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

blue eyes, but he had dark brown hair, not the glistening blond of the posters. At seventeen he was one of the oldest boys in camp, and by stint of his leadership in the Hitler Youth he was essentially second in command to Herr Tischendorf. Given that Herr Tischendorf was increasingly only seen at the morning flag raising and in his classroom and spent the rest of the time alone in his office (drinking bootleg plum brandy it was rumoured), Felix had more or less free rein over us. Moreover, I had the additional bad luck of having him in our dormitory. He was dormitory head boy and the camp’s Hitler Youth leader all in one.

In later years I read William Golding’s justly famed book, Lord of the Flies. Although he gained his insight into the true nature of children in the English boarding school system, he could just as easily have learned it at the KLV-Lager. It is perhaps a harsh satire of English boarding schools, but for the KLV-Lager it is simply factual description with only the setting and specific circumstances changed.

I immediately was put on chamber pot duty again. I tried my spilling trick and it did not go well.

“Schott! You swine, what did you do?”

“I am sorry, it was an accident. The bucket is so heavy.”

“That’s ‘I am sorry, Herr Schneider,’ you disrespectful little shit!” Even though he was not an adult we were expected to address him as one. I had forgotten. “You are not a baby anymore. Accidents are unacceptable in the Hitler Youth! Weakness is unacceptable in the Hitler Youth! You will clean up this piss and shit while the rest of us are at breakfast. Use your facecloth to do so.”

“Sir?” This did not make sense. Nazis were many things, but they were not dirty. Cleanliness was pursued with an especially intense fervour. We may have been short of nutritious food and warm clothing, but we were never short of cleaning supplies.

“You heard me clearly! No breakfast! Facecloth! If it is not clean enough you will scrub further with your toothbrush!” This was almost farcical, like something from a Marx Brothers comedy film, but I did not laugh. I managed to clean it up well enough that it was not necessary to deploy the toothbrush. I was also placed on chamber pot duty for the next two weeks. I slopped some of the contents out once, truly by accident, but fortunately Felix did not notice before I had a chance to quickly wipe it up. I should say, “Felix and his henchmen,” as there were three other older boys in our dormitory who acted as his deputies and took delight in reporting infractions to him. I do not remember their names, and their faces are interchangeable in my mind’s eye. Perhaps there were even four of them.

My marching also came under scrutiny. For some reason, when we were formed in ranks and ordered to march left, I would sometimes march right. It was not an act of deliberate rebellion, nor was there anything wrong with my hearing; it was just that sometimes the command would enter my ear, sail down the nerve to my brain and then get lost somewhere on the way to the part which sorts left from right. Perhaps my brain has more twists and turns than the average brain. This was especially likely to happen when my brain was busy straining to hear a bird or noticing that a cloud was in the shape of Sweden. This had attracted bellows and corrections from Reinhard and Herr Tischendorf, but they seemed to allow a little more latitude because I was the smallest and youngest and as long as I turned 180 degrees to the correct direction right away, they would sigh, or grumble, and life would go on.

Felix, in contrast, was incensed. He screamed at me the first time I did this and smacked me on the shoulder with the butt of a wooden rifle, threatening dire consequences if I was ever so insolent again. I burst into tears, which did not help my case. I found out later that Theodor, who looked like he had been ignoring this, went on his own to Herr Tischendorf and asked him to speak to Felix about me. This must have been effective because while Felix still screamed at me and while he still tapped me hard with his wooden rifle, it was not as hard and he no longer threatened punishment. I do not think that I ever thanked Theodor for this. I suspect that he protected me in other ways that I was not aware of then.

But all of this was just an advanced level of meanness and cruelty; it was not true sadism. The first act of true sadism was after Felix had been in charge for about a week.

One of the ways being in the DJV and the Hitler Youth differed from just being a student at the camp was that there was less time devoted to sports in the afternoon and more military drills and exercises. As I mentioned before, I certainly did not love the sports, but the change was unwelcome, as the replacement activities were much worse. Also Felix did not seem particularly concerned about wrapping the exercises up in time for supper. Once we did not eat until eight in the evening as he had us out on a twelve-kilometre march across the frozen fields and overestimated how fast we would manage to do it. He was furious, screaming at us for the last two hours, but perhaps some spark of intelligence buried deep in his skull prevented him and his henchmen from beating us bloody, as I am sure he would have loved to. Beating would have slowed us down even more. This was not the sadism though. That came later that night.

Although he was a year older, Ernst was as small as me. He was in the bunk diagonally across from mine.