staying home at your wish.”
The father puts his weight first on one foot and then on the other. “As a matter of fact, it is my wish that he stay home when he has such a severe cold.”
“Oh, I didn’t have such a bad cold at all,” the son breaks in. He is leaning on the handle-bars of the bicycle that his father had to fight for. “I could have gone, perfectly well.”
The man looks at his son, a long look of surprise and pain and the resignation he has learned. “Well,” he says, and moves toward the door.
But Fritzekarl stops him. “A moment, please,” he insists, but politely. “Your son was in school on that day and the following day. So he cannot have been really ill. Let me call your attention to the fact that he should have been present at practice and that it is my duty to report the absence!”
“Oh, please —” the boy was speaking for his father, quickly, bargaining “— don’t do that, please! It won’t ever happen again — will it, father? —really, never again!”
The father wanted to protest; he felt the despairing look of his wife, the outrage and embarrassment of the scene. “How dare you speak to me like that!” was what he was repeating in his mind. But he knew the consequences of such an argument, for himself, and for his son. Even if he could convince the Nazi authorities of his own part, and Fritzekarl’s rudeness, his son would still have to face the Jungvolk, paying for his father’s moment of “courage.” And so he only said, hesitatingly and stiffly, “No — it certainly will never happen again!”
“I thank you,” replied the fourteen-year-old superior of the treasonable son. The father was dismissed.
He cannot air his resentment; he has to expect eavesdroppers and spies everywhere. His wife tells their son everything — not out of malice, but in the mistaken hope of reclaiming him this way. And the new maid is a person to be feared. She listens at doors, reads everything that’s lying around the house, and she happens to be having an affair with a Blockwart; he could destroy a family single-handed. The boy would hardly denounce his own father, the man reflects, but if he repeats some remark to the maid, she will run to her Blockwart, the Gestapo (Secret State Police) will have it right away, and the doom will begin to move on them. Or, if they decide to dismiss the maid, her vengeance hanging over their heads may be even worse.
With these conditions, nothing is to the point but care and extreme reticence. Families guard this reticence, and live side by side like strangers, or enemies.
One boy of seventeen, an aristocrat, and delicate, wants to study philosophy, in spite of the times. He is slender and well-built, and most of his racial heritage is rated excellent. He has never been brilliant in sports, but, helped by his name and his determination, he may enter Hitler’s personal bodyguard ( Leibstandarte ), and he pushes towards this end passionately. He is looking worse all the time, paler and more desperate, and his foreign friends insist on getting to the bottom of it. They tell him not to lose courage; he’ll surely be admitted, all will end well. But he shakes his head: “That’s just it!” he answers. “Of course, they’ll admit me; and that will be the end of everything.”
But is he fighting so passionately for something he hates? The boy makes them swear not to tell a soul — not even his own family — and then breaks down. He tells them that his father is so terribly anti-Nazi, he loathes it all; besides being careless, he is rebellious; and for years, he has refused to join the Party. The son knows his father’s danger. “They’ll just take him away some day,” he says. “A nobleman who won’t play their game! That’s serious…. They’re after him.”
His friends begin to see the picture he is chalking in for them. “Something has to be done,” the boy continues. “We have to show them we’re good Nazis, not just arrogant aristocrats. I hate them, God knows. But I’ll join the Leibstandarte; I will not see my father endangered.”
When they meet his father a little later, he tells them: “My own son, insisting on joining the guard — horrible, isn’t it? He knows how I hate the whole business. But, if he insists, I shan’t do anything to stop him. After all, he might end by denouncing me.”
The members of a family are alone, living side by side, like strangers, or enemies.
Does the German child suffer under these conditions?
Is he subjectively unhappy?
Is he aware of loss? Does he realize his situation?
Human beings — the Germans proved this during the war — can become accustomed to almost anything if they are led to believe its necessity. And children seem to be adjusting to altered conditions, accepting their novelty without criticism. They have not been given time to come to their senses; they accept Nazi life almost unconsciously.
It is true that the average child is neither gay nor very serious. He is cruel, but not courageous; hard, but not firm in character; sly but not clever; unchildlike, not mature. So far, the average German child is neither unhappy nor even rebellious.
But were we German children of 1914 subjectively unhappy during the War? Did we protest? Did we question? Hitler’s government goes farther than the Kaiser’s in what it wishes the people to accept, but it also goes farther toward supporting its premises and making them credible. It concentrates upon the conquest of the “inner enemy”; between 1914 and 1918, there were other troubles to be met and mastered.
The isolation of the Nazi world protects the growing child from seeing things as they are, and so from unhappiness. One day the child grown up will inevitably come face to face with truth, and be struck by its lightning glare. Susceptible to the “new,” the German youth of the future will find in truth, apart from its general power, the might of the unexpected. It will have the force of a revelation.
