A Gnostic Childhood

            Part XV               

             Berlin 1954 - 55

          North Sea Island Norderney

After we had returned to our barracks and made up our beds, we went on to explore the camp and it's surroundings. Sand and dunes were everywhere and the grass growing sparsely on the dunes was hard and sharp. It was very cold for a summer day and the blustery wind made even my ears hurt. But what did it matter when the inner heat of discovery and the promise of adventure takes over one's mind and spirit. We were so excited! After an hour or so of almost feverish excitement, we decided to walk into town again to get something to eat. When we returned to the camp it was already dusk and two of our three guides were waiting for us. We formed an assembly and they announced that about fifty or so more kids were going to arrive from all over West-Germany the next day. Some of the kids who had arrived with me from Berlin, I had already met at different occasions. Not many though, only perhaps three or four including 'Olaf' from the Scharnhors-Jugend. Rumors spread that a group from the 'Wiking Jugend,' the youth group of the 'Hilfsgemeinschaft ehemaliger Angehoeriger der Waffen SS,' were also coming. These kids were considered in whispered admiration as the 'elite.' I had, at one time, attempted to find them in Berlin, but didn't get anywhere. It seemed that they only existed in West-Germany. So I looked forward with mixed emotions to meeting them. Feeling excited about the possibilities and fearful that they would reject me as not worthy of their attention. 

The toilets for the camp were in a separate wooden structure. About six stalls with square, box-like, wooden commodes and no flushing mechanism. I guess they were what's called an 'outhouse' on a large scale. But the three shower stalls in our barracks had running water, only barely-warm but bearable. There were also faucets and sinks for us to use to wash up in the mornings. To use the term 'roughing it,' would perhaps describe our 'accommodations' best. But that was exactly what made the whole situation so exciting and adventurous. 

By nine o'clock we were already in bed, telling stories and joking around until sleep gradually took over and more and more silence spread through the barracks. I woke up to a cold and smelly dawn. It must have been about five in the morning and I was cold, shivering under my thin army blanket. From the South side of the island came the fishy, salty and decaying smell of the low-tide. It was almost nauseating and on top of my feeling so cold and anxious, it seemed almost overwhelming. I got dressed quickly and went to the 'outhouse' to relieve myself. Then I washed my face and took a walk towards the ocean. When I got to some of the old World War I fortifications and bunkers, built with huge chunks of concrete which could probably outlast humanity, I sat on one of the concrete blocks and faced the open sea in silent reverence. God, I loved the sea and her promise of adventure! Ever since my vacation in Groemitz, at the Baltic sea, I felt such a strong longing to explore the world. And not only that, I felt such a deep spiritual promise and affirmation, such oneness with spiritual beings and with all humanity, whenever I sat silently by the shore, looking with transfixed longing at the rolling, foaming waves. I felt like I had returned to the 'source' of all life and being-ness on earth.

Yes, I felt like I had, once again, returned home. After some time of silent reverence and meditation, I shook myself loose from my trance state and slowly walked back to the camp. By that time most kids had gotten up and were waiting with sleepy indifference to get something to eat. The lights were on in the mess-barracks and we could hear the muffled sounds of activity inside. Everybody was starving and soon the door was unlocked from the inside and we were allowed to go in. There were huge tables and long benches, like picnic tables only much longer, and we sat down waiting for our food. Ready made, open-faced sandwiches made with hearty German rye-bread was served on big platters. Some had cheese and others liverwurst and other sliced sausage on it. We ate with a ravenous appetite until nothing remained and washed it down with glasses of milk which was served in large pitchers for us to pour into our own glasses. When we had finished, we were told to assemble outside for information and roll-call.

The other groups were to arrive today and we were asked to help in their accommodation and orientation. Organized into small groups of three or four boys, we helped in the distribution of sheets, blankets and pillow cases, worked in the kitchen, peeling potatoes and cleaning pots and pans, as well as cleaning and straightening out the barracks for them. 

They arrived in two large contingents with the two train arrivals at the Norden railroad station. The first group came walking down the path around noon. About fifteen boys, looking somewhat tired and cranky, didn't impress us very much. The second and last group arrived around six o'clock in the evening with the same attitude. After eating and resting, they all seemed to become more lively and talkative. At eight o'clock, we were told to assemble and were then split up to move into different barracks, in order to mix kids from different areas of Germany and thus encourage more interaction. At first I didn't like the idea because I had already made friends with some of the boys from Berlin, but later, when I met some of the new kids from West-Germany and made friends with them, I came to appreciate the split-up.

