Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of Germany, making his greatest victory speech and having the crowds of Germans cheer him on, is at the top of the world and basks in his glory.  Never before was he able to control the masses as he does now, he feels that, if he wanted to, he could move them to action with one command, one word, one gesture;  but what would he have them do?  Where would he want them to go?  What would he have them conquer?  All this power and - what now?  After all, they won the war, no, he led them to victory, He was the one who is to be praised, he spurred them to action, he told them what to do, he told them what to think, he made them who they are.
     As he looks at his followers he can’t explain the feeling that something is wrong, something is odd about them, something out of the ordinary;  and suddenly it hits him:  they all look the same, that’s it, they are all beautiful, blond, perfect specimen of the Aryan race.
He has accomplished his goal, he is looking at the embodiment of his ideal.  This is a result of all the years of experiments,  this is the reason why all the Jews had to die.
     He closes his eyes to savor the feeling and as he opens them again he sees, to his horror, that everything is gone, he is not the great dictator, there are no flowers, no balloons, no cheering crowds, it’s just him, as a boy, laying on the bed in his room.  The special ceremonial clothes are hanging on the chair next to his bed.  Young Adolf has just turned thirteen and today is his barmitzwah.  He is living with his folks in his grandfather’s house, who is a son of a wealthy Jewish family named Frankenberger and who, when he was nineteen, fell in love with a family cook, young, attractive girl, Maria Schicklgruber, Adolf’s grandmother.
     Adolf is alone in his room, the house is usually full of noises: his brothers fighting, his sisters playing out in the yard, his mother preparing dinner his father, a shoemaker, tending to the livestock; now, however, everything is quiet, the house seems empty, there are no sounds coming from anywhere; the total silence scares him a bit so he leaves the room and walks around the house looking, hoping to find anyone at all.  Where did they all go?  Why did they leave me here?  He checks all the houses and barns but there is no one to greet him.  Finally in his desperation he cries out into the silence: Where is everybody!  Don’t leave me here alone!  And with a lower, breaking down voice: I’m scared.
     Suddenly the horrible idea dawned on him:
I must have killed them together with all the other Jews.

L  -  Leszek Berezowski
O -  Oscar

L:     I am supposed to write about Hitler, but I wanted to do it with a twist:  I wanted to show him from the good side;  everyone seems to concentrate on the crimes he has committed;  I was trying to find some information that was positive;  I was looking for sources,  I tried bookstores, libraries, even internet and I didn’t get anywhere.  Everything is a one sided view and there is nothing that shows him from the positive side;  there must have been positive side to him, especially in the beginning, when he was coming to power, all people were behind him, he revived the economy... .
O:     So, you want to know good things?  I can tell you lots of bad things. ha ha ha.
L:     That’s a problem.
O:     Yes, that’s a problem.  If you take a writer today that writes about Germany it is usually a Jewish man, and you have to keep that cow on the milking, you know,      no offense....
O:     I can tell you one thing - the only way he got in power was when 54% of the electorate gave the Nationalistic Party the vote, so, he was the leader of the Nationalistic Party, that was the only fellow that said that if he gets elected he will stop sending two billion dollars in gold to the allies for the reparations for the World War One.  That’s the first thing he stops.
In Germany they had at that time thirty four different political parties it could be thirty seven, I’m not sure anymore but not one of them strong enough to build a government, so what happened was, they changed one government after another because they could not pass any laws in Berlin, in the house because they never had the majority.  So, in 1933 Hindenburg as the president of Germany had no other choice but to go to Hitler whose Nationalistic Party, couple of months before, got 54% of the votes and that is how Hitler got in power.
For the first couple of years he didn’t do anything, he just stopped the payments to the allies and instead of giving two billion dollars to them, he put the money back in.  When he got in power there were fourteen million unemployed,  within a year and a half there was no more unemployment in Germany.
L:     Year and a half?
O:     Year and a half to year and three quarters.
