Lieutenant Block had never been to a party like it. The gothic, high-ceilinged hall, more than the length of a football field, was full to overflowing with people in costumes and masks, some humorous, others hideous. There were the usual clowns and animals, a Salome with her seven veils, and two ballerinas, one of whom turned out to be male. The air was vibrant with laughter and overhung with cigarette smoke. Black, red, and yellow balloons floated above the narrow wooden tables, each decorated with bouquets of fresh-cut spring flowers. Garlands of colored lanterns provided the only illumination. Hilarity seemed to be the order of the day. And there was the music; he had only to close his eyes to imagine himself back at his high school prom.
One of the first to arrive, he had taken a seat at the head of an empty table near the bandstand. By now all 20 chairs were taken. No one had acknowledged his presence with more than a perfunctory nod, except a vivacious blonde who seated herself to his left and gave her name as Alma. “Roger,” he said and shook her hand. “Raja” is how she pronounced it. Dressed in a revealing, black strapless evening gown and a double strand of pearls, she looked out of place. Was she a student? he wondered aloud. “Ja, of course,” she said. “We are all here from the university.”
“What is your field of study?” he asked, recovering quickly.
“Economy.”
“Then we have something in common,” he said and went on by telling her that he planned to pursue a Ph.D. in economics when his Army service was over.
“Das ist ja toll!” she said. Then, seeing he looked puzzled, she explained this was an exclamation of wonder.
He proposed they converse in German, since he needed the practice. But the effort proved too much for him, his vocabulary too meager. He said he expected to go into teaching. She had not yet made up her mind but thought she might go into banking. Presently they were exchanging family and personal histories and discovered that they were both avid watercolorists. Several of her landscapes would be on exhibit in the university library in April, she told him. He promised to come. She asked if he had been to the Spielbank (casino) in Wiesbaden. “I am very lucky in roulette.” He shook his head, and so they agreed that she would take him the following Saturday.
He was reminded of a girl he had dated in his junior year at Columbia. A freshman at Sarah Lawrence, she also had a perfectly symmetrical face and luminous, dark blue eyes, laughed easily, and seemed to light up the space around her. He almost forgot the swelling crowd until Alma spilled a few drops of wine on his sleeve in the process of refilling both of their glasses. She giggled and dabbed at the stain with her napkin. All eyes seemed to be on him. “Macht nichts,” he assured her and raised his glass in a toast. “Prost, meine Freunde.” Three or four male students jumped to their feet and held their glasses aloft. “Bitte sitzen,” he said, blushing.
“The lieutenant speaks German?” asked a bucktoothed student.
“Ein bisschen,” Block replied, holding his thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “I’m amazed how well most young Germans speak English.”
“Ja, we learn it in school,” said the bucktoothed student. “It is required.”
Block explained that American high schools generally require students to take a foreign language, too, but that they do so grudgingly and rarely acquire the skill to speak it fluently.
“Soon perhaps it will not be necessary,” said a young woman at the far end of the table, the upper-half of her face hidden by a black mask. “You will require us all to speak only English, no?” Block smiled politely and waved the presumption away. Another student wanted to know if he had studied German. Block shook his head. The little he knew, he said, he had picked up at his former post in Kaiserslautern. “Enough of this lieutenant stuff. Please, all of you, call me Roger. And also tell me your names.”
“This is very difficult for us,” said the student with the protruding teeth, who introduced himself as Klaus.
“I understand,” said Block, “but if Alma and I can be on a first-name basis, the rest of you can too.”
Alma leaned her head against his and laughed with girlish glee. He had a sudden impulse to kiss her but held himself in check. Yet something had already passed between them. All that week he had overheard Germans employed on the base talk about Fasching, so when he walked past a placard advertising a Fasching ball at the university he decided to find out what it was all about. He hoped to meet young people, maybe get to know one or two. It was his first Saturday night in town and he went in uniform because the trunk with his civilian clothes and books had not caught up with him. That may have accounted for his table filling up so quickly; more likely, he decided, it was because he was buying wine for everyone. The first time he ordered three bottles, but they went quickly and the next time the waiter came around he raised five fingers. Several students threw him appreciative glances. What the hell, he thought, the exchange rate was four marks to the dollar, and he was celebrating his new assignment, which came with first lieutenant bars.
“Does the lieutenant have any idea how much longer the Occupation will last?” The questioner was a muscular youth with pale, unblinking blue eyes and a ragged goatee who gave his name as Karl-Heinz. “It is now ten years, almost half of my life.”
The “Ami Go Home!” slogans plastered everywhere one looked flashed before his mind’s eye. Before he could answer, Alma asked if he liked to dance.
“I do,” he said, “but not just now.”
“Ach, perhaps you are a little tipsy?”
