Parallel Journeys

Antisemitism is hatred for Jewish people like Helen. As Ayer notes, the Nazis didn’t invent antisemitism. Violent, deadly prejudice has been around for centuries. Before Hitler called Jews Germany’s enemies, Martin Luther, the creator of Protestantism in the 1500s, referred to them as enemies of Christianity. Antisemitism continues to exist, though some Jewish scholars argue Jews use antisemitism to deflect criticism of the Jewish homeland, Israel, and its treatment of Palestinians.

The Axis are the countries fighting with Nazi Germany, including Japan and Italy. As with the Allies, Ayer doesn’t go into depth about the Axis nations. Benito Mussolini was the fascist dictator of Italy, and his authoritarian style inspired Hitler. Unlike Hitler, Mussolini didn’t have total control of Italy, and he wasn’t preoccupied with systematically killing Jewish people and other groups. Hideki Tojo, a military general, was the dictator for Japan during most of World War II.

As the term implies, concentration camps are a concentration of detained people in a closed-off area. The Nazis maintained multiple kinds of concentration camps, and Helen experiences all of them. She and Siegfried go to a transit camp, where Nazis held them before sending them to Auschwitz, a death camp with gas chambers. She then goes to a labor camp, Kratzau. The labels can be misleading. In any camp, Nazis could kill Jews. Thus, at Kratzau, Helen worries about death.

The Nazis didn’t invent antisemitism or create the concept of concentration camps. The U.S. concentrated Indigenous peoples in closed-off spaces, and England concentrated the Boer peoples in the late 1800s/early 1900s.

Using manipulation and misinformation—in a word, propaganda—the Nazis turned select groups of people into their enemies, and the primary group was the Jewish people. The Nazis had a Jewish problem: They didn’t want to share space with Jews. Their solution became known as the Final Solution, and it was genocide. Thus, the term is a euphemism, as it obscures the murderous policy.

The Gestapo was the official police force of the Nazis, and their stealth, covert operations make the term “secret” applicable. The Gestapo had unlimited powers, and could show up at any time. As Ayer writes, they were the main agency “in charge of rounding up the Jews and shipping them east” (141). Two Gestapo officers work with two Dutch offices to deport Helen and Siegfried to the concentration camps in Eastern Europe.

The Nazis also concentrated Jews in specific areas of cities, and these places are called ghettos. As Ayer illustrates with the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland, the Nazis kept the spaces overcrowded and unsanitary, and Jews regularly died of malnutrition or disease. Yet the ghettos were preferable to the camps, as the Nazis didn’t constantly patrol the ghettos: They left that to the Jewish Councils.

The Hitler Youth is the official youth organization of the Nazis and, eventually, the only youth organization in Nazi Germany. The point of the Hitler Youth is to create strong Nazi leaders for the future. It’s harsh and abusive, but Alfons remains a dedicated member and receives numerous promotions.

The Holocaust comes from a Greek word that means “burnt offering.” In other words, it’s a type of sacrifice where the person burns the offering on an altar. The term refers to the genocide of the Jews and the other targeted groups, including people with physical and mental disabilities, Roma, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. The term can be controversial, as it implies that these people died for a greater cause when, in reality, the Nazis murdered them. The focus on the Jews can also lead to contentious debates, with people wondering why Jewish deaths continually receive the bulk of the attention, even though Jews were the greatest number of victims.

The Nazis set up Jewish Councils—composed of prominent Jewish leaders from the relevant area—to manage the Jews in the cities they occupied and the ghettos they created. The Jewish Councils put together lists of people to deport to the concentration camps, and they kept track of their property and items for the Nazis. The existence of the Jewish Councils is a contentious part of the Holocaust, and Helen alludes to their odious reputation when she writes, “Suddenly, it became clear to me that the Jewish Council was lying when it told us that all deportees were sent east to do labor” (141).

The Luftwaffe is the prestigious German air force that Alfons dreams of joining. He’s on his way to becoming a fighter pilot, but the disastrous war turns him into a commander on the ground. By the war’s end, Alfons cares much less about becoming an elite Luftwaffe member: His main goal is survival.

Adolf Hitler didn’t invent the Nazi political party. The party, first known as the German Workers’ Party, began in 1919 as a response to the Treaty of Versailles, and its main leader was the locksmith Anton Drexler. Hitler joined the party a few months after its creation and took control of it in 1921. He rebranded it Nationalist Socialist German Workers (Nazi) and made it a force in German politics. The Nazis weren’t socialists: They had no coherent ideology.

Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, and the document dictated the peace terms for the end of World War I. The treaty blamed Germany for starting the war and made them pay hefty reparations to the countries it harmed. It also prevented them from remilitarizing and took away territory Germany had gained in the war. Many Germans thought the treaty was humiliating, and Hitler rallied against the harsh treaty and the politicians who signed it to amass support.