The winter of 1939-40 [after the German invasion of Poland] was one of the longest and coldest in memory….It was as if all sides were waiting for a mediator to intervene and undo hasty deeds. Millions of Germans still believed that the British and French did not want to wage all-out war, despite their declaration of Septermber 3.  “The French could have beaten the hell out of us when we were busy in Poland,” said my Uncle Franz, who had recently become a member of the police. “Even they are not stupid enough to attack now when we face them in full strength. And don’t forget, our victory in Poland must have scared the hell out of them. No, they missed their boat for good.” But my grandmother merely snorted: “If it’s all over, why does this whole valley look like an armed camp?”

“Just propaganda,” replied my uncle disdainfully. “What would Hitler do with France anyway? He’s got a hell of a chunk of land now in Poland. That’s what he’s really after.” The craving for land was something my grandmother understood better than my uncle. “Hitler won’t rest until he has Alsace-Lorraine back,” she said calmly. “He always says the French stole it from us in 1918, and he’s right on that.”

… [In Gymnasium] Herr Fetten, the assistant headmaster whom we called ‘the cuckoo’, claimed that not even half of us uncompetents woul dever graduate. He didn’t know how right he was, if for a different reason. Over half of my classmates were killed before they reached the age of 18.

Despite its benefits, the Hitler Youth contributed to lower scholastic standards, since it claimed so much of our time and energy. Even before the war, two afternoon’s a week were taken up by rallies and frequent Sunday parades. As the fortunes of war turned against us, education suffered grievously, until it almost disappeared in its existing form after the summer of 1944. From then on, all boys over 15 could be called up for duty. Entire school classes were shipped to the front to dig ditches, man anti-aircraft guns, and finally fight the enemy in close combat. The portents were there in 1940.

In th eearly morning hours of 10 May, 1940,  our troops swarmed across the borders of France, Luxemburg, Belgium and Holland. Woord War II had begun in earnest. The French expected to break our initial thrust at their Maginot Line, but General von Rundstedt’s panzers drove north through the difficult terrain of the Ardennes, for the moment by-passing the Maginot Line and rolling through Luxemburg into neutral Belgium and Holland. Paratroopers jumped deep behind the Dutch lines, sowing confusion and paralyzing resistance…. When King Leopold of Belgium surrendered his army on 28 May, without consulting with his allies, the British Expeditionary Force was given orders to evacuate Dunkirk…. After Dunkirk, no German doubted the outcome of the battle for France….  [Paris falls 14 June 1940] On that day, few Germans remained unimpressed by the feats of their Wehrmacht. My brother told me years later that my fathher chuckled with glee when he listened to the radio report describing the entry of our troops into the French capital, something no German soldier of 1914 had achieved. In the provinces bordering France, jubilation was unrestrained. The French were finally tasting the bitter fruit of the Treaty of Versailles which had subjected our land to 12 years of occupation.

… By the summer of 1940, I seriously doubted I woul dbe fortunate enough to fight. Only England remained to be defeated, and it was on its last legs dur to the ever-tightening noose of our U-boats….Several of my classmates had already decided to become career officers, but I didn’t think the war would last long enough and I didn’t see much excitement in a peacetime army.

…On morning my Uncle Franz and my grandmother took me to the synagogue, which had been turned into a prisoneroof-war camp. What took place next was almost like a slave auction. About two dozen farmers milled around in the backyard of the building, somewhat self-consciously inspecting 30 to 40 French prisoners. A German sergeant passed his helmet around and everybody took a number. That’s how we got George Dupont. [The French POW worked for nearly 5 years on Heck’s farm.]

…Especially among farmers (who were always complaining anyway), it wasn’t at all unusual to hear jokes about Hitler, the other leaders, and the war in general. But the international ‘undermining of the will to fight’ by stating that Germany ought to surrender was an accusation that could draw the death sentence as early as 1941. Anyone careless enough to make such a statement after the assassination attempt on Hitler in 1944 was simply committing suicide. By then our parents and elders had become afraid of us and our single-minded fanaticism.