“Ein bisschen.” A few of the students laughed. She kissed him lightly on the cheek and got up to fix him a plate. “That’s very kind,” he said, “but please no meat.” As soon as she left the table a man with pomaded blond hair and wire-rimmed glasses the thickness of magnifying lenses left his place and took Alma’s seat. “My name is Stefan,” he began, “and I would like to ask the Herr Leutnant where he is coming from.”
The formality, as always, bothered him. “San Francisco,” he said.
“I hear this is a very beautiful city. You Americans are such lucky people.”
“How do you mean?”
“Because your cities were not bombed. As you can see, here everything has been damaged and destroyed, even some of our most beautiful buildings. We suffered terribly.”
In the short time since his arrival, Block had driven through whole neighborhoods ravaged by bombs, inhaled the stench of charred beams and other detritus, crossed paths with rats scampering amid the ruins. All along he had hoped for a stateside assignment, had expected his college degree to lead to a desk job. Instead, he had been assigned to an infantry battalion in Germany, which his parents had fled before he was born. But he said none of this; Occupation forces were under orders to avoid altercations with the locals.
“You killed thousands of innocent people, women and children,” Stefan pursued.
Block looked around for the waiter. “What are you studying?” he asked, hoping to fend off an argument.
Stefan helped himself to another glass of wine. “Physics,” he said.
“If the Herr Leutnant will permit, I have family in Dresden, and for this reason I would like to know why you firebombed this beautiful city. Many of my relatives were horribly burned and could not be identified. It was terrible.”
“If you will permit,” Block said, “it so happens that the RAF bombed Dresden. But I’d rather not talk about the war.” He hesitated. “Not on such a festive occasion.”
“Perhaps you are ashamed.”
“Ashamed?” Block looked around and considered finding another table—or leaving altogether. But Alma reappeared at that moment with a heaping plate in each hand. “You must not talk about serious things,” she said brightly. “Tonight you must be happy.”
Block nodded grimly and threw her a mock salute. The tension in his neck lessened. Stefan made no move to give Alma back her seat. After some shuffling of chairs, room was made for her on Block’s right.
“On Fasching we forget all our difficulties,” she said. “Tonight—how do you say—you must let down your hair.”
“You mean, anything goes?” Block poured himself another glass of Piesporter Michelsberg, the fourth, by his count.
“Anything goes? What means this expression?”
“I’ll explain later,” he said, his eyes on the plate in front of him. It was heaped high with potato salad and sauerkraut, pickles, slices of dark bread, and two plump, steaming sausages. Had she not heard him? He cut the sausages into chunks and pushed them piecemeal under the bread. The students dug into their food as though they had not eaten in days—except Stefan; his head wobbling from side to side, he watched Block like a starving beggar.
After a while Alma asked Stefan why he was not eating.
“I am still waiting for the Herr Leutnant to explain why the Allies firebombed Dresden.” Some of the others looked uncomfortable. “It was willful destruction,” Stefan went on, throwing back the remains of his glass and immediately pouring himself another. “It was completely unnecessary and an inexcusable atrocity.”
A tall, spindly woman in a witch’s costume rose before Block could say anything. “My name is Ilse Wittig,” she said, “and if the lieutenant will excuse me, I must agree with Stefan. Dresden was like Florence, a city with magnificent architecture. It had not one military target. The bombing was especially tragic because, as the lieutenant knows, the war was almost over.”
Block studied the faces of those around him. The students weren’t much younger than he. He harbored no enmity, did not believe in indicting a whole nation, could not work up a hate. The still-smoldering past was not of their making. But for the sins of their fathers and grandfathers, he would be in their shoes now, studying economics at a German university. But what he said surprised him. “Please spare me a lecture about atrocities. When Dresden was bombed, millions of people were already dead because of the war Germany started, including six million who were exterminated because the Nazis considered them racially inferior.”
“If you are talking about the concentration camps,” said Karl-Heinz, “they were a fabrication of American Jews.”
Block’s eyes swept the table. “Do all of you think Auschwitz was a hoax?” Everyone stopped eating and looked at him fixedly. No one said anything until a man too old to be a student and wearing a Viking costume got to his feet. “Hitler did not approve of killing Jews,” he declared. “Auschwitz was a labor camp. Many people died from illness and old age. But war is war.”
Alma reached for Block’s hand and placed it in her lap. “That is Herr Professor Doctor Zeitzler of the history department,” she whispered.
For the second time Block repressed an urge to leave. It had been a mistake to come in uniform. The orchestra was playing “All the Things You Are.” He lit a Camel; this time he did not pass the pack around. What were they being taught in school? Were they expressing their own opinions or parroting their parents’ prejudices and contorted memories? He would deal with one falsehood and distortion at a time. “Are you suggesting that Rotterdam, London, and Coventry were military targets?” he asked, pointing his cigarette straight at Stefan.
