Requiem for a German Past: A Boyhood among the Nazis

9. Etzel’s Tale

9 Etzel's Tale A FTER THE BOMBING RAID IN JANUARY 1944 the tempo of alarms zyxwvutsrqpo / \ and of summons to special relief actions for us boys in the JLJL Jungvolk increased measurably. Night- and daytime attacks on Hannover occurred once or twice every week, and we Jungvolk boys continued to board specially chartered buses to Hannover to dig out basements and air-raid shelters, clear rubble from roads and streetcar lines, and help bombed-out families pack up their few rescued belongings and load them on trucks to be taken out to relative safety in the countryside. When we were home in Wolfenbiittel, Dieter, Etzel, myself, and a few others, all Jungvolk leaders, drew together ever more closely. The evacuation of the Hannover Light Opera Company to Wolfenbiittel and the quartering of its personnel with families on the Harztorwall had given me a wonderful opportunity to get to know some of the actors and actresses. The story of the ahngehackter was only one of many that made the rounds among us boys and showed how our nightly involuntary meetings during air-raid alarms in our basement had forged close friendships. As a result I received free tickets for myself and my friends for every new performance the company gave in Wolfenbuttel 's Lessing Theater. Strategically placed throughout the theater, a couple of us on every balcony, we were expected to start the applause after every aria ancj act. That duty and, for one of us, at the end of the performance, the leap from the first balcony's front right seat to the stage, with a bouquet for the lead actress in hand, was our price of admission. We hummed and whistled all day long melodies of Emmerich Kalman's Csdrdasfurstin, Leo Fall's Dollar Princess, Fred Raymond's Mask in Blue, and Franz Lehar's The Land of Smiles. We had become enthusiastic operetta connoisseurs. 141 ■^^^^^^^^^^■^^^ w zyxwvutsrqpon Etzel 142 Etzel's Tale zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQ When we weren't in the theater or on relief missions we spent many a night at the blackjack and peach brandy ice cream parties that lasted until the sirens would drive us in the shelters or, if the night was quiet, until way past midnight. We were conscious of the fact that for all of us this might come to an abrupt end any day or any night. Our mission in Grofi Denkte and our trips to Hannover had told us that. School itself had become ever more meaningless for us. For most of my classmates in the Grofle Schule regular classroom activities had ceased already in the spring of 1943 when they were sent to man the anti-aircraft batteries around the nearby industrial centers at Salzgitter. Our teachers followed them, and instruction for us "three-year boys" who stayed behind continued on an on-again, off-again schedule until, later in the year, we were sent to school in Braunschweig. That proved to be a disaster since I quickly found out that, compared with the Braunschweig students, we transfer students from Wolfenbiittel were at least a year behind in our knowledge of mathematics, Latin, and the natural sciences. I began to dread my daily streetcar trip to Braunschweig and threw myself into my Jungvolk activities with even greater enthusiasm than before. It became for me a virtual life-saver. In these months my friendship with Etzel deepened. Etzel, two years older than I, was my Fahnleinfuhrer, and I served under him as one of his platoon leaders. I often met with him in the afternoon and evening in the house on the Lange Strafie where he lived with his mother on the second floor. His uncle, the artist Otto Biicher, had his studio down below on the ground level and lived with Etzel's aunt Elli Biicher on the top floor of the building. The house itself, built of halftimbers filled in with straw-lined bricks, was old and dilapidated. The wooden steps creaked when I climbed up to Etzel's room. The room itself was just large enough to hold a sofa, two easy chairs, a bookshelf, a gramophone, and a coffee table. Its window looked across the narrow street onto the plastered wall of a building on the opposite side. With its entrance separate from the main apartment and no possibility for anyone to watch us through the window, Etzel's room afforded us the greatest possible...