Children to a Degree - Growing Up Under the Third Reich (16 page)

“Thank you,” said Karl. He had no salt or nettles. He was happy to have something extra to eat.

It was Sunday afternoon and the boys were on their way to the Jungvolk meeting place. The first thing they noted was the absence of all their older leaders. There was only an SS officer who told them that all the HJ members over 16 years of age were being drafted into labor details.

“What kind of labor?” asked Karl.

“Digging ditches and building shelters outside of Berlin.”

“What kind of shelters are they building?” asked Harold.

The officer told him to mind his own business and to go home. They would be notified of their new assembly places within a week.

“Rudy was a nice guy. I wonder if we will see him again.” Harold was worried because just a few days ago he had heard his father say that all the boys 16 years and older were being drafted to serve in the infantry. The boys had dismissed it as a rumor, because every other day there was another disturbing news story and so far their older HJ members had still been around.

Karl suggested spending the remainder of the afternoon in the subway. He had found some time ago an underground walkway which he had never seen before. It was kind of crude and not as well constructed as the regular walkways. At first he had speculated that is was a short-cut for maintenance workers but when he followed it to the end, it did not seem to connect to anything and he wanted to show it to his friend before they parted on their individual missions.

“See, Harold. This is just a blind tunnel. It is not leading anywhere.” Karl carried a small flashlight and the battery was near the end of its life.

“Direct the light to the floor on the end,” suggested Harold.

Karl let the meager light dance around the floor and saw what Harold was pointing out. At the very end of the tunnel was a culver leading slightly down. It was blocked with a large grate, which looked like it was anchored in concrete.

“This could be a drain pipe in case the subway gets flooded in a major storm. I wonder where it leads to.” Harold speculated as he tried to unhook the grate from its locks. The culver looked large enough to allow a person to crawl through it.

“No, I don’t think so,” said Karl.

“Why not?” challenged Harold.

“Well, for one thing, this passageway is not descending. It almost felt as if we were going a little bit uphill. For another, this foot path looks like it is being used. Look at all the foot prints in the dust.” He directed his light down again but the battery gave finally out. The boys were in complete darkness. “I am sure that I saw several foot prints,” he repeated, “I should have looked at the floor when I was here the first time. Let’s go back and come back tomorrow with new batteries.”

Karl took the lead back and after the first turn they could see the first maintenance lights of the regular subway system ahead of them.

“Maybe it is an entryway to a building. Maybe a fire station or something like that.” Harold guessed.

“Could be, as far as a special purpose building, but why a culver with a grate blocking it?” Karl could not think of an answer. They exited the subway system through an airshaft close to the zoo station.

“We could come back with a compass and measure the distance and the direction. This way we might be able to ascertain what kind of building is above the shaft.” Harold suggested. “But why do we want to know?”

Karl shrugged his shoulders. “I really would like to know because the entry from the regular subway tunnel is almost hidden. I only found it by accident when I stumbled over a small pile of dirt. It is not a passage way for the subway workers. That much is sure.”

“Do you think that it matters to us what this is about?” Harold wanted to be supportive but was also ready to drop the subject.

“I don’t think that it matters to us, but we know almost all of the system and that we do not know the purpose of this path bothers me.”

“Alright, then it’s settled. We will come back with a compass.” Harold agreed. “We only have one more day and then I have to report to the campus by Potsdam.”

***

All evening long Karl was thinking about the possible purpose of the tunnel and he was wondering to himself why he was unable to dismiss it from his mind.
I will think about it real hard before I fall asleep,
he decided. It was a technique his father had told him to employ whenever he was searching for an answer. Sometimes it worked but most of the time it did not produce anything but a headache.

Karl decided to ask his dad if he was missing something with the technique or how he could do it better.

“How often did it work in relationship to your efforts to find an answer?” His father asked.

“Not very often.”

“Well then, we know that it sometimes works. Just train yourself by asking yourself easy questions. The more answers you get, the more efficient you will become in producing answers to the more important questions.”  Herr Veth spoke to his son in a very assertive tone as if there was no doubt in his mind.

Karl thanked his father and wished his parents good night when his father called him back. “I forgot to ask you, do you expect the answers in the morning when you awake, or did you notice that they sometimes pop up in the middle of the week, or when you expect them the least?”

Karl had to think. “Maybe it was more often that I found the answers a few days later. How long do you wait, Pappa?”

Herr Veth wanted to be sure that Karl understood correctly and he spoke slowly.

“I just wait. In the meantime I simply open myself up to observe what is around me. Because the answer is always all around us.”

Karl had no reason to doubt his father. He just wanted some more detailed instructions. “Is there any procedure I have to do to train myself?”

“No, no special procedure.  Just let yourself drift off to sleep while you gently think about your questions.”

“I would like to believe you, Pappa, but if it is this simple, why don’t the military leaders employ this method and win all the battles?”

“Karl, you are thinking in the wrong direction. Don’t think about why things don’t work. We will take this up again when you are older or ready for it. In the meantime, it is important that you just allow yourself to think that it is possible.

Karl’s father got up and took an encyclopedia from his book cabinet. He wanted to look up some famous names.

“Did your teachers ever tell you that many inventors have more than one patent in their lifetime of achievements?”

“Yes, of course. Thomas Edison was one I learned about. He had over 1,000 patents to his name.”

“Alright, and have you also heard about very smart people who do not hold a single patent?”

”Yes, I have, Friedrich Nietzsche is one of them.”

“Good, now just consider for a moment that maybe there was no difference between them. Edison thought about a technical problem and then started to believe that he could solve it. He allowed himself to believe in himself. He also allowed himself to believe that he could invent more than just one single thing. Eventually he was holding over 1,000 patents to his name when he died.”

