Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2022 15:46:57 +0000 (UTC)
From: John Gerald <connectwriter@yahoo.com>
Subject: Lukas 2

Chapter 2

"The first thing that you have to remember," he said to his family gathered
around his big easy chair, "is how quickly things changed when the Germans
marched into Austria."

"We didn't have it as bad as they did in Germany during the previous few
years, but they rapidly accelerated the persecution of `non-Aryans' to
bring them up to, or should I say down to, their German standards. They did
in a few months what it took them five years to do in Germany. For Rena and
Fexl this was bad, as they got kicked out of their school within a
week. But for me, it was different. Even though it seemed like the
attitudes of my classmates changed overnight. The principal of the school,
who eventually lost his job, was a true liberal and kept the enrollment of
few `non-Aryan' kids like me."

"I just had one more year to go, and if I could eke it out and get my
Matura, my diploma, I would at least have that credential behind me. As you
already know, Oma's brother had come to the United States and we were
fortunate that he could sponsor us. It took a big commitment of him and his
family, as they had to show they had the money to support us so that we
wouldn't become wards of the state in case we couldn't make a living."

"As I said, though not as bad as in Germany, the situation for us had been
deteriorating for a long time during the 1930s. It took the Anschluss
itself to really wake up Opa and Oma. We couldn't last much longer –
Opa's business had been pretty good, but after the Anschluss, they actually
had Nazi flunkies standing by the door to discourage his customers from
coming in. A few of them risked a lot by coming in the back door, but in
the end it really crushed the business.

"But I digress. As the next school year started up, the Nazi persecution in
school had become almost unbearable. No one called me by my name. They
called me and the one other Jewish kid names like "Israel" and `Isadore'
and other made-up, exotic sounding names to emphasize our `racial'
foreignness, at least in their eyes. This was even though Opa's family had
been in Vienna for over a century."

"There were several guys in the class who were etched in my memory of this
time," he continued, shifting in his big chair."

"One was a really a big but not very bright guy who enthusiastically joined
the local Hitler Youth group right after the Nazis marched in. I'll call
him the `The Bully.' He would often bump into me really hard, practically
knocking me down, which wasn't difficult since he was much taller and about
50 pounds heavier. In a normal school, I wouldn't put up with it, but just
about every time it happened, he'd call over his pack of wolves to stare me
down and let me know that there was nothing I could do. The fact that his
desk was right in front of mine made him hard to avoid."

"Then there was the pseudo-intellectual, I'll call him `The Brain.' He was
a mousy, sleezy, blond-haired guy but one of the top students in the class
and was always seen with one of the German Nazi newspapers, as the Austrian
press was not quite as developed yet as that in the `Altreich,' or the
original German, itself. The teacher, who was a quick convert to National
Socialism to save his job, seemed like an old pro at opportunistic
collaboration and allowed `The Brain' to give periodic lectures on National
Socialist Ideology to his classmates. He would often tell me, in front of
the class, that I didn't have the racial intelligence to appreciate the
sophistication and power of Nazi ideology but that I should sit through the
presentations anyway."

"There was also a good football, or soccer as it's called here,
player. I'll call him `The Jock. He was actually a recent German transplant
whose father was a railroad expert and had followed the Nazis into the
country in order to meld together the railroad lines and schedules."

"Amongst all of the hostility in the class, his was almost the worst, as he
acted like I wasn't even worthy enough to speak to or interact with him.
Like all of the boys, except `non-Aryans' like me, of course, he had to
join the local Hitler Youth and he quickly showed his talents and became
the leading scorer and star of their soccer team.  In this guise, I was
even more useless to him."

"To which I might add that I was better than 90% of the players on that
team," he added, to smiles and laughs from the family that surrounded him.

"Anyway," he continued, "these and other guys were my daily life. Back then
in Austria the Gymnasia were all single sex, so my school was all-boys. It
was what we now call a `macho' atmosphere, and especially with the Nazi
emphasis on fighting and attacking, it was not what you'd call much of a
supportive environment, even before the Nazis."

