The Town Square Fire and the Power of Words

n the evening, it would be wrung out and bleached again, ready for the next dawn.‎And that was when the fighting was only during the day.‎With his son gone, Hans Hubermann stood for a few moments longer. The street looked so big.‎When he reappeared inside, Mama fixed her gaze on him, but no words were exchanged. She didn’t admonish‎him at all, which, as you know, was highly unusual. Perhaps she decided he was injured enough, having been‎labeled a coward by his only son.‎For a while, he remained silently at the table after the eating was finished. Was he really a coward, as his son‎had so brutally pointed out? Certainly, in World War I, he considered himself one. He attributed his survival to‎it. But then, is there cowardice in the acknowledgment of fear? Is there cowardice in being glad that you lived?‎His thoughts crisscrossed the table as he stared into it.‎“Papa?” Liesel asked, but he did not look at her. “What was he talking about? What did he mean when . . .”‎“Nothing,” Papa answered. He spoke quiet and calm, to the table. “It’s nothing. Forget about him, Liesel.” It‎took perhaps a minute for him to speak again. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready?” He looked at her this time.‎“Don’t you have a bonfire to go to?”‎“Yes, Papa.”‎The book thief went and changed into her Hitler Youth uniform, and half an hour later, they left, walking to the‎BDM headquarters. From there, the children would be taken to the town square in their groups.‎Speeches would be made.‎A fire would be lit.‎A book would be stolen.‎People lined the streets as the youth of Germany marched toward the town hall and the square. On quite a few‎occasions Liesel forgot about her mother and any other problem of which she currently held ownership. There‎was a swell in her chest as the people clapped them on. Some kids waved to their parents, but only briefly—it‎was an explicit instruction that they march straight and don’t look or wave to the crowd.‎When Rudy’s group came into the square and was instructed to halt, there was a discrepancy. Tommy Müller.‎The rest of the regiment stopped marching and Tommy plowed directly into the boy in front of him.‎“Dummkopf !” the boy spat before turning around.‎“I’m sorry,” said Tommy, arms held apologetically out. His face tripped over itself. “I couldn’t hear.” It was‎only a small moment, but it was also a preview of troubles to come. For Tommy. For Rudy.‎At the end of the marching, the Hitler Youth divisions were allowed to disperse. It would have been near‎impossible to keep them all together as the bonfire burned in their eyes and excited them. Together, they cried‎one united “heil Hitler” and were free to wander. Liesel looked for Rudy, but once the crowd of children‎scattered, she was caught inside a mess of uniforms and high-pitched words. Kids calling out to other kids.‎By four-thirty, the air had cooled considerably.‎People joked that they needed warming up. “