By about ten o'clock we were in our bunks falling asleep quickly. It had been a physically and mentally demanding day. The boy in the bunk below me was from the Hanover area in Lower-Saxonia. He was a member of the Viking-Youth, organized around the organization of former Waffen-SS members. Blond haired with features like from an idealized 'Hitler-Youth' poster, he could have certainly been arrogant and dismissive to us other kids not endowed by nature with such striking 'Aryan' features. But he was the nicest and most helpful boy in the whole group. A natural leader, he took it upon himself to organize barracks meetings where we would sit and talk about ourselves and about history, the second World War and whatever else came up. Since he was in the bunk right below me and thus in very close proximity, we immediately developed a close friendship. Often, during our free time, we would walk off together to sit by the sea or on top of 'my' concrete block by the WWI fortification. We would talk intimately about our lives and aspirations, about our spiritual quests and our families. He told me of the brutal treatment his father had received in allied camps after the surrender of 1945 and about how his family had been ostracized by former friends and neighbors under the climate of de-nazification. We also talked about the books we had read and the organizations we had dealt with. At one of our sessions, he asked me if I had ever heard of a magazine called 'Der Weg' from Argentina. When I declined, he told me that he would give me an address, which was very secret, in a town named Bad-Pyrmont, and said that if I wrote to them and gave his name as a reference, they would mail me a copy and I could then subscribe to it. The magazine, he said, was published by former ranking National Socialists in Buenos Aires, Argentina, by 'Editoral Druffel Verlag,' or was it 'Duerer' Verlag? I can't remember the exact details, but I did write to them at the German address given to me by my new friend whose name, by the way, was 'Volker.' It took about three weeks for me to get a copy in the mail and it was indeed a very exciting publication. It's front and back cover was tan colored with a wide 'nazi-brown' stripe in the middle. There was no pretense, this was a nazi publication for all intends and purposes! A 'high-brow' theoretical journal filled with articles about Mozart, Hans Ulrich Rudel's exploits as a fighter pilot and political articles attacking the Nuremberg trials. There were advertisements for books I could only dream about, because I would never have the money to order them from Argentina. Indeed, this was 'hard-core' stuff and I loved it. One advertised book I remember was "Mit Goebbels bis zum Ende", and another was "Ende und Wende einer grossen Zeit". Of course another factor was the secrecy connected to it and that I was one of the chosen few in Germany who was to be trusted with it. The price for a year's subscription was not very high, considering that it came all the way from Argentina. Something like twenty to thirty German mark. I raised the money by telling my mother and grandparents that I wanted to subscribe to a cultural magazine from a foreign county which was very educational and stimulating. After begging and harassing them for a while, I was indeed able to raise the money and to send it as a postal money-order to the address in Bad-Pyrmont, but I never got any more copies because about a month or so after receiving my sample copy, the operation was closed down by the German political police. I read it in a newspaper (Die Welt) first and also got a letter from my friend Volker in Hanover. He told me that the police had raided the address where I had ordered my magazine and confiscated all addresses of subscribers, warning me that I might get a visit from them also. This never happened though and I can just imagine their astonishment if they had come to visit and found a thirteen year old boy as their 'neo-nazi' suspect. My mother would have died on the spot. But I never heard from the police about it, thank God. Not that I cared about it for myself, but I didn't want my mother to have to deal with the situation and find out what my 'cultural' magazine subscription really was. She never did.      

Our days in Norderney were filled with group meetings, exchange of information, soccer, swimming in the ice-cold North Sea and explorations of the island. Nobody demanded our participation in any of those activities and we were pretty much free to do what we wanted. I had found friends in Volker and about five or six other boys. We often left the group and their activities to do our own thing. We explored the island like true adventurers, looking for buried treasures of the last war, for buried weapons or even books or money, but didn't find anything worth the trouble. One time I found something in a crack of one of the fortifications which looked like a rifle-barrel, calling the others we got all excited, only to discover that it was a rusty bicycle pump. Nevertheless, we did learn a lot from each other, things like comradeship and loyalty to each other as well as a deepening of our political 'convictions' and spiritual beliefs. Volker is the only one whom I ever told about uncle Ali. Never before or after until writing this account of my life, have I talked about him and his teachings. And Volker never betrayed my trust. He was fascinated by uncle Ali's life story and the teachings of Gnostic National Socialism and envied my 'luck' of having met such an important and colorful mentor. 

