She Didn't Do It Alone (605 hits)
Category: PoliticsRating: 0 on 2 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by DieKreutzen (View user info) at 2005-11-02 17:14:39 EST
He liked to say it: "Mongomery, Alabama". Compared to the Hard K's, rolling R's and back-of-the-throat "ecchs" of of his native tongue, the pronunciation of "Montgomery Alabama" seemed absolutely comical, like the name of a preschooler's fantasy kingdom, or a lost African city like Timbuktoo. Indeed, there were enough schwartzes here in Alabama to lead one to believe that they were in Africa. But he doubted African blacks were like this...
Helmut thought back to the first time he had ever seen a scwartze; it was on the end of his bayonett. In France, Helmut Reuter had served as a Hauptmann (captain) in a divisional field office near Alsace on the Germany / France border. One night air raid sirens remained on for longer than usual, and the radio crackled with the report that an American bomber escort had been shot down in the countryside, and that it's pilot had been seen parachuting to safety. Helmut's squad was the first to find the parachute, and tracked the surviving pilot to a large abandoned farm house. they took position around the house, and Helmut silently led the way inside.
The German soldiers crept, led by their thoroughly Nazi commander. Helmut was the first to see - or rather, smell the enemy. It was a strange odour, not thoroughly unclean, yet strikingly unpleasant, offensive and musky. As he crouched in the shadows inside the farmhouse, the other soldiers he commanded were in position throughout the abandoned property. Suddenly, Helmut sensed movement down the hall and the foul small grew stronger. A lone figure clawed it's way across the floor, breathing heavily, exhaling fear. As it drew nearer, Helmut simply rose up, and ran the terrified soldier through the back. The soldier attempted to let out a cry, but was stopped by the failure of his nervous system when the bayonet severed his spine, just between his shoulder blades.
Later, Helmut realized that the blade had pierced the soldier's heart as well; there was a lot of blood, and as his soldiers collected the body, Helmut could notice the thoroughly grey complexion of the soldier they had killed. As the stormtroopers laughed at how the Americans had now resorted to having flying monkeys as fighter escorts for allied bombers, Helmut realized that the schwartzes that fought for the Americans wore the same uniforms, flew the same planes, and bled the same color as every other American airman. A pit grew in his stomach as he realized that America had reconciled it's differences with lesser races, and now used them as a powerful tool to bolster their own offensive capabilities. They treated them as equals.
Helmut would see more schwartzes as the war moved on, and indeed many more arrived once Allied forces occupied his homeland. All his life he had been taught that these schwartzes were of a far lower intellectual capacity than the European man - but this obviously was not true. Whereas the Jews were most definitely the source of great ills in numerous societies throughout history, Helmut remained ambivalent to the "negroes" as they were called, fascinated not with them, but with the myths that surrounded them. Indeed they did look more like primitive primates than any other race he had observed, but their ability - and willingness to die with honor - set them apart from the animal kingdom, and especially the Jew. Indeed, during the 2 years after the war in which Helmut was interred with other officers at a camp in Bremerhaven, Helmut became quite well aquainted with his captors, several of whom were negroes who would gladly help him practice his english skills. Although scorned by his peers, Helmut took every opportunity to speak and learn from the negro soldiers who seemed equally as fascinated with their nazi prisoner. Slowly, the walls between them came down just a little bit, and the world moved on.
Helmut thought of the black soldiers as Americans; he did not think of Jews as Germans, or Poles or Frenchmen; Jews were homeless, parasitic scum, proclaiming loyalty to no nation other than their misguided vision of a nation. For that, Helmut admmired the Negroes. Of course, Helmut was not privy to the abuses and racism that were rampant among the American and Allied forces which treated black soldiers with gross disdain. Nobody had taken the time to explain American style segregation to Helmut, who imagined that America was as tolerant of the negroes as the soldiers he had seen during his post war imprisonment. He had never seen the blatant discrimination and hatred, and didn't know about the rapes and the lynchings which were so commonplace in American history. When he did learn, he was shocked by the outright barbarism; at least the Germans had given the Jews fair warning, and had conducted their ethnic cleansing on a deserving race behind the walls of specifically designed camps. The Americans, it seems, had a history of hunting negroes for sport, for no reason other than the color of their skin.
Helmut's brother Hans had immigrated to the United States in the "good years" before the war, and was one of the few German nationals to arrive in America by zepplin, back in 1936. Post war Germany was in ruins, and Helmut decided to accept his brother's invitation to come see him in America. What started as a 6 week vacation turned into a permanent residency, as Helmut acclimated himself within the small German / American community in his brother's chosen home state of "Alabama".
Henry, as Hans was called in this country, was a mechanic who worked many years for the Public Transit Commission in the city of Montgomery. When his brother "Hal" applied for a job as a driver for the same company, management assumed that they would be employing the same type of worker that they had found in Henry. For the most part, they were right. For years as Helmut drove the busses, he mused over the industry and infrastructure that this nation commanded, a vast difference from his broken homeland. And he thought about the hypocrisy of racial segregation in America, and the ideological failures of Nazi Germany. It was all very fascinating.
Part of his job was to remind black passengers on crowded busses to give up their seats to the white skinned standees. He understood the sentiment expressed in such a policy very well, and wondered if any exception was made for negro war heros. Probably not. As he approached his next stop, he noticed a negro woman who he had evicted from his bus before - often she would refuse to exit from the back of the bus, unrepentantly using the front doors instead. He would let her on today, and see what happened.
After a few stops, the bus became crowded; a passenger called up to Helmut, asking him to attend to a problem on the bus. As he approached, Helmut asked the 4 negroes seated nearest to the front of the bus to give up their seats; 3 stood, and one, the trouble making negro woman, remained seated. Helmut said "if you don't move, I'll have you arrrested", to which the woman replied "You go ahead and do that".
The police arrived in short order and took the woman away. Helmut smiled to himself - somehow, he know that today, he had help light a fire that would burn brightly forever.
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This story is a tribute to my Uncle Helmut "Hal" Reuter (RIP 1915 - 1978), loyal American citizen and the REAL father of the American Civil Rights movement.
User Reviews
Submitted by DieKreutzen (user info) at 2005-11-02 20:22:52 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
This post isn't supposed to be funny, dipshit.
Nice work America, sweep it under the carpet for another 50 years...
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2005-11-02 17:26:47 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
this post isn't funny - my grandfather died in a concentration camp - he fell off a guard towar!
ba RUMP bump TSSSHHHH!!