Two Brothers (48 page)

‘A half prick, half arsehole
Untermensch
, that’s your Führer,
sir
.’

The principal didn’t rant and rail as Otto had expected him to. He didn’t beat him or shoot him on the spot. Instead, the big friendly-looking face broke into a smile.

‘Well, I must say, lad,’ he boomed good-humouredly, ‘those Jews certainly didn’t manage to knock the spirit out of you, did they? You’ve got balls, my fine young man. Big proud German balls.’

‘Fuck you, sir,’ Otto replied, ‘and fuck Hitler too.’

‘That’s right. Get it all out. Fifteen years a kike is going to have an effect, isn’t it? But I’m going to fix that. You see, young Otto my lad, you are my
project
. An experiment if you like. I’m going to show that your blood is stronger than any Jewish lie. I’m going to bring you back to the
Volk
, my son. Renew your membership of the
master race
, which some careless Commie doctor disregarded at your birth. So then, let’s get to business. We know you’ve got guts all right. Tell me, can you box?’

Otto had resolved not to cooperate with this man but still could not resist the question.

‘If I’m hitting Nazis,’ he replied.

‘Good. We have lots of those here. There’s a senior class going on right now as it happens. Come with me.’

Otto was led back down to the same changing room that he had just left and presented with a sports kit marked with the same triangular swastika badge that was switched to his arm. He could hear the sound of boxing going on in the gymnasium where he had just been examined and, sure enough, on being led back in he saw that a boxing ring had been set up and a group of seventeen-and eighteen-year-old boys were sparring.

‘Lads,’ the head teacher shouted as he entered the room, causing all the youths to spring to rigid attention. ‘This is Otto. He’s a new boy. He just insulted the Führer. Who wants to teach him a lesson?’

The clamour that this announcement caused produced the most likely candidate in short order, a hugely powerful young man who was three years older than Otto and twenty centimetres taller.

‘If this
Jungmann
has insulted our Leader,’ the powerful-looking boxer boomed, flexing his rock-like biceps, ‘then it will be my honour to punish him.’

Otto shrugged and climbed into the ring.

As he did so the principal stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder, whispering into his ear, ‘Bet you can’t last a single minute with him, little Jew boy.’

Otto wasn’t stupid. He knew he was being goaded. But then he did not need goading. He was ready and happy to fight an opponent who looked quite capable of killing him. All he hoped for was to do some damage first and show those Nazis that a Jewish boy knew how to die. As they tied the gloves to his hands and pushed a gum guard between his teeth, Otto resolved that the only way he was leaving the ring was either unconscious or dead.

The fight was stopped after lasting almost three rounds, by which time Otto was not quite yet unconscious, but then neither was he fully conscious. He was a swollen, bleeding, staggering, gagging, punch-drunk wreck, hitting the canvas over and over again but refusing to stay down and somehow managing to drag himself back on to his feet.

For most of the first round he had even held his own, tucking in under the big man’s reach and getting a couple of heavy hooks into his opponent’s body. But as the older lad got his measure, Otto quickly became nothing more than a tenacious punching bag, as bloody faced as he was bloody minded, careering about the ring, propelled by the massive blows that were raining down on him.

Eventually when one particularly vicious haymaker sent him spinning and tumbling through the ropes and in amongst the spectators, the principal called a halt.

‘You see this wild boy,’ Otto could hear the principal calling out, ‘brought up by Jews! But within him flows the blood and beats the heart of Thor! This fight has been proof! If proof were needed that
blood
is everything. Take him to the hospital.’

As they dragged him to his feet, Otto attempted to bawl out a cry of defiance, but his mouth was too cut and swollen for him to speak. Both his eyes were also closing fast. He struggled feebly in the grip of the grinning youths who had hold of him, flailing weakly with his gloved fists, before staggering and falling once more. This time when he hit the floor the lights had truly gone out.

Making Contact

Berlin, 1936

FOR THE FIRST four months that Otto was at the school, he was kept closely watched and not allowed any contact or communication with the outside world whatsoever.

‘Your body and your blood belong to the Führer,’ the principal informed him many times, ‘but it is clear that your mind still resides with your Jew abductors. Therefore,
Jungmann
, we will keep you close, eh?’

Incarcerated in the Spartan confines of a uniquely confident and self-satisfied institution, Otto soon realized that making his protest was not to be as easy as he’d hoped. His plan, such as it was, had been to fight the entire school until they either killed him or threw him out. The problem, he discovered, was that the more he fought, the more spirited and ‘German’ they considered him to be. Every blow he delivered and every beating he took confirmed the school in its belief that rare ‘blood’ flowed in his veins. They held that no Jew could ever show such courage or loyalty and therefore the fact that Otto had maintained these characteristics despite their malicious influence was further proof of Nazi racial theories. The principal saw his happy challenge as simply to redirect Otto’s splendid fighting spirit back in its proper direction. What was more, the harder that task was, the further proof it provided of how wicked and manipulative the perfidious Jew family who had brought Otto up had been. In the principal’s mind, the more Otto fought, the more noble he appeared and the more spitefully cunning his adoptive parents seemed.

Otto had also won for himself the amused respect of his peers, which of course made him angrier still. Right from the first boxing match when he had gone three rounds with the school champion he had been admired as a fighter, which was really the only quality the school thought worthy of respect. Otto’s snarling aggression and willingness to mix it at any time and with anyone was regarded as magnificent, endearing almost. Otto had a pleasant, open sort of face (when it wasn’t bruised and battered beyond recognition) and people had always been drawn to him, liking him on sight. It was the same at the Napola, and very soon the school began to treat him as a sort of pet. A valuable dog that had an impressive mean streak and killer instinct which, when tamed, would make him the best of his breed.

