Parallel Journeys

Alfons Heck doesn’t have blue eyes and blond hair, but he’s a white German Christian and, thus, a part of Hitler’s Master Race. His family has lived in Germany for over 150 years on a Rhineland farm in Wittlich, a town in the Rhineland). While his mom and dad move to Oberhausen, an industrial German city, with his twin brother Rudi, Alfons stays on the farm with his grandparents.

The Treaty of Versailles is the harsh agreement that ends World War I, and it allows French soldiers to occupy the Rhineland, so Rhineland Germans don’t tend to like the French. The treaty also prevents Germany from rebuilding its military, and it forces them to pay money to the countries it damaged. The treaty exacerbates Germany’s financial problems. Inflation is extreme: People have to carry around German marks in wheelbarrows—at one point, it takes 4.2 billion Germans marks to equal one American dollar.

Adolf Hitler, a former soldier, is the leader of the Nazi Party, and he blames communists, labor unions, and Jews for Germany’s problems. If Germans want to make their country strong again, he argues that they should support him and his party, and on January 30, 1933, Hitler becomes Reich Chancellor; soon, he curtails freedoms to protect the supposedly threatened nation.

Alfons is six, and he, his family, and his neighbors are listening to Hitler on the radio in their kitchen. Alfons’s grandpa thinks Hitler is deranged, but he prefers Hitler to the Communists. As Hitler produces jobs and economic stability, Alfons’s extended family becomes more supportive. However, Alfons’s parents don’t like the Nazis, and they get Alfons’s brother Rudi to dislike them.

Alfons’s teacher, Herr Becker, is abusive, and he whips the students but doesn’t touch the Jewish kids—he makes them sit in a corner that he calls “Israel.” During the spring of 1933, the Nazis pass The Law against the Overcrowding of German Schools, and Alfons’s Jewish friend, Heinz Ermann, has to leave.

Alfons can’t wait to turn 10 and join the Nazi organization for young people, the Hitler Youth. The parades enchant him, and Alfons worships Hitler. He’s building a bold new era for Germany, the Third Reich, and its greatness will last 1,000 years.

In the early 1900s, Helen Waterford is a young Jewish person in cosmopolitan Frankfurt, Germany. Her mom’s family had lived in tiny villages in Southern Germany for hundreds of years, and her dad’s family escaped the Lithuanian pogroms (organized killings of Jews) by moving to Germany.

At 16, Helen’s mom pressures her to marry a rich 32-year-old man, but Helen rebels. A little later, while vacationing near the North Sea, she meets Siegfried Wohlfarth. His family is more religious than her family, and Siegfried’s parents don’t think they should get married. The Nazis accelerate their antisemitic policies: Siegfried loses his job, and Helen leaves her university. Still, over pastries and tea, Helen stands up to Siegfried’s mom and tells her she’ll be a Wohlfarth.

Siegfried’s friend, A.G, opens his own metal business in Holland and offers Siegfried a job. Helen and Siegfried, now married, move to a small apartment in Amsterdam and become friends with other displaced Jews.

In 1937, Helen is pregnant, and on October 28, 1937, their daughter Doris is born. The couple needs money. A.G. can’t give Siegfried a raise, so Helen becomes a prosperous interior decorator and meets Ab Reusink, a carpenter and contractor. He’ll play a pivotal role in Helen’s future.

Hitler turns 49 on April 20, 1938—the same day Alfons becomes a member of Jungvolk (Young Folk), the junior section of the Hitler Youth. He has to raise three fingers on his right hand and pledge to follow Hitler even if it means death. He then endures a courage test that requires him and the other boys to jump head-first off the 10-foot high diving board into the swimming pool. After passing, the 15-year-old leader gives the boys a short knife with the inscription “Blood and Honor.”

The equivalent of the Jungvolk for girls is Jungmadel (Young Maidens). While the boys dress like soldiers, the girls wear blouses and skirts. Like the boys, the girls endure hikes and marches, but for the girls, the Nazis emphasize motherhood. They have to give birth to Aryan babies.

Neither boys nor girls need their parents’ permission to join the Hitler Youth, and if an adult tries to stop a young person from becoming a member, they might face punishment. When Alfons’s dad sees him in his Hitler Youth uniform, he ridicules it. Alfons doesn’t care. He’s a member of the drum and fanfare section, and he gets to go to the annual Nuremberg rally, where Germans spend a week celebrating Hitler and the Nazis. On Saturday, September 10, 1938, 80,000 Hitler Youth members fill a stadium. Hitler addresses them: They’re the future leaders of Nazism; one day, they’ll have undeniable power.

Hitler’s words and actions enthrall Alfons and German citizens. That same year (1938), Germany annexes Austria and Sudetenland (a region of Czechoslovakia with a large German population). Hitler also makes Jewish Germans use “Jewish” first names like Abraham and Sarah, and Nazi newspapers run headlines that told Jews their future in Europe was hopeless.

Heinz Ermann, Alfons’s Jewish friend, comes to his family’s farm. His dad is sending him to stay with his uncle, a rabbi in Cologne. It’s a big city, and in a small place like Wittlich, Jews tend to stick out more. Alfons’s grandma gives them pieces of cake, but the boys don’t talk to one another. Their friendship is over, and as Alfons climbs the Hitler Youth hierarchy, he denies ever having a Jewish friend like Heinz.

Near the end of 1938, Nazis arrested Polish Jews living in Germany and sent them back to Poland. One of the Jews is the dad of 17-year-old Herschel Grynzszpan. Livid about the mistreatment, Herschel, who lives in France, enters the German Embassy in Paris and shoots Ernst vom Rath, a secretary. To retaliate, the Nazis organize a night of destruction and violence against German Jews, Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), where they damage and loot Jewish homes, shops, and places of worship.

Alfons and the other boys watch an SA (Sturmabteilung, the Nazis’ first paramilitary force) member smash the Wittlich synagogue’s crystal window and mock the Torah. The violence excites Alfons and the boys, and one of his friends throws a rock toward a synagogue window before Uncle Franz grabs them by the neck and tells them to go home. Alfons’s grandma doesn’t like the violence, and she thinks the police should arrest the rampaging Nazis.

During Kristallnacht, the Nazis set 119 synagogues on fire—76 burned down. The Nazis pillaged around 7,500 Jewish shops, arrested 20,000 Jews, and 36 Jews died. Alfons see the Nazis arrest the butcher, Gustav Marks, and his wife screams at the silent onlookers: Why are they doing this?

In Frankfurt, where Helen once lived, the Nazis burn four synagogues, and they send her brother and Siegfried’s brother to a concentration camp. Helen and Siegfried get Helen’s father a visa to come to Holland, but he doesn’t want to leave Germany. The Nazis arrest him during Kristallnacht, and he shows his visa to the SA man, who calls him an idiot for not leaving. The SA official meets Helen’s dad at the train station and gets him to Amsterdam.

Siegfried’s family in England takes in Helen’s brother, and then Helen’s mom and Siegfried’s parents come to Holland. In 1940, Helen’s parents and brother get around the United States’ tight immigration quotas by entering as Lithuanians. Countries continue to reject Jewish immigrants, and the Nazi newspapers taunt the situation with headlines about Jews being for sale, and no one wanting to buy them.