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62 D Chapter Sixteen d School dAyS Like vermin,the Nazi big shots had infested Dahlem’s stateliest residences,after the rightful Jewish owners were chased out.Behind high walls, embedded in luscious parks with swimming pools, these“prolet-Aryans,”a term invented by my father, were guarded by SA or SS with dogs from attacks by Communists or, worse, Jews. St. Gertraude’s School for Girls, which I had been attending since the spring of 1932, had been invaded by Nazis. In my class was Bettina von Ribbentrop, daughter of the future Nazi ambassador to England. She was a head taller than I, and once I had to climb on a bench in order to slap her across her sheep-like face. Fortunately, she did not report this insult at home,but for days I waited for the Gestapo to come for me.There were two sisters, offspring of the notorious Reichsfrauenfuehrerin 17 Gertrud Scholz-Klink,miniature editions of their mother, including their hair in plaits draped around their heads in a Teutonic fashion . Mechtild Rust, older daughter of the Minister of Education Bernhard Rust, received a well-deserved failing mark, but her teacher, Dr. Schroeder, was to bear the consequences. He did not land in a concentration camp, but he was transferred to a godforsaken village in the East. Gudrun Himmler, by a stroke of luck, was in a lower grade. Except for Inge Lutze, her father the SA Chief Viktor Lutze, all Nazi brats arrived at school in their fathers’ luxury limousines, swastika flag and all, snubbing their chauffeurs, who submissively opened the car doors for the snot noses. At age sixteen, Inge would die in the same car accident that killed her father; we all mourned her loss. By the summer of 1933, certain changes at St. Gertraude’s began to become quite noticeable .Not overnight,but little by little,three different categories of teachers had begun to emerge.The first category consisted of staunch anti-Nazis,the second one ardently in favor of Hitler, while the third group, initially opposed to the regime, eventually fell for it, either through mounting pressure or by a true change of heart. These turncoats, eager to make up for their initial errors, were dangerous. Our homeroom teacher, an elderly, yellow-faced spinster with matching yellow bags under her eyes,thin gray hair knotted in a tight bun,had become a turncoat in favor of the Nazis. One morning, her voice trembling with emotion, she informed us that she had placed her dear departed mother’s framed picture on top of the radio when the führer spoke, so she could partake in the new euphoria. Hitler’s heroic portrait soon graced the walls of every single German classroom. Instead of the traditional“good morning,”a teacher would be required to lift his or her right They even Closed The Candy sTore 63 arm in the new Hitler salute when entering a classroom.By the manner in which this“wing flapping,” as we called it, was performed, we were soon able to determine whether it came from the heart or not. At a tender age,when a young girl’s mind should have been occupied with dolls,games, fun parties, and mischief, I received my first instructions in “conspirative behavior.” Being a fast learner, it did not take me long to differentiate clearly between what I heard at home and what was taught at school, and to act accordingly. Soon I was able to sense and recognize imminent danger and learned how to cope with this strange kind of schizophrenia,regarding it as a game, a very perilous game, eventually enabling me to walk the dangerously narrow path over an abyss without falling down. One day, late in 1933, we were handed questionnaires in class, accompanied by the order to have them filled out and signed by our parents. They contained questions about the student’s “Aryan” descent. I turned to my bench neighbor, Ditte, a lively and cheerful little girl with an audacious face and wiry brown pigtails, to inquire what “Aryan” meant. Was that a religion,maybe? But she did not know either.My concerned parents told me that this term had nothing to do with religion but with “race.” What the school wanted to find out was which students were Jewish.Jewish?All I knew about the Jews was what I had been taught at Sunday school, namely that they did not believe in Jesus. Were they...

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