It made Otto almost crazy with frustration. He could not make them hate him the way he hated them. In fact, he began to realize, they felt
sorry
for him. A fine lad, ruined by Jews. Anti-Semitism was the number one subject at the school, it informed every lesson whatever the subject, and Otto became a living, breathing mascot for the school’s creed. Brave, aggressive and headstrong because of his blood and misguided because of his upbringing.

Lying silently in his dormitory amongst boys with whom he refused to speak and with whom he fought every single day, Otto realized he must rethink his strategy. Clearly just fighting was not enough.

He almost smiled to think how Paulus would have laughed to hear him admit that.

He missed Paulus so much.

Paulus was the clever one, the thinker, the strategist. He would know the right way to behave. He would have a plan. He always did.

Thinking of Paulus reminded Otto of how wretchedly lonely he was. So lonely that he had occasionally even found himself considering making a friend or two amongst the other boys. They weren’t such a bad lot, country lads mainly, farmers’ sons and party kids. All bound together in common cause against the pathologically harsh discipline which the school clearly seemed to feel was the only way to educate future leaders. These
Jungmannen
, as they were called, were harassed constantly by often sadistic group leaders who were barely older than they were. This suffering of course formed a close bond in the dormitories and Otto would have liked very much to take some comfort in being part of the group. But he could not. Not ever. These same jolly boys chucking balls, laughing at farts, exchanging dirty postcards and comparing strap marks from the beatings they all regularly endured, these were the same boys who believed that his mother and the girl he loved were vermin.

He would not forget that just to make his life in this prison easier. He could not.

Nonetheless, as the days and weeks passed he found himself slowly compromising on his attitude towards his captors. His anger never subsided but he started trying to manage it. He could see that by behaving in such an openly combative manner he was really only hurting himself.

Besides which, he missed his parents and his brother so much that he resolved to try to behave at least well enough for them to allow him to go outside of the school occasionally. He knew that he could make no direct contact with his family but he longed at least to have news of them.

Desperately, gnawingly lonely as he was, he longed also for a friend. And so he set himself the task of earning a pass out. He kept on fighting, of course, but he began principally to do it within the rules, in boxing and military classes. He also began to give the Hitler salute, having perfected a way of giving it with two fingers very slightly crossed, which always made him feel closer to Paulus. And he began to make an effort on the playing field, which, along with fighting and soldiering, seemed to be the only area of achievement the staff were interested in. He even started to exchange the odd word or two with those hearty farmers’ sons who tried sometimes to engage him in conversation.

By the middle of the spring of 1936, Otto finally managed to get through a week without being disciplined for insubordination and he decided that the time had come to approach the principal in the hope of being allowed out of the school.

The principal had of course been delighted to note the change in Otto’s attitude, and slapped him on the back while Otto stood rigidly to attention before him.

‘Well now, boy,’ the principal said indulgently. ‘Of course, I should be happy to let you have an afternoon free each week as the other boys have. The only thing is how can I trust you not to go and visit those Jews you once called family?’

‘Because they
are
Jews, sir,’ Otto replied, ‘and I wear the uniform of a Napola
Jungmann
.’

The principal smiled but he was far from convinced.

‘You are saying that you are done with them? That you have no family feelings left?’

Otto might not have been as clever as Paulus but he knew enough not to overplay his lie.

‘No, sir. I still love my ex-mother and father because they were kind to me. However, I am a
Jungmann
of the Napola and I belong to the Führer. Therefore I cannot visit my ex-family because whatever I may feel for them personally they are still Jews.’

‘Well, who do you wish to visit then?’ the principal asked.

‘A girl, sir.’

‘Ahh!’ The big man laughed. ‘Now
that
I can believe. What girl?’

‘A fine German girl, sir. She is the daughter of my ex-mother’s ex-maid. She is a member of the BDM and her stepfather is in the
Sturmabteilung
.’

‘Now that sounds more like it!’ the principal said. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. To start with you can invite her here. Sundays are visiting days when older boys may entertain family or a friend to tea. You can invite this girl. Sit down at once, boy, and write her an invitation. I’ll see that it is posted.’

And so the following Sunday Silke came.

She had scarcely been able to reply to the invitation fast enough. For once even she had the support of her stepfather, who had been hugely impressed when Silke received a letter from such a prestigious institution as a party academy.

When Otto first caught sight of Silke he nearly broke down and cried. He had had no word nor sight of anyone he loved in many months and when he saw his old friend smiling through the railings waiting to be admitted he was almost overcome. Then, when the moment came and the great iron gate was opened, they rushed to each other and hugged and hugged and actually jumped for joy in each other’s arms before they had even spoken a word. It was only the awareness of grinning faces around them that made Otto let go of Silke at all.

‘Hey watch out, miss,’ one of Otto’s dorm mates called out. ‘He normally punches before he speaks.’

‘Looks like now we know what makes him smile,’ another laughed.

The faces and the voices were friendly. Everyone was pleased to see the wild boy of the school hugging someone. Especially a pretty girl in a BDM uniform. For once Otto did not resent their intrusion – he was too happy to be back in contact with at least one part of the life he loved and had lost.