Unfortunately, I had the luck of being born into it all. My name is Otto Hoffman. I too was born into the protestant neighborhood of Oberammergau in the south of Germany, in the year of 1924. My mother Elisa and my father Louis were very hard-working people, we lived a very simple life. We all attended the Lutheran Church every Sunday, we all worked on the farm, and I attended school along with the other boys in my neighborhood. Every day my friend Leander and I would walk the long dirt road to arrive at school, some days taking well over thirty minutes to arrive. On the way to school Leander and I typically walked in silence, because it was just too early to be thinking. But by the time we arrived at school we were wide awake and ready to cause trouble. We enjoyed being in school when we weren’t messing around, and at the time our teacher Mr. Schmidt was very fond of Hitler. Claiming all of the great things he will do for our country as the Führer, and how much better off we will be when we don’t have to worry about any minorities. No more handicapped ruining our genetics, no more gypsies stealing our land, no more homosexuals ruining society, and especially no more Jews taking our jobs. “A new Germany is underway, and you German boys will be the bright future of our prosperous Germany.” I liked the idea of the new Germany through the eyes of our new leader, the idea that one day we would again be prosperous, maybe in my lifetime.

There was one time where Leander and I had made a plan to ask our families if we could visit the capital Munich during the winter holiday to see the Nazi parade and hear the empowering words of Hitler. However, Leander’s mother had refused the idea, saying that Hitler meant no good and there is no reason for little boys to want to get into politics. My father thought it was a wonderful idea, and that holiday we had set off to Munich to listen to the great words of our Führer.

The parade was like nothing I had ever experienced before, it seemed as if all of Germany was united ready to fight and give what it takes to achieve Volksgemeinschaft. A community where everyone would be permanently prepared for war and that everyone would unwillingly accept the discipline that this required. My father had supported this, saying that all of his life everyone had taken everything from his family. While his family was on the farm working to provide a living for themselves, barely putting enough food on the table for the family. The stingy Jews were on the other side of it, owning and working in the largest stores, and eating excessively only because they had the money to do so. And that now it is the time to regain control and take back what was rightfully ours. This fueled my fire, I too wanted to live in a society where my family didn’t have to work on the farm. I wanted to live in a Germany where we would one day prosper.

A few months after the holiday Leander’s family had disappeared one night during a raid in our neighborhood led by the Nazi party alongside the Lutheran Church. I had questioned my father about where he went, and when he would come back. My father simply said to me, “Do not worry my boy, his parents are liars, and you should not have been hanging out with that dirty Jew anyways.”

In the year of 1934, my mother became pregnant with my twin sisters Luisa and Edda, at this time the Nazi party had already opened the first concentration camp and were constructing more. My father was desperate for work because the Nazi’s had begun to take our farmlands to reconstruct the new Germany. He ended up being drafted at the end of 1939 to help fight for a brighter future. My mother begged him not to go, she tried to plead with him, saying that instead they could just leave the country and never look back. That they would be able to find a peaceful place to raise my two newborn sisters. My father convinced her it was in their best interest that he go. That he would be fighting for a new Germany, a greater one, one that would only contain the pure German race.

My father had promised me he would be home in time to celebrate my 16th birthday in 1940. He lied. My father never returned from that damned war, and my mother was left broken-hearted. I tried to step up and comfort her in every way that I could but it did not work. So I did what I thought was right, and in 1941 on my 17th birthday, I too entered the war, to try and help finish the fight that my father had at one time supported. My mother had rejected the idea, saying that the war was no place for a young boy. And that the things the Nazi’s were doing were inhumane and unjust. I just ignored her, the same as my father did.

After fighting in the war for about a year, I was moved up in ranks and essentially was repositioned. I was to be traveling through Germany, raiding houses to see if the party had missed anything. It was a spring day when I first started, the first few houses we passed through nothing seemed to be out of order. I still remember the golden doorknob of one specific house, with the sound of young girls playing inside radiating through the walls. As soon as we walked up to the door, the house fell completely silent. We had knocked once and waited. No answer. We knocked once more and waited again. No one was going to answer the door? Finally, we knocked a third time, still no answer. The leader in command kicked down the door and sent each comrade to different parts of the house. I walked passed the dining room table and sitting there were menorah candles for Hanukkah. My blood began to boil, the dirty jews were somewhere hiding inside the house.

I continued up the stairs, each one creaked with every step I took. I had walked passed a series of bedrooms, all of which seemed to be empty. When finally I reached the end of the hallway where the bathroom was, I had seen the shower curtain move. As I moved closer I heard a gasp from the bathtub. I opened the curtain to find two small girls holding hands with a young boy just a little older than them. I immediately shut the curtain, I did not have the heart to bring them downstairs. I walked out of the bathroom and a comrade had just reached the bathroom door. He asked me what I had found in the tub that made me shut the curtain so quick. Before I knew it he walked passed and flung open the curtain. He grabbed the two little girls by the collars of their sweaters and demanded that I grab the boy too. I followed him downstairs, and outside to the backyard of the house. He had told the commander I planned on leaving the children upstairs. The commander told me that I was an embarrassment, and insisted that I must shoot the children. I knew that if I denied his order, then it would be me instead of them. So I did it, and at that moment I could not believe what I had done.

After I decided that it was time to go home. I was scarred and sick at the thought of the things I had done. I had returned to the South of Germany and decided it was time to go home and see my dearest sisters and mother. It had been so long since I had seen their sweet faces, an image that I thought would destroy the terror replaying in my head. When I returned to the farm, everything was still. Not one sound passed through the house when I entered, I thought they had gone out for the day so I waited for their arrival. When they never came, I began to worry. I decided to go and question the neighbors that were still left nearby. I was still in my uniform, and many of the remaining people in the neighborhood were extremely hesitant to open the door. When finally an older woman had confessed to me that the party had raided our house not long ago and that they had discovered that my mother was hiding several Jews in the cellar.

At that very moment, my heart sank into my stomach. All that time I had spent fighting and hurting other people. Wasted. I could have spent that time at home getting to know my sisters and being there to support my mother. And maybe even protecting the innocent people whom I thought were the enemy.

For the majority of my life, I had thought my father was some sort of war hero, fighting for a good and proud Germany. I did not know until I left the war. And more so shortly after the war how truly inhumane and unjust the things the Nazi party, and even I was at one point doing. But my time in the war has changed me. I have realized that there is no reason to have so much hate in one's heart for a stranger that has never done anything wrong in their life. I will never be able to remove the images of the many innocent ghostly faces that haunt my dreams.