Coming to think of it, it was actually in 1951 that we went back to visit my aunt Baemelburg in Erkner for the last time.
It was then that the "iron curtain" closed completely around the suburbs of East-Berlin.
This was also the year of the massive and well orchestrated Communist "World-Youth Festival" in East-Berlin and I remember, as a nine year old boy, watching one of their camp-grounds in Berlin-Treptow, near the Spree-River and S-Bahnhof (train-station) Treptow.
 There was also a permanent large carnival, a 'Rummel,' located in that area where I could walk from Neukoelln in about 30 minutes.
 Treptower Park was such a fascinating area with the carnival and the half burned-out and partially sunken riverboats in the Spree-River, as well as the pageantry of the "World Youth Festival" going on.
True adventure was beckoning me! 

 There was a huge 'tent-city' erected in the Treptower-Park area where a large group of participants of the youth festival lived. It was August, 1951, and the summer heat beat down upon the young people mercilessly almost every day.
All one could see were young people in blue "Freie Deutsche Jugend" (the name of the Communist East-German youth movement) shirts and dark shorts (I'm not quite sure about that anymore).  There were colorful assemblies and marching formations to watch with stirring marshal music, Schalmeien and fanfares, drums and fifes, and seas of flags from all over the world!
 I was enthralled and moved to emotions I had never known before.
My heart beat and I was ready to join the ranks, if only they had invited me to.
 After all these years, I can still feel my heart beating as I write these words. Still, today, I can re-experience those hot August days in East-Berlin almost 51 years ago.
 I can still remember the particular smell surrounding this experience,-the smell of heat, sweat and sand, all mixed into an emotional experience of indescribable magnitude.
Good God, I loved this and wanted nothing more than to be able to participate and become part of this movement!
But, despite of my emotional enthusiasm, there was always the fear of Communism, which was more a fear of the Soviet-Russians, in the back of my mind.
 I had overheard too many horror stories about 'the Russians' to feel completely comfortable with Communism, even though being emotionally stirred up by their idealistically-appealing pageantry and speeches.
 It was a dilemma in my young mind which I wasn't able to solve and overcome.

 I met kids from all over the world, but mostly from Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Hungary.
These were mostly 'Young Pioneers' (Junge Pioniere) around my own age and probably the 'cream of the crop' of their particular countries.
 They were bright, friendly and intelligent kids, young idealists like myself, who would welcome my approaches and communicate to me through mostly gestures how much they loved Communism and this youth festival and even me.
 We were all swept-up in the gigantic display of propaganda and idealistic hope for a better future through Communism.
Of course, being nine years old I didn't really know much about Communism.
In fact, I knew through 'uncle' Ali much more than most people, even older people, about National Socialism than about Communism, but it seemed to me as if the 'Hitler-Youth' of the Third Reich and the 'Freie Deutsche Jugend' of East-German Communism were about the same.
 I had seen, through uncle Ali, many books and albums with pictures from the Nazi era and I remember how touched I was by the 'Hitler Jugend' with their obvious comradeship and pageantry.
...Well, this display of the 'World Youth Festival' didn't seem much different.
Perhaps different uniform colors and flags, and even slogans, but, in general, I was transported back to the time and experience which uncle Ali had shown me in his books.

What is so amazing to me, in retrospect, is that these children all had gone through the horrors of the second World War and were still able to be enthusiastic and full of idealism, no matter whether it was for Communism or for the 'Brotherhood of Man.'

