It was the summer of 1997 when I received an unexpected letter and a picture from a former non-Jewish playmate. The picture had been taken by a street photographer and was of a group of neighborhood youngsters near where we lived in Bremen, my hometown. We boys were then about 10 or 15 years old. It was taken shortly before Hitler came to power, when Jewish and non-Jewish children still played together.
In June 1997 I had visited Bremen at the invitation of the city. This playmate of mine, Gunther, wrote me that he had missed meeting me during my stay, but had wanted to show me that in our early lives we had been good friends. I myself had a copy of the picture. He wanted to assure me that he had never “touched a Jew.” His parents had owned a cleaning store right next to my father’s business and we frequently met as children. He knew my family and knew that my mother had been murdered by Nazis during Kristallnacht. He might have felt bad about that.
After more than half a century, you can say many things. I answered him that I remembered well our encounters before the war. We were a happy-go-lucky group, never thinking of harming each other. But I was interested in his life after Hitler came to power, during the time that non-Jews were forbidden to talk to Jews.
The answer was shocking. He wrote that he had been a guard in Bergen-Belsen. Again, though, he assured me that he “never touched a Jew.”
What I wanted to hear from Gunther was how he felt about his job. Did he think that killing Jews was the proper thing to do? His answer taught me how deeply the Nazis had been brainwashed and how frightened they were to tell the truth. That was the end of our correspondence; he never wrote to me again.
©2005, Rabbi Jacob G. Wiener. The text, images, and audio and video clips on this website are available for limited non-commercial, educational, and personal use only, or for fair use as defined in the United States copyright laws.