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

In any case, there was fresh snow and it was very cold when Herr Tischendorf called Reinhard over to one side of the yard. This was not unusual and would not have stuck in my memory if this had not been followed by a sudden very loud scream, which was all the more startling for the otherwise muffled silence of the snowy day. We all wheeled around from whatever pointless exercise we were engaged in and looked at the source of the scream. Reinhard had collapsed to his knees in the snow and was making a sound unlike any I have heard from a boy before. It was an animal sound, like I imagined a farm animal would make while being slaughtered. It was not a sound I recognized as human. Nobody said anything. We just stood and watched while Herr Tischendorf tried awkwardly to calm Reinhard down, bending over, putting his hand on the boy’s shuddering shoulder. It then became quiet but for some barely audible sobbing, yet we all still stood, our oddly synchronized puffs of breath vapour being the only thing that moved for several long minutes.

That evening at supper we learned that Reinhard’s father had been killed fighting in Italy. Here was death again. This troubled me in two ways. First, I had only been vaguely aware that there was fighting in Italy. Italy was much closer than Russia. This did not strike me as good news for Germany, or ultimately for me. The boys sitting around me insisted that it was because our Italian allies had failed, and now that our own army had taken direct control the situation would surely improve. Nonetheless, the fact that Americans and British (and Canadians too, I later learned) were able to shoot Germans dead right on the continent of Europe, less than a day’s drive from the southern border of the Reich, was worrisome. My companions were much more versed in military affairs and launched into a detailed explanation of why there was nothing to worry about, but my mind was already drifting off because of the second way this troubled me. I had never seen that kind of grief before.

While they jabbered on about the Tiger II versus Tiger I tanks, I tried to imagine how I would react if Herr Tischendorf pulled me aside to tell me that Papa had been killed, say in another bombing raid on Leipzig. I did not picture myself reacting as Reinhard did. I did picture myself being sad, perhaps privately crying a bit like I did after Oma’s passing, but certainly not screaming and wailing. I reasoned that I was just less emotional, but Reinhard had never given any indication of an emotional range beyond that of a common garden slug. Moreover, when I contemplated Mama’s theoretical death, I pictured something beyond screaming and wailing. I pictured end-of-the-world hysterics and fathomless lifelong grief, so it seemed that emotion was in me too. I wondered then if the difference was in how we felt towards our fathers. I was sure that I loved Papa, but I was coming to see that love is not just one thing. The love I felt for Mama was different than the love I felt for my siblings, which was different again than the love I felt for Papa. Perhaps, for some reason, Reinhard felt for his father the kind of love I felt for my mother. This analysis made sense, but it bothered me a little bit to know this.

The Allied bullet that ended Herr Protz’s life in some smoking ruin of a village in the hills of central Italy was the first domino in a series that led to life becoming even worse for me at KLV-Lager Schoenberg. Reinhard was sent away the next day to be with his mother. We never saw him again. I learned years later that he had been killed in the final battle for Leipzig, although whether he was one of the Volkssturm teen soldiers or just a bystander, I do not know. His replacement as head boy was not an improvement, far from it. Reinhard had been mean and at times arbitrarily cruel, but Felix was an actual sadist. It is ironic in a way, because “felix” is Latin for “happy.” Maybe Felix was entirely happy in his sadism, or maybe it was a mask to hide a deeper unhappiness. This I wonder now, but a ten-year-old boy does not wonder these things. A ten-year-old boy only knows that someone is a source of terror and pain and wonders how he can avoid the terror and pain. He does not wonder why it exists in the first place.

In February 1944 I was in the DJV of the Hitler Youth. Papa had insisted that I join as soon as I turned ten, the minimum age. Even if he had not insisted, life in camp would have become even more unbearable if I refused to join. I would likely have been the only one. On January 21, which was my tenth birthday, Papa sent me a cheerful letter welcoming me to the “brotherhood of patriotic German men.” In the letter Papa reminded me that although I may be small, I was a Schott, ergo by definition I would do well. I was encouraged to make him, the nation and the Führer proud.

The DJV led directly to full Hitler Youth membership at fourteen, which led directly to full Nazi Party membership at eighteen. The distinction between DJV and regular Hitler Youth steadily dissolved over the course of the war as the older Hitler Youth leaders were sent off to the front, and it became more expedient to put mixed-aged groups of boys under the command of sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds. Felix was one of these. He was almost the classic Aryan type one consistently saw on the propaganda posters, but much less consistently in real life. He was tall and muscular with a chiselled chin and high cheekbones and