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She was gone all afternoon, perhaps searching for a Jewish lover, and I spent the ti in a hot tub We had venison steaks for dinner; a friend of Kurt’s had shot a deer in one of the governht three filets to celebrate my speech to the Bund

"We must celebrate in advance," he said, "because you and Greta ant to leave i around seven-thirty It was held in the basement of a Lutheran church about half a h a back entrance, ht of stairs, and eed in a room full of old Germans

It was a shock I had expected a beer hall full of bristling young Storm Troopers, and instead I found myself in what looked like an old folks’ hoe was somewhere between fifty-five and sixty Around seventy-five ht-backed chairs and talked co now and then to refill their glasses fro at the rear of the roo else, of the American Co on drealory, and about as much of a revolutionary force as a librarians’ conference in E, Herr Neuer members? Not at the Bund, I aue for our schoolchildren They go hiking and ca and win prizes for physical fitness No Hitler Youth by any means, but we do e can"

I took a seat near the back of the room, with Greta on one side and her father on the other We were close to the beer keg, which was fortunate, because the first hour of thewas intolerable There was an insufficiently brief speech of welco of the , a secretary’s report on correspondence with other Bunds, a treasurer’s report on the state of the organization’s finances and the lethargy of so address by a doddering white-haired gentleman on the current state of the German business community in Mexico City So letter on the subject, and the old fool stood up there and read it to us, inserting his own parenthetical rehout all of this ritual, the audience paid only cursory attention to as going on in the front of the roo, with individuals pausing fro was still officially in progress At first it was co to note that Nazisive one to understand, but as the evening wore on I began to grow annoyed at the towering wave of apathy which flowed over everyone in the rooht, they at least ought to work at it

When the old white-haired etically and sat down to the sa, even the statement that the Bund was several thousand koruna in the red I was irritated There ought to be a way to reach these people, to get the one way or another They were, after all, political extremists Revolutionaries, if you will They were not supposed to act and react like a Rotary Club

"And now," the chairuished Party member froreater ramifications of the problems of Germans in Czechoslovakia Herr Evan Tanner"

Inevitable polite applause

I walked down the aisle, took my place at the podium I hadthe contributions of Germans to the culture of the world and of Sudeten Ger the poor state of Ger for unification of East and West Gered to include German areas of Czechoslovakia The usual pap, and I’ occasional h, in a round of polite applause

But so happened

"Brothers, sisters, fellow Ger But I paused then, and held the pause, and the conversations died down and eyes were drawn to me My heels clicked,out: "Heil Hitler!"

The response was about fifteen seconds delayed They were out of practice, but they had been properly conditioned and I had rung the right bell; they had to salivate The roar caht have been, not raising the rafters, but loud enough and fir

"I look around," I shouted, "and what do I see? I see Gerround into the dust by the heel of a foreign oppressor And who is the oppressor? The Czech! Who is behind the Czech? The Russian! And what villain pulls the Russian’s strings? The Jew!"

More eyes were on one for beer since I began to speak Either the keg had gone suddenly dry or I was actually beginning to reach these people

" Ger from a wound that leaves her in pieces, one half a pawn for the Jews of Wall Street, the other a police state under the thuodless Hebrew Bolshevists of Moscow And Berlin, the grandest city in the world, is an island in a turbulent sea with the indignity of a wall down its spine And what of Austria? A German country ripped away from Germany, as the rest of the world tries to undo one of the Fuehrer’s greatest accohout the world? Do you knohat they say? They say that Germany is dead!"

I dropped my voice to a murmur "Is Germany dead?"

They expectedin the air, and finally a few adventurous souls said, "No"

"Is Germany dead?"

"No!"