 How sad and discouraging is the thought about the youth of today, spoiled and narcissistic, growing-up in a trivialized and commercialized environment without ideals or hope for a cause greater than themselves.
...Without something to strive for beyond consumerism, movie-idols and nihilism.
The New World Order cabal has done a thorough job indeed, brainwashing generations of young people into mindless and ideal-less zombies.
Is not this exactly what it says in the despised 'Protocols'?
 Does it even matter who wrote them or if they are a 'forgery'?
One should read them and see that this is exactly what is coming about with the governments, historians, teachers of all nations conspiring to bring about the 'New World Order,' where the people of this world will be nothing more than cattle.
It is all so clear and visible to even the most 'uninitiated,' that I can not understand why people remain so passive and gullible in the face of all that is going on in the world.
 So, whoever wrote the Protocols, be it the 'Illuminati,' Zionists, or somebody trying to tell mankind something, even if the source is different than claimed, he, she or they were absolutely correct.
And that is all that should matter at this point in time.
That there is a conspiracy going on for the establishment of a One World Government and many of our most renown people in government, politics, media, as well as scholars and writers, actors and teachers are either willing or uncaring participants in this conspiracy seems to me quite obvious.
 But why so many people choose to either ignore all the sign and occurrences, or even vociferously deny them, I will never know.

 Anyhow, here were these beautiful, bright and idealistic 'Young Pioneers' from all over the world assembled in East-Berlin, reaching out to me in acceptance and friendship and I was overcome by the desire to be part of it all.

 There were bonfires in the evenings to which my mother, after endless tantrums and begging, took me and torchlight parades. Campfire meetings and always the stirring marshal music. I felt myself uplifted into a state of almost divine rapture, and can still hear some of the words of the songs sung: " Im August...im August in Berlin," ..."Wier sind die Moor-Soldaten und ziehen mit dem Spaten ins Moor..."  "Brueder zur Sonne zur Freiheit...Brueder zum Lichte empor...geht unser Sehnsuch verlangen zu Frieden und Freiheit hervor.." 

 When the festival ended, I had made many friends whom I, of course, have never met again.
Perhaps they were even killed in one of the Stalinist purges, or betrayed for their ideals and incarcerated.
Perhaps they eventually took part in uprisings against Communism in Hungary or East-Germany in 1953 and were condemned to death for their part in it.
 Who knows where life leads us in it's course of uncertainty?
Perhaps some of them even attained high positions in their respective Communist governments.
 Nevertheless, I still believe it is better to fight and die for an ideal than to live in the abject nihilism and consumerism of today.
The mediocrity of our existence today is much worse and more destructive then Communism in its ideal and idealistic possibilities.
What young children are exposed to in our 'free' societies is not only destructive to their psychological development but also destructive to society.
 To hear young girls and boys sing the lewd songs of their rock-idols and 'teen-heart-throbs,' is an indicator of what state of mind these children are in and in which state of mind they experience the world.
 This is neither a natural state nor a 'progressive' state, but one they were manipulated into through propaganda.
Television and the movies as well as the 'music industry,' are the tools with which this mindlessness is propagated by the New World Order cabal. -After all, who needs idealistic, bright and strong-minded children who would grow up into idealistic, strong-minded and aware adults?
Certainly not the NWO cabal, who, in order to achieve their goal of total domination, needs ignorant and mediocre people, human cattle, just as written in the 'Protocols'.

 We also had youth movements in West-Berlin, like the Boy Scouts, the 'Pfadfinder,' which were organized into religious and secular groups.
 The Catholic Church had them as well as the Protestant Church.
There were also groups like 'the Falcons,' 'Die Falken' of the Social Democratic Party, as well as groups of other political parties.
 Even groups like the 'Bund Deutscher Frontsoldaten, 'Der Stahlhelm,' which is a right-leaning veterans organization, had youth groups.
 I later on became involved with some of them.

     
 
Communist FDJ Mass Assembly at Night

       
The Arrival of the Ball-point pen
(Kugelschreiber)

 Next to where uncle Ali used to have his used book-stand opened a stand which sold ball-point pens.
This was something new and 'revolutionary' in those days.  I think they were quite expensive when they first came out.
 Up till then we had to write with 'fountain-pens' or plain ink-pens which we had to dip constantly into ink-jars.
This was a very messy affair, especially in school as we usually got ink all over our books and clothes.
 When the ballpoint pens came out and became popular, we wanted to use them in school, but our teachers were dead-set against it.
One claim was that it would spoil our handwriting because a ballpoint pen had to be held more straight than natural in order to work well.
 Thus, for the next few years, we still had to work with our ink-pens in school and for our home-work.

