The Boy Who Dared: List 1

Memories drift through Helmuth's mind like clouds. Clouds that obscure his intense fear of what is to come.

He rubs his arms beneath his drab gray prison smock.

Moonlight floods the bedroom, shimmers the walls, opalescent.

"Your right flank is in trouble," he says, pointing.

He imitates the sounds of artillery, exploding grenades, storms of shrapnel.

He imitates the sounds of artillery, exploding grenades, storms of shrapnel.

"Only if that lunatic Hitler comes to power," says Opa. "That will mean only one thing. War. That warmonger wants to make his mark on history."

Helmuth rejoices with relief. Gives thanks for the meager breakfast, for living to eat another morning meal.

He knows letters have been written on his behalf, asking for clemency.

It crackles, and a stormy arpeggio from the final movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata bursts forth.

Its ferocity underscores the day's unquiet.

"Did you hear that, Seligmann?" says one boy, leering.

It's the same grown-up argument Helmuth has heard everywhere—between his mother and his grandparents; among his neighbors in the tenement; floating out of the teachers' room at school; and even among the older boys in the school yard.

"The problem is that treaty. It's a sacrilege!"

The treaty forced Germany to take all the blame for starting the war and to pay high reparations that made Germany poor.

They shrug their shoulders and stand idly with their hands in their pockets.

The Hammerbrook streets teem with excitement.

Helmuth feels her giving in, but Mutti shakes her head, her dark brown hair billowing around her pretty face, her pale, tired face, and says, "Nein, it is verboten. I forbid you to go. You're not old enough. If something happened to you, I'd never forgive myself."

Helmuth feels her giving in, but Mutti shakes her head, her dark brown hair billowing around her pretty face, her pale, tired face, and says, "Nein, it is verboten. I forbid you to go. You're not old enough. If something happened to you, I'd never forgive myself."

Helmuth scuffs at the floor with the toe of his shoe.

He doesn't wave back, sits sullenly at the table.

He imagines the streets booming with Nazi storm troopers, hundreds of them, like distant thunder, marching straight-legged, twelve abreast, singing in echoing voices:
We have broken the bonds of servitude,
For us it was a great victory.

"It seeks to poison and disrupt in order to hurl us into an epoch of chaos," shouts Hitler.

"Every class and every individual must help us create the new Reich," Hitler implores.

The speech isn't very long, and at its end, Hitler prays, "May God Almighty give our work His blessing, strengthen our purpose, and endow us with wisdom and the trust of our people, for we are fighting not for ourselves but for Germany!"