Read Comfort to the Enemy (2010) for Free Online Page B
Authors: Elmore - Carl Webster 03 Leonard
finished playing a big military number, they report that your guys are bravely holding the line 'with heroic efforts.' You believe that's true?
I believe we're resisting bravely, yes. What else can we do?
Shemane said you've stopped talking about winning the war. What about most of your guys? Are they still optimistic?
Many of them, yes. Or they would have to believe in Anglo-American victories, what they read in your newspapers. I'll tell you something, Jurgen said, coming here, crossing this country that can take days, seeing all the lights in the cities we pass, seeing no evidence of destruction from bombing raids, it gives us doubts about what we were told, that industrial cities were bombed, and of course New York City. But our comrades who came through New York saw little or no damage from bombs.
They didn't see any, Carl said. You have bombers that can fly across the Atlantic Ocean, drop their loads, turn around and fly back to Europe?
They would have to refuel.
Where? Where do you stop for gas over here? Jurgen didn't answer. He took his time to say, You want to know about the Jewish Question.
*
The first thing he did when he took power, Jurgen said, was dismiss all Jews working in civil service. He also began to reduce their numbers in the various professions. The Fnhrer saw no Jews as workers in factories or the trades like carpenters. He saw them as a race of merchants and money lenders, and called them our deadliest enemy.
German people, Carl said, who happened to be Jews.
Blaming them for whatever was wrong with Germany, Jurgen said. The Fnhrer passed the Nuremburg Laws, the idea, to unite all Germans and exclude the Jews as citizens. For a German to marry a Jew was forbidden. Jews were no longer permitted to practice law or medicine except among themselves, but IF you were part Jewish you could be a pharmacist. Are you following this? Jews were prohibited from attending German theaters, concerts, film houses. They could no longer attend German schools. They were forbidden to own firearms. In fact, the day before Kristallnacht in November, 1938, the SS went into Jewish homes and removed anything that could be used as a weapon. You know about Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass?
When they started wrecking Jewish stores, places of business, Carl said. I remember seeing it on the newsreel. The cops watching the brown shirts smashing shop windows.
They burned synagogues, Jurgen said, all over Germany. They destroyed thousands of shops, businesses. Some of the Jews were killed and as many as thirty thousand arrested and sent to labor camps. This was the beginning of violence against the Jews, 1938. I asked my father if he believed this kind of persecution made was going on. I said, 'Can you believe our government is systematically killing people it doesn't like?' I asked him this while we were in Detroit and were reading about it in the paper. My father said, 'Give the impression you accept National Socialism, since you have no other choice, and never in a public place criticize our Fnhrer or any of the lunatics working for him.' My father was a production engineer with Ford of Germany, or Ford Werke, as it was called. A year after we left Detroit and came home, the Fnhrer awarded Henry Ford on his seventy-fifth birthday, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest honor we give someone who isn't German.
I did read that Hitler had a portrait of Ford on his office wall in Munich. Your dad said to give the impression that you accept National Socialism?
He didn't mean act like a Nazi. Act like you believe in the future of the Third Reich ands you don't mind being a member of the master race. He said it isn't something we have to deal with directly.
Don't think about it, Carl said, it might g o a way.
You have the same kind of problem, Jurgen said, in the way you treat Negroes, American citizens, but black. I'm in the cafT waiting to be picked up. Let's say two Negro GIs come in pointing carbines
I believe we're resisting bravely, yes. What else can we do?
Shemane said you've stopped talking about winning the war. What about most of your guys? Are they still optimistic?
Many of them, yes. Or they would have to believe in Anglo-American victories, what they read in your newspapers. I'll tell you something, Jurgen said, coming here, crossing this country that can take days, seeing all the lights in the cities we pass, seeing no evidence of destruction from bombing raids, it gives us doubts about what we were told, that industrial cities were bombed, and of course New York City. But our comrades who came through New York saw little or no damage from bombs.
They didn't see any, Carl said. You have bombers that can fly across the Atlantic Ocean, drop their loads, turn around and fly back to Europe?
They would have to refuel.
Where? Where do you stop for gas over here? Jurgen didn't answer. He took his time to say, You want to know about the Jewish Question.
*
The first thing he did when he took power, Jurgen said, was dismiss all Jews working in civil service. He also began to reduce their numbers in the various professions. The Fnhrer saw no Jews as workers in factories or the trades like carpenters. He saw them as a race of merchants and money lenders, and called them our deadliest enemy.
German people, Carl said, who happened to be Jews.
Blaming them for whatever was wrong with Germany, Jurgen said. The Fnhrer passed the Nuremburg Laws, the idea, to unite all Germans and exclude the Jews as citizens. For a German to marry a Jew was forbidden. Jews were no longer permitted to practice law or medicine except among themselves, but IF you were part Jewish you could be a pharmacist. Are you following this? Jews were prohibited from attending German theaters, concerts, film houses. They could no longer attend German schools. They were forbidden to own firearms. In fact, the day before Kristallnacht in November, 1938, the SS went into Jewish homes and removed anything that could be used as a weapon. You know about Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass?
When they started wrecking Jewish stores, places of business, Carl said. I remember seeing it on the newsreel. The cops watching the brown shirts smashing shop windows.
They burned synagogues, Jurgen said, all over Germany. They destroyed thousands of shops, businesses. Some of the Jews were killed and as many as thirty thousand arrested and sent to labor camps. This was the beginning of violence against the Jews, 1938. I asked my father if he believed this kind of persecution made was going on. I said, 'Can you believe our government is systematically killing people it doesn't like?' I asked him this while we were in Detroit and were reading about it in the paper. My father said, 'Give the impression you accept National Socialism, since you have no other choice, and never in a public place criticize our Fnhrer or any of the lunatics working for him.' My father was a production engineer with Ford of Germany, or Ford Werke, as it was called. A year after we left Detroit and came home, the Fnhrer awarded Henry Ford on his seventy-fifth birthday, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest honor we give someone who isn't German.
I did read that Hitler had a portrait of Ford on his office wall in Munich. Your dad said to give the impression that you accept National Socialism?
He didn't mean act like a Nazi. Act like you believe in the future of the Third Reich ands you don't mind being a member of the master race. He said it isn't something we have to deal with directly.
Don't think about it, Carl said, it might g o a way.
You have the same kind of problem, Jurgen said, in the way you treat Negroes, American citizens, but black. I'm in the cafT waiting to be picked up. Let's say two Negro GIs come in pointing carbines
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