"And by the way," he added, "you could totally forget about girls at this
point. Before the Anschluss, I went out with all sorts of girls, even
gentiles, even though I was Orthodox. `We'd sort that out later,' was what
I thought to myself."

"But after the Germans came in, even a short `hello' could be considered
`Rassenschande,' or, `race defilement.' You could go to jail for that or,
like in some parts of Germany, paraded through the streets. It was really
depressing how girls who seemed to like me and were glad to be squired to
the movies suddenly wouldn't return a greeting or even look at me on the
street.

Anyway, the only thing that stopped the Bully and other guys from
exercising their rights to push me around was when the Jock came over to
talk about the soccer team, as he seemed obsessed with winning and making
sure that everyone was always at practice and well-prepared . The Bully was
kind of a mediocre player but would do anything to impress the Jock, who
quickly became the coach's favorite and rose to co-captain. I don't know
what attracted the Jock to The Bully - maybe he just needed extra coaching
and encouragement.  After class and before they gathered for practice, the
Jock would often come over to the Bully's desk and talk with him, turning
his back on me like I didn't exist. It wasn't all bad, though, as it kept
the Bully from his regular rounds of harassment. So, the trade-off was
pretty fair as far as I was concerned.

"There were a few other types, too, I won't tell you about all of them. But
suffice it to say that it was a battle every day. Besides the usual
tendency of the mob, the class was in a lot of ways out of control, which
sometimes served me well, too. The Brain would sometime hold Hitler Youth
Meetings during what was supposed to be math class with a particularly weak
and craven teacher, while the Jock was also a bit of a class clown and
entertained everyone with antics and jokes whenever the teacher was out of
the room.  That was also a convenient distraction as the General, the SS
Boy and the Aryan God and others who I won't waste time describing, would
then leave me in peace at the back of the room where I was assigned to sit
as a `non-Aryan.'"

"There were a few chances for me to prove myself, or at least interact and
not be just a spectator in the back row of seats. There was a class chess
tournament and I got second place to the Brain, whose dad paid for his
son's professional coaching. Pretty good, considering that just about the
entire class was rooting against me. Surprisingly, the Jock was a pretty
good player himself, and he seemed to have some really sophisticated moves,
but I beat him in the semi-finals when he made what was a really dumb error
and I was lucky enough to think and take advantage of it."

He again shifted in his chair. "I have to say, I really felt alone, and I
think Rena and Flexl could share the feeling, especially since they
couldn't even go to school. But I didn't have a choice and I just had to
survive as best I could until we made it to America."

"However, one day something happened that I couldn't explain."

"A few days before, I had arrived early at school and the Bully and some of
his friends beat me up outside the school. I should have known better than
to get there early, but I had to help the previous night at Opa's shop and
was hoping to finish studying for an important math test at the end of the
week. I made it through the day, bruises and all, but Oma kept me home the
next day and didn't want me to ever go back. But I was determined to
finish."

"I had missed an entire day, which in math class can be fatal. And the
worst part was that there wasn't really anyone I could turn to for the
notes. That other Jewish kid, like many others, was just not there one day,
either having emigrated or moved away. This happened a lot, as families
would leave in the middle of the night to avoid harassment or suddenly an
opportunity came that couldn't be passed up. I was actually happy for him,
hoping that the family had found a refuge someplace. But it left me as the
single, juicy target left for their sadism."

"Coming in the next day, I dreaded that class, and again risked bodily harm
by coming in early to try to go through the book and see if I could catch
up. When I got to my desk, I found a piece of paper with yesterday's date
and very clearly written notes and explanations about what had transpired
in my absence. It was not signed and was written on the same paper that
everyone used so it was impossible to tell who dropped it off. I only
noticed that the number 9 was written kind of funny, almost backwards, like
these days you might say that someone dyslexic wrote it."

"I didn't dare ask around about who might have done it. It could make it
such an issue that there would literally be a manhunt for that person and
their lives could actually be in danger. Besides hiding a communist, there
was no greater crime than helping a non-Aryan kid. I was even afraid of
telling Opa and Oma about it."

