Read Online The History of History by Ida Hattemer-Higgins - Free Book Online Page B

the clean, white cotton nightgowns they wore to bed, blond hair still in braids, color in their cheeks, the apotheosis of everything the National Socialists meant by the word
Heimat.
Their heads are turned toward the camera, each in turn, held erect by a young Russian coroner in a butcher’s apron, round tortoiseshell glasses, and long, black rubber gloves
.
    A few moments later, Margaret was still on red alert. She recalled that once, she had read a letter Magda Goebbels wrote with her own hand. It was reproduced in its entirety in a book that she knew was very likely still somewhere in the flat. It quickly became shining and irresistible. She went to the shelf and began to page through several books. She couldn’t remember exactly where she had read it, that was the trouble. She went into the hall and knocked over two piles of books and rummaged.
    The passage was nowhere to be found.
    Back at the desk, she grabbed her forehead in her hand again. Her mind pulsed. All at once, like a word on the tip of the tongue bubbling up after sleep, she knew after all which book it was. She plunged her hand to the shelf and withdrew a dust-covered book:
The Death of Adolf Hitler
. She paged through it, and there indeed was the facsimile.
    She could feel hives blooming on her neck. She was so excited—it was as if someone else’s body were moving under her head. Her heart beat, and it was hardly her own heart.
    My beloved son! Now we have been here in the Führerbunker for six days—Papa, your six little siblings, and I—in order to give our National Socialist lives the only possible honorable finish. Whether you will receive this letter I don’t know … You must know that against his wishes I have stayed by Papa’s side, that even last Sunday the Führer wanted to help me to get out of here. You know your mother—we have the same blood, for me there was no question of it. Our heavenly idea is going to pieces—and with it everything beautiful, awe-inspiring, noble, and good that I have known in my life. The world that will come after the Führer and National Socialism is no longer worth living in, and therefore I have brought the children here with me. They are too good for the life that will come after us, and the merciful Lord will understand me when I give them salvation myself. You will live on, and I have one request of you: Don’t forget that you’re a German, never do anything that is against your honor, and take care that through your life our death was not in vain
.
    The children are wonderful. Without any assistance they help each other in these more than primitive conditions. Whether they sleep on the floor, whether or not they can wash, whether they have something to eat or not, never a word of complaint or tears. The bombardments shake the bunker. The older ones protect the younger ones, and their presence here is already a blessing in that every now and then they manage to bring a smile to the Führer
.
    Be true! True to yourself, true to humanity, and true to your country. In each and every regard! … Be proud of us and try to hold us in proud and joyous memory. Everyone has to die sometime, and isn’t it more beautiful, honorable, and brave to die young than to live a long life under shameful conditions? The letter must go out—Hanna Reitsch is taking it with her. She’s flying out again! I embrace you in closest, warmest, motherly love! My beloved son, live for Germany!
    Yours, Mother
    By the time Margaret finished, her hands were shaking and her eyes were wet; she thought they were bleeding, but it was only a few tears. Magda’s strange idea gripped her—this choosing of death over shame.
    Margaret made herself ready and went to bed. For a long time she lay still under the covers. It was raining out and there came a tapping. The panes shook.
    Margaret could not sleep. She began to read a second time, nowwith heavier eyes. She read about Magda Goebbels’s high marks in
Gymnasium;
about the details