Children to a Degree - Growing Up Under the Third Reich (7 page)

Aside from these self-imposed measures there were always air raid marshals patrolling the streets and their shouting “
lights out
” could be heard every evening.

***

During the last two weeks before Karl left for camp the inevitable happened. The last male teacher in Karl’s school had been drafted and female teachers took over. Most of them came from the countryside where they had been teaching integrated classes.

The first few weeks were a time of adjustment for the boys. A female authority figure was as good as unknown. It was only the instilled obedience which prevented an out-and-out rejection.

In Karl’s class there was an additional element of open abhorrence. Due to their age group they were now all members of the Jungvolk, where they had been taught that a German woman would never wear lipstick. The word ‘makeup’ had not been invented. Lipstick was supposedly a French invention and any woman who would wear lipstick was simply a whore. The squad leaders were unwavering in their teachings that women who
paint
their faces did so for the express purpose of attracting men and selling their bodies to them.

So far so good. Karl’s mother did not own lipstick and Karl did not know of any women who would
paint
her face.

However, some of the female teachers who came from the country side and small villages were for the first time in Berlin and thought that they had “
arrived.”

It was a time of changing values in more ways than one.

Adults spied and reported on each other.

Children turned in their parents.

Relatives and friends disappeared during the night.

The Gestapo and the SS were hunting down people of different belief systems or social values.

And Karl’s class in the elementary school of the Pfalzburger Strasse had a new teacher who was a whore. No doubt about it. Everybody could see it. The female teacher was wearing lipstick. Her name was Frau Kessel. The first time she entered the classroom the boys were stunned in utter disbelief.

When Frau Kessler told the class to sit down the boys simply walked out. They went home to tell their parents what was happening in their school.

Two days later all the boys were back in class. The school principal had instructed Frau Kessler to clean her face but the damage was done. The boys could see that their teacher was not a whore anymore but they knew that she had been one. The principal addressed the class and explained and talked, then talked and explained some more but he missed an entirely different point.

There was no way that the boys could conceive that a person, man or woman, who thought so little of their own face that they had to paint it, could possibly teach them anything of value.

Then the unthinkable but true happened. The principal dismissed all the women teachers who had shown up with lipstick on their faces and replaced them with
unpainted
female teachers from other districts.

Since Karl knew he only had to endure the female teacher for a few days, he was not as upset as some of his classmates. He was more amused than dismayed. In his mind Frau Kessler looked like a clown. Maybe not a happy clown, but a clown nevertheless.

On the day that his class walked out of school he visited his grandfather once more.

“Opa, you will not believe what happened.” Karl wanted to know what his grandfather thought of the clown teacher. He thought that the old man might be laughing with him and was surprised by his opa’s attitude.

“Karl, I hoped that my lesson of last week would have resulted in teaching you how to think correctly. Apparently you did not listen to what I told you.”

“Sorry Opa, I will pay better attention. Promise.” Karl was a little ashamed of his behavior.

“Alright, Karl, let us do this differently. I will ask you some questions. You are only allowed to answer yes or no.” His grandfather sat down by the kitchen table and indicated to Karl to sit opposite from him. His grandfather looked Karl sternly in the eyes.

“Here it goes, Karl, I want fast answers. We are talking about the Frau Kessler. Based upon the teachings from your squad leader, did you believe that she was a whore?”

“Yes,” answered Karl.

“Do you know that she is a whore?”

“No,” Karl was getting the drift.

“Do you believe that a female teacher cannot teach you anything?”

“Yes,” Karl answered a little slower.

“Do you know if a female teacher is able to teach you anything?”

“No,” Karl understood now but his grandfather was not done.

“One more question, Karl. Do you understand that your belief system can be in conflict and even the complete opposite from what you know?”

“Yes, Opa, I understand.” Karl liked his grandfather’s simple lessons. He wished that his teachers would make learning this easy. Nevertheless he had a question of his own.