What happened with the young people?  As soon as the young fellow had learned his trade, he was usually finished by the time when he was seventeen or eighteen years old, he put them into what they called a “Work detail”  they had nothing but a pick and a spade, they usually marched with a spade.  They built the Autobahn by hand, not with machines, by hand.  That’s how he organized work, he put youth to work, he gave them something to look forward to, naturally, he was like Stalin in one way:  “either you’re for me or you’re against me” so people saw that if you worked with him you had a better life.  All of a sudden, everything increased, people could do something with their houses, families had children,  for instance when I was born in 1930 there were only 12 kids born in our town of 1200 people,  the year before in ..29 there were only 9 born, in 1931 there were only 7 born.
L:     Why was that?
O:     There was a total economic disaster in Germany at that time.
L:     Why?
O:     Allies created that.  England, France and United States created this with that treaty of Versailles,
L:     Just by reparations?
O:     Oh!  They stole left and right, whatever they could carry out.  Naturally, the day Hitler got in power all that has stopped.
L:     That’s interesting.  What happened then?
O:     The French dragged with them whatever was not nailed down including the woods, they stole everything you can imagine and never paid for it and it didn’t get deducted from the reparation money.  Germany was cows and that’s why Hitler got in power, so what he did, he worked on the infrastructure in Germany plus, naturally, he started the war machine.  He started building tanks, airplanes, ships, submarines, he put harbors to be build, you know what I mean? And then in 1936 this good gentleman in this country, so called angel in the world: Roosevelt, gave him two hundred million American dollars as a loan, that was at that time a billion and two hundred thousand marks.  You know how much money that was ... ?
L:     So with that money he built ... ?
O:     With that money he started building airplanes.  Germany always had good ingenious and even though they were not allowed to work on that stuff, they still worked on it.  They worked on atomic power, they worked on heavy water,
L:     I heard that Hitler was interested in new technology.
O:     Unbelievably interested, but, you know, he put the Germans back to work, everybody was happy, they had organized lives, so... only one man ran for politics, you had no other choice but to elect Adolf, you know, that wasn’t right either, but at that time people didn’t look at it that way.  They went through such a bad time, like Poland did for the last forty years with the Russians in their back.
L:     He showed him them better life...
O:     Yes.  And that’s why they were for him.  It is not only that the normal working man was for this man, the intelligence was for him.
L:     It is also amazing how he was able to span the generations because children and old people, everybody, loved him.
O:     Again I have got to tell you something.  We were brought up with Adolf that he likes animals, he likes children.  The deer did not run away from him,  he could walk up to them,  dogs did not bother that man.  And that impression gave the people the sense that this man doesn’t do any harm, so when this Jewish question came up, I didn’t even know anything about it, I was to young, I was born in 1930.  by the time this whole Jewish thing in Germany started, it was 1936.  As a six year old you don’t have the slightest inclination, what’s going on,  you are a kid.
L:     Did people know...?
O:     The basic German had nothing against the Jew.  It’s the politicians that do those things.
L:     But was it widely known that those things were happening?
O:     I personally did not know and I don’t think German people knew either.  Jews were taken away, so were Germans taken away, that were Jehovah Witnesses, they were taken away too, but only if they refused to wear uniform.  So, they were in camps too, the parents visited them and they never came back and said that this is this and this is this; they wouldn’t dare.  I told you before that either you’re for me or you’re against me, there is no in between.
Basically he helped the German human being to respect himself again, if you understand what I mean, he gave the people a sense that they are somebody, that they can go to work and get paid, that they can build a little house for themselves.  He gave them hope.
Ninety percent of the people never thought that he will go to war.  I don’t think so.  I don’t think my father even did and he lost a hand in the first world war.  My father was not crazy about them, he never was a member, in fact, I remember one day , in 1938, when the votes were in Germany for Chancellor, as he shaved himself, I was standing in the living room when my mother comes out of the bedroom and she says “For whom are we going to vote today?” so he said to her “You dumb chicken, who the hell you want to vote for when only one is running.” Now, I remember this as a child; I must have been 8 years old but I remember it clearly.