"If that meant that some person was now going to rise up and make a
difference though, it didn't seem to happen. Things continued on the
same. I still had to really watch myself, especially after class if there
wasn't soccer practice and the goons were milling around looking for
something to do."

"Besides Hitler Youth meetings, which often took precedence over school
activities, I was often saved by soccer practice as I mentioned before. I
remember more than a couple times when some of those bastards were
ominously circling around me when the Jock started yelling at everyone
about practice, especially if they had a tournament match. Victory in
battle was important for Nazis and there was nothing more important than
winning, no matter what you had to do."

"I liked to let everyone get out of the room before I left at the end of
the day to avoid getting assaulted in the hallway. But one day The Brain
and the Jock were both staying late in the classroom. Eventually the Brain
left and I was alone with the Jock."

"It was strange, but after he left, the Jock got up like he was going to
leave. He got to the door, but instead of walking right out he looked both
ways, then came back in. I thought that he had maybe forgotten something,
but instead of going for his desk he started walking toward me. I didn't
know what was going to happen and prepared myself for a fight if he wanted
to start one. We were about the same size so I thought tht I could fight
him off if I had to."

"I was about to raise my hands in front of me when he came up and said,
"Hans, listen to me very carefully, please. You and your dad, you need to
get out of your house tonight and go hide. Go anywhere, just get out of
your house. They're going to come after you and all the other Jewish men
and send you to a `KZ.'  Please, go! I'm trying to help you." he
continued. It looked like he was going to reach for my shoulder but ended
up putting his hand on my desk and tapping on it."

`KZ' was short for `Konzentrationslager' or concentration camp, and
everyone knew those initials. In many cases it was a death sentence.

"What? Why was this guy trying to help me? I'd never even spoken to him,
except very minimally during the chess match. But he said my real name
instead of a made-up one. I was totally dumfounded."

"But his advice was entirely consistent with the atmosphere outside. The
Nazis were making a huge deal of the shooting by a Jewish kid of a member
of the German legation in Paris, and the atmosphere was darkening by the
day. If that guy dies, my father said to me earlier at dinner, something is
bound to happen. He didn't know what would happen, but this made sense with
what was going on around us."

"I didn't know whether to believe the Jock or not. But when I got home and
explained what happened to Opa, he started calling around to his gentile
friends for guidance and, hopefully, assistance. Except for one old
customer who told him that he'd better follow that advice, most of them
hung up on him as soon as they knew who was calling them."

"Opa had his answer," Hans said, with a sigh.

"But where to go? Many of his so-called friends now seemed to disappear. He
couldn't necessarily blame them, as helping us could put their own families
in grave danger. But I think the quickness and finality of their answers
really crushed him. Many of these were people whom he had known for
decades, and in one instance, a fellow who he helped set up in business in
another part of Vienna. The more he heard `nein,' or nothing at all, the
more anxious he became."

"We used to have a vacation cottage in the mountains, a place that Oma
inherited from her parents. Gosh, I loved it there! It was on a lake, with
a view of the mountains and was only about an hour from great skiing. It
would have been the perfect place to retreat to: it was isolated yet very
livable. But it was still the Depression and they had sold it a few years
before to make sure that the Tailor shop could stay solvent. And it was
probably too far away anyway and besides, that rural area was particularly
hospitable to the Nazi Party even when the party was illegal in Austria."

"How really bad it was hit me when Opa actually asked me if I knew of
anyone. None of Oma's friends would or could help either, and our relatives
were getting the same messages. It was a measure of their desperation that
my parents turned to their teenage son for help. It must have been
humiliating especially for Opa, asking for my help rather than providing it
himself as the patriarch of the family, a very German feeling. But he'd do
whatever he had to do to protect his family."

"Who did I know? The only person who I had a remote chance of asking was
the Jock, but I hardly knew him and had no idea whether he'd take such a
huge risk. Be we had no time to think. We already had heard of shops being
destroyed and houses being ransacked and ruined, with gangs driving people
out of their houses and tearing the places apart."