“Excuse me, Opa. Are you saying that I should only act on what I know and not according to my belief system?”

“See, Karl, there is already a conflict between the belief system and the knowing; not only within you but between the whole human race. Most, if not all of the wars ever fought, were based on either revenge or different belief systems.”

Karl’s grandfather got up to pour himself a glass of water from the faucet. “Listen Karl,” he continued. “This is a subject I would like to debate with you when you reach mental maturity.”

“When is this, Opa? You mean when I am an adult?”

“No, Karl, you are an adult when you reach physical maturity. I know many adults who are not mentally mature.” He wanted to add that Karl’s mother was one of them but he did not wanted to hurt Karl’s feelings.

“For you, and for now, it is important that you understand and know the difference between right and wrong and act accordingly.”

There was so much more he wanted to tell Karl about the many differences between knowing and believing but he did not want to confuse him. He himself had a hard enough time comprehending the forced belief system of the Nazi movement and the changes it caused. But he looked forward to debating this subject with Karl in a few years from now. He knew that the boy would apply what he learned and that the debate would be interesting

“Thank you, Opa. I will see you in six months from now.” Karl got up with a heavy heart. It would be so nice if he could talk with his grandfather more often.

When he got home he saw that his mother was busy marking his clothing with a water proof laundry pen.

Six

Karl’s travel destination was the seaside resort Heringsdorf on the island of Usedom by the Baltic Sea. The Berlin school authorities chartered a riverboat with the name of Wintermaerchen (Winter tales), which traveled from a pier in the Havel River by Berlin through the Havel-Oder Canal and then downstream on the Oder river to Stettin. The island of Usedom was then reached by steamboat to the town of Swinemuende.

The day before the departure, Karl had to visit the local HJ office to obtain last minute instructions. The remainder of the day was filled with the packing and re-packing of two suitcases. Karl’s mother had so much clothing laying on the beds and chairs that it would have taken five koffers (suit cases) to transport all of it.

When Karl’s father arrived home from work in the evening, Karl had unpacked his cases for the third time. “Papa, help me. I am going bonkers with all this stuff.” Karl was standing in socks and a turnhose (gym shorts) helplessly in front of the disorder on the bed. His brother did not help at all by sitting on the bed and throwing Karl’s clothing willy-nilly in the air.

Herr Veth did not waste any time.

“Uniform?”

Karl had two matching summer uniforms and was required to wear one during the trip. He handed his father the other one.

“Next, sport shirts.”

Karl had about five and his father packed three of them on top of the uniform.

“Next, shorts and regular underwear.”

Within no time at all Herr Veth had finished packing the first suitcase. In the meantime, Karl’s mother came to the rescue and packed the other suitcase with a pair of turn (running) shoes, socks and the remainder of underwear. There was even some room left for Karl’s favorite books. This was actually the whole dilemma in his previous packing efforts. He did not give a hoot about his underwear or the new swim shorts. It was his books that gave him problems. He needed the HJ manuals and instruction books, so they had to come along. Next he did not need, but wanted, the advanced school books for all the remaining grades up to the final school year. This amounted to a whole bunch. When his parents had realized how serious Karl was in his effort to enter the Napola they bought every school book available.

Karl’s father came through again. “Your German grammar is excellent. You might need one dictionary for your writing. Your arithmetic is also outstanding. Take one book for algebra. History is your favorite subject, so take one you have not read. That’s all. Write me if you need any of the remaining ones and I will send them to you. Your birthday is coming up in July and next week I will send you a pre-birthday present in the form of some University entry level books. You once told me that you like to study law. Is this still of interest to you?”

Karl looked at his father and wondered when he had slipped up. He did not remember when he had this conversation with his father but he had to agree that the laws of different countries were of great interest to him.

“Yes, Pappa, I know a little bit about German law. I also read a book on British law. But my real interest is in international maritime law.”

Herr Veth looked at his son in surprise. This really was news to him. He did not even know that there was such a thing as maritime law.