  Herr Schwartz was a good teacher who knew how to motivate us into studying our books and and do our home-work.
My friend Joachim Bandmann and I even rode our bicycles to visit him and his family in Bohnsdorf near Gruenau, which was in an East-Berlin suburb close to the "zone" area which was closed to West-Berliners.
It took us about two hours by bike to get there and Herr Schwartz welcomed us warmly, introduced us to his wife and children, and offered us something to eat and drink.
In those days children really respected and even feared their teachers and I remember feeling awkward and ill at ease in his home.
 The Schwartz family had a little back-yard with a tree-swing and we wanted to try it out.
We all took turns on the swing and Herr Schwartz teased us that we were much too cautious.
When his turn came again, he told us that he was going to demonstrate how it should be done.
As he was swinging higher and higher, the rope suddenly broke and he went flying through the air for quite some distance and landed on his butt.
....It must have really hurt and embarrassed him, but he joined us in laughter after a few moments of painful silence. Unfortunately we had to leave soon due to the time it took to ride our bikes back home. 

Edison and the "Nipkow-Scheibe"

Despite Herrn Schwartz' efforts and capabilities, I still didn't like school.
And as contradictory as everything else in my life, it wasn't because I didn't care to learn, but exactly the opposite.
 I read a lot for my age and enjoyed reading more than anything else, but I wasn't much interested in reading school books and doing home-work, because I had so many other, more interesting, books to read from the library.
It was then, as it is now: the obstacle was my instinctual habit to follow up on things I had heard or read about through books on the subject.
This could be as diverse as Christian material or the development of television.
Not that we had televisions then, but here and there, radio stores began to display television sets in their display windows.
 I read material about Edison and Paul Nipkow and decided that I wanted to become an inventor like Thomas Edison.
Not that I really understood all the principles of physics and electronics written about in the books, far from it, but I did get a very general idea which eventually led me into my own experimentations a few years later.
Thus, if I read something about Nicola Tesla in these books, I would immediately go to the library and try to find something about Tesla ...and so on.
 This was the way my mind worked and how I needed to study on my own.
Of course schools don't allow for this independent research by ten year olds and I was soon in trouble with my teachers and grades.
 Although this bothered me because it made me look and feel stupid and inferior, I just became  more and more alienated from my school work and teachers.
Having nobody to understand me and guide me, aside from my frantic mother, I began to ignore school and home-work to the point where I didn't bother to participate at all in class and just didn't do my home work at all.
 My feelings were anger and frustration at 'the system,' as one would say today.
Becoming thus more and more an 'outsider,' I decided that I would have to follow my star alone by 'swimming against the stream.'
The teachings of Jesus, as I understood them, and the lectures of uncle Ali on the Gnostic path, had prepared me well.
 Yes, I was a 'rebel' and ready to take on the world!
....To hell with school and ignorant kids, to hell with my mother and grandparents!
I was going wherever my destiny would lead me and didn't care what anybody else said or thought.
 I was a Gnostic and I despised everything which made claims on me or my mind.
And even though I knew that I wasn't free to do whatever I wanted at my young age, I would certainly 'fight the system' tooth and nail.
....I would fight for my independence and freedom by just not co-operating with anybody or anything which tried to enslave me, such as school and family.
 This was first an instinctive reaction to outside pressures which eventually developed into a conscious decision which, nevertheless, reflected my deepest personality.

      
It is Lonely at the Top

 Perhaps you think that I am mistaken about the age when all this came about and became clear in my actions, but I can reassure you, that I was definitely ten years old, in 1951 when I "dropped-out," and became the Gnostic that I still am today. My feelings were that the majority of people, whom I didn't invite into my life, and who still claimed authority over me, were ignorant and stupid.
 They were, to me, even then, like sleep-walkers, uninspired and dead to the true marvels and ideals in this world, and had thus no right to claim authority or any power over me.
And I am not really ashamed to say that I felt that they were inferior to me even as a ten-year old boy, and that I would simply ignore them since I certainly didn't have the means to get away from their reach.
 
