The Willow Wren by Philipp Schott (free ebook reader for iphone txt) 📕

became very stiff and thin-lipped every time “Greta” was nearby. Afterwards, on the walk home, she would mimic her high voice and how she would say Herr Ortsgruppenleiter a half dozen times in every sentence in reference to Papa and all the great things he was apparently doing. I always forgot what exactly he did.

“Sorry, Mama, please explain again what Papa does there,” I asked on more than one occasion as we walked home.

And the answer was usually a variation on “When he is not combing his hair or smiling at pretty young women, he and his colleagues in the local Party oversee the ration system, make sure that the blackout rules are followed and generally make sure that Leipzig and its people are doing what they can to support the Party and, I suppose, the war effort.”

While Mama’s tone was unmistakable, I could not suppress a certain sense of wonder regarding my father. He did look very important in his spotless grey uniform with the gold-rimmed red insignia on the collar, as well as a red armband with a swastika on it. Standing quietly but imposingly in the midst of his swirling staff, he gave off the aura of a wizard orchestrating some sort of magic, making things happen, perhaps great things, with the merest nods and hand waves. Papa, as Ortsgruppenleiter, was the head Party official in the Connewitz and Leipzig South neighbourhoods. Before the war this was just one rank below the senior Party official for the city, the Kreisleiter, and two below the regional boss, the Gauleiter. This may sound like a simple hierarchy, but the Nazis were bureaucrats extraordinaire and created another system of parallel but more finely graded ranks for wartime. In this system Papa was also an Oberabschnittsleiter (“senior section leader”) and reported to a Hauptabschnittsleiter (“head section leader”) in the Kreisleiter’s office. But this Hauptabschnittsleiter was a notorious bungler and alcoholic who happened to have important Party connections, so Papa was effectively the Kreisleiter’s deputy. Even Mama proclaimed this proudly to neighbours and relatives.

Papa was always at the office until very late in the evening and consequently I was always in bed well before he came home. Mama usually sat by herself during the evenings, mending old clothing or sewing new things. She did not like to have the Volksempfänger on, so the house was very quiet. One evening I was having trouble sleeping, so I got out of bed and walked into the sitting room where I knew Mama would be. I wanted to ask her for a small glass of milk. I found her sitting in an armchair by the window, with her sewing folded on her lap and her head bent down. As I came closer, I saw that her shoulders were shaking and that she was crying. I had never seen her cry before. I did not know what to do. I was about to turn around to sneak out of the room when she noticed me.

“Oh, little mouse, I’m sorry.” She wiped her eyes and smiled at me.

“Mama, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I just . . .” She paused. “I just felt sad. Adults feel sad sometimes for no reason.”

I found this curious as Papa never seemed sad at all, not even a little bit, but then I did not see him very much, so perhaps he was sad sometimes at work. A mental image of that whole group of Nazi officials sitting around the office, weeping freely and passing each other tissues came to mind. But I dismissed the picture right away. I reasoned that they probably excused themselves to the washroom when they suddenly felt sad for no reason. Possibly even the Führer cried sometimes for no reason. Mostly he sounded angry on the radio though.

I was seven years old in the spring of 1941. It must have been around this time that I got beat up for the first time. The boys I played with who made me the loser of their games were not the problem. They were at least theoretically my friends and I think they liked me. In any case, they never showed any inclination to hurt me physically. No, it was another group of boys, the boys who sat in the back rows of the classroom. I think this is a universal phenomenon. Part of the problem was that I had been put ahead a grade, so I was a year younger than my classmates. I was already a small boy for my age, so this only compounded the size differential. It was probably unwise for my parents to allow me to skip a grade, but Papa, who seemed to otherwise view me as a somewhat aberrant and even slightly defective Schott, was proud of my budding academic stardom and did not consider refusing the offer. The other part of the problem was that I was a poor judge of social situations. It took me many years to understand this about myself, but now that I do, many aspects of the past look very different. It is a little bit like suddenly seeing the old woman in that famous optical illusion where it is either an old woman looking to the left or a young woman looking to the right, depending on how you view it.

On the day in question, the teacher, Frau Krämer, was demonstrating a simple addition problem on the blackboard. I had taught myself addition already and had devised a different method for adding numbers with multiple digits. I put my hand up. The teacher was indulgent and invited me to come to the front and demonstrate my method. Twenty heads turned in unison to watch the little Schott pipsqueak march proudly to the front of the class, pick up a long piece of white chalk and in his high voice explain how he preferred to add numbers. Frau Krämer smiled at me and explained that that was very interesting, but that my method would not