A Nazi Son’s Revenge

I accomplished my goal of graduating high school one year early in 1974. I was a fair student who had little patience for boring lectures on topics I had no interest in. I wasn’t thrilled about attending college either, as it wasn’t my first priority. All I could think about was Europe. I desperately wanted to live there or, at the very least, get a full-time job at home. But I wasn’t convinced of that idea frankly. I didn’t want to be at home. What to do?

As kismet would have it, I received an international telephone call from Gunther: surprise surprise, Germany calling New York. We had met the previous summer in Rome on my European trip. He wanted to try his luck and take the plunge of living on his own for the very first time. In New York!

Although he wasn’t on my “hit list” of summer loves, I certainly did remember him. And, it dawned on me that perhaps just maybe, I could get back to Europe with him. Not that Germany was a place I had any intention of visiting. Our tour guide Titus avoided it the previous year, except for Dresden. I learned later that most Dutch reviled the Germans (even though the Dutch handed over the most Jews per capita to the SS, compared with every other nation that was invaded).

Once Gunther arrived, Mom kindly offered to help him find an apartment in Flushing, Queens, not exactly around the corner from where I was — the sticks on Long Island. It was also quite generous of her to drive him around because we were still caught up in the oil crisis of the previous December in 1973. Massive stretches of automobiles were lined up on side streets, gas stations, near train stations, highways, and through neighborhoods, waiting for a turn at the gas pump. Sometimes we’d be in line at the Sunoco station for two hours! But when my mother liked someone, she would put on her bells and whistles and go all out for them. She did enjoy Gunther.

An apartment in Flushing was all that he could afford, and it was close enough to the city on the number 7 train. We took him shopping for a mattress, and some basics as the apartment we found were furnished. His great adventure ended in less than a month. He was homesick and felt bewildered in a foreign country within a foreign country. Flushing was at the time, an enclave of Taiwanese, Koreans, interspersed with a growing Japanese community and non-Hispanic whites.

Mom took him back to our house so he could think about his next steps. Gunther was madly in love with me and wanted me to return with him to Hamburg, to his family. Not to marry me, but who knew what his real motivation was? I took his affectionate overture as my grand opportunity to get back to the continent I knew I belonged in. I could work with that, so I agreed to go back with him to Germany.

Of course, I was attracted to him, but not to the depths of love that he felt for me. I found his personality to be pleasantly receptive, non-combative, and accomodating. His longish brown hair, thin, soft, and wispy, was parted in the middle and swayed to his footsteps. There was an angelic quality to him, not unlike the whitewashed images of Jesus. His tender oceanic colored blue eyes framed the longest eyelashes I had ever seen and were dangerously inviting.

First, though, he had to determine whether to phone his father. He needed to get permission for me to come back with him from dad, a former Nazi! Absolutely not, was the first response. His dad hung up the phone on him. Although his father was adamantly against the idea, his mother was aghast at her husband’s declarations of post-national socialist racism. Gunther was appalled and distraught, even though he knew better.

Eventually, his mother’s sentiments of guilt won out, and I was given the green light. My mother was ever ready and keen to let me fly to far-flung locations. She envied me a bit. Her emotional responses to travel were without borders. To make up for her non-existent international travel, she allowed me to take risks that, in a sense, I was unprepared for.

Until that summer, I had never worn a Jewish star of David around my neck. Yet before embarking for the Fatherland, I bought the biggest, in-your-face star I could find. It was white, made of faux ivory, approximately three inches in diameter on a silver chain. I put it around my neck, determined not to take it off as long as I walked the blood-soaked pavement in that northern city. That’s where Hitler’s willing executioners existed, I reminded myself.

At the time, the German people were still reeling from the war and many in denial. Gunther’s friends and the younger generation hadn’t yet been exposed in school to the real horrors committed by the Gestapo. While he was in New York, I basically made him watch a PBS WWII documentary, which explicitly showed some of the inhumane experiments perpetrated upon the Jewish people. Gunther was mortified. He wept uncontrollably for hours at the sight of the tormented souls he saw on the black and white TV screen. I consoled him on the one hand and also reacted quite aggressively.

I ranted about the idiocy of denial, going on and on about the hypocritical German system. How could they dismiss the truth about what happened? How could students ever learn not to repeat the sins of their elders? What did he actually think took place?…

The family Richtung resided in a McMansion styled corner home in one of Hamburg’s leafier, more affluent areas. Although it felt and looked like suburbia, it was still within the Hamburg city limits. It took Gunther and me around fifteen minutes by bus to get downtown to the Big Alster Lake where the discos were. Sometimes we would take the U-Bahn (translation: subway). Each time I knew we’d be taking the bus though, I would hurriedly put on that Jewish star to shock those Nazi geezers on the bus.

You should’ve seen the looks on their faces. I’m talking about an older-than-fifty crowd who rode that particular bus, number forty-seven. Shock. Embarrassment. Guilt yet, no remorse, redness, and extreme discomfort ran across their faces. Not a single one of them could look at me, but I certainly looked at them, staring right into their eyeballs. I flaunted the fact that I WAS ALIVE. And how did they like that? Hmpf. A survivor in their wake, riding their bus, in their hood, walking with pride.

The homes in his neighborhood were inhabited by old monied folk. I imagined that those homes were stolen from Jewish merchants and professionals during the 1930s. Everywhere I looked, there were Mercedes and BMW’s lining the driveways. People dressed appropriately, almost too formal. The elderly ladies wore blouses under cardigans or scooped necked woolen sweaters, with long plaid skirts that touched their calves.

