The Brownshirts Are Coming
By Fred M. B. Amram


On Saturday evenings we sometimes walked over to the neighborhood cinema for a double feature and for a few hours of relief from the summer heat. Of course our railroad tenement had no air conditioning back in the summer of 1941. Windows at both ends of our flat provided just a little circulation, thanks to a fan at the living room end.

The front door opened into the kitchen. We had a ritual for entering that door into the dark apartment and this Saturday night was no different. Mutti unlocked the door with her key and stepped back. Papa took off his right shoe and held it as if he would hammer a nail with the heel. The seven-year-old that was me hid behind Papa. We all took a deep breath in anticipation.

Suddenly Papa opened the door, reached around for the light switch and bam, wham, bam. He was pounding roaches.

Thousands scurried for shelter in the baseboard and the cupboards. They were on the walls and floor and ceiling—everywhere. Roaches fled from the table and the chairs. Skwoosh, skwoosh, skwoosh as one after another was crushed by Papa’s heavy rubber heel. Sometimes Papa accidentally stepped on one or two of the disoriented, frightened beasts with his stockinged foot. Brown, stiff-backed, multi-legged, monster-faced roaches who had been in total control of the darkened apartment were now escaping my father’s wrath. Fat bugs, some over two inches long, seemed to fly short distances, or were they hopping? I held onto Papa’s belt and hid my face in his back.

When no more live roaches could be seen Papa cleaned up. On a good night Papa would kill more than thirty. When each living roach had found shelter from Papa’s shoe and each dead roach had been dropped into the garbage can, Mutti entered the room as if nothing had happened. My heart raced. I was terrified. Surely these roaches were reproducing faster than Papa could kill them.

The cockroach chase filled my mind, even replacing the memory of the movie. Before undressing I checked under the sheets and inside the pillowcase. I knew that once the lights were turned off for the night our creepy tenants would reappear. I feared I would dream about the roaches—and I did. Was I dreaming that they walked on me during the night or did they really?

In the morning I checked my body and inside my pajamas. I turned my slippers upside down and banged them, individually and carefully, against the bed frame. Too often a roach fell to the floor and scampered away.

Concern about roach droppings became an obsession and prompted careful daily washing and inspection of my body. I welcomed my weekly bath and I wiped dishes before I allowed them to cradle my food.

There were cockroaches everywhere. I don’t mean just everywhere in the room. I mean all over the city. New York is a city of roaches—or, at least, it was when I was a boy. We had been living in the United States about sixteen months, escaping from Germany via Holland and Belgium, a step ahead of the Nazis. The next-door commercial bakery, where Papa worked, provided food for much of the big city and for the roaches. Poison around the baseboard did not have a big impact. There were way too many millions of them to control. Surely, I imagined, there were at least 1,000 roaches for each of New York’s seven million residents.

My dreams became ever more frightening and, as the weeks passed, the roaches seemed to grow larger. And they felt heavier when they walked on me. In one dream they had hot feet and burned my skin as they wandered aimlessly on my chest and arms. When I awoke Mutti was holding me. I had been screaming and had ripped the buttons from my pajama top.

Anna lived at the other end of our block in an apartment house slightly more upscale than our tenement. Hers was a larger apartment with a separate entrance to her father’s medical office. Anna was a special friend, almost a girlfriend, and I visited her apartment often. Anna’s family had escaped Nazi Germany quite early and had learned to speak English while living in Manchester, England. They moved to New York when the European war seemed imminent. The family spoke German and a British version of English at home. They were able to help with my developing command of the new language.

One evening, when Anna’s mom had invited me to dinner, I regaled the family with one of my dreams. Mrs. Wertheimner’s response—horror and disgust—encouraged me to elaborate in great detail, even identifying the number of legs each roach had and the fuzz on the legs. Doctor W. could outdo me. He told about another Jew who wrote stories in German. “Franz Kafka,” he said, “wrote a story called Die Verwandlung, The Metamorphosis, in which a young man wakes up one morning to discover that he has been turned into a monstrous bug, perhaps a cockroach.” Anna’s father then proceeded to tell Kafka’s horrible story, simplified so that the two youngsters in his audience could understand. In dismay, Mrs. W. left the room. Anna cried a little and I tried hard not to. I skipped dessert.