"In desperation, I looked on a class address list and found where he
lived. We both said goodbye to Rena and Fexl and Opa and made a point of
not telling them where we were going or even the name of the classmate, as
it could put them in a bad spot.  It was about 4 or 5 kilometers away, and
as it was getting dark we risked trying to walk there and get accosted. On
the way we saw smoke coming from buildings in the distance, and in one
silhouette we recognized the building."

"It was our synagogue," he said, his head dropping down.

He sighed, then continued.

"Finally, we found the house. It was a decent sized place, consistent with
what a senior civil servant might own, located on a side street with a gate
and a small garden in front. There were lights inside and I gently knocked
on the door.

We waited forever under what seemed like a spotlight on the porch, though
it was probably only a few seconds. Opa and I looked at each other –
should we knock again? And then the questions went through my mind –
will they help us, or will they turn us in? What will his parents think? Is
this a huge mistake?

"We saw the drapes silently move, and then an eye, and then the door flew
open. It was the Jock."

"I started talking, my voice shaking.  `I'm so sorry, but we have no where
else to go. If it's too dangerous for you we can leave, but..."

`Come in!" he replied quicky but quietly as he turned out the foyer
light. "Follow me!"

"Who is there, son?" his mother asked from a back room.

"We followed him. "Mom, Dad, this is the classmate I was, um ...telling you
about," he said, motioning to us.  "I don't think that they have anywhere
else to go. Can we keep them in the basement? I know they will be OK there
and quiet."

"Again, he didn't even know me, but acted like he did."

"His parents looked at each other.  The Jock looked at them both and used a
German expression that translates to something like `putting your money
where your mouth is."

"Yes, you are right and there is no time to talk about this, they are here
and we need to help them," his mother responded."

"Thank you, `Mutterchen,' he replied, using very affectionate diminutive
for his mother. It's hard to exactly translate into English."

"We all need to be very careful," she added. "I don't have to tell you all
how dangerous this is. So, let's all help each other here, yes?" she said
to Opa and me."

"We'll do whatever you ask. But from my whole heart, thank you all. I hate
that we've put you in this position and we'll try to leave as soon as
possible. We will never tell anyone that we were here," Opa replied.

"She turned out the light in the room while the father and son led us into
the semi-darkness of the basement passageway where we all had to feel our
way down the steep stairs. The son seemed to have night vision as I could
hear him going from one basement window to another to close the blinds
before the father turned on a dim light underneath the stair."

"When the light came on, it looks like we had ended up in a half-storage
room half-engineering laboratory. There were the usual sacks of potatoes
and flour and dried fruits, not to mention carefully packed bin of coal
that you would find in a typical Austrian cellar. But along one wall a
bench was a marvelous display of little engineering inventions, all
assembled out of erector set-like pieces of metal, along with small tools
and vices for working metal."

"I asked the Jock what all this was about, but his Dad, with considerable
pride, answered first."

"He's got a mechanical mind and likes to invent these contraptions. He's
got lots of interesting ideas, but the one that's really interesting is
this one for digging tunnels. Son, show them how it works," he said,
turning to the Jock.

"Well, it's just a prototype, of course, but what I'm thinking is that this
part presses ahead and... He went on to clearly explain his idea and why
his was better than the way that tunnels had previously been drilled. He
would look often at me, as if he wanted to know what I thought. I really
didn't understand all the principals involved, of course, but whether I did
or not, it was great to just talk to a peer who didn't call me names."

"In explaining how the drilling head worked, he showed me a sketch with
some dimensions and I immediately recognized the odd way that the number
nine was written."

"Could I ask you about something? I said, holding the sketch."

"Sure," he answered, tinkering with one of the pieces on his model."

"Did you leave the math notes in my chair, about two weeks ago?  For the
calculus exam?

He stopped and looked at me. "Um...yeah, I did. But how did you know?"

I pointed out the way he wrote numbers, especially the number nine.

"Huh..." he replied. "I just proportion it a little differently, it's not
much. I didn't think it was noticeable to anyone but me, he said, looking
down at the document. "You've got a pretty good eye."

"Why did you do that?" I asked.