I come from a town of twelve hundred people.  There were no Jewish people there.  The only Jewish people I ever have seen was in February in 1942; my aunt, my mother’s sister in law was living in Stuttgart, and she invited us over to visit, so my oldest sister and I went to Stuttgart with a train.  On the way over we had to go through a church yard and there were four people sitting on a bench in front of a church. They had a yellow star on their chests.  I asked my sister what are those people?  She said “They are Jewish people”. I said “what’s Jewish people”.  She said “You know, Hitler and all our top officials don’t like them, so they have to walk around like the French or Polish war prisoners; a Polish war prisoner had a “P” on the chest, the French war prisoner had an “F” and the Jews had that star on, so I said what the Jews are doing wrong and she said that they have a real funny religion, that’s what my sister said and it ended there, I didn’t ask anymore questions.  If you have no people like this in town, how can you relate to them?
L:     You can’t be prejudiced in that situation...
O:     Yes, but Hitler helped the basic working man.  he wasn’t so much for the rich.  It was a socialistic government, don’t misunderstand, socialistic government is to spread the wealth, and that is what he did well.  He looked out for the individual working man.
He was very, very conscientious with the law, how he applied the law to everything It was unbelievable how strict he was.  This is why I personally can’t understand what happened in those concentration camps.  Germans were not allowed to kill.
L:     They were not allowed to kill?
O:     To kill people.
Basically, you know, ninety nine point nine percent died innocently in that lousy war.  Let’s be honest in all things.
L:     But somebody had to do the killings.
O:     Yes.  It comes from the top on down and as the German is, I am like that,  If you come after me today, I would see that I get you first.
L:     So, are you saying that it was in self defense?
O:     No!  I’m not saying that.  Adolf started the war, but the men, the individual people said that before I get killed I will kill as many of the others as I can.  That’s why they lasted six years, that’s the only reason.  Unbelievable discipline they had, if you understand what I mean, discipline, discipline, discipline.
L:     To this day Germany is....
O:     Oh no... all has changed today.  Oh my God.  When I go over there I shake my head.
Germany is not anymore.
L:     But the qualities are the same, which is to be admired. ...
O:     They still like to work and do a decent job.  If you do something, do it right or try not to do it.  This is a little German philosophy in the folks, you know.
What was then in this 1918 against Germany was the most unfair think that ever happened to any nation.
L:     Do you mean the reparations?
O:     Yes, and all this.  That’s why the Americans did not allow, after the second world war, to do the same stupid thing again.  The French wanted to take all the industry out of Germany and take it to France.  The English and some of the Americans, they wanted to make a farm country out of Germany, no more factories, no more nothing.  They had in mind to take universities away from Germany and all of this kind of stuff.  It’s idiotic, you know, but some people had that in mind.
L:     How was Hitler able to reach so many people?...
O:     He had a hundred thousand, or so, little Hitlers that were more eager than he was.
When German does something he sometimes over does it, he is to correct, he is to accurate, you understand what I mean?  And this is what he counted on.  He had so many people helping him.  That’s why he was so strong, that’s why he established himself like that.
The people were eager and, count it, from 1918 till 1933, this is fifteen years; those people, they had a horrendous time, they had to go with a wheel barrel to go to the store to buy loaf of bread and if they were ten minutes late they needed two wheel barrels full of paper;  the inflation was that big.
All those things played the role but, he should have never done what he did.  You don’t do to nobody what that man commanded lower people to do.
L:     What was the reason?  If you were to guess?
O:     Ah!  That shit head thought that he is an Aryan and that Germans are Aryans, my foot they are, they are human beings like the rest of us.  He rose so quick and got so powerful.  He was a jerk, he got power hungry, if you know what I’m trying to say,  he was... “I can do anything, with the Germans even if six million bleed to death”.  ...Uhhhh....... .
L:     How was he able to stop paying back the reparations?
O:     He said come and get it.
L:     Germany at that time wasn’t that strong.  Wasn’t he taking a big risk?
O:     You don’t want to go in there and get it.  The women might stab you.  If they have no business there and you have the right cause, you put the shit pot on top of your head, anything, just to make man walk.  So they didn’t try.
L:     The reparations must have taken the big chunk out of the economy.
