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  And then, one day, things began to change. At Gymnasium, there was a contest to see which class could first get 100 percent participation in the Hitler-Jugend. In 1934, joining the Hitler Youth was not mandatory yet, mind you. It was a social club, like your Boy Scouts, except we also swore allegiance to Hitler as his future soldiers. Under the guidance of adult leaders, we would meet after school, and go camping on weekends. We wore uniforms that looked like those the SS wore, with the Sig Rune on the lapel. I, who at age fifteen chafed at sitting at a desk, loved being outside. I excelled at the sports competitions. I had a reputation for being a bully, but that was not necessarily fair--half of the time I was beating someone to a pulp because he had called Franz a sissy.

  I desperately wanted my class to win. Not because I had any great allegiance to the Fuhrer but because the local leader of the HJ Kameradschaft was Herr Sollemach, whose daughter, Inge, was the prettiest girl I had ever seen. She looked like an ice queen, with her silver-blond hair and her pale blue eyes; and she and her friends did not know I existed. This, I realized, was an opportunity to change that.

  For the competition, the teacher put everyone's names on the board, erasing those of the boys who joined the HJ, one by one. There were some who joined out of peer pressure; some who joined because their fathers said they had to. There were more than a dozen, however, who joined because I threatened to pound them in the school yard if they did not.

  My brother refused to join the Hitler-Jugend. In his classroom, he and one other boy were the only ones who didn't. We all knew why Artur Goldman did not join--he could not. When I asked Franz why he would align himself with a Jew, he said he didn't want his friend Artur to feel like he was being left out.

  A few weeks later, Artur stopped going to school and never came back. My father encouraged Franz to join the Hitler-Jugend, too, to make new friends. My mother made me promise to watch over him at our meetings. "Franz," she would say, "isn't strong like you." She worried about him camping out in the woods, getting sick too easily, not connecting with the other boys.

  But for the first time in her life, she didn't have to worry about me. Because as it turned out, I was the poster child for the Hitler-Jugend.

  We would hike and sing and do calisthenics. We learned how to line up in military formations. My favorite activity was Wehrsport--military marching, bayonet drills, grenade throwing, trench digging, crawling through barbed wire. It made me feel like a soldier already. I had such enthusiasm for the Hitler-Jugend that Herr Sollemach told my father I would make a fine SS man one day. Was there any greater compliment?

  To find the strongest among us, there were also Mutproben, tests of courage. Even individuals who were afraid would be compelled to do what we were told to do, because otherwise the stigma of being a coward would cling to you like a stench. Our first test was climbing the rock wall at the castle, without any safety harness. Some of the older boys scrambled to be in the front of the line, but Franz held back and I stayed with him, as per my mother's orders. When one of the boys fell and broke his leg, the training was aborted.

  A week later, as part of our tests of courage, Herr Sollemach blindfolded the group of us. Franz, sitting next to me, held tightly on to my hand. "Reiner," he whispered, "I'm scared."

  "Just do what they say," I told him, "and it will be over soon."

  I had come to see a beautiful liberation in this new way of thinking--which was, ironically, not having to think for myself. At Gymnasium I wasn't clever enough to come up with the right answer. In Hitler-Jugend, I was told the right answer, and as long as I parroted it back I was considered a genius.

  We sat in this artificial dark, awaiting instructions. Herr Sollemach and some of the older boys patrolled in front of us. "If the Fuhrer asks you to fight for Germany, what do you do?"

  Fight! we all yelled.

  "If the Fuhrer asks you to die for Germany, what do you do?"

  Die!

  "What do you fear?"

  Nothing!

  "Stand up!" The older boys pulled us to our feet, in a line. "You will be led inside the building to a swimming pool with no water in it, and you will recite the Hitler-Jugend oath and jump off the diving board." Herr Sollemach paused. "If the Fuhrer asks you to jump off a cliff, what do you do?"

  Jump!

  We were blindfolded, so we did not know which of the fifteen of us would be pulled to the diving board first. Until, that is, I felt Franz's hand being torn away from mine.

  "Reiner!" he cried.

  I suppose at that moment I was thinking of nothing but my mother, warning me to take care of my younger brother. I stood up and yanked off my blindfold and ran like crazy past the boys who were dragging my brother into the building. "Ich gelobe meinem Fuhrer Adolf Hitler Treue," I cried, streaking past Herr Sollemach. "Ich verspreche ihm und den Fuhrern, die er mir bestimmt, jederzeit Achtung und Gehorsam entgegen zu bringen . . ."

  I promise to be faithful to my Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler. I promise to him, and to those leaders he has assigned to me, to give them my undivided obedience and respect. In the presence of this blood banner, which represents our Fuhrer, I swear to devote all my energies and my strength to the savior of our country, Adolf Hitler. I am willing and ready to give up my life for him, so help me God.

  And without looking, I leaped.

  *

  Wrapped in a coarse brown blanket, my clothes still soaking, I told Herr Sollemach that I was jealous of my brother for being chosen first to prove his allegiance and courage. That was why I had cut him in line.

  There was water in the pool. Not much, but enough. I knew they could not let us all jump and kill ourselves. But since each of us was being brought into the building individually, we could not hear the splash.

  I knew, however, that Franz would, because he was already at the edge of the pool. And that, then, he would be able to jump.

  But Herr Sollemach was less convinced. "It is admirable to love your brother," he said to me. "But not more than your Fuhrer."

  I was careful the rest of that day to avoid Franz. Instead I played Trapper and Indian with abandon. We split up into platoons based on the colors of our armbands and hunted down the enemy to rip off their armbands. Often, these games escalated into full-on brawls; they were meant to toughen us up. Instead of protecting my brother, I ignored him. If he was trampled in the dirt, I wasn't going to pick him up. Herr Sollemach was watching too closely.

  Franz wound up with a split lip and bruises up and down his left leg, a nasty scrape on his cheek. My mother would hold me accountable, I knew. And still, when we were walking back home at dusk, he bumped his shoulder against mine. I remember the cobblestones on the street were still warm, from the heat of the day; there was a rising full moon that night. "Reiner," he said simply. "Danke."

  *

  The next Sunday we met at an athletic hall and squared off in boxing matches. The idea was to crown a winner from our group of fifteen boys. Herr Sollemach had brought Inge and her friends to watch, because he knew that boys would show off even more if girls were present. The winner, he said, would get a special medal. "The Fuhrer says that a physically healthy individual with a sound character is more valuable to the volkisch community than an intellectual weakling," Herr Sollemach said. "Are you that healthy individual?"

  One part of me was healthy, I knew that much. I could feel it every time I looked at Inge Sollemach. Her lips were pink as ribbon candy, and I bet just as sweet. When she sat down on the bleachers, I watched the rise and fall of the buttons on her cardigan. I thought about peeling back those layers to touch skin, how she would be white as milk, soft as--

  "Hartmann," Herr Sollemach barked, and both Franz and I stood. This surprised him for a moment, and then a smile spread across his face. "Yes, yes, why not?" he muttered. "Both of you, into the ring."

  I looked at Franz, at his narrow shoulders and his tender belly, at the dreams in his eyes that scattered when he realized what Herr Sollemach wanted us to do. I climbed between t