I lived as a child and young teen under the iron fists of two dictatorships—the Nazis in Germany and Austria, and Soviet Communism in what is now Czechia.
I was born in 1937 in Berlin. Even we, the children, could not miss seeing enormous photographs of Hitler proliferating next to supersized swastika flags rippling in the wind. Black-clad men marched briskly through the streets, throwing their legs high like puppets on a string. Cheering crowds watched, but in time more and more people would shrink into stores for safety, until these same stores bore the signs of “Don’t buy from Jews!” and ceased to exist. Hitler’s shrill voice set to its highest volume attempted to drown out all reason as he proclaimed that he alone could save us from all enemies, whether real or imaginary.
My Estonian-born father passed as being of a superior race, presumably because of its large German population.
After a steady denial of the evil of which the Third Reich was fully capable and some futile and tragic attempts at appeasement by an unbelieving world, British bombers began retaliating against the Nazi Blitz bombings of London. In the summer of 1940, nightly raids announced by shrilling warning sirens brought our parents rushing to our bedside to remove our limp, sleepy bodies from the warm covers to take us….
