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53 D Chapter Thirteen d nAziS on pArAde The charade of Potsdam had sent my father into a fit of rage. He learned that not only had the kaiser’s fourth son,August Wilhelm, attended the spectacle in his brown storm trooper outfit,but also his older brother,“Crown Prince”Wilhelm,nicknamed“LittleWilly,”saluted the new chancellor while wearing a black World War I uniform. In the late spring of 1933, a big parade was scheduled in honor of the chancellor. My father decided to take our family to his own office in the Dutch Palace on Unter den Linden , where we would able to watch the spectacle without getting cold feet. He wanted us there so that we would never forget. We took a taxi for the lengthy ride into the city, and upon entering my father’s office suite, we met with a crowd of friends and employees. The old white-haired and white-gloved butler carried around a tray with tea. When he came to me,he filled a dainty little cup,reverently bowed his head,and again addressed me as“most gracious baroness.”Fortunately,this time my mother was not around to set him straight,so I thanked him with a gracious smile. It was a cold evening and the sun had gone down, leaving the city in twilight. Excited beyond description, I climbed onto the sill of the wide-open window. In front of the building were masses of people in a state of euphoria, waving little swastika flags. A storm trooper with a fat shaved neck above his brown uniform collar offered me one,but I caught my mother’s threatening look just in time. The flag itself had been designed by Hitler; the hooked cross,resembling a large spider,would become the most cherished and feared symbol of Nazi Germany, standing for ultimate victory of the Aryan race. Thousands of Berliners lined the streets, eagerly awaiting the motorcade, the open car carrying its precious cargo,Hindenburg and Hitler.Endless formations of soldiers marched swiftly by our window, members of the Reichswehr, the post-war German Army. The presidential convertible was followed by police squads, platoons of brown-clad storm troopers, HitlerYouth formations, and—in black outfits with shoulder straps, skull symbols on their lapels, sleeves, and caps—Hitler’s very own guard, the newly formed Schutzstaffel. In runic style their insignia displayed two letters: SS. Total darkness had fallen over the city, illuminated only by the flickering light of hundreds of torches,enhancing the macabre atmosphere of the scene.No demonstration of Nazi power,no ceremony would ever be imaginable without torches,so most of the party events took place at night. In my father’s opinion, the führer had reason for shunning the light of ParT one 54 day, the darkness having the distinct advantage of concealing the revolting ugliness of the Nazi representatives of the new Aryan master race, like Hitler, Röhm, Ley, and Himmler. Fire as the source of light and life was interpreted as a mythical Teutonic symbol; its purifying powers would eventually light the darkness in the extermination camps, with flames shooting up from the smokestacks over the crematoria of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor , Majdanek, and all the other places where human bodies were burned. On May 10 that same year, flames were to consume the books of unwanted authors, such as Heinrich Heine, Thomas Mann, Heinrich Mann, Kurt Tucholsky, Émile Zola, Marcel Proust, Upton Sinclair, André Gide, and H. G. Wells. On that day, an allegedly spontaneous torchlight parade led by students had halted on the Opernplatz in Berlin,opposite Humboldt University, not even a stone’s throw away from the kaiser’s palace.A hysterically screaming mob watched as thousands of books, piled high not by hooligans out of control, but by faculty, students, and burghers alike,were reduced to ashes.Similar actions followed in almost every German town that same year. In the words of Josef Goebbels,“these sacred flames marked the end of an old era and the coming of a new one, in which there is no room for Anarchists and Bolsheviks and Jews!” It had been Heinrich Heine who once made the ominous prophecy that where they burn books, they will eventually burn people. In my father’s office,still crouching on the windowsill,I finally heard the long-awaited, exultant cry,“They are here! Here they come!” I almost fell out of the window. Indeed, the president’s car slid...

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