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6 Assignment East I N THE SUMMER OF 1943 the adult leadership of the Hitler Youth in Wolfenbiittel asked nine of uszyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONML Jungvolk leaders whether we were ready during our vacation to spend four weeks in the areas of Poland occupied by the German army. We were to carry out there our normal Jungvolk activities with the local Polish boys, go camping with them, teach them to march and to sing, play soccer, engage in athletic contests, and tell them what life was like for our boys in the Reich. For us there was only one possible answer. Of course we were ready to go. We were impatient to travel and I wanted to see the formerly Polish lands I had heard so much about in Mr. Fuchtel's class. We were eager to carry to Polish boys our enthusiasm for sports, parades, war games, and all the other things we did at home. We saw that invitation as a great adventure, a once-in-a-life-time oppportunity. We told ourselves that this was going to be the high point of our lives thus far. We would be able to prove what we were capable of. We could see for ourselves whether our ideals would stand the test on foreign soil, and we could do our part to help the war effort. I cherished the additional thought that I would now follow in my father's steps, would see the country he had seen and written about in his letters and, if luck was with me, perhaps have a chance to meet him there. None of us gave it a second thought. None of us imagined, even for a minute, that our hopes and expectations might be dashed; that instead of introducing Polish boys to our ways of the Jungvolk, instead of inspiring them with our ideals and aspirations, we might discover with our own eyes the reality of the Nazi domination of Poland, the misery it brought to the boys we had wanted to be with, and the corruption that clung to the occupiers who claimed to be Hitler Youth leaders and our superiors. 101 Assignment East zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQ But that is what we encountered. The cruelty we saw inflicted upon the Polish boys in the camp to which we were sent and the debauchery in which their tormentors indulged were so stark and so gross that we, at first, did not recognize them for what they were. We were astonished , then dumbfounded, and just as we were about to digest and understand what confronted us, we were thrown out of the camp, sent individually into widely dispersed towns and villages where we could no longer communicate with one another, and then shipped back home, decried as traitors, unworthy of the uniform we wore. We were left to our own devices, unsure of our own reactions. Were the Nazi rulers of Poland, the professional Hitler Youth leaders among them, cruel and corrupt, or was it our naivete that blinded us to the necessities of war and occupation? Who would tell us? Who would answer such questions? Were we traitors, indeed, for having sought answers from the Polish boys we met in the camp? Would we, on our return home, be removed from our leadership positions in the Jungvolk , as the Hitler Youth men in the camp had threatened, and would our careers as soldiers and officers be cut off before they ever had really begun? We did not know; we feared the worst. As a result, on our return to Wolfenbiittel, we were all too ready to forget and suppress what we had learned if only no one was going to ask and remind us. We were going to continue leading our boys as though nothing had happened, as though we had forgotten what we had seen. All this, of course, was far from our minds when we began our journey on the appointed day. With Dieter, "The General", as our leader, we nine gathered at the Wolfenbiittel railroad station early in the morning, resplendent in our uniforms, packs on our backs, canteens dangling on our sides, a new merit stripe Osteinsatz—Assignment East—stitched to our sleeves. The train took us to Braunschweig where we changed to the Berlin express. Our destination in the Reichshauptstadt was the national headquarters of the Hitler Youth. There we were to be briefed on our assignment and to get our marching orders. We arrived at headquarters late in the afternoon and were...

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