 Having said this, I should also admit that I craved the company and friendship of enlightened people more than anything else.
As they say: "It is lonely on the top," which is truer than I could ever express here, and which has led me sometimes into the company of people whom I thought were 'enlightened,' but were anything but that.
 This is something most idealists and dreamers must have experienced through the course of their lives, as they indeed are desperate for companionship with people who understand and respect them.
We are like 'aliens' wherever we are, desperately searching for other alienated souls amongst the masses.

 Is it then that we are arrogant and full of pride, and that people sense this and ridicule and avoid us?
I don't think so at all, because we are seen more like 'fools' to the ways of the world and could thus never comfortably feel that we are better than others.
We are absolutely 'different' and want nothing more than to be accepted and respected the way we are without attempts to change us or make us into something we simply can not be.
 Gnostics are born the way they are and can neither help it nor change it.
I could also call Gnostics 'Idealists' as it should come to mean the same, as long as it defines the open-minded and spiritually inspired quest for a better world expressed by an individual's personality. 

 Of course, as a ten-year old boy filled with disappointment and anger at all superficial authority, I had to think of myself 'better' than those who oppressed me, since I wasn't mature enough to grasp the complexity of the world and it's people and needed to protect myself mentally from their taunting and reproaches.

      
Psychic Visions by the River-Spree

The Spree-River in Berlin-Treptow was filthy and filled with partly submerged sunken ships of one kind or another and I thought this was just great.
 I could look at the rusty wrecks and experience instant psychic visions of what had happened.
My psychic senses were becoming more and more pronounced and I began to even enjoy this capability, even though the visions were often gruesome and disturbing.
 Sitting in the grass by the river I would often experience a total withdrawal from reality and be instantly transported into the war years.
Not only would I visually see what had occurred, but I would also feel the fear and despair of the people I saw and even hear their words and screams.
 Sometimes I would spend hours sitting by the river's edge reliving the events which had taken place there six or seven years ago and which had now become part of my life too.
 Never would I mention these experiences to anybody else as I was already wise enough to distrust other people's reactions and possible ridicule.
Often, on going to sleep at night, these vision would come back to me and I would re-live what I had experienced until, finally, I would fall asleep and dream about them.
 My life became thus part of many dimensions and experiences which often intermingled into my three-dimensional reality in school or at home.
Perhaps one could call it just 'day-dreaming' and dismiss it thus.
But it was more than that, as I remember it now, because it forced me to deal with these psychic experiences as a definite part of my understanding of life, people and history.
Perhaps I should say that I not only lived my own life but the lives and sufferings of a multitude of other people at the same time.
 It seems to me that these experiences were related to emotionally charged and often death causing occurrences which made me their more or less unwitting witness.
 
 Death and life after death became thus, very early in my life, a fascinating reality.
 

         
 
This is just about exactly the spot where I taught myself to swim.
 Of course it didn't look like this then, but was completely "wild" looking
without the huge building in the background and the anchored ships. There was
no promenade and no water-wall, instead it was overgrown with trees and bushes
 and one could walk right into the water from from beach-like sandy areas.

 This inner conviction of life after death, also helped me immensely to kind of 'blow off' the claims of this world on me.
What I mean by that is, that I early-on lost my inherent fear of death and thus didn't take life as seriously as other people. Which might be good in a general sense, but also makes one avoid worldly duties.

 As a ten year old with the mentality of a fifty year old (at least in some ways), I often used my conviction of the 'meaninglessness' of life as just another excuse not to do my home-work or participate in school.
Which would have been o.k. if it wasn't so important to get good grades and good schooling to eventually get a decent job and, with that, a 'decent' life.
 In other words, sometimes it is best to 'play the game,' and give to Caesar what is Caesar's.
But such reasoning can not be expected from a ten year old with psychic visions and a Gnostic mentality.
Thus, needless to say, I paid a high price for my early neglect and rebelliousness all through life.
Be that as it may, I do not regret anything and wouldn't want to have done anything different.
 