That evening, as I lay in bed, I thought about Dr. Werheimer’s story. Would I dream about being turned into a roach? What if I were really changed? What if my family became disgusted by me and disowned me? Could I live with the Wertheimers? Could Dr. W. cure me?

I was not changed into a giant cockroach. I remained a small boy. However, giant roaches came to my bed. Giant roaches wearing shiny boots and brown uniforms. Hundreds marched in parade formation past my house. They wore pistols and carried large clubs like the SS officers I had seen in Germany. They marched four abreast and as they passed my house the last row peeled off and walked swiftly toward our front door. I heard the outside door slam and the boots in the hallway. They stopped at our apartment door and one of them knocked. No, he pounded. Bang, bang, bang! Pause. Bang, bang, bang! Loud, determined knocks. A third series of three bangs. Another pause. The apartment door burst open and crashed to the floor. The four roach brownshirts were in the room. Their armbands seemed familiar but I couldn’t quite place where I had seen them before.

“Aufstehen,” commanded one of the soldiers. “Stand up.” The brownshirts were larger than Papa and Mutti. The shiny boots on their many legs confused and frightened me. In one motion the lead soldier tore the blanket from my bed. Four large roaches and my bed were now squeezed into this tiny room. “Aufstehen!” Louder than before. Where should I stand? Sitting on the edge of the bed, I moved my bare feet to the floor. It now occurred to me that Papa and Mutti had not come to the rescue. Where were they? Still sleeping?

I looked down. Usually, when I stepped out of bed I was careful not to crush a roach with my bare foot. Now, out of respect, no, out of fear of the roach soldiers, I certainly didn’t want to crush a bug of any kind. I pictured the small roaches that dominated our tenement. Were they all now larger than me? But there was no time for speculation. The four soldier roaches now moved apart, making a narrow path for me to walk out of the room. They marched me out of the cramped bedroom into the kitchen, past the broken front door and into the dark hallway. “Raus. Raus aus dem Haus,” they ordered. “Out of the house.”

They guided me outdoors and into a waiting truck. I climbed up and they locked the doors behind me. I stood in total darkness. Something touched me and I let out a huge scream. Scream after uncontrolled scream. I couldn’t stop myself. Anna’s voice reassured me, “I’m here.” But I couldn’t stop screaming. “Ich bin hier Freddy. Ich bin dein Freund Anna,” Anna kept saying. “I’m here. I’m your friend Anna.” She touched me again and we both allowed ourselves to cry.

After a short time Anna began to report her thoughts. She noted that when the truck door was opened to let me in she could see that there were no other humans with us. She had also observed that the roaches had boots on all their feet. They had no hands, only feet. That’s why they pushed with their bodies. That was all we knew except that we were locked in a large black box.

We sat in silent thought. Suddenly I remembered that the roaches at our house scrambled about feeding in the dark. Were there roaches with us? Anna assured me that she had seen none when I climbed aboard.

“No small ones and no giants?” I asked.

“None.”

Anna had been first into the box. Apparently the parade had passed Anna’s building before it reached my end of the block. Four soldiers had peeled off the back of the parade to arrest her. I was second.

“Will there be others?” Anna wondered. Almost immediately the truck door popped open and another girl was pushed into the truck. Anna rushed toward the door and started talking very loud so that the girl would know that we were in the truck too. No more fearful screaming. The girl quickly crawled to Anna who was ready with a hug. The frightened little girl cried for quite some time. Then between sobs she announced, “My name is Lisa and I’m six years old.” Her heavy accent hinted that she, like Anna and me, was not American.

After Anna calmed Lisa, we learned that she was Jewish and from Austria. Her father had been hauled away after the Anschluss. Lisa and her mother hid in the woods and secretly made their way across the Alps into Switzerland. She had arrived in the United States only a few weeks ago.

I blurted out the obvious, “They’re rounding up the children.” Something made me uncomfortable. The phrase “rounding up” troubled me. I had heard my parents use that phrase. Dr. W. used it. Why were the words so disturbing?

Lisa calmed down and we waited. The three of us agreed that Anna would again talk to any newcomer while Lisa would use the opportunity of light to study the inside of the truck. I was to see what I could learn from the outside world.

