Read Online A Perfect Madness by Frank H. Marsh - Free Book Online Page B

its breath and look around
one last time before stepping into the smoldering fire waiting
patiently for it. Sitting down in the main lecture hall, Erich
glanced quickly around the room before realizing that he was alone
in his row of twelve seats. No one sought his company, nor would
they in the weeks ahead. The Jewish students were gone as well, and
most of the non-German Czech students. The ones remaining now
professed their own carefully rehearsed allegiance to Germany.
Later Erich would say to Julia and her father, “The bugs are
sneaking out of their holes.”
    Two weeks passed before Erich felt
comfortable with the drastically changed student body. Everyone
knew of his continuing relationship with Julia, but said nothing to
him, as if waiting for a signal to do so. Then it happened. The
wild shouts of the Sudeten German students rang out across the
campus, their stamping feet echoing down every hall as they emptied
the university buildings. Screaming on the airwaves, Hitler had
promised that the liberation of the “oppressed” Sudeten Germans was
near and that the Sudeten National Socialist Party would lead the
way. Having left the empty classroom, Erich walked across the
street and sat down on a curbside bench and looked back at the
campus walkways filling with shouting students gathering throughout
the university. The sound and fury unfolding across the campus
became deafening, much like what he had witnessed years back with
his father at Berlin University. It was then that the mind of
reason began to weep as great bonfires began devouring a thousand
books of knowledge, sending their ashes high into the night sky,
never to be read again. The sight before Erich was little different
than what he imagined the ancient German tribal warriors looked
like as they danced in a frenzied madness around their fires at
night. Even his father seemed moved by the burning of such
knowledge. Years later, though, when asked by Erich about the dark
night and the burning of the books, he could hardly recall
it.
    Before the students could move across
the different streets ringing the campus to demonstrate their joy
by smashing the store windows of all known Jews, the Prague police
arrived and cordoned off the campus until a controlled calmness
took hold of the students. One by one, the rowdiest were forced to
line up in a long row and wait on the police captain to take down
their names before hauling them off to the central office. As the
captain, a lean and timid-looking man wearing tiny spectacles,
started down the line of students, he stopped abruptly in front of
the tall, blond Sudeten German student. “Name?” the captain asked
meekly, noticing the National Socialist Party armband on the
student.
    “ Franz Kremer.”
    “ Age?”
    “ Twenty-seven.”
    “ Are you a student at the
university?”
    “ No, but I will be again
when the Führer comes to Prague,” Franz answered in a voice loud
enough for Erich, who was sitting directly across the street from
him, to hear clearly the threatening words.
    At the sound of Franz’s voice shouts
of approval rolled down the line of students like the rumbling of
distant thunder. Fixing a freezing stare on the captain, Franz
continued, “Now is the time for you and your men to take a stand.
You are either with us or against us. And rest assured, we will
remember you when the given day comes.”
    Looking across the street at Erich, he
screamed, “You piece of dog dung. You lover of Jewish devils. Hell
will not be big enough to hold the Jews when we’re through with
them.”
    Erich tried to smile at Franz’s words,
but couldn’t. He knew such words were no longer empty boasts, but
would soon be filled with the gaseous insanity of intolerance
already sweeping into Czechoslovakia and the rest of the Eastern
European states. Later he would come to believe it had always been
there, hidden from ages past by brittle bits of reason, waiting for
the right moment to show its face again. Erich