Children to a Degree - Growing Up Under the Third Reich (24 page)

“No, Karl, you misunderstand. It is not the destination, it is the camp itself which is an acknowledgement of your leadership abilities.” He gestured to Karl to sit down. “I understand that you are worried about the Russians and that is understandable, but let me explain. The leader of this camp in Kosten will be a severely handicapped officer who has some teaching abilities. You and Peter will not only be his assistants but you will be empowered to take control of the camp in case something happens to the officer.”

Herr Hartung debated with himself how much he should tell Karl about the gravity of the situation.

The male teachers had been drafted and the few remaining female teachers in Berlin were not volunteering for a camp so close to the Russian lines. The school administration was forced to issue stern orders with the result that the teachers simply did not show up.  The ‘blue’ letters which had been sent out came back with the remark ‘moved, not at this address.’ Sometimes the letters came back “bombed out. No forwarding address.’ In any event it was the same. No teachers for KLV camp duty.

“Of course neither you nor Peter will be expected to teach, but you both have shown that you are able to maintain sanitary conditions and keep the students occupied. You will be rewarded with promotions.” He saw that the boy was squirming in his chair. “But this is not all. You will stay in constant contact with us and we will render any assistance you require.”

Karl recognized that the Berlin school system was slowly disintegrating. He had seen it coming during the past year. Every time he came back from a camp there was someone new in charge. Mostly a totally clueless official with absolutely no practical experience. Herr Hartung had been the only one who lasted over a year in the position of KLV administrator. He was responsible for all the school districts in Berlin. All the other bureaucrats were nothing but replacements for replacements.

“But why Poland? I have seen several places in Bavaria and elsewhere that seem to be a lot safer from the Russians,” Karl could not help himself. He had to ask.

Herr Hartung had a helpless expression on his face. “I don’t know, Karl. I just follow orders.”

Karl could feel that he was not getting anywhere. If the head of the KLV system had to follow orders, who was he to question the wisdom of the decision makers.

He got up and saluted the administrator, who waved him off. “One more thing, Karl. You don’t need to write any more reports, but I expect you to see me every few weeks and to report to me personally. I will issue you free transportation vouchers to use the railroad whenever you deem it necessary. Check in with me before you leave.”

In a way Karl was glad to leave the office. He instinctually liked order and discipline but in the KLV system, both seemed to be unraveling.

“Kosten it is,” he announced when he came home. His mother smiled when he told her about the meeting with Herr Hartung.

“I am sure that the NSDAP (Nazi) leadership knows what they are doing. They would not send you to Poland if they thought that there is any chance the camp could be overrun by the Russians. Don’t forget that Herr Hitler is in charge, and don’t forget his wonder weapons.”

Karl’s father however, did not seem to share her sentiment. He was worried about his son.

The transport to Kosten left a week later and Karl met his new camp leader for the first time. His name was Lothar Hardfeld. He was in the black uniform of a panzer commander and carried the rank of a lieutenant. His right hand was missing and so was the foot and lower part of his right leg. Karl guessed his age to be in the late forties. Karl hit it off with him from the moment he saw him.

“My name is Karl Veth. I am your sub leader. Please leave the boarding of the students to Peter Zahn, your other sub leader and to me. We are versed in the procedure,” he snapped his sharpest salute and the lieutenant was visibly pleased.

“I heard about you, Karl, and I am glad that you are assigned to my camp.”

It was shortly after 8:00 AM and after the usual ceremonies the train left nearly on time. It would have been only a four hour trip but troop carrier trains forced the children transport to stop several times at small railroad stations to let the military trains pass.

Karl had studied the map of the Kosten area and he was prepared for a one hour march from the railroad station to the cloister. He was wondering how the lieutenant could do this with his prosthesis. To his surprise there were several horse-drawn farm wagons waiting for them at the station. Peter arranged for the backpacks and suitcases to be loaded and helped Lieutenant Hardfeld to climb on the first wagon. Karl was a little concerned when he saw that some of the students were barely 8 years old. It was a cool April evening and he did not know what the condition at the cloister was like. He hoped that the building had a warm hall or at least some wood stoves in the sleeping arrangements.

