42) Strange stories about moral fellow citizens and the good old days Written by Rainer: rainer.lehrer@yahoo.com Learn languages (via Skype): Rainer: + 36 20 549 52 97 or + 36 20 334 79 74

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Strange stories about moral fellow citizens and the good old days In a rural town of 3,000 inhabitants, with a beautiful large church from the Gothic period, the priest was a man around 50 with a large belly and thin legs. The thinness of his legs only made him appear taller than a bit more than 6 feet. He drove a red Porsche, which many didn't like. Several even said to have seen him with prostitutes. However, I think it was much more honest to enjoy life this way than to assault young altar boys during service in church. One of my aunts was a nun and when at the age of 6 I asked her why she had become a nun, I got the answer that she was so shocked by the death of her father, my grandfather, that she decided to dedicate her life to God. The assembled relatives bowed their heads, perhaps out of agreement. On the way home, I mentioned this sad story again, but my mother, my aunt's sister, whispered cynically into my ear: “You mustn't believe everything. It was only a man who left her.” This is what you call real sister love. The old woman of the neighbourhood was already over 90 and had seen the First World War as a child and the second as a mother of three children. In the end, she had 5 or 6 children. When asked about the war and post-war period, she always told of great hardship and hunger. She didn't like to see the books about that time in our hands. Once we asked her who she voted for in 1933. The answer came promptly and decisively: "Of course for the NSDAP, like every decent German!" (NSDAP = National Socialist German Workers' Party / Hitler's Party) My grandmother was a very kind and religious woman. As long as her legs carried her, she went to church every Sunday on foot, when later she could only move with difficulty and with a stick, she listened the Sunday Mass on the radio. She did everything for the family and so I, an illegitimate child, spent my first year with her until my mother found a new man. Sometimes she also talked about the good old days. Later I often spent part of the summer vacation with her. The settlement was small and there was little traffic, so that all children could play together in the dead end street. In the evening, when it was getting dark, all the children were called home by parents and grandparents. It usually sounded like this: “Come in! Soon the Jew will come, collect the disobedient children and take them away to eat them.” The more experienced of us had the right answer: “Hitler has already solved the problem!” At which everyone, including the old ones, laughed heartily. My high school history teacher was the son of a German who had fled to Argentina at the end of World War II and as such had spent his first years in South America and brought back with him many of his views. That made his jokes sometimes quite morbid. One of them sounded like this: "In the past we sang 'Germany above everything in the world', today we say 'Germans everywhere in the world'." He was sitting in the office lobby waiting for an official to call him into one of the offices to settle his case, his grandfather's legacy. A door opened and a head with glasses looked out: "Mr. Kovács, please!" He got up and followed the official into the office. "Sit down, please!" And the official pointed to a chair on the other side of the desk. He sat down and looked hopefully at the official who had gone back to the file in front of him. "Unfortunately, we cannot accept your request because your grandfather received the farm in 1944 as a reward for reporting a fellow citizen who had hidden Jews in his attic." Another illusion of the past had burst. He was not really interested in history or politics, especially since he had learned that his father had been a snooper during the communist system and that he was now serving the new national regime. "Everyone wants to survive," he thought, and "if possible, survive well." What did he care what people say about him after his death. Only his own son worried him. Will he also once be called "child of and opportunist"? An underpass and underground station in the city center. It's summer, 4 a.m. in the morning, lots of half-drunk people who are getting home from the last party. 6 a.m .: The working day has already started. Sleepy worker faces. And the churches are there too. They have set up their stands and are trying to attract lost sheep with their singing. Pupils go to school. 9 a.m .: The first tourists come and give the churches money because it is part of their wealthy culture, although they do not actually collect. But money can always be used. 10 a.m .: Well dressed and a lot of make-up. They go shopping. 12 noon: Office workers go to lunch. From 2 p.m .: Students go home or meet friends. 5 p.m .: The employees go home and with them the last small stands of the church are dismantled. 7 p.m .: slowly, evening and night life begins. In winter: it's cold. More and more homeless people populate the underpass, but the stands of the churches fail to appear. Where there are people without money, the churches disappear. One also has to live on something. And the really helping churches don't advertise themselves in the underpass. Back to list!

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