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Authors: Claire Conner
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cold of winter.
Every few months, Mary outgrew her cast. The old one was sawed off and the doctor constructed a new one. Each time, we worried about the drying, especially after Mary struggled with a bout of pneumonia. After that, Janet and I decided to use a hair dryer to speed the process.
That evening, while I was stuck downstairs at a Birch meeting, Janet was struggling alone. “I can’t hold the hair dryer and keep Mary covered at the same time,” she said.
“Let me take over. You keep the blanket on her.”
I propped my arms on the top rail of the crib and moved the hair dryer back and forth, back and forth, covering every inch of the cast. When I’d been over the front, Janet and I gently turned Mary on her tummy and repeated the process.
The meeting in the living room went on and on. It seemed like forever before I heard Mother calling me. When I went to the steps, she looked stern and pointed toward the floor. “Where have you been?” she asked. I quickly explained. “Go back up then,” she said. “When everyone’s gone, I’ll be up.”
Ten o’clock came and went. Finally, my brother appeared in the doorway. “Everyone’s gone, and Mom and Dad want to see you,” Jay R. said. “I’ll help Janet.”
In the living room, Mother and Dad greeted me from their usual spots on the sofa.
“Your country is calling,” my father said. “You are old enough to join the fight.” Dad slid a membership application toward me. “Sign on the line.”
That night I became a full-fledged, adult John Bircher. I was thirteen years old.
Chapter Six
Twisted
Although Revilo Oliver remained unknown outside White Supremacist circles, his fingerprints showed up on virtually every far right tendency during the post-World War Two era
.
—L EONARD Z ESKIND,
B LOOD AND P OLITICS
1
For ten years, my family and I lived in Rogers Park, a northside Chicago neighborhood of many Jews and a few Catholics. I was in the first grade when I started walking to school, a four-block hike from our apartment on Maplewood. The highlight of the trip was three blocks on Devon Avenue, a busy commercial street lined with small specialty shops, most with Jewish proprietors. Many of those folks had “come over from the old country,” which, in my mind, explained why the men sported beards and the women wore babushkas.
I was around ten years old when it dawned on me that many of the snippets of conversation I heard concerned Germans, Jews, and World War II. I didn’t understand a lot of the words, as the old folks often spoke in Yiddish. But I did know the English words “smoke,” “ghetto,” and “camps.”
One day, I asked our across-the-alley neighbor, Mrs. Fishman, about what I’d been hearing. “Oy gevalt, it’s bad luck to speak of the dead.” Even so, she sat me down at her kitchen table, offered me a cookie and milk, and shared her story.
“My family came from Germany when I was about your age. That was years before the war, but my father worried. ‘They hate us,’ he said. ‘We have to go to America.’ He was right. First, every Jew had to wear yellow stars, and then they were rounded up and put in railroad cars. Now they’re all dead. Everyone. No one is left.”
One evening I asked my father about the yellow stars and the boxcars. “Those were terrible times,” he said. He told me how Nazis arrested the Jews in cities and towns across Germany and Poland. The Jews were loaded into cattle cars without food or water and transported to camps to be killed. Inplaces called Treblinka, Dachau, Buchenwald, and Auschwitz, men, women, and children were forced to strip naked. Their clothes were thrown into huge piles and their heads were shaved. Then they were gassed. After every extermination the bodies were thrown into huge ovens, called crematoriums. Day and night, smoke spewed from the chimneys.
“The ashes of the dead covered everything,” my father said. “Hitler planned to exterminate every Jew in Europe.
Every few months, Mary outgrew her cast. The old one was sawed off and the doctor constructed a new one. Each time, we worried about the drying, especially after Mary struggled with a bout of pneumonia. After that, Janet and I decided to use a hair dryer to speed the process.
That evening, while I was stuck downstairs at a Birch meeting, Janet was struggling alone. “I can’t hold the hair dryer and keep Mary covered at the same time,” she said.
“Let me take over. You keep the blanket on her.”
I propped my arms on the top rail of the crib and moved the hair dryer back and forth, back and forth, covering every inch of the cast. When I’d been over the front, Janet and I gently turned Mary on her tummy and repeated the process.
The meeting in the living room went on and on. It seemed like forever before I heard Mother calling me. When I went to the steps, she looked stern and pointed toward the floor. “Where have you been?” she asked. I quickly explained. “Go back up then,” she said. “When everyone’s gone, I’ll be up.”
Ten o’clock came and went. Finally, my brother appeared in the doorway. “Everyone’s gone, and Mom and Dad want to see you,” Jay R. said. “I’ll help Janet.”
In the living room, Mother and Dad greeted me from their usual spots on the sofa.
“Your country is calling,” my father said. “You are old enough to join the fight.” Dad slid a membership application toward me. “Sign on the line.”
That night I became a full-fledged, adult John Bircher. I was thirteen years old.
Chapter Six
Twisted
Although Revilo Oliver remained unknown outside White Supremacist circles, his fingerprints showed up on virtually every far right tendency during the post-World War Two era
.
—L EONARD Z ESKIND,
B LOOD AND P OLITICS
1
For ten years, my family and I lived in Rogers Park, a northside Chicago neighborhood of many Jews and a few Catholics. I was in the first grade when I started walking to school, a four-block hike from our apartment on Maplewood. The highlight of the trip was three blocks on Devon Avenue, a busy commercial street lined with small specialty shops, most with Jewish proprietors. Many of those folks had “come over from the old country,” which, in my mind, explained why the men sported beards and the women wore babushkas.
I was around ten years old when it dawned on me that many of the snippets of conversation I heard concerned Germans, Jews, and World War II. I didn’t understand a lot of the words, as the old folks often spoke in Yiddish. But I did know the English words “smoke,” “ghetto,” and “camps.”
One day, I asked our across-the-alley neighbor, Mrs. Fishman, about what I’d been hearing. “Oy gevalt, it’s bad luck to speak of the dead.” Even so, she sat me down at her kitchen table, offered me a cookie and milk, and shared her story.
“My family came from Germany when I was about your age. That was years before the war, but my father worried. ‘They hate us,’ he said. ‘We have to go to America.’ He was right. First, every Jew had to wear yellow stars, and then they were rounded up and put in railroad cars. Now they’re all dead. Everyone. No one is left.”
One evening I asked my father about the yellow stars and the boxcars. “Those were terrible times,” he said. He told me how Nazis arrested the Jews in cities and towns across Germany and Poland. The Jews were loaded into cattle cars without food or water and transported to camps to be killed. Inplaces called Treblinka, Dachau, Buchenwald, and Auschwitz, men, women, and children were forced to strip naked. Their clothes were thrown into huge piles and their heads were shaved. Then they were gassed. After every extermination the bodies were thrown into huge ovens, called crematoriums. Day and night, smoke spewed from the chimneys.
“The ashes of the dead covered everything,” my father said. “Hitler planned to exterminate every Jew in Europe.
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