 On the mental and spiritual plane I have been rich beyond imagination and thus adequately rewarded for sacrifices on the physical, material plane.

        
Swimming-lessons in the "Spree"

Coming back to the Spree-River, the places where I had my visions were usually grassy with sandy access to the river.
People, especially kids, would go in the water there and swim in the river.
I also went into the water and regretted that I didn't know how to swim yet. Watching the others do their breast-strokes, I went in deep enough to attempt to imitate their movements and learn to swim on my own.
Being very self-conscious about the whole thing, I made first sure that there was nobody sitting by the water and possibly watching me.
 As I attempted my moves in the water, I held my breath and found myself swimming under water.
This puzzled me because I knew that swimming under water was good, but that I really wanted to swim like everybody else more or less on top of the water.
 Experimenting with my moves, the breast strokes, I didn't seem to get anywhere but more under-water swimming.
Determined to swim 'here and now,' I eventually found myself breathing in harmony with my movements, and thus starting to swim the way I wanted to. 
 
 Of course it took a lot more practice and quite a bit of dirty swallowed water until I finally got it right.
And boy, was I proud of myself!
I walked home to Neukoelln like a decorated hero and told my mother and anybody else who would listen about my accomplishment.
 My mother, instead of being happy and proud, was horrified that I had gone into the river alone and probably didn't really believe that I had taught myself how to swim.
This negative response from her naturally deflated my ego instantly and I regretted having told her about it at all.          

There was also a huge Soviet 'Ehrenmahl,' -a Soviet park with a huge monument and lots of smaller monuments in honor of our Soviet 'liberators.'
 I loved to walk through there because of the many beautiful mosaics depicting heroic Soviet actions during the war.
But I was also filled with fear of being 'abducted' by the Russians.
 Another place I visited often in the same general area was the 'Sternwarthe,' the astronomical observatory, not far away from the memorial, where also a movie theater was located.
 Sometimes a group of us would walk there to watch an East-German or Russian movie.
The observatory was fascinating to us with its display of stars in it's ceiling.
Needless to say, I spent a lot of Saturdays and Sundays in the 'Treptower Park.'

      
Stadtbad and Foreskin

In 1952 we started going to an indoor swimming-pool as a school-class with our teacher Herrn Schwartz.
This pool, the 'Stadtbad,' was located in the 'Ganghofer Strasse' in walking distance from our school. 

     

Picture of the main pool inside of the 'Stadtbad Neukoelln,' Ganghofer Strasse.

We used to go there once a week for two hours.
Before we could go into the water, we had to take a shower and wash ourselves with soap.
This meant that we had to take this shower completely naked.
Even Herr Schwartz was naked.
 He instructed us to make sure to wash carefully even under our 'foreskins' (almost all of us were uncircumcised).
...And I remember very clearly how Herr Schwartz had talked to us in class before going to the pool about foreskins and that some people didn't have foreskins because as part of their religion this foreskin had been removed.
Of course he did this in order to avoid harassment for our Jewish class-mate Eberhard Galinsky.
Poor Eberhard, he wasn't harassed, but about thirty pairs of eyes were checking him out 'down there' in order to see what somebody without foreskin looked like.
But Eberhard took it in stride and the next time we were in the shower nobody paid him any more attention.

       

The entrance-hall of the Stadtbad Neukoelln.
I can still smell the strong odor of chlorine!

       
Libraries

 Trying to feed my voracious reading habit I relied on the public library to supply me with books.
Often they would not allow me to check-out my choice of books because they claimed that I was too young to understand them.
This would make me sometimes so angry that I would brake out into tears of frustration.
But the functionaries at the library wouldn't give in and had no idea what my tears were about.
 These experiences led me to beg my mother to sign me up at a private library where one could rent books for money like people rent videos today.
Actually their prices were quite reasonable, somewhere between twenty cents (Pfennig) and one Mark.
 But for us, poor as we were, this was still expensive.
Often I would forego the matinee children's movies on Sundays in order to use the fifty pennies to rent a much 'needed' book on Monday.
 The people who owned the private library were much more lenient in allowing me to rent the books of my choice, than the functionaries at the public library and I was able to read many good and stimulating books through them.
They also had an excellent children's book section where I found some very good books.
 My favorites were the series by the English author "Enid Blyton" about two boys and two girls (I think) and their adventures in England.
These were wonderful books which not only stimulated my imagination, but also taught me about a code of honor, responsibility and the interaction between the sexes, as well as about the English people and their customs.
Enid Blyton definitely had a great impact on me and I remember her books to this day with great fondness.