“Alright, if I find something of this subject I will send it to you.”

He closed the cover of the second suitcase.

“Now make us proud of you. I know that you will write for the HJ and the Jugendburg (school periodical); but these are monthly publications and I can pick up a copy at the school. Just don’t forget Mutti and your brother and sister and me. We will cherish every one of your letters.” He wiped a tear from his eyes. “Be a role model, Karl. But most of all be good.”

He went to bed because he had to leave for work early in the morning.

When Karl went to bed he could hardly sleep. The excitement of leaving home and traveling with a group of children to an unfamiliar destination was one thing. Saying goodbye to his parents was another and he loved his little brother and his sister.

The worst was still ahead of him: saying goodbye to his mother. He tried not to think of it and wondered if he had made the right decision, but sooner or later he would have to leave home anyhow. “
Might as well get used to it early on
,” he thought by himself.

***

The next morning was a beautiful day. Spring was coming and the bright and almost warm sun chased last night’s doubts from his mind. On the evening before, his mother had taken his sister and brother to the grandparents and was now traveling with him on the city train to Tegel where the river boat waited on the pier.

There were over 200 children crying and saying goodbye to their parents. Karl was not sure who cried the most. It was a toss-up between the adults and the kids.

There were also several boat workers who loaded the luggage on handcarts and rolled them into the freight room of the riverboat. This again caused a certain panic because some of the parents had no name tags attached to the baggage.

On this particular trip all of the children were between 8 and 9 years old and belonged to the Berliner school district of Kreuzberg. Karl knew the subway station of the area but that was about all. His luggage was already on board. As he stood next to his mother under the large sign marked “V” for the first letter of his last name he saw Rudy walking up to him. The squad leader was relieved when he spotted him. He shook hands with Karl’s mother and then slipped a white and red armband over Karl’s arm sleeve.

“Unterfuehrer” (sub leader) it proclaimed in big black letters.

“Say goodbye to your mother. I will console her. We need you to board the ship to install order among the kids. You are the only sub leader we have on this trip and the teachers will be happy to see you. Do it now.” He urged as he saw some hesitation on Karl’s part.

Karl was happy to be forced to say a fast goodbye. He kissed his mother’s tears away and closed his arms around her. “I love you Mutti. I will be back in six months,” he whispered in her ear and then disentangled himself from her arms. He snapped a salute at Rudy and walked with firm steps toward the boat.

Before he entered the gangway he turned around and waved to his mother and then snapped his sharpest salute in the direction of a small musical band of World War One invalids who played the German farewell song: “
Muss I denn aus dem staedeli hinaus.
” His salute was answered with a rousing shout of “Heil Hitler,” though he thought that he heard someone yelling “g
o to Hell,”
but he might have been mistaken. He could not discern his mother in the crowd, so he turned and entered the lower deck of the double deck boat.

As soon as he walked between the rows of crying and shouting children sitting on benches across the width of the ship he was discovered by a female teacher. “Over here, sub leader” she shouted in a warm voice and pointed to a seat next to the ship’s window. Karl was amazed that his name and designation was on a card pinned to back board of the seat bench.

“Does every child have their name on a seat?” he asked the teacher, who had a plain but friendly face. No lipstick. She looked older than his mother, which in his mind made her old.

“No, only the teachers have a reserved seat. My name is Frau Niehaus.” She offered Karl a handshake.

“My name is Karl Veth,” Karl introduce himself. Frau Niehaus smiled.

“I know,” she said pointing to his name on the seat. “You are the only sub leader on board.” She wanted to say more but a squeaky loudspeaker announced that all the children were on board and departure was imminent. “We need to calm the children here on the lower deck. There are two more teachers on the upper deck so we don’t need to go up there. However, your armband allows you to go wherever you please.” She was interrupted by the ships horn which bellowed three times and Karl could feel a rumbling below his feet as the boat backed off from the pier.  Frau Niehaus went to the rear part of the ship and motioned Karl to go to the forward section.