But this has not yet happened.
Of course, some children suffer under the pressure of the everlasting propaganda, the monotony of days that are dreary in spite of dictated festivity. Many suffer because now they can never be alone, left to themselves to read and invent stories and pictures.
There are other lacks. Children who had been sent to Switzerland, because of insufficient food supplies at home, were often at a loss in the beginning for something to help them spend their time. This sudden freedom was a desert; the day was empty without commands. Only gradually, as they found themselves accepted by other people, they began to find themselves; they might sit for hours in the garden with a book, deep in a childhood world withheld at home; or eat normal food, good eggs, rich milk, and white bread. At first they couldn’t get enough. They were like the “holiday children” during the War; they would overeat on these “delicacies” and be ill. But they would soon recover and accept freedom and plenty here as they had learned to accept want and drill at home.
It is generally known that want is great in Germany, and that growing children suffer especially from it. There is a shortage of most foodstuffs: fats are rationed, and good meat, fresh eggs and pure flour have not been inexpensive and plentiful for a long time. Bread is spoiled by the addition of potato meal and other Zusatz — it is dark, damp and almost indigestible, and the breadcard, that most dreaded of war measures, seems inevitable. Great physical endurance is demanded of the children; they suffer most.
The recipes in the new German cookbooks reveal more of the actual state of affairs than the official reports do. It is not unusual to find advice on how to make a “delicious, nourishing cake” with Ersatz fat, oatmeal, and entirely without eggs. “Good, dried fish” is recommended instead of meat, which is declared — just as during the War — unhealthful. The German Woman’s Paper (No. 14) makes revealing suggestions, like this about the use of mildewed marmalade: “If there are only a few spots of mildew, we remove these and use the marmalade immediately on bread or for dessert. If there is a lot of mildew, we remove it along with the adhering marmalade, and boil the residue. We use it as rapidly as possible thereafter.” We do not waste rancid butter either, according to the same paper. “Our precious butter may taste rancid. We knead it thoroughly with salt water, and, if that does not suffice, we fry it with onions and can then use it perfectly for fried potatoes, roast meat or vegetables.”
Menus arranged by the household publications are just as embarrassed. Vobachs Frauenzeitung suggests for Wednesday dinner, after a lunch of boiled potatoes and cold pudding, nothing but “cottage cheese with linseed-oil.” That’s not much of a dinner; and it is not surprising that the children, transplanted into normal Swiss or Dutch conditions, collapse. Family reunions will not become more gemütlich because of insufficient meals; family life can never be improved by these menus and suggestions.
If life in the family has fallen to such small importance for the average German child, it is infinitely more difficult for the child of Jewish or “non-Aryan” descent. All the misery of the pariah — of being outside and despised — he must suffer because of his parents.
“If only I had other parents, ‘Aryan’ parents,” the child thinks, “I could be happy, like the others — belong to them, go marching and sing their songs. I would be a human being — not an Untermensch, an ‘enemy of the German people,’ a ‘misfortune.’ ‘The Jews are our misfortune,’ they tell us in school — my parents are Jews, and they are my misfortune. If I only had some other parents!”
Many Jewish children will look around the dinner-table and think that. Others will look for protection at home from the persecutions they find outside; but their home is unable to give them that refuge, and the child feels, “They are good, but helpless. Just as I am, they are hit by this misfortune.” Home cannot make up for what happens outside; they are all defenseless, and tragically aware of it.
The Jewish child, in contrast to the “Aryan,” has leisure; he has time to think about himself. The Hitler Youth is closed to him; he may sit at home and brood, for he is forbidden to take part in the “Comrades’ Evenings,” the “Gymnastic Games,” the “National Political Festivals.”
That child, too, sits at home, whose father is Jewish, but whose “Aryan” mother would be taintless, if she had not followed him into artvergessener Verblendung, in an infatuation contrary to her “duties to the race.” Perhaps the young half-Jewish girl sitting at the mirror resembles her mother. She looks at her blonde hair, her small, turned-up nose, and her “Nordic, long-narrow” skull; but her mother’s short face, little chin, and her head that is flat in back, are not reflected in the girl’s well-curved skull. That is a heritage from her father which she refuses to admit. “If I could hide him, if he were my secret!” she thinks venomously. “If only he were dead!”
The idea breaks over her, a great wave, and although she realizes its horror, she imagines what might happen to her if she could move into another city with her mother. She is naturally blonde, she could change her name — of course, her papers would not be in order, but something could be done about that, she feels, if only her father were out of the way. She has heard stories of half-Jews who were declared “Aryan” after their mothers took oath that they were not the issue of the Jewish husband, but of an adulterous liaison with an “Aryan.” “Maybe I’m not his daughter at all,” the girl at the mirror dreams, “Oh, God, if only that could be true!”