…On a cold November evening, my grandmother called me into the milk kitchen next to the stable. “Come in here and say good-bye to Frau Ermann,” she said. If Frau Ermann was as embarrassed as I, she didn’t show it. I hadn’t talked to her for years outside of a quick nod when I saw her on the street. Her hair was totally grey and she seemed frail and shrunken, but she was quite agitated.

“I’m glad it’s finally over, Frau Heck,” she said. “Maybe we’ll get some peace now, since they don’t want us here anyway.” Rumors had been afloat thatthe Jews of Wittlich would all be deported since we were located in the defenses of the Westwall, but I couldn’t quite see why they would spy on us now after the defeat of France. “We’ll be gone in four days,” said Frau Ermann, and then she broke down and started to sob. My grandmother reached out to her and pulled her to her chest. “Get out,” she hissed at me. I had known that she still lit Frau Ermann’s Sabbath fire, despite Uncle Franz’s mild protestations, but this was the first time I had seen Frau Ermann come into our house. My grandmother did not invite easy intimacy and nobody called her by her first name, but I heard her sau to Frau Ermann, “It’ll be alright, Frieda. All of this madness is going to pass.”

I never did say good-bye to Frau Ermann, and I was relieved I didn’t have to. When I told my grandmother the Jews would be shipped to Poland to atone for their crimes by working the land, she shrieked in a rage, triggered by her own feelings of shame: “How would you like to work as a slave on a lousy farm in god-forsake Poland, Du dummer Idiot? What have the Ermanns ever done to us?

The Jews of Wittlich were not herded into cattle cars. There were perhaps 80 of them left. One morning early, as I came home from serving Mass, I saw a small group of them guarded by a single SA man, walking toward the station. Jews had become lepers. All were dragging heavy suitcases. Many frantically sold their valuables at sometimes ridiculous prices. All Jewish property became the trust of the government. My grandmother bought stacks of Frau Ermann’s fine linen, and stored three boxes of her silver and other valuables in our wine cellar. That was against the law, and I only found out about it when I overheard her discussing it with my uncle. “My God, mother,” he said, “Don’t you realize you could end up in a KZ for that?”

… Although the principal function of the camps was to contain and punish political opponents, or indeed anyone who dared to critisize the government publicly, criminals, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Gypsies were also sent. The name that covered all of these categories of offenders was Volksschädling, “parasite of the people.”

By 1938, the Gestapo had become all powerful and was beyond the control of the regular judicial system. A man convicted of three burglaries, for instance, might be sentenced to five years in prison. Since it was his third offense, the Gestapo might well meet him at the courtroom door and lead him away. There was no appeal against such action. What made the so-called ‘protective custody’ of the camps even more terrifying was the uncertainty. I person might be kept for years, suddenly released, or simply executed. A sentence was usually not pronounced in public.

When the Jews left Wittlich in three third-class cars, few guessed that they might go to a concentration camp. Prior to Kristallnacht of 1938, most camp inmates had been non-Jewish. Most townspeople, myself included, did not doubt that the regime would deport them to Poland, into the enclave known as the General Government. For years, the Nazi regime had proclaimed to us and the world that it wanted to make Germany judenrein, clean of Jews….. The ‘Final Solution’ to exterminate was decided upon at a small, top-secret conference in Wansee, a suburb of Berlin. The year was 1942, and the SS had captured millions of Polish, Russian, and other Eastern Jews. That incredible, incomprehensible decision to wipe out a whole race was always kept secret from the German masses. To us in the Hitler Youth, the Final Solution meant deportation, but not annihilation. A measure of guilt must go to most Germans because they neither disputed, nor opposed that decision. We in the Hitler Youth wholeheartedly approved, although nobody asked our opinion. Despite their newly-found conscience after the war, most citizens of my hometown felt the same….The notion of Auschwitz as a farm seems grotesque now. It was perfectly believable to me in 1940.

[Of course, the sentiments expressed by Heck are not uncommon among Germans of the war generation. However, they are also some of the more controversial considering collective guilt. How much people ‘know’ and how much they choose to know remain a gray area. Blind trust in political authority can have terrible ramifications. If one lesson should be taken away, it may be that, in a democracy, people need to knwo what their government is doing in their name.]