O:     Two billion dollars in gold. Do you know how much money that was at that time?  That’s why I don’t understand that Jewish claim, that there is seven billion dollars in the Swiss Bank.  That’s horse shit!  You were, in Germany, a rich man, if this was a Jew or another one, you were rich if you had ten thousand marks in the bank, now, how many Jews you gonna have in Europe from Poland or from Hungary?  The German Jews, that got out, took their money with them.  Their businesses got taken away from them, but their money didn’t.  Do you think, they had seven billion dollars in gold in the Swiss Bank?  They are bunch of idiots and that includes our senator here, this guy needs to have his head examined, he should be in the mental hospital!
L:     Maybe they figured it with the inflation ...?
O:     Hell!, You can’t make out forty million, not seven billion! come on!  This is not right!  I’m very fair human being, but as I told you, you were a rich man if you had ten thousand marks in the bank.  Whoow!  You had money... .Do you know what that was worth?  And they want to have seven billion dollars in the Swiss Bank?  There were not enough Jews to own that much,;  not in nineteen hundred and thirty six and thirty seven till forty one.  Then, in forty one, Europe was finished.  The Jews in my point of view were collected, as bad as it sounds... .  Do you understand what I’m saying?  The Germans were in Russia by then, they were down in Greece, they were all over France.  The only land that got away was England and Ireland;  everywhere else he was.  I’m not laying to you, that’s a fact;  they couldn’t take money from there and put it in that Bank.  There were not five countries in the whole Europe that were worth seven billion dollars.
L:     Maybe they taking about today’s money?  In today’s terms?
O:     They need to have their heads examined, my friend.
L:     O.K. (hesitantly)
O:     Now you get to hear a little of the new politics.  Ha ha ha.  See, we can’t lose side of actual things, you’ve got to have common sense in anything you do, you’ve got to have common sense.  You can not make outlandish statements that will hurt somebody, somehow.  People are not supposed to do things like this to each other, for power, or otherwise.  At least I don’t think so.  That war taught me an awful lot, and I was only a kid.  I would never allow my kids to become a soldier.  I would have sent them anywhere in the world but I would not have them drafted.  War is, absolutely, no good for nothing. All what we do is bleed; and I am not lying to you.  If they want to fight in Washington ... .  Now they want to go after that Irakian again... .  Let our bastards go down there and fight it out with him;  give each a handkerchief to see who hangs first.  That’s how I feel about it.  They should let that man and his people make a living; sell their oil. That’s how I look at it.
L:     Every part of the world has its problems,  You can’t be policing everywhere.
O:     No, you can’t!  I always get along with everybody, including the Jewish people.  I, honest to God, never had an argument with anyone.  It’s very simple, they are human beings like I am.
L:     You treat them as individuals.
O:     You bet ya.  As long as he doesn’t throw a stone at me, I won’t throw one back.  I will never be the first one that will throw a stone.
L:     But when you are in the army, you have a different situation.  You have to follow orders.
O:     Oh yeah.  That’s another story.  You know, a lot of Germans got in awful trouble on the account that they had to do stupid things, just because their officer said that they had to do those things.  Like it or not.
L:     Why do you think Hitler was so anti-Semitic?
O:     I have no idea.  I really do not know.  The German people, basically don’t really discriminate, they think they’re good, oh yeah, oh my God, oh, never forget that, the German thinks that he is God’s gift.  You know?  Just like the Jew thinks that he is God’s gift.  That’s why I said to Steinbucher, a Jewish man I built the house for, “you and I are pretty good half brothers”.  They act alike , they talk alike.  Ha ha ha.  That’s what I said to him.  He laughed.  That’s a fact.  That’s why Jews were in love with Germany and they were good Germans.  Why they did things like that to them, I still don’t understand, ... I never will.
although, I know that Adolf sent once three big ships out of Bremen with Jewish people on it, to come to United States;  they went first to Miami;  they got sent out of Miami, they wouldn’t let them land;  then they went to New York City and they were not allowed to come out either.  That were the poor german Jews.  The ones that had a little business and had some money, they all live in this country, every one of them;  they didn’t die;  they left, already, in 1938;  they were gone.  It was old people that were left over and some schnooks (fon.);  they were taxi drivers that drove taxi in the cities;  they were poor guys, that had to work from the morning till the night for their living;  they didn’t even go to the synagogue and that’s where the crime is.  How could the Germans do this?  I don’t understand.
The bottom line is that we are all the same.  All we do is bleed.
That’s all I have to say.