There was a proportionately sizeable geriatric population. I didn’t see many men or young people on the streets. The sidewalks were predictably spotless, and not one shrub appeared to be out of place. They seemed to be monitored by a force of nature that had used remedial scissors.

Gunther warned me about his father’s stoicism and curmudgeonly attitude. I decided to play the role of a provocateur in his presence. I wasn’t afraid of him either. Literally, what was he going to do to me? Make a lampshade out of me? Herr Richtung was a stout five-foot nine-inch unfriendly fellow. His receding curly hairline and angry countenance reminded me of Larry in the Three Stooges. He never once spoke to me except the very first time I stepped inside his home, and all he said was Guten Tag. For the remainder of the time I lived there, he’d throw me nasty glances and purposely played 33 RPMs of Hitler’s most cherished speeches. I was subjected to the Billboard Top 100 playlist of maniacal expressions by the Fuhrer, every single night when Gunther and I returned home from a day’s adventure in town.

Mama Richtung reminded me so much of my beloved Grandma Faye it made me cry. It was uncanny. Except for her hair, which was long, and past her shoulders. Frau Richtung’s hair looked like it could be used as a warm scarf in winter. Her blue eyes were gentle yet piercing. Don’t all Germans, though, have blue eyes? That’s what the entire deluded theory of the Aryan race was about — genetic superiority. Hitler didn’t even have blue eyes, but I did, and still do. I mean, I am one-quarter German after all.

One night while Herr Asshole was listening gleefully to his Hilter speeches, Gunther and I sat down on the flower printed Victorian sofa next to him. He was drinking a pilsner with a little too much of his beer belly exposed. His squinty eyes and thin lips belied a lame intellect. He’s a Nazi after all, and in my opinion, they are all deformed. When you have no conscience and systematically destroy humans as if they were “things,” that to me is a gross deformity.

Gunther didn’t want to speak with him at all, ever, which is why we always went right up to his room on the second floor or scooted to the kitchen to visit his mother when we got home. In the mornings, we ate breakfast unattended. Gunter protected me at all costs.

I ventured to ask Herr Richtung a series of questions, through Gunther, who was my translator. We both had to scream above the ranting lunacy of Hitler’s voice to be heard. Gunther was relatively soft-spoken, unlike me. I could be as subtle as a sledgehammer.

“What did you do during the war?” I asked. ”What was your job?” I pressed on.”Were you in the SS?” I demanded to know,” How many people did you murder?”

He muttered some nonsense to Gunther to avoid answering my questions. I continued, but that only angered him more. He refused to give me a response. Gunther’s mom tried to mitigate the situation by providing more beer to her husband and for us, vanilla semolina pudding with fresh strawberries on top. It was the best pudding I had ever eaten, but I refused to be bought out by treats. So I raised my voice even louder.
WHAT DID YOU DO DURING THE WAR?.

He jumped out of his seat and snarled, “I was a soldier then, and I’m a soldier now.” Then stomped off to his study. Frau Richtung was shaking. She didn’t dare reprimand me because, after all, I was there in Hamburg because of her guilty conscience.

As the manager of Wurlitzer (makers of the jukebox, pinball machines, and other gaming devices) for northern Germany, Herr Richtung would collect coins from the hundreds of Knieppe (bars) throughout the region, religiously every Friday. When he got home, he’d sit at the kitchen table, and unload the coins into a money sorting machine. Out they’d pop all wrapped up in thick paper marked by denomination for Monday’s bank deposit. Once they were checked for exact amounts, he’d stock them like the solider he was in the living room wall unit, adjacent to the kitchen. There was nothing else in that wall unit save for the temporary coin collection.

After three months, I decided it was time to wave Auf Wiedersehen to Gunther. I made a few phone calls to Amsterdam. The first one was to my big love of the previous summer, Edo, who I missed. I wished to be with him again but was broken-hearted when we actually spoke. He said that all the kisses and caresses, letters sent, and words spoken, were just a summer’s romance, and nothing more. And please, do not visit him if I go to Amsterdam. Just forget all about him.

I called several other boys I met from Holland. Gerrit, the last one on my list was gung ho to meet again, although honestly, I had little recall of him. I guess he was just a one night fuck whose address I had in my phonebook. He was living with his mother in a two-bedroom flat in Amsterdam Oost (east side), and yes, I could stay with them.

I said my goodbye’s to Gunther’s mother and older sister. Gunther drove me to the central train station. Once we arrived, he went to look for a parking spot while I purchased my ticket; he promised to catch up with me at the cafe. When he returned, he was lugging a large, heavy-duty black suitcase. We drank a coffee then headed up to the platform. I told him that I had all of my belongings and didn’t leave anything extra at his house.

“Why on earth are you bringing this luggage?”, I quizzically inquired.
“It’s for you, Elise. It’s a going-away present. Open it when you get on the train,” he said.

I loved presents and was excited to see what was inside. Gunther helped me with the baggage onto the train as I couldn’t lug it by myself. We said our farewells and hugged each other tearfully. Then the train whistle blew, indicating he had to deboard; otherwise, he would be on his way to Amsterdam with me.

We waved as the train rolled out of the station. Like a film noir, the glass became misty until both of us were out of each other’s sight. I opened the luggage and almost had a heart attack. Therein, were hundreds of rolled up Deutsche mark wrapped in packets of five and ten Pfennig coins.

Gunther had stolen the money from his father’s wall unit. Once I was settled in Amsterdam, I counted the coins as I needed to convert them into Dutch guilders. He had gifted me over one thousand Deutsche Marks! In today’s dollars, that would be equivalent to around two to three thousand USD. It was the Nazi son’s form of repatriation.