“Yes, I guess you are right,” said Karl, trying to absorb everything his father told him. He also tried to listen to the unspoken words. 

“Nietzsche, on the other hand,” his father continued, “allowed himself to think about the wonders of the human race and came to some astonishing conclusions. By the time he died he was known all over the world.”

Karl was itching to get his five-cent comment in.

“Yeah, but Edison and Nietzsche were geniuses.” There he said it.

“Right. We call people geniuses who allow themselves to use their minds. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Herr Veth got up. He wanted to keep the lesson short and to the point. There was nothing gained by confusing Karl. Right now, the boy had plenty on his plate. He placed the heavy book back into the cabinet.

“To sum it up, Karl, you have to train yourself to use your mind. Look, your legs are a part of you and you use them for walking. If you train your legs for speed, you will be surprised how fast you are able to run.”

“What have my legs to do with my lesson, Pappa?”

“Nothing, Karl, only that besides your legs you also have a mind. If you train it and then use is constructively you will be amazed at your own achievements.”

Karl wanted dearly to comprehend what his father told him. He wanted to listen, but, like always, he had another question.

“Do all the adults train their mind and then use it correctly?”

“I don’t know about other people, Karl; I can only go by what I see. It looks like that some of them are not even willing to use it to seek shelter when it rains.”

Fourteen

Karl decided to follow the advice of his father. He went to bed and pushed the pillow into a bunch because he liked his head to be a little elevated. His father had suggested that he should gently think about his concerns and then just allow himself to drift off. He fell asleep before he even thought about the subway.

There was no answer in his head as he awoke the next morning. He took the small dynamo flashlight from his air raid suitcase and met Harold at the airshaft near the zoo station.

“You think that this one will fit?” Harold handed Karl a canister with a label of a small gasmask on the outside.

“How did you get it this fast?” Karl never ceased to be amazed at his friend’s ability to produce scarce items.

“This was easy,” Harold told him. “These are brand new items in my father’s warehouse and for some reason he had some samples in his office. I asked him if I could exchange the masks and he told me to help myself.”

“But, the mask I gave you had no storage canister,” exclaimed Karl.

“This one had none either but I searched a bit because I needed a container. Look inside.”

Karl opened the metal box. Right on top was an 8 oz. can of butter.

“I thought that your parents could use it in their food reserve. We have two of these cans in our emergency suitcases.” Harold smiled his young innocent smile when he saw the perplexed expression on Karl’s face.

“Thank you, Harold.” Karl imagined what his mother might say when he handed her the canister with the butter on top of the new gasmask.

“Nothing to it,” Harold assured him and produced a small compass from his pocket. It was the regular Jungvolk-issue compass with a fold-up mirror.

“Let’s see if this will do us any good,” Harold pondered as the boys walked through the hallway of an apartment complex. Some of the smaller airshafts of the subway system exited in the sidewalks. Some of the larger ones were kind of concealed in the courtyards of the huge four and five-story apartment buildings. The one they wanted to use was in the very far rear court of a prestigious building on the Kurfuerstendam.

Once they were inside the tunnel they oriented themselves as to the general direction in which the trains were traveling and stepped off the distance to the mystery pathway. They took a compass bearing and stepped off the distance again. This time they directed the light to the floor. They could clearly see their own foot prints from the day before but in addition they could also see many other foot prints.

“This is unusual,” ventured Karl, “most of them are going towards the end of the tunnel.”

“Yes, but some of them are also walking the other way,” Harold pointed out.

The boys were not experienced enough to read anything else from the tracks but Karl saw a small imprint. “This looks like a child’s footprint. I wonder how old the tracks are.”

“In which direction was the child going?” Harold asked.

Karl searched to find another likewise imprint, but the other overlaying shoe marks made a positive answer impossible. “Maybe this was an escape tunnel when the SS was rounding up the Jews,” Karl speculated.

“Possible,” allowed Harold, “but maybe the tracks are not that old and the tunnel is still active.”

“Could be, but I think that the cemented metal grate speaks against it. It would, however, explain the few marks leading in the direction of the main tunnel.” Karl sounded undecided. “Maybe if we could find out what is above this tunnel we would know the answer.”

The boys had recorded the bearings on a piece of paper and stepped of the distance again as they went back.

On the way out Karl picked up the gasmask container he had left at the airshaft. “Let’s start; about 1,900 feet along the main line and then we have to change directions.” Harold agreed and the boys walked down the Kurfuerstendam and came to a stop between the famous café Kranzler and the Fernbahnhof (long distance train station) Zoologischer Garten.

“Now, let’s see what lies in the direction of the compass bearing,” Karl suggested. The boys could not really decide on the exact direction and Karl suggested they walk the remaining 1,200 feet and then walk in an arc. Somehow, he supposed, that they would find a building. But there was no building. Matter of fact, at the estimated distance, there were the long distance railroad tracks, city train rails and the entrance to the Zoo.

There were plenty of open spaces and small plazas in between and the large Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, but nothing that would indicate an entrance or exit to an underground passage.

“Several possibilities,” announced Harold after the boys gave up their search. “There could have been an exit directly before the train station. We have not gone there. Maybe the culver was put in later on to block the tunnel and the pathway extends much further beyond.” He scratched his head. “And finally, we are not experienced with a compass. Maybe we are looking in the wrong places. We should go home. It is late and I have to leave tomorrow early in the morning.” Karl had to agree that a prolonged exploration above ground would not produce any different results than they had already.

“I just wondered what the purpose of the side tunnel was. Maybe when you came back to Berlin we can take it up again.” He looked at Harold. “You are coming back, aren’t you? I hope that you don’t change your mind and stay in the Napola.”