But first things first. He made sure that all of the youngest children had a seat on the wagon and then divided the remainder of the children in two groups. They would alternately march for fifteen minutes and then ride on the wagons. The lieutenant kept time because neither Karl nor Peter owned a watch.

The cloister turned out to be much more comfortable than Karl had anticipated. While it was a very old building - Karl had heard something about it being 200 years old - it featured large fireplaces and there was plenty of birch wood stacked under rainproof covers.

The boys were greeted by three polish women who introduced themselves in passable German. They were cooks and general care takers. They had the main hall very well heated and served a nice hot vegetable soup to the children.

Karl and Peter inspected the sleeping quarters. They were rather primitive compared to the previous camps where they had stayed. There was no real bedding, but plenty of straw-filled feed bags. To make it worse only a few of the sleeping rooms featured fireplaces and all of them were stone cold.

“Well, this is most certainly a disappointment. Any suggestions?” They could hear the voice from the lieutenant who had followed them. Peter looked at Karl to come up with something

“We will make a game of it. We let the boys drag the straw bags out of the cubicles and show them how to make their own sleeping arrangements in the main hall. The ones who settle down the fastest will be awarded their choice of rooms tomorrow morning.”

“Sounds good to me,” agreed the lieutenant. “We will set a time limit. The ones who are not bedded down within an hour will have to sleep in a cold room. At least this is what we will tell them,” he added.

Peter looked expectantly at Karl. “You are the one in charge of hygiene. I have not seen a single wash room and only a few dry toilets. How are you going to handle this?”

“Easy,” said Karl. “We will show them the location of the toilets and tell them that they don’t need to wash themselves until tomorrow when we will have this building sorted out. The kids will love it.”

He was right. The students thought that their sub leader was a great guy to let them go to sleep without washing up and within an hour after the meal everyone had found a place to sleep.

Everyone, except the lieutenant. He had taken a notion from Karl’s previous arrangement and had helped to get the youngest ones to sleep closest to the large fireplace. “Now what?” his face showed that he was in pain as he babied his right arm.

“Call me mother,” mumbled Karl to himself and searched for the Polish women. He found them were he suspected they would be; in the huge kitchen. After a few questions he was informed that there were two additional rooms next to the kitchen and actually right behind the big dining hall. They were pleasantly heated from the stone wall which separated them from the main fireplace. The cooks occupied one of the rooms but the other one would be suitable for the lieutenant. There was however a huge drawback. The nearest toilet was on the far side of the dining hall.

“Thank you Karl. I am more than happy to take this room.” Lieutenant Hardfeld did not seem to mind at all.

The next few days were filled with getting the camp organized.

Karl discovered that there were plenty of wash rooms. They were in a separate building that featured rather large storage tanks to prevent the water from freezing. There was also a boiler room and the lieutenant and Peter created a makeshift warm-water system.

Karl noticed on the second day that one of the younger boys nursed a heavily bandaged left hand.  His name was Bernd and when Karl called him to join him in the kitchen he wanted to hide his hand behind his back.

“Let me see what’s bothering you.”   

“Nothing,” answered Bernd.

“Then why is your hand covered?” Karl reached for boy’s hand.

Bernd flinched at first but then allowed Karl to remove the bandage. There was no open wound but the whole hand was swollen to nearly twice the normal size. The knuckles were blue and red and Bernd was unable to move his fingers except for his thumb.

“You are left handed, Bernd?” Karl asked the boy.

The boy hesitated before he answered. “Yes.” Karl noted the fearful expression in Bernd’s face.

“You don’t have to worry any more. Please tell me who did this to you.”

“Nobody.” Bernd was almost shaking in fear of being beaten again on his hand, but something in Karl’s voice told him that he could trust him.

“You got hit with a stick, didn’t you?”

Bernd nodded, holding back his tears.