He went back to tinkering with his model but said, "I really wanted to get
the best grade, but it should be a fair fight," he said, raising his
eyebrows and smiling. "Anyway, the way this works..." he answered and just
continued with his demonstration.

The next thing I said just popped into my head, and I don't know why I said
it. It just seemed like there was a pattern here. I said to him, "Did you
throw that Chess match to me?"

"Looking at me out of the corner of his eye, he turned and reached up and
took a box off the top of a nearby shelf that was stuffed with machine
parts. But this box had something else in it."

"He dropped the box on the table next to us with a bang."

"Of course I let you win! You actually think that you could ever beat me?
Foolish boy!" he said, smiling. Out of the box he then pulled out an old,
worn-out chess set and placed it on the table next to us. "But I'll give
you another chance to prove yourself, that's if you don't want to be
humiliated," he added, continuing to smile."

"Opa and I spent the next two weeks there, living in a basement, having
mice crawl over us and only seeing glimpses of the sun and playing chess
when he got home from school or practice. Because of the close-by houses,
Opa and I could only rarely go upstairs, let alone go outside. Each day The
Jock carried down two pails for us to do our business in, and he carried
them upstairs every night after dark. He never joked about it or made us
feel bad. It was just a matter-of-fact job that someone had to do and he
did it."

"The mother must have had some familiarity with Jewish culture and
apologized for not having kosher food, but it was almost comic. We had such
bigger issues to worry about. But they cared about us in all ways. And they
never left us alone, even on Sunday, when they all were supposed to go to
church, the Jock would stay behind."

"Oh, and at chess, he really was a good player and we probably split the
matches 50-50. And he definitely gave me that victory during the match at
school."

"For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why this guy did all this for
me. We weren't related and as I mentioned hardly knew each other. But he
made this incredible sacrifice and risk."

"Why?"

"Was it some religious reason? They were Catholic and going to Mass in
those days for a civil servant at least, could be perceived as a minor act
of defiance, and for Hitler Youth it was not a good idea, either. But
growing up in Vienna, I knew what devout Catholics sounded like and I never
heard this family talk about religion or even pray outside of dinner time,
and the house had few of the devotional pictures and statues that seemed to
fill every wall of the houses of some of my more pious classmates."

"In my adolescent - but I'll claim precocious mind - the only other thing
that I could think of was that it was perhaps political.  Maybe he and his
parents were, like, very liberal and progressive people. In Germany, that
would probably have them labeled as Social Democrats, one of the many
outlawed parties that still had sympathetic but only underground
supporters."

"Yes! That was it! I thought to myself. Even though his parents were middle
or upper middle class, with his father's job as a higher-level civil
servant, the antithesis of the typical Social Democrat and more likely
someone who pined for the exiled Kaiser, I had my `Eureka!' moment. That's
why he was helping us! We were the underdogs and he was fighting for our
social rights!" Hans proclaimed, smiling but at the same time shaking his
head.

"When The Jock's parents thought it was safe to leave, we slipped out at 2
in the morning. Again, at great risk, my classmate insisted on accompanying
us the entire way home, to make sure that we got there safely. He also
brought along a rucksack full of food since many food stores were now
off-limits to us."

"Opa had insisted that he travel on the other side of the street so that he
wouldn't be associated with us if we were confronted by Nazis or the police
or even a mob. He understood but insisted on following behind us so that he
could know if anything happened. The night was cold, and I remember
regularly looking over my shoulder to make sure he was there, my face
catching the cold wind when I turned my head.

"When we returned to the apartment, which was above the business, it almost
looked like we had already moved out. It was a testament to Oma and Rena
and Fexl and their cleaning efforts that the few pieces of surviving
furniture had been carefully placed back in their original spots, even
though anything made of cloth was ripped and torn and almost shredded.  We
later saw a couple pictures taken the next day by Fexl with his little
Leica camera. He was able to get them developed by the nice camera store
guy next door."

