Cruel World (15 page)

The most elementary reading texts had a military air. One, entitled
Rhineland Children
, ended its chapter on vowels with these stirring verses:

Even the fairy tale was put to work as a “preparation for the struggle for existence.” Teachers, who might not have thought of this themselves, were instructed, in a volume entitled
Volk und Führer
, to select tales “in which combative contrasts emerge most clearly” and in which “the boy must be strong; a German child must be faithful and true … faithfulness is stronger than death.” The fairy tales, of course, had to be Aryan and not the narratives of “primitive exotic peoples.” One helpful text even provided the proper interpretation of
Cinderella
, giving a new slant to the
ugly sister theme. The tale symbolizes the conflict between a racially pure maiden and an alien stepmother: “Cinderella is rescued by a prince whose unspoiled instinct helps him to find the genuine Cinderella. The voice of the blood within him guides him along the right way.”
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An elementary school reading text laced with Nazi symbols
.
(photo credit 4.1)

Young teenaged boys, in the so-called Viking years, were required to read the ancient Nordic sagas, not so much as illustrations of Germany’s heroic ancient days, but as examples of the Führerprinzip. Here were noble leaders followed unto death through terrible adventures by a totally devoted band of heroes filled with “blind confidence” in their own physical prowess. Bringing this theme into the modern day led to the glorification of other German heroes from Frederick the Great to Bismarck. Crime and mystery were out, while the military exploits of the Red Baron were in. Adventure in general was thought to be a good thing, “because a fair shot of adventure runs through the blood of every German” and “forms a preliminary step toward the heroes.” Unfortunately, some of the
most popular adventure stories involved non-Aryans and had to be brought into line.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
was banned, as “counter to the ideas of the National Socialist political education” and “literary counterpropaganda to the colonial idea.”
Robinson Crusoe
, clearly a “Nordic hero capable of surviving the most adverse conditions,” was fine, but Man Friday was not. Hardest of all to reconcile with the new ideology were the immensely popular “Red Indian” tales of Chiefs Winnetou and Tecumseh, written by German authors Karl May and Fritz Steuben, which even Hitler had read in his youth. Warnings that Germans “should meet the colored danger with all … necessary sharpness” were waived for the noble savage Winnetou with the argument that “the lack of racial consciousness and the failure to grasp the importance of establishing racial bonds among themselves” had led to the downfall of the Red Indians, who were therefore a good object lesson. The Red Indians not only survived the onslaughts of racial science, but the Winnetou books were even used as prizes for the Hitler Youth and, perhaps thought to be relevant, would later be sent to troops fighting partisans and protecting German settlers on the eastern frontiers of the extended Reich.

Deciding on the role of girls in this warlike scene was difficult. The Nazis believed not only that the sexes should be educated separately, but also that girls should study completely different subjects in order to prepare themselves for the future. Separate schools were already the norm in the Catholic parts of the country, but in some areas coeducation had been instituted as a means of saving education funds. Special home economics schools for girls had existed for years, but were generally looked down upon. These were immediately upgraded, but fitting domestic science into the already crowded curricula of the academic high schools was a problem. Education Minister Rust at first feebly suggested that the girls’ mothers could take care of that sort of thing and ordained the inclusion of a few needlework courses. It was not until 1938 that a general decree regulating all the schools, while timidly leaving in place a “language” track with reduced science and mathematics, instituted a home economics track at the academic high schools. This was loaded with racial theory and practice sessions in the Nazi welfare agencies. These regulations, and others forbidding coeducation, were never well enforced. Academically inclined students and their parents found all sorts of loopholes, and, in the end, the enormous demands of the German workforce, depleted by the induction of men into the armed forces, would require reversal of the policies, complete with propaganda urging girls to prepare themselves to serve their
country.
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It would be in the extracurricular area that the Nazis would assert their greatest control over women.

