An Uncommon Friendship by Bernat Rosner

Author:Bernat Rosner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press

Bernat Rosner was thirteen years and three months old on the day of his liberation. The Nazi reign of terror had left him suspended between life and death.

During February and March 1945, the front moved ever closer to Kleinheubach in western Germany. Air raids increased as tactical strikes and strategic bombings that supported the advancing Allied army filled our days and nights. I remember the two nights Dresden was bombed: February 13 and 14. I had gotten myself a widely published map of Germany and an official military grid that could be superimposed on it. Horizontal and vertical lines were marked by numbers and letters. Then, as I listened to military reports of the bombing raids that were broadcast on the radio, I was able to follow the position of the planes in their paths over Germany. “Anton, Bertha vier” would correspond to coordinates on my map, and I could determine the approximate position of the bombers. I remember that when I tuned in on February 13, the first wave of bombers was already on its way out of Germany near the border of the Netherlands. The last wave was entering Germany over the Eifel mountains, southwest of Cologne. Many squadrons seemed to fly in various directions at first, but in fact all zeroed in eventually on Dresden. The death toll was particularly high—approximately 135,000 people were incinerated during the two nights—because half a million German refugees from the east had poured into the city. Goebbels's total war on the world had finally come home to the Germans themselves. A few Germans, however, didn't seem to have noticed. My teachers in Miltenberg continued to instruct me and my peers without skipping a beat, as if nothing was happening outside the red sandstone walls of our school building.

One day about forty of us between fourteen and sixteen years of age—the older ones had already been drafted—were told by the school principal to assemble in a large classroom. I sensed that something important was up. I remembered the advice my father gave me when he left on his last furlough in case I were ever drafted and saw action. Avoid the front line, he said, where the enemy could shoot you, and the back as well, where the fanatics might kill you. Stay in the middle where nobody would notice you. Now I decided to sit in the middle of this assembly so as not to attract attention. Wearing long overcoats, three SS officers entered briskly, stood in front of the class, and asked for volunteers to become officer-cadets in the SS. They emphasized that anyone signing up at this point, at the time of Germany's greatest need, was sure to advance rapidly in the SS ranks after the war was won. No one volunteered. The officers became frustrated and called us cowards. Then they produced a list of our names and harassed those of us whose fathers were officers in the army. They started in on a schoolmate of mine whose father was a retired captain in the German colonial army of World War I in Africa.

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