"It looked like a tornado had torn through the house. In the bedrooms, the
eiderdown blankets were sliced open, lights torn from the ceiling and beds
overturned. All the books in Opa's library had been pulled off the shelves
and vases busted up. They had even brought axes to chop up the furniture."

"It was an awful scene, truly a nightmare, but we had two things going for
us: one was that Oma had already hidden some money in balls of yarn that
had fortunately not been unraveled.  This allowed us to survive for the
next few weeks, purchase train tickets to Hamburg, the main point of
embarkation for overseas boats, and buy second class tickets on the
ship. And those tickets were possible because of the arrival of the
affidavit of support from Oma's brother in New York. Without that, we could
not have cracked the almost impenetrable immigration barriers thrown up in
the 1920s by the American congress."

"I can skip ahead to our trip out of the country, as the ensuing period was
almost totally dedicated to preparations.  At that point, the headmaster
was powerless to keep me enrolled and I could not return to school. After
buying our tickets for the boat and also paying the extortionist emigration
taxes that the Nazi bled out of all the emigrants, we were to be allowed to
take only 10 Reichsmarks per person, just a couple bucks, out of the
country. This was to ensure that we arrived as paupers. Because of Oma's
forethought, we had some money left over so she bought first class tickets
on the train to Hamburg.

The only issue was that the compartments fit six people and there were only
five of us. Not a big deal in a typical situation, but if the sixth person
was a Nazi or even a military person, they could order us out of the
cabin. But even with a typical citizen, we'd need to be very careful of
what we said to each other. So, it bought us some creature comforts but was
not in any way relaxing."

"I couldn't believe that I was getting kicked out of my own country," Hans
said, sighing, slumping a bit in the chair as he continued. But I tried not
to dwell on it. Others had it worse that us in that they couldn't get out
at all and had nothing to look forward to, except for the government
turning the screws tighter and tighter. We had all resigned ourselves to
it, and I have to hand it to Rena who was the most relentlessly optimistic
amongst us about the possibilities of America," he added, turning and
looking at his sister, who reached and gently took his hand in hers.

"In the end, my only regret on leaving is that I couldn't say goodbye to my
classmate, The Jock as I've been calling him.  There was no way that I
would put him in danger. Maybe I could write to him but getting a letter
from a foreign country was certainly an occasion for suspicion. Maybe
someday I'd be able to really thank him for what he'd done for our family,
but in the meantime I could only hope that he'd understand the situation
that we were all in."

"Instead of a train directly to Hamburg, which would have taken us through
Czechoslovakia, the ticket we got took us through Salzburg, where we had to
change trains. It was indirect, but it looked like the only way to get the
private compartment for the bulk of the trip. So, we were in open rows of
seating to Salzburg but then transferred to the direct Hamburg train."

"Our train had been right on time, but the connecting train didn't leave
for another hour though it was already sitting at the station. They let us
board about 45 minutes before departure, so we loaded our few pieces of
luggage on the racks above the seats and waited for the sixth person to
fill in the compartment."

"Fexl said that he crossed his fingers that there wouldn't be anyone, but
the trains were so crowded in those days that I had little hope of that. We
counted down the minutes, though, and still no one showed up. We heard the
whistle blow, which meant `all aboard' like they do here and thought that
we really had the cabin to ourselves."

"However, just as the train started moving, the door began to slide
open. We all kind of held our breath until that last passenger stepped into
the cabin."

"It was The Jock."

"What are you doing here!?" said Opa as he practically jumped out of his
seat and gave him a big bear hug. I myself was just as shocked and also got
up quickly to greet him, giving him a manly pat on the shoulder and asking
the same thing as Opa."

"I thought that you all could use a guide when you got to Hamburg. I've
been there lots with my dad, and I at least know the area around the train
station. And with my dad's position in the railroad, he could find out who
is going where and I asked him to look out for you. He saw the empty seat
but knew it might be dangerous for us to travel together from Vienna, so I
got on the early morning train and, well, here I am," he said

"When I told Oma who he was, she practically jumped out of her seat herself
to hug and kiss him. He smiled at her and tried to deflect her gratitude as
much as he could, saying how brave my dad and I were to even come to his
house. I was beginning to learn that it was a classic demonstration of
modesty and circumspection by a strong person, one who doesn't need praise
and attention.  At the time I was only dimly aware how people could be like
that."

