Forget-Me-Nots

Karl Heinz Neumann joined the Nazi Party early in 1930 because, as he said, "I saw it coming." He quickly rose to the post of Oberaufsichtsrat in a munitions plant. His wife became house warden, later a block warden, of the Frauenschajt, the Nazi women's organization.

Little Hans Neumann was too young to join the youngest class of Hitler Youth. But when Herr Doktor Goebbels visited the Berlin workers' district to inspect bomb damage, Hans, dressed up in a Hitler Jugend uniform, proudly presented the Doktor with a bunch of forget-me-nots. Big Brother Joachim joined the Hitler Jugend at ten and became a Grup-penfuehrer before entering the Wehrmacht. Sister Ursula served in the girls' branch of the Hitler Youth, collecting tin foil, warm clothes for soldiers on the eastern front and funds for winter relief.

Last spring Joachim, fleeing the Russians, was drowned in the Oder. On April 21 a blockbuster crumbled the Neumann house, killed eight-year-old Hans and 14-year-old Ursula.

Father and mother lived on in Berlin after Allied troops arrived. As winter approached, Karl cut wood and his wife cleaned bricks. Their one room on Dan-zigerstrasse had no windowpanes. One morning last week, as freezing winds and snow swept Berlin, the Neumanns could not force themselves to get out of their bed, though it had only one thin eider down for cover. That night the wind tore loose the cardboard over the window; snow drifted in at the foot of the bed. Next morning the Neumanns, paralyzed with cold, could not move. After another day and night they were dead. Their bodies were loaded onto a flowerless handcart, taken to one of the thousand mass graves already dug for the Berliners who would die this winter.

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