Final Account

Sharpen the long knives

Sharpen the long knives

Sharpen the long knives On the paving stone

So that they go better

So that they go better

So that they go better Into the Jewish belly

As boys we thought nothing of singing these songs.

Isn't that terrible?

I once flew over Buchenwald with my squadron.

We intentionally flew low,

so we could see into the camp.

And we asked ourselves,

"What is happening in Buchenwald?"

And we heard things that you could scarcely believe.

I was on leave with my brother-in-law.

He told me that he had witnessed

Germans from various units

shooting Jews in huge pits and burying them.

He showed us the photos.

I said, "Is this Germany?"

This is a provincial commuter town.

This place makes me feel really aggressive. I don't know why.

How is your father?

He's well. He's better than I am.

"Nazi Party Census."

Here it says "Blood Order."

-Blood Order. -Or is it crossed out?

-What is a Blood Order? -I don't know.

"I was made an SS Stormtrooper on January 30, 1936."

"On January 10, 1940, I was dispatched

to the SS officers’ school in Dachau."

"I passed with fairly good results."

"Promoted to SS Sergeant Major on March 1, 1940."

It sounds rather brutal.

Are you seeing this for the first time?

Yes, I didn't know any of this.

I didn't even know he'd been posted to Dachau.

We were raised in this manner, "Children may only speak when spoken to."

"They are not allowed to ask questions."

What is a Blood Order?

-Blood bath? -Blood Order.

It was a political decoration

for participating in the 1923 Munich Uprising.

-Did you take part in that? -No.

You would have only been nine.

And when were you sworn in at the Feldherrnhalle?

In 1935.

The bells rang all over Germany.

It's hard to imagine that after Hitler's seizure of power,

the bells rang everywhere in Germany.

My mother voted for Hitler.

My father also voted for Hitler in 1932.

Because of unemployment and inflation.

My older brother

was already a convinced Nazi in 1932.

In 1932, he was 11 years old.

I remember how he showed me his brass knuckles with spikes.

"Today, we're going to smash the Communist HQ."

And he photographed Insterburg citizens who frequented Jewish shops.

And then these pictures were exhibited at the Insterburg Town Hall.

Pictures of people buying from Jewish shops.

I attended the local primary school in 1933, at the age of six.

The teacher was a local party operative.

He raised us according to the Nazi doctrine.

In the morning, we had to stand up, and say, "Heil Hitler."

He practically raised me to be a Nazi, against my parents' wishes.

I trusted my teacher more than I trusted them.

Our teacher asserted

a strong control over us.

This is my Hitler Youth membership card.

I joined the Jungvolk at the age of ten

and I received this.

I joined on 1st May, 1937.

Before I even turned ten years old.

I just couldn't wait.

When you're ten, 12 years old, what do you want?

You want to be part of a group and get out of the house.

We could do sports.

We were allowed to play tennis on the marine sports field.

We were allowed to use the pool.

We were allowed to play on the lawn in the park.

Before that, everything had been forbidden.

My mother was active in the Frauenschaft.

That was the women's organization.

When we went for walks on Sunday, when I was little,

my father always put on his uniform.

And then we went for a walk.

My mother didn't like this at all.

Women didn't have a uniform,

but he made sure that she wore the Frauenschaft badge on her coat

so that everyone could see

that they supported Nazi ideology.

I would have liked to have gotten involved,

but Father said no.

And in the summer of 1933,

they finally said yes.

And I got a brown shirt

and black trousers for my birthday.

And that was in Stendal, when we visited my grandparents.

They bought the uniform from a Jewish store.

We did things that we enjoyed.

But that faded.

And when we moved up

to the Hitler Youth at the age of 14…

participation was mandatory.

I was in a communications unit,

where we trained as radio operators at the age of only 15 or 16.

My leader was drafted into the military,

and then suddenly, I was a Hitler Youth leader.

They found me a bit girlish.

I wasn't the right kind of leader for the Hitler Youth.

We did boxing in the afternoon.

We weren't allowed to stop until there was blood flowing.

At the end of the week, the leader spoke to me.

He said, "You don't have what it takes to be a Hitler Youth leader."

"You're too soft."

From the ages of 10 to 14, there was the "Jungvolk" organization.

At 14, you joined the Hitler Youth.

For the girls, there was the "Jungmaedel" and then the BDM.

The Association of German Girls.

A blue skirt, a white blouse, and a knot made of leather.

It was a triangular neckerchief, that was held together with the knot.

There were these social evenings, where we would meet.

Those were evenings where we spoke about Nazism, about the Führer…

Sometimes we'd talk about parts of Hitler's Mein Kampf.

We didn't support the Party.

But we liked the uniform.

We went along with it because we enjoyed it.

Putting on the uniform and going on marches

or we'd sing, and so on.

Oh, that was lovely!

They were hiking songs, ones you still sing today.

It was lovely.

Raise the flag!

The ranks tightly closed

The SA marches with calm, steady step

Comrades shot by the Red Front And reactionaries

March in spirit within our ranks

We had the task of standing guard in front of a Jewish department store.

And us little boys, I was just nine,

we had to line up in front of this Jewish shop

and we had to link arms.

We weren't allowed to let anyone through.

My friend said, "Let's go in there."

"There's got to be something there."

"I think you can recognize the Jew by…"

"The Jew smells."

"You can smell the Jew."

Between Slawentzitz and Ujest,

there was a Jewish cemetery.

There were at least 100 graves there.

So, there must have been a Jewish community there

at some point.

We were in the Jungvolk and Hitler Youth.

And that's when the Jew-baiting started.

We would often go to the Jewish cemetery.

We went there at midnight, at the witching hour.

It was a test of courage.

JEW

The Jews weren't popular, were they?

This had consequences.

Why weren't the Jews popular?

Apparently because they…

They were into deal-making, and they had hooked noses.

We learned to read using the normal alphabet book.

But we also had a Jew-themed alphabet book.

It was published by Streicher, who had also published the Nuremberg Race Laws.

And this book had a caricature of a Jew

for each letter of the alphabet.

I remember one in particular.

It showed a butcher's shop that was…

really greasy and filthy.

It showed a disgusting Jew,

one with dirty long hair and a hat, behind the counter.

And next to him, there was a blonde German girl

with a white apron.

The Jew had his hand where it shouldn't be.

The Jews were to blame for everything.

We were a village of 175 people.

We had no electricity.

The mobile Nazi Film Unit came to show us films, like Suess the Jew.

They showed Nazi films in the smallest villages.

You can't imagine today what kind of pressure there was.

That was my grandmother.

-Is that the Jewish grandmother? -Yes.

That is the Jewish generation. That's her.

And that's her mother.

Yes.

My older brother was a convinced Nazi.

And much later, he realized

that our father was also a Jew, in accordance with Jewish tradition.

His mother was Jewish.

But he didn't make that public.

He kept that a secret.

And when my brother realized that our father was a Jew…

He wanted to be racially pure.

When he realized that according to both the Jewish and Nazi rules…

that our father was actually Jewish,

a process of rethinking began.

There were no Jews in our village.