   
America

 1951 was also the year when 'Mickey Mouse' magazine came out in Germany.
I bought a copy and fell instantly in love with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Pluto and all the other characters.
 From then on I got every copy and collected them avidly.

Even today I still have some copies in my possession.
These characters and their adventures, as depicted in the drawings, gave me an instant sense of being in America and of what America was all about.
 Strange how I craved everything 'American,' and wanted so much, even then, to live there.
 
 Mickey Mouse magazine, I could argue, is mainly responsible for my being in America today.
Perhaps it is all connected to our starvation and deprivations in post-war Germany and our observation of American abundance as symbolized in chewing-gum, candy-bars and cigarettes, so freely enjoyed by American G.I's and sometimes shared with us, which made us look at America and everything American as 'holy' and revered, almost to the point of worship.
 But I should mention that there was more to it than just the desire for material things.
I am hard-pressed to find the correct explanation of this phenomenon, at least as to what my feelings were and still are.
All I can think of are the stories of William Saroyan, specifically his 'Human Comedy' (Eine Menschliche Komoedie), which also stimulated my desire to live in America immensely because I felt drawn to his compassionate analysis of life in the USA and fell in love with it's fascinating people from so many different backgrounds and nationalities.
Of course I should also mention that Mark Twain's 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' and 'Huckleberry Finn' were very influential to my young imagination and fascination with everything 'American.'

"The writer is a spiritual anarchist, as in the depth of his soul every man is. He is discontented with everything and everybody. The writer is everybody's best friend and only true enemy - the good and great enemy. He neither walks with the multitude nor cheers with them. The writer who is a writer is a rebel who never stops."
(from The William Saroyan Reader, 1958)

I am interested in madness. I believe it is the biggest thing in the human race, and the most constant. How do you take away from a man his madness without also taking away his identity? Are we sure it is desirable for a man's spirit not to be at war with itself, or that it is better to be serene and ready to go to dinner than to be excited and unwilling to stop for a cup of coffee, even
--Sweet Drive, Sweet Chariot

 One small occurrence in William Saroyan's "Human Comedy" had touched me to tears of joy and remained with me through all my life as a cherished possession.
...It is the scene when a little boy stands by the railroad tracks of his home town and a freight train passes by. There is a black man, I think he is a hobo, on it and the little boy waves to him as the black 'hobo' waves back.
 I don't remember the details actually, as they are not really that important...It was the way Saroyan told the story, the sweetness of a fleeting moment, leaving not only a life-long impression with the little boy in the story, but also with me.
 It expressed something to me, which I can not describe in words, about the greatness of America and it's human experiment and it's possibilities for a better world.
 William Saroyan had touched something within me, an instant recognition if you will, of kindred spirits telling each other what they already know and dream of.

....Whoever the kid had been, whoever had had the grand attitude, has finally heeded the admonishment of parents, teachers, governments, religions, and the law: "You just change your attitude now please, young man."

This transformation in kids--from flashing dragonflies, so to say, to sticky water-surface worms slowly slipping downstream--is noticed with pride by society and with mortification by God, which is a fantastic way of saying I don't like to see kids throw away their truth just because it isn't worth a dime in the open market.

                                  --The Flashing Dragonfly

         
 
   Picture I drew of Donald Duck

            
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Enid Blyton Page On This Website

The excerpts of William Saroyan's works is reproduced gratefully from: The William Saroyan Page

  http://www.electroasylum.com/saroyan/