Leichte Sprache
DGSIt was in the late 1930s – I was seven at the time – that Mussolini came to Berlin to celebrate (I think) the Pact of Steel between Germany and Italy. A motorcade was going to travel the length of Unter den Linden with Hitler and Il Duce in an open car.
There was the usual dilemma as to whether to go and spectate or risk being reported, for not attending, by someone in the block of flats where we lived. My father decided on the former as neither he nor I was Semitic in appearance.
We walked from our home in Agricolastraße to the Tiergarten-station side of Unter den Linden. The whole route was lined by black-uniformed SS men who had linked their arms to keep the enthusiastic crowd from spilling onto the road. It was a warm and sunny day. We found a suitable space where I had a view of the road by the side of a huge SS man and waited for the big event.
“You’ll see now from there, lad!” he said – in German – smiling down at me and without any more ado swung me up onto his shoulders. So there I was, six feet above the ground, my circumcised genitalia pressed against the back of his Aryan neck. The motorcade passed, with the Führer and his guest, within three yards of me; the crowd cheered wildly. The SS man lowered me to the ground and my father and I thanked him.
Very much later – at least sixty years later – I was dining with a very extrovert Italian woman. During a lull in the conversation, I began, somewhat pompously, “I’ve seen Mussolini.” “Where!” she cried, standing up and turning her head to look in all directions. “Where?”