Despite the success of Winnetou in gaining Hitler’s approval, there was clearly no place for real non-Aryan children in the new educational scene. But all German children who were citizens were entitled to an education. The Nazis’ first emphasis was, therefore, on rearrangement rather than direct expulsion of students. A special decree, the Law Against the Overcrowding of German Schools, ordained that non-Aryan students must never be in the majority and limited the number of such pupils in any school above the elementary level to 5 percent of the total enrollment. Certain children, those whose fathers were World War I veterans or who were of mixed parentage, were exempted. This law was augmented in March 1935 by an executive order instituting measures to select those students who would be allowed to go on to and remain in secondary schools after fourth grade. The criteria were not very academic. No child with “serious infirmities resulting in a decrease of their vitality” or “afflicted with hereditary diseases” could enter secondary school. Those “showing no realization of the necessity of physical hygiene and cleanliness” would be dismissed if they did not improve, as would those committing “serious breaches of the rules of public decency and morals” or “persistent offenses against the spirit of comradeship and a disregard of the general welfare of the community.” And “pupils devoid of a sense of order … as well as those not having an ‘open character’ ” were not to be allowed to continue either. Once accepted, it was not only important to have passing grades, but also “high character … on the athletic field” and “special aptitude for leadership.” Last but not least was the “requirement for National Fitness,” which noted that no non-Aryan was to be given preferential treatment, that Jews could not have scholarships, and that “students harming the state in any way or violating the principle of national fellowship of all Germans are to be excluded from secondary schools.”
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These rules were particularly good for getting rid of Gypsy children, described not only as “afflicted with lice, neglected and entirely incapable of being educated,” but also as constituting “a moral threat to their classmates of German blood,” which was construed, with strong support of the local citizens in some jurisdictions, as grounds for eliminating education for them altogether.
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The measures, however, like many other Nazi rules to come, were terribly difficult to translate into concrete action where cleanly scrubbed,
bright, middle- and upper-class Jewish children were concerned. It was all very well to require their segregation, but it put school districts to a lot of trouble. Some jurisdictions put them in separate classrooms or separate buildings. Proposals were floated to build separate elementary schools, financed in part by the Jewish community, wherever twenty or more Jewish children were available. There were, of course, existing Jewish schools, but their capacity was limited, and many assimilated Jews and “Christian non-Aryans” did not wish to attend them. On top of all this, different rules applied to the different degrees of
Mischlinge
, or children with varying numbers of Jewish parents and grandparents. Such children, many of whom had been baptized as Catholics or Protestants, often fell between two stools. As one school principal said: “There are Jews and there are Christians, but worst of all are the half-breeds.”
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While the Catholic Church continued to help its converts, most of the German Protestant denominations quickly abandoned theirs. Expelled from their “Aryan” groups, these children were, at first, not eligible for Jewish ones. A doctor who had converted to Protestantism just after World War I wrote, bitterly, in 1933:

A tiny number of such youngsters were taken in by the Quakers, who also helped the children of Social Democrats and other banned political groups. The Quakers were regarded with mixed feelings by the Nazis, who kept them under careful surveillance. Hapless Gestapo agents assigned to this duty were often lulled to sleep in Quaker meetings and were reluctant to send in negative reports, since many of them had, as children themselves, been fed in the Quaker soup kitchens that had provided meals for hundreds of thousands of impoverished Germans after World War I.

As time went on, school became an increasingly lonely battlefield for Jewish students. The mortification of children forced to endure the most vicious references to themselves, in the presence of their peers, day after day, is hard to imagine. Their isolation was compounded by the fact that the children often tried to hide their misery from their still patriotic families, as well as by the fact that some parents, for a long time, simply did not believe that such things were possible.

Parental attempts to help often made things worse. The mother of Marianne Regensburger, who had already been denounced for playing the Virgin Mary in her school play (an eminently suitable role, one would think), dyed the girl’s hair blond in an apparent effort to make her look Aryan. This was to no avail: Marianne’s teacher told her that “even with blonde hair you’ll never be an Aryan.”
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European children in the 1930s did not usually ride on school buses. They walked, bicycled, or used public transportation. For non-Aryans this usually most carefree and fun part of the school day soon became a physical and psychological gauntlet. The streets were frequently filled with the uniformed marching groups so beloved by Northern Europeans, the Nazi ones sporting ritual daggers and other accoutrements. As they marched, they sang patriotic and political songs that often contained racist lyrics. It was impossible to avoid the ubiquitous propaganda. Kiosks were plastered with posters exhorting the German Volk to defend itself from Jews. Some candy stores and even some shops where required schoolbooks were sold began to display signs suggesting that Jews go elsewhere, and special vitrines set up in public areas displayed pages from the semi-pornographic magazine
Die Stürmer
, which specialized in cartoons of hideous Jews molesting innocent Aryan maidens. Most Jewish teenagers could not resist the desire to look at this filth; others were sometimes forced to do so by gangs of Hitler Youth bullies, who made their lives generally miserable:

Long before 1941, when wearing the yellow star would definitively identify them, older Jewish children were made conspicuous by their very lack of badges. Before the Nazi takeover, the wearing of badges denoting Party preference or membership in a myriad of organizations, much like the T-shirts of today, was extremely popular. After 1933, Jews were not allowed to wear the swastika or other Party emblems and uniforms, though many longed to do so. Half-Jewish Verena Groth, the only “non-Aryan” in her school, had no problems with her classmates, and even participated in Nazi parades when the whole school was sent. “You simply went along,” she later told her interviewer. “To place yourself apart would
have been superhuman.” But it was impossible for her to blend in without the right clothes: “The others ran around in their uniforms.… And as I was the only one of seven hundred girls … not to be part of it … when you’re twelve or thirteen years old, that was very hard.”
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Another little girl, in her longing to be included, had a dream in which classmates and teachers teased her and tried to take away a swastika armband that she was wearing on grounds that Jews were not allowed to wear the Nazi emblem. In the dream, she triumphantly announced that Hitler himself had met her, had said she was a good child, and had given her the armband. After that, in her fantasy, the teacher and children were kind to her.
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