The Boy Who Dared: List 2

Benno sits, chin jutted. Doesn't look the least bit sorry.

There are Hitler Youth, too. Boys Helmuth knows, older boys from his school. Scrawling the word JEW in thick yellow paint and painting crude yellow outlines of the Star of David.

There are Hitler Youth, too. Boys Helmuth knows, older boys from his school. Scrawling the word JEW in thick yellow paint and painting crude yellow outlines of the Star of David.

The Nazis drag their arms across their damp foreheads, looking strangely flushed, exhilarated.

Students wearing uniforms and swastika armbands are tossing books onto the burning pyre.

"From now on," intones the narrator, "Germans will read only German books by German authors, books that promote strong, traditional German ideals. We will not have our minds poisoned by Jews and others who promote liberal ideas."

"From now on," intones the narrator, "Germans will read only German books by German authors, books that promote strong, traditional German ideals. We will not have our minds poisoned by Jews and others who promote liberal ideas."

He hears blows, the dull thuds of a truncheon, the kick of boots, the shackling of handcuffs.

He squeezes his eyes tighter, repeats the last words, chants them fervently, asThouwiltasThouwiltasThouwilt, until they wrap around him and the floating feeling comes.

It's April 1935, and spring has come to Hamburg. Helmuth hears it in the crackling gray ice floes that drift through the rivers and narrow canals.

He wears his brown-and-black SS uniform with its blue collar insignia that says he's a Rottenführer, a noncommissioned corporal.

The classroom grows noisy, and Helmuth feels lost in the din.

The man raises his dark eyes to look at Adolf Hitler's portrait, as if invoking the Führer's blessing over his class. He then lifts his arm nonchalantly, a bored wave it seems, and returns the Hitler salute.

Helmuth grows more interested and listens intently.

They evoke his name in praise and even in prayers, giving thanks to the Führer for getting Germany back on its feet, for jobs, for the new factories that produce everything from tanks and airplanes and guns to the cheap People's Radio.

The director asks general questions about Helmuth's family and their political beliefs, which Helmuth answers briskly: "Nein, I am not a member of the Hitler Youth."

He scribbles a notation and then hands Helmuth a paper to sign and another to get signed at home.

Karl Schnibbe's experience wasn't much better, except that Karl was expelled after he beat up his zealous platoon leader.

If Helmuth were a detective, he'd arrest real criminals, not the ordinary men and women who criticize Hitler or the Nazi Party and find themselves denounced by friends and neighbors.

Helmuth glances back at Rudi, can tell he's brooding.

"You'd like this book," Helmuth says, changing the subject. He reads the title out loud: Lord Lister, genannt Raffles, der grosse Unbekannte. "It's about a gentleman thief who helps honest men ruined by swindlers."

Rudi looks at him incredulously. "And play detective like children?"

An odd, watchful silence hangs over the foreboding brick building.

Rudi traipses behind Helmuth.

"Unemployed, you say?" says Inspector Becker, looking pleased. "At a time when Hitler has jobs for everyone. Sounds like a suspicious character, possibly an anarchist. There are those people who want to undermine this great country. All mentally unstable, if you ask me. In need of rehabilitation."

"Of course. But the one agent slapped me, hard. He said it was no game to them. He warned me that they take subversive activity very seriously. The second agent wanted to know if it was a cover-up for a secret underground movement."

Hamburg is beautiful nonetheless, with its rivers and canals, craggy spires and turrets.

Hamburg is beautiful nonetheless, with its rivers and canals, craggy spires and turrets.

In full cry, the newscaster erupts with the details of spontaneous riots against the Jews that have taken place all over Germany. It's all in retribution for the Jew who killed the Nazi official in Paris.

Nothing prepares him for what he sees—the work of Hugo and his Nazi friends—the ruined shops and businesses, the burned-out buildings, the smoldering synagogue, its colorful glass windows shattered; the looters, their arms heaped with clothing, shoes, everything they can carry; the splintered furniture; the weeping women pushing broken glass with their brooms.