Last flight from Stalingrad

They came by night. Knocked harshly like urgently seeking assistance. The maid answered the door. Rough, menacing words.

They had just finished dinner and mother ordered him and his younger brother up to their bedroom. In the dark, however, he returned down the stairs to the long hallway, knelled in front of the door to the library. Through the keyhole he watched father seated behind his desk in his business attire. Dark suit, tie, a cigar in one hand, monocle to his eye. Two men in long leather coats were standing in front of him their hats on, one of them waving a paper in his hand. He could only see their large backs.

"Herr Baron, your son is stealing books," he heard him shout.

"Mhm," father said, pointing at the vast library with his cigar. "I'm surprised, and he can buy all the books he wants."

"He stole books that are written by degenerates, they are forbidden, they will be burned."

He listened silently, puffing his cigar, ignoring them.

"He stole books by Erich Maria Remarque, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, Jack London, Sinclair Lewis, Hemingway, Wells, Helen Keller," from a list spit out like it was poison.

"How can I pay the damages?" father looked like he was under terrible strain leaning back in his squeaking leather armchair, heaving his chest displaying prominently his latest acquisition, the Hacken Kreuz in his button hole.

"He can join the Hitler Jugend!" came the barking answer. "Heil Hitler".

And he walked them to the door.