A Fine Artist

ONE - KÜNZLE

My story does not begin with Hitler's takeover of the German government in 1933. Instead, it begins in 1921 in the Weimar Republic with the Künzle family in their one-floor home in Berlin.

I was born at home, at 5 o'clock in the morning of August 8. My mother was on the living room floor, writhing in pain as I struggled to make my grand entrance. The labor took five hours until I was a crying pile of pink skin and wet tears, scrunched up on the carpet as the doctor raced over with a towel to swaddle me and clean me off. The doctor was a friendly Jewish man; he was a friend of ours until Hitler came to power and my father shut him out of our lives. Now, I do not know what happened to him, but I'm sure he is suffering greatly. It pains me to think that the very physician who delivered me is either emaciated or a rotting corpse among piles and piles of dead human beings, all of whom were forcibly subject to a mass murder which no one deserves to endure.

My childhood was mediocre until my father, then a kindhearted, soft-spoken man, began drinking. He abused my mother and me on a daily basis, and often came home from bars looking disheveled and as though he had been crying. His eyes were red and swollen, and his speech was slurred. One fateful night in 1933, my mother had asked him, "Why were you out so late?" to which he immediately reacted negatively.

"Late? I was not late!" he protested, as though he were a child. My mother and I were appalled. What had happened?

"You are being a boy," my mother said, raising her voice while trying not to yell. "What was the reason for this?"

"You are nothing but a bitch," my father argued. "You are an impudent bitch."

My mother was taken aback by his words. He had never insulted her like this, let alone he had never insulted her at all.

I, being only ten at the time, had no idea how dangerous the situation was. I pushed past my mother and began to speak calmly to my father, "Vati..."

My mother's arm came in front of my chest, and she pulled me back. "Werner, go upstairs to your room. I will deal with this." I did as I was told as she faced my father, her eyes glaring at him, full of determination.

I shut the door and sat against the wall. I listened in on my parents' argument as it only became worse. The harsh talking progressed to yelling, which progressed to threats, and eventually full-on violence. I heard slapping and pans clattering and feet stomping until finally I heard a sound that I would never forget.

The sound of a gunshot. From my father's gun.

I prayed, hoping that my mother was alive and that she was the one who had fired the shot. But when I no longer heard her voice, I broke.

I was alone now.

My loving mother who had given birth to me, who had nursed me, who had shielded me from this drunk that was my father, was gone.

There was no hope for me now.

My father, of course, continued to abuse me, but I appeased him, so I was never threatened with violence. He was only abusive when he was drunk, and when he was not, he was quiet and withdrawn, though he did show his love for me once or twice. That was the father I knew.

But when Adolf Hitler gained full leadership of Germany shortly after my mother's murder, my father had become a monster, just like he was. He fully embraced all forms of Nazi ideology, constantly praising me for my "pure blood", blonde hair, and blue eyes. It was all garbage to me. It was pure bullshit. I was having none of this.

He'd forced me to join the Hitler Youth, which I hated just as I hated the people behind it. Every time we had the book burnings, the lessons on how to treat Jews, et cetera, I would pretend to have to go to the bathroom or fake an illness. The instructor, a young man in his twenties, began to grow suspicious of me, though I professed my false loyalty to the Führer as realistically as possible, and he believed me. It was a good thing he never found out how repulsed I was.

I continued to fake my support for the Nazi party until I was eighteen. By then, world war had broken out and I was a grown man, able to make my own decisions and fend for myself. And fend for myself I did.

I am twenty-three now, and I have recently been spending my winter patrolling the streets disguised in an SS officer's uniform. It sickens me, but I have to wear it in order to conceal my true mission. Otherwise, I would surely be captured, tried, and hanged.

Shortly before I donned the uniform, I had written my father, informing him that I was now a member of the SS and was killing anyone I thought to be a Jew or someone who was protecting them in the streets. He had written back that he was proud of me and of what I was supposedly accomplishing for my country. Little did he know that he had fallen for my lies, for I was doing the exact opposite of what he was expecting.