13 April 1945

I didn’t intend to kill her. It was an order. We were on opposite sides. 

I had joined the BDM in June 1941. it had been made compulsory by then, but I had loved every minute of my activities there. Sport and Games everyday! As a nation, we were on top of the world. To be a German was like winning the lottery. 1941 had been the best year of my life so far. 

Then everything changed, and I was forced to do things I had never dreamed Of doing. Like killing Liselotte Stein. 

I had known Lise at the Berliner Gymnasium. We weren’t exactly what you’d call friends, but we had always been polite and civil to one another in the corridors. I must admit, she did annoy me at times and made me a tad jealous. What with her being uniquely pretty, having a typically Jewish halo of curly black hair and bright bovine eyes, turning the heads of all the boys in our year and not to mention coming top in every class test. But what happened to her was in no stretch of the imagination deserved. 

I still remember the Night of Broken Glass so vividly. I remember my father sighing with glee amidst the deafening shattering of windows, the terrified screams of Jewish housewives, and avenging, hoarse bellows of the SA. 
„They‘ve had it long coming,“ my father announced, as confident and sure as if he were the Fuhrer himself. My mother said nothing, but instead hid her emotions by turning her face back to the kitchen wall and recommenced washing-up.

A catalyst then hit the German civilians. Jewish neighbours were transformed into sworn enemies, and it seemed that practically overnight everyone believed they were the source of the Fatherland‘s problems. Jewish classmates now branded gaudy yellow stars on all items of clothing. We were no longer allowed to converse with them in any way, and not long after the first stars had been sewn onto jackets were they sent to exclusively Jewish schools, with significantly less rights than us. 

My most poignant memory of Lise though, before I met her again for the very last time on 13 April 1945, was that she still walked with her head up high, despite the humiliations directed towards the Jewish people, and she still managed to turn the heads of Aryan boys. 

When I met her for the last time, she was nothing but a walking skeleton. That jovial, plump beauty had dissolved into something less than a starved animal. I tried to tell myself that she was a thing, an enemy of the state, vermin, waste that needed to be disposed of as quickly as possible. But those unmistakably innocent, petrified, and fellow young girl‘s eyes evokes a thought in my brain as clear as the fire that had just been out in a nearby put. I was the vermin. My heart was less than an animal‘s and hers was one of purity and love. She would die rightful and honest and I would wear the badge of guilt forever. 

I was commanded to shoot her into the pit, and just before I pulled the trigger on the borrowed Luger, I mouthed a Genuine „sorry“ to Lise. It would never be enough.