Bathing in the cold North Sea was enticing but usually didn't last more than five minutes because of the cold water and cool air. We actually had our own beach where nobody else came to bathe. It was located north of our camp and on the north-east side of the island. Most tourists, of whom there weren't really that many in 1954, were using the official beach on the north-west side of the island near the 'downtown' area. This gave us peace and solitude to talk and relax together undisturbed from nosy strangers who might have inhibited our conversations. For the first time in my life I was amongst friends, real friends, who not only believed in what I believed in, but were also intelligent and open to deep discussions about life in general. These were happy days for all of us indeed. We were 'comrades' in the deepest sense of the word.

One evening we had fried herring and fried potatoes for supper. It tasted great and I ate much more than I should have. After falling asleep at night, I suddenly woke up sick to my stomach and I barely made it out of my top bunk into the toilet barracks when I exploded from top to bottom. Sitting on the toilet with diarrhea and throwing up unto the wooden floor planks in front of me. I was so sick that I didn't even notice that there were other kids too who seemed in the same predicament. After spending some time on the toilet and attempting to clean my mess from the floor with pieces of newspaper which we used to wipe ourselves (we had no toilet paper), I returned to my bed in the barracks. I was dizzy and shook uncontrollably when I realized that the whole barracks was filled with sick kids just like me. Getting back into my bed, I had to jump out again after a few minutes throwing up onto the sand floor. Others were doing the same. The place was like a beehive with all of us sick and throwing up. Some kids even went in their pajama-pants because they couldn't make it to the toilet building. The smell was sickening to say the least. But we were to sick and pre-occupied with our own suffering to really notice it at the moment. Soon our guides came in and informed us that we probably had food-poisoning. By morning, non of us had slept a wink and we were too sick and exhausted to do anything but lay-down again on our bunks. We were told to drink lots of water and to try to get some sleep and eventually we did fall asleep into a dreamless void. I slept something like fifteen to twenty hours and awoke around midnight feeling much better. All around me everybody seemed like in a coma and I got up and went to my favorite place, the fortification in the dunes. There I sat and gradually found my balance. After a couple hours in the cold and windy air, I went back to my barracks and slept another five hours.

Soon our time was up on Norderney and we had to pack our belongings, exchange addresses and get ready for the return trip back home. I felt sick in heart and soul, having to part from my newfound friends and our life on the 'wild side' in almost complete freedom. The thought of having to return back to conformity and to people who didn't understand me, seemed unbearable. For once in my life I had not felt as an outcast and 'oddball.' I had been amongst true friends and fellow outcasts and never felt so relaxed and 'at home' as I did on Norderney. No, I didn't want to return to Berlin and face my old life in this crowded and dreary city again. 

We left Norderney the same way we had arrived there, by boat to Norden and then by train back to Berlin. All of us looked different and radiated a new self-confidence. We were seasoned. Not only seasoned travelers, but seasoned in our beliefs and attitudes toward life. Norderney had given us something very special but indefinable. We had come as 'little' boys and we left as big boys, almost men. We had come as political 'boy-scouts' and returned as comrades and friends committed to a common ideal and cause. Not as members of different organizations, but as members of a people, a community of peoples called 'Aryans.' We were all members of a generation which had experienced War and horrors beyond descriptions at a very tender age. Most of us were refugees of one kind or another, had lost fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles and grandparents under the most horrific conditions imaginable and were thus psychologically and even physically damaged by our experiences, fears and malnutrition, and nevertheless were able to rise above all of these 'handicaps,' because we found meaning and purpose in life despite it all. 

We were 'survivors,' not by conscious choice, but by finding refuge in our common heritage and worldview. And we had dreams of a better world and a better future which would be the task of our generation to bring about. Our minds were not poisoned by television and movies and the propaganda they contain. We had still found ourselves through reading and exploring the world in almost complete self-reliance and innocence. The whole world might have been against us, as German people, condemning us hypocritically for things they themselves had also done, but we knew of our worth, self-worth and worth as a people, because our minds had generally remained free from social-engineering and subtle propaganda. We, as a generation, had fallen through the cracks. Thank God for that.