My oldest brother, Felix, was a brilliant student--
brilliant student and a brilliant athlete.
And he went to the Schiller Gymnasium,
which was one of the best high schools in Stettin.
And even though...
all the Jewish students were asked to leave,
the principal didn't want him to leave.
First of all, he didn't look Jewish, and second of all,
he was a great asset both athletically and scholastically to the school.
So he told my mother, "Don't worry about it. Leave him be,
because he's of great benefit to us."
Under the Nazis, that period became a period of Rassenkunde,
where they were taught racism, the racism of the Nazi ideology.
And the teachers who were teaching it were not on the staff.
They were Nazi functionaries who used to come and teach
in the morning, this course in racism.
It was based all on that whole bizarre notion...
that you can tell a race by the nose and by the this and by the that...
and that racial charact-- Jews are a race and all that sort of thing.
Well, in order to demonstrate what he was talking about,
the teacher used to pick on a student...
to illustrate what is the Aryan face,
what is the Aryan head, what is-- and so on and so forth.
Tried to make it very scientific. Well, one day, he picked on Felix,
and Felix was a blond, very handsome boy, well developed.
And he gets up in front of the class, and he tells him to take off his shirt,
and he turns his profile and says, "Now you see a pure Aryan head,
and now you see pure, blue Aryan eyes and even the eyebrows."
And he goes on and on and on, and he says,
"You see the chest development and the shoulder bones?
This is Aryan-- typical Aryan."
Okay. This class is still not roaring with laughter,
but then he tells him to take off his pants and he wants to go on.
Now the class is, you know, roaring with laughter,
but they aren't saying anything.
He is insulted. He thinks this is a reflection on his teaching technique.
And he runs out of the class, and he puts the class on report with the principal...
that they have no respect for the Nazi ideology...
and that they are hooligans and all kinds of things.
The background of this is that there were young boys, for example,
who resisted belonging to the Hitlerjugend.
Well, that was very punishable. That was very punishable.
And he thought he had come across a group of these kids...
who didn't want to be regimented...
under the Nazi rules.
So the principal-- What he said to him I, of course, don't know,
but he did call my mother in, and he says, "I'm in a terrible quandary...
because, this guy, if the kids tell him...
why they were laughing, I am-- I'm out of a job.
Not only out of a job. It might even be worse.
So you have to take your son out now."