What If?

What if my Oma and Opa had not been forced to enroll their three sons in Hitler Youth camps? What if those boys of 6 or 8 or 10 were not taught that they were soldiers in an army to help save Germany and its culture and the Aryan race and the sanctity of their mother and sisters? What if, slowly, as those boys were taught how to fish and hike, make fire, gather berries and catch rabbits to cook for dinner, what if they were also taught to only trust what their counselors had been told directly by Hitler? It was their duty to report people, including their parents, to those counselors when lies about the Fürher were spoken, when their Mutti or Papa or a neighbor complained about him. What if they disagreed with rules they had to follow? Or disagreed with the new “truth” that some of their classmates were now dirty enemy threats to the Fatherland? What if those boys, the uncles I never met, had survived the war? Would they have later understood their personal surveillance role given them as children? What if their sister, my mother, had not fallen in love with my G.I. father during the Occupation? What if she had not said goodbye to her family and the rubble that was left of her country to marry him here? What if one of her brothers had joined her? What if he told his son what he had been taught as a boy? Would that son see the link to the AI surveillance system he was helping to design today? My mother never spoke of what she knew. If she had, would I be sitting in this AI class today trying to understand surveillance technology and the link to my family? I wonder.

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June Cressy is retired, has been published in several anthologies and is working on a memoir. She is on Facebook and on Substack @cressyjune but hasn’t posted anything yet.