“Who hit you? A teacher or other children?” Karl wanted to ascertain if the boy had been punished by his class mates.

Bernd did not answer, his eyes pleaded with Karl to stop questioning him. But Karl had to know. There was a hard stigma against left-handed children and if the injury was caused by other children he had to separate the boy from the group who did this to him.

“Bernd, look at me. In this camp I am your friend. You have nothing to fear and I want to help you. You don’t have to answer. Just nod or shake your head when I ask you something. Will you do this?”

Bernd nodded.

Karl looked once more at the information tag that dangled from Bernd’s neck.

“Are you nine years old?”

Bernd nodded his head.

“Has a teacher hit you on this hand before?”

Another nod from Bernd.

“Did any classmates ever hit you?”

A vigorous shaking of Bernd’s head confirmed Karl’s guess that the injury was caused by a teacher. Every student who was left-handed was automatically considered an idiot or at least a dummy who could only be cured by severe beatings on the left hand. If he would learn to write and work with his right (the correct) hand he was considered to be healed. If not, it was considered to be proof that he was indeed a dummy. This was the common belief in Germany in the 1940s. Employment for a left-handed person was nearly impossible to obtain. Who wanted to employ someone who did not know how to use the correct hand?

The teachers did their best to ensure that their students grew up to be employable and routinely disciplined the left-handers. Most of the time they were called to the front of the class. They were then shown several sticks and permitted to select the one which was then used to punish them.

Some of the teachers were more lenient and did not hurt the boys. They just bandaged the hand so that the student could not use it. Karl had noticed that the left handed girls never got ‘corrected’ and had asked his granddad about it.

“You don’t need to teach a person who will never seek employment. A girl will grow up to be a woman and women shall not work other than to take care of her children and her husband.”

This conversation happened over two years ago and his granddad summed it up in two sentences.

Karl realized that he had a little challenge on his hand. He didn’t know the lieutenant’s take on left handers but one thing was for sure, as long as he was in this camp nobody would touch Bernd. He took the boy by his right hand and went looking for Hardfeld. He found him tending to the boiler in the wash room building and decided on a direct approach.

“Look at Bernd’s hand, please, Herr Lieutenant.”

Hardfeld examined the hand. “This is not as bad as it looks. Nothing is broken. Unfortunately we cannot bring charges against the teacher who did this, but, thanks for bringing this to my attention.”

Karl was glad to hear that the camp leader, who seemed to be in constant pain, was on his side. He decided to ask Harold for some pain medication when he was in Berlin again.

He was taking Bernd back to his friends when he heard loud shouting from the camp gate. Peter had initiated a simple guard detail which patrolled the entry to the camp. In practicality it was unnecessary, but it made the older boys feel important and it gave them something to write home about it.

“Jesus imitator is coming, Jesus imitator is coming!” The shouting got louder as more boys joined in. When Karl got to the gate he was joined by Peter who had also heard the commotion.

Indeed, there was a man passing in front of the gate wearing sandals. There was no beach for hundreds of miles around where sandals might have been condoned as acceptable footwear. But here, in the middle of the country? There was no doubt in the minds of the children that this fellow was imitating Jesus. Every one of them had heard at one time or another about this ancient fellow who about two thousand years ago had traveled through the desert wearing sandals. Anyone wearing sandals now, in 1944, was called a Jesus Ersatz, or imitator.

In 1938 and 1939 the SS had a field day hunting down people wearing sandals. Hundreds if not thousands had been arrested and wound up in concentration camps. It was proclaimed that anyone wearing sandals was either a Hungarian tramp, a Jew or a German drifter sympathizing with the undesirables.

Karl was perplexed about the audacity of the stranger. He could not remember when he had seen an adult wearing flip-flops.

“Come over here,” he waved at the passerby. The man, who seemed to be in his thirties, glanced at Karl’s uniform and for a moment it looked as if he wanted to run away. He probably would have if it hadn’t been for Wanda, one of the Polish camp cooks. She had joined the hubbub at the gateway and was now calling out to the man in Polish.