This devastation has entered the souls of children. If the “Aryan” child suffers objectively through the destruction of the family, the “non-Aryan” child receives the full subjective impact; he knows how great the damage is. He knows the grief of his parents because they are Jews and their chances of making a decent living have been taken from them. He sees one Jewish parent going about like a criminal, and the growing hatred or the tragic pity that the “Aryan” parent feels for the other. And he loves both his parents; perhaps, however, he adores the Führer; and his deepest wish is to “belong” — to be a “pure Aryan.”
The quarter-Jews are in the strangest situation of all; those children having (according to the Nuremberg laws) one Jewish grandparent are treated almost like “Aryans” in school; they are good enough to be aufgenordet (Nordified), and it will be their duty in time to marry a “pure Aryan.” For their part, “Aryans” are permitted to marry quarter-Jews — indeed, some of them will have to, to bring about the State’s “Nordification.” At home, the child must resign himself to the fact that one of his parents is a half-Jew. Some of these children have been given the businesses of their half-Jewish fathers, and taught that, whether the father has founded it and brought it to success or not, it actually belongs to the child, and the father is countenanced as manager by him and his mother. The Führer wills it.
These shattered “mixed” families are the exception, however. A much larger group of “mixed” families have retained dignity and pride, and have not been broken by the degradations they suffer under National Socialism. Whether by regarding themselves as a nation which they hope to see united into a national Jewish State, or by a standard of reason and humanity which is out of place in modern Germany, they stand with the opposition made up of millions of Catholics, Protestants, liberals and ordinary decent human beings. And if their children have been kept out of the Nazi schools and put in the Jewish ones, they feel personal pride and the distinction of belonging in this “camp.” They have that possibility far more than the “Aryan opposition,” which is, except for the churches, diffuse and broken up. They have a chance of organizing because they live harmoniously in closed groups. And, through all the danger, they are far more gemütlich than any Nazi—or apparently Nazi — family can be today.
Of course, many “non-Aryan” families have been reduced or destroyed under National Socialism. Robbed of a future, children were sent abroad to school or emigrated, if they could, to start life again in England or America or Palestine. The parents, alone in Germany, often do not dare to correspond with them, and many have died without seeing their emigrant children. Often months pass before the children learn of the death of these parents.
The life of the “non-Aryan” family has been altered in the dissolution. The “non-Aryan” child of a “mixed” family cannot face his relatives openly any more. He feels his situation as a problem to them, even to those whose sympathies lie with the Jewish members of the family.
The separation which exists throughout Germany in the lives of adults and children — a separation between official and private life (such as it is), between controllable and secret activities — makes schizophrenes of many children. Bewildered and torn, forever at odds with themselves, they turn in tragic confusion.
Association between “Aryan” and Jewish children is, of course, absolutely forbidden.
A little Jewish girl is going down the main street of a small town. She is thirteen, and very pretty; and coming toward her is a boy she recognizes, a friend of pre-Hitler days, who used to play in the sand with her, and who is now wearing the uniform of the Hitler Youth. She waves at him, naturally and without thought. But he does not wave back; he approaches, his face set straight ahead, and dashes past as if he hasn’t seen her. Now she hurries home, head down in shame, not wanting to walk any more, after that! She hasn’t been home more than five minutes before he knocks at the door.
“Look,” he begins, red-faced and stammering, “I only wanted to know how you are, Ruth…”
She is shaken with joy, with fright and surprise. “You’re mad to come here,” she whispers. “What if somebody saw you?”
“It’s all right,” he answers. “Nobody saw me come. And you won’t tell; you’re no denouncer!”
An extreme of respect lies in the phrase. She knows it, she can be proud of it. But what does it mean about the other, the free and powerful — his comrades of the Hitler Youth? Are they denouncers? Is he afraid of them?
After he has left, the Jewish child stands at her window for a long time. Shall she tell her parents what has happened, to please them? Why did he do it? And the visit itself — was that the famous treason to his “group” that we always hear about? — a treason against National Socialism? How is he now — ashamed or proud? Is his conscience bad or particularly good at the moment?
He is neither proud, nor ashamed. He is only confused. But since he feels confused so often, he does not waste much time worrying about it.
They don’t concern themselves about their state of mind; all efforts are made so that the children of Germany shall not worry, for the country has become a powder-keg; thoughts might set it off.
Who has glanced into the hearts of this youth, whose ideas might have such power? Who knows if this emptiness, hardness, monotony, militarism — everything that starves and overstrains and kills personality— this drill for war — who knows if this is not reaching the point when it becomes untenable, when those secret hopes, worked for so long, will burst into the outer world and end the fury?