It was a long wait for the next child. Pincus was yelling at the roaches as they kicked and prodded him. He was fighting back. Several especially large roaches seemed to pick him up by biting his clothes. Others crawled beneath him and a few butted him with their heads. Without hands the roaches couldn’t place Pincus into the truck. The roaches created a ladder by standing on one another and eventually were able to push and kick their victim into our box. Pincus’ resistance gave each of us ample time to accomplish our tasks.

Anna introduced herself and Lisa and me. Pincus told us that he was twelve years old, a Polish Jew who, with his older brother, had escaped from a concentration camp. An uncle arranged his trip to the United States and he had just arrived a week earlier. That explained his bitter fight with the. . . But who were the roach soldiers?

Anna suggested, “They’re rounding up Jewish refugee children!”

There was the phrase again: They were “rounding up.” The image was horrible. Millions of giant roaches were rounding up Jewish children. Who were these monsters?

None of us knew the time although we could tell it was still night. Pincus suggested that we set aside one corner of the truck box as a toilet. He had some experience with boxcars. We looked to Pincus for leadership. Anna took on the role of mother, providing comfort.

Yitzak, Rachel, Sarah, Manny—we were soon thirteen children clustered in our dark box. Not yet crowded. Pincus warned, “When we are too many for our space we will start fighting for territory. Then they will either move us in this truck or they will kill us all right here. Perhaps this truck is a mobile gas chamber.”

“Will the roaches scatter when daylight appears?” I asked naïvely. I remembered how they scattered when Papa turned on the apartment lights. The very first rays of light were noticeable when the most recent child had been pushed into the truck.

Of course, no one could guess the answer.

“Who are these monsters?” asked Anna. “What are those marks on their armbands? They look so familiar.”

“Don’t you children know anything?” We couldn’t see his face but we could hear Pincus’ frustration. “Those are the Brownshirts.”

“What are Brownshirts?” asked Lisa.

“The Brownshirts came to get my father when we still lived in Germany,” Sarah announced. “Those marks on their armbands are swastikas,” The picture was becoming clear for me. I had heard Mutti and Papa talking about “rounding up the Jews” on Kristalnacht, the night of broken glass, in 1938. The roach Brownshirts were rounding up the Jewish children.

Anna, realizing that we had to take action asked, “Pincus, what shall we do?”

“If Freddy’s question about light makes sense we will have to wait all day for them to come back at night,” suggested Pincus. Rachel, who was beginning to get the gist of the conversation about light, announced that she always slept with a flashlight and that it was still in the pocket of her pajamas. With that she provided a strong beam of light that reached the top of the truck.

“It is almost light outside,” Pincus said. “If the roaches bring one more child before full daybreak we can use the flashlight to frighten them and we can fight until the sun rescues us. If God helps us with the sun we may be saved. I cannot see you. However, I’m guessing that I am the oldest and perhaps the strongest. If you like I’ll use the flashlight to frighten them and all of you will have to fight for your lives. Beware. They bite.”

“What if they don’t come before daybreak?” asked Anna. Just as she finished her sentence the door opened. Rachel handed the light to Pincus who was out like an angry tiger. We followed our leader, a huge gust of children leaping on the roaches. Clearly we outnumbered the Brownshirts guarding the truck, although they were much larger than us.

I awoke to find myself pummeling my Papa who was holding me on the bed with all his strength. I was wild! Fists swinging! Kicking! Papa was shouting for me to calm down.

That evening Mutti took me to meet with Dr. Wertheimer. She and the doctor spoke in German. He explained that dreams help us to cope with terror—real and imagined. The Holocaust has done that to many children and to millions of adults. Dr. Wertheimer told my mother that Anna, too, has fearful dreams. “As do I,” he added. Mutti allowed that she has bad dreams quite regularly.

“Those who have died and will die in the Holocaust pay the ultimate price,” said Dr. Wertheimer in his most reassuring voice. “We survivors also pay a price—a price we are willing to pay to have our children alive and not in the gas chambers.”

“But the cockroaches in our apartment are real,” I said. Or was I asking a question? “They are,” assured Dr. W. “They disappear when you turn on the light. I hope that you and Anna will enjoy the security of light and that one day you will no longer have to fear the darkness.”

When we arrived home Papa promised to buy me a flashlight of my own.

© 2009 prickofthespindle.com