Emma clears her throat and takes a sip from her coffee cup. "I’m sorry ... what is Hitler’s youth program? I’ve never heard of such a thing."
"Many haven’t, darling. It isn’t a part of history people are proud to share."
Chapter 6
Twelve Years Old - 1935
Belgium, Germany
Summer ended quicker than I would have liked, which meant the dreaded day of starting a new school had arrived.
"I’m proud of you, Charlie. You are going to learn so many wonderful subjects. This school is going to prepare you for your future." Mama pinched my cheek as I left the house that day.
I didn’t think there was much of a reason to be so concerned with my future at only twelve years old.
There were classrooms in my new school, yes. The desks we sat at were nothing fancy, as the founders of the new school promised to offer. Elite Boys—that was how we were supposed to be perceived—the best of the best. But, our desks were old; the wooden tops etched with names, some with vulgar sayings. The rusty-brown linoleum floors were peeling and clashed against the pale-yellow walls. The windows, stained by the sun on the outside were covered by a film of dust and cobwebs on the inside. The classroom smelled of mildew, chalk-dust, and bleach. What was worse was that the teachers we had didn’t seem confident in what they were teaching, not even to a young twelve-year-old child.
At least I was with Claude. We both started in the fall after he was well enough to be out of bed. I did my best to hide my lack of desire to attend this school because Claude couldn’t contain his excitement.
The school was made up of all boys as warned, but it was instantly apparent that gender wasn’t the only singularity the school idealized. It didn’t take long before I noticed that all of us boys had a striking resemblance with our varying shades of blonde hair and hues of blue eyes. I still couldn’t understand why those attributes would be favored.
I recall one of the first days of classes and the teacher I had. Herr Leon, he was a self-proclaimed politician of sorts. Of course, I didn’t know what that meant then, but what I gathered was that he had no actual background in education.
Herr Leon wore a similar uniform to the students: taupe corduroy shorts, a mustard yellow button-down shirt, a black tie, and a tawny leather cross-chest belt that connected to a waist belt, finished with silver emblems. Then we also had our black ankle-high boots, intended for the marches we would take. Herr Leon was a tall man, his ashy blonde hair was greased and comb-slicked to the side. His face was clean-shaven, and his dark eyebrows were permanently in downward turned angles pointing in toward his nose. Without speaking, he emanated a sense of misery.
My feelings of distaste for Herr Leon was solidified shortly after watching him write a string of words along the green chalkboard. We watched attentively, waiting to see what was written while listening to the thin piece of chalk scrape, crumble, and ping off the board, while a boy two seats down coughed through the sound of a barking dog. Another boy sneezed, and Claude, who was sitting next to me, cleared his throat. The room was full of nervous sounds. Then, for a moment when Herr Leon stepped away from his written words, the classroom became silent, still, and I slowly read the words to myself.
Jews are the devil!
I felt deflated, as though the air was draining from my lungs. During my short life, I had seen the words but had never heard anyone speak so much hatred about another. No one had to ask why the teacher wrote those words on the chalkboard because he continued to draw pictures beneath his words. He outlined four faces, two profile angles, and two point-blank angles. One profile picture displayed the eyeballs set inward, and a nose jagged and long. The front-view showed eyes too close together, and a nose that took up too much space along the center. The other two pictures had symmetrical features on both the profile and front-view.
Herr Leon held his piece of chalk up to the unsymmetrical drawings. "These are Jews. They are biologically defective, and we must stay away," he explained. "However, those of us here, right at this second, are the start of a new race to outlaw anything bred beyond perfection. We are Aryans, a race superior to all others."
The coughing boy from two seats down raised his hand, and then spoke before being called. "I thought God made us all look different for a reason, ja?" he suggested.
Mama had preached this to me, as well. Her reason was to keep me from staring or pointing at a person who didn’t look like me.
Herr Leon’s eyes went dark, and he walked toward the boy with his chalk outstretched. "Nein1. Nonsense! We are one kind, and we must unite to continue our race. We must not let the demons in, for they want to abolish our kind. They want to kill us. They are monsters, those Jews. You understand, boy?"
My heart stopped beating, or so it seemed. I questioned why the Jews would want us dead. What had we done to be on the receiving hand of so much hatred?
Herr Leon continued: "They are awful people. They don’t believe in the same kindness we do. We must stay away. We have to keep them out. It is the only way to survive."
Survive.
Claude peered over at me with a lost gaze. It seemed as though he was silently thinking the same questions as me, probably wondering if I was as lost as he. I shook my head slightly, enough for him to see I felt the same. Something was not right.
It seemed like hours before class ended, but when we left, there was nothing more than silence among many of us. We strode through the hallway toward the exit, all of us in formation.
A group of boys gathered outside of the school doors, huddled in discussion. I stood just outside of the cluster, listening to what they had to say.
"I heard they’re going to train us to become soldiers so we can fight off the Jews," one boy said.
"My papa told me we might be lucky enough to meet the Führer2."
"We might meet Adolf Hitler?" another boy responded with a sound of delight and excitement.
"We are part of his youth program. That is what this is, ja?"
