Parallel Journeys

In Chapter Two, Alfons is elated that he has been chosen to be a future leader of Germany. Alfons has reached the age where he can join the Hitler Youth in the junior level. Alfons is completely taken in by all the fanfare and promises of world leadership. It is easy to see how a young boy could be so infatuated with dreams of glory, both personal and civic, when Germany had been in a depressed state for so long. Hitler made the German people feel proud again and the children like Alfons felt cherished and preferred to be selected as an important factor in the rise of the Third Reich.

At the same time that Alfons was at the height of his glory under the Nazi regime, Helen, her family, and other Jewish families were experiencing unspeakable terror at the hands of the Nazis. In November of 1938, the Kristallnacht occurred, frightening the Jews in its intensity. Anti-Semitic behavior had been occurring with more and more outright publication of hatred of the Jews but they could not have imagined that the Nazis would
have taken things to the extreme like they did during Kristallnacht. Kristallnacht, which means night of broken glass, was a pogrom (organized deadly attack) in Jewish communities throughout Germany and Austria. The name comes from all the broken shards of glass resulting from the destruction of shops, hospitals, synagogues, schools and other Jewish buildings. It is widely accepted that Kristallnacht was the beginning of what Hitler called 'the final solution' to the Jewish problem, meaning that the extermination of the Jewish people officially began at this point.