"The relief could be felt by all of us in the cabin. Instead of just having
a comfortable seat, we had a comfortable space, unlike what a lot of other
refugees had, and we were extremely grateful."

"One humorous incident happened when the ticket agent came by the
couchette. I could barely understand the guy, he had some kind of Rheinland
or strange north German accent. As he punched the last ticket, my classmate
said something to him in what sounded like some strange dialect that I had
never heard before. The agent responded, saying something like, `yes, I'm a
long way from home, too. But there are staff shortages these days,
especially with guys being called up for service," or something like
that. And they both said good-bye, which I could clearly understand.

"After the door slid shut, I asked, `What was that you were speaking?"

"Koelsch' my classmate replied "It's a dialect from around Cologne. My
Grandparents have a farm in that area and I went out to their farm in the
summers when I was a kid. It was a bit of a risk in replying to him that
way, I wasn't exactly sure. But he responded immediately, so a lucky
guess."

"I could hardly understand him, but I was with some guys in the war who
were from there and he sure sounded the same," Opa said.

"You sounded funny,' Felix piped in, looking up at the Jock, who was seated
next to him.

My classmate looked at my parents and Rena across the small aisle and
subtly smiled.

"Well, you look funny," he said, staring at Fexl."

"I don't look funny!" Felix shot back.

"Yes you do!"

"No, I don't! Felix again retorted.

This went on for while until my classmate put his arm around Felix and told
him that Ok, he didn't look funny. But he had on a kind of funny hat."

"Felix was flustered, but the rest of us had a good laugh and other happy
conversations that, on this momentous occasion, got us through the day."

"When we arrived at the station, it was crazy and would get worse as the
hours wore on, as we were certainly not the only desperate people on their
way out of Germany that evening. Lots of families who looked just like us:
lives packed away in one bag per person and only the clothes on your back
for a new life in some other place far, far away, most never to return."

"My classmate grabbed Oma's luggage without even asking, which took a load
off of Opa and me. As we walked down the track he looked up at the huge
glass-and-metal vaulted ceiling. "I really like looking at that," he
said. `I think that it's beautiful. This stuff kind of inspires my
contraptions that you saw in the basement," he added before looking down
and stepping over a pile of bags that were just pulled off the train."

"I had never noticed that kind of thing myself, but I could make the
connection once he pointed it out. It really was kind of a remarkable
structure, a huge steel vault spanning over all the train tracks without
any supports underneath. At another time I might even had been inspired
myself."

"In any case, after winding our way through the hustle of the city and
watching my parents complete all the final paperwork and emigration fees,
which, as I mentioned, were meant to take virtually all of the rest of our
money, we waited anxiously near the bottom of the huge gangplank. When it
was finally our time, my parents and Fexl and Rena said goodbye to The Jock
and went on ahead while my classmate and I said goodbye."

"Like a true, masculine guy of the time, I was going to shake his hand and
maybe pat him on the shoulder. He really had, surprisingly, been a good
friend. About the only one I still had and I was truly sorry to be leaving
him."

"Contrary to his usual very masculine style, however, and very un-German,
he came over and gave me a very firm and enveloping hug. It was not what I
was expecting, but he had sacrificed and risked so much that of course I
would respond in kind and put my arms around him.

First, I felt moisture on my neck. I had no idea what it was, there was no
rain. Then as he slowly pulled away, his cheek grazed against mine before
he moved his head.

"And then he tried to kiss me."

"Like a flash, I understood everything."

"I stood stunned and just looked at him, frozen, I couldn't move. I didn't
know how to respond. He saw me and then froze himself and we stared at each
other. And then he backed off and I noticed the tears in his eyes."

"I have to go,' he said, then stepped back, slowly at first, then turned
and practically ran out of the station."

I called after him and ran to the corner of the building to see where he
had gone. but it was too late. I had to go back and get on the boat.  And I
never saw him again."