“Of course,” said Stefan. “We had to retaliate.”
“Retaliate? The London Blitz and the destruction of Warsaw happened long before the bombing of Dresden.”
“Ach, Schatz, don’t spoil the evening,” Alma pleaded. “It’s not a good idea to talk about politics.”
“I understand how some of you feel,” Block went on. “Both sides in any war commit excesses, even atrocities. But the Nazis committed acts of wanton savagery on a scale never before seen in human history.” His mouth dry, he marveled at his self-restraint. “For example, I’m sure you’ve all heard the name Lidice, the city in Czechoslovakia that the Nazis simply eradicated. Every man over 16 was killed. The women and children were sent to concentration camps and the buildings were all burned to the ground.” He paused to look around. “I ask you all, why?”
“They were criminals!” Klaus exploded. “My father told me so. They deserved to be punished.”
Block clenched his right hand into a fist. Army orders be damned. “Tell me, Klaus, what did your father do in the war?
“He was in the army and lost a leg on the eastern front.”
“Where on the eastern front?”
“Stalingrad.” The whole time he had been in Germany, Block had yet to meet the first civilian who admitted to having fought against the Americans and British. “Did any of you have a father or older brother who fought on the western front?” he asked.
There was no answer and Alma tugged at his sleeve. “Come Schatz. Let us dance.”
He pulled his arm away and loosened his tie. “Does everyone at this table deny the existence of the concentration camps and the mass killings in gas chambers? Do you deny Hitler wanted to eliminate every Jewish man, woman, and child and eventually dominate the world?” He was about to go on when Zeitzler, still standing, his face turned purple, cut him off.
“There is no proof, no proof whatsoever, that Jews were systematically exterminated.”
“Surely the Herr Professor knows that there is ample and incontrovertible proof, from documents, survivors, and even the SS’s own testimony, of the crematoria and the use of Zyklon-B at Auschwitz.”
“Den Quatsch kann ich nicht mehr anhören,” said Zeitzler, executing a smart about-face as he left the table.
“I can’t listen to any more of this rubbish,” Alma translated. He considered following Zeitzler, who was already at the far end of the hall looking for a place to sit, but thought better of it.
“Tonight is not a good time to talk about the war,” said Alma, tugging at his sleeve. “Anyway, it was long ago.”
“Hitler did not wish for war,” said Stefan before Block could respond. “It was forced on him.”
“This is also my opinion,” said Ilse Wittig, who stood whenever she had anything to say. “I think the death of six million is exaggerated. Yes, many people died, but they died of natural causes. You know, of course, that Anne Frank died of typhus.”
A student in a bear costume, silent until now, said, “My parents told me the Jews had too much power before the war.” Next to him a girl in a dirndl dress nodded vigorously.
The waiter ambled past with an inquiring look, but Block waved him on. Turning to Alma, he said, “Okay, let’s dance before I do something violent. Then we’ll get out of here.”
She took his hand and led him to the makeshift dance floor. Even the females could not take their eyes off her. “Don’t take it so serious,” she said, nuzzling his ear. The girl from Sarah Lawrence flashed through his mind. Her father had served time in jail for war profiteering. He had not yet asked Alma about her father. Better not to know; her charm and beauty might force him to suspend moral judgment again. After three numbers, perspiration was showing through his uniform and he led the way back to the table. Alma, now sitting on his lap, her voice grown husky, said, “You are an excellent dancer. Are you enjoying yourself?”
He nodded. “Funny thing is, I still don’t quite know what Fasching is all about.”
She tilted her head and threw him a curious glance. “It is the celebration before Lent. I think it is the same as your Mardi Gras.”
“That much I pretty much guessed,” he said. “But what exactly do you do on Lent?”
“Ach, Raja, you are so funny. I personally don’t do anything. But my parents, they are very religious. They go to church and fast and pray for forgiveness of their sins. And they avoid many pleasures for the entire 40 days.”
“Forty days? Why so long?”
“Ja, because that is how many days our Savior spent in the desert fasting.” She freed her hand from his. “How come this is unknown to you?”
“Excuse my ignorance,” he said, pulling out his handkerchief and using it to wipe his forehead. “I’m Jewish.” “
You are a Jew?” She jumped to her feet, her face flushed. “I had no idea. But you of all people should know.”
“Why is that?”
“Why? Because you killed Him!” She snatched up her evening bag and took a step backward. “Auf Wiedersehen, Lieutenant.”
He grabbed her by the wrist, but she managed to break loose. “Is something the matter, Lieutenant?” asked Klaus. “You’re damn right, something is wrong,” he said, reaching for a nearly full bottle and hurling it against the wall. “This party is over!” He collected his Zippo and cigarettes, stuffed them into his pockets, and left by the same door Alma had used, knotting his tie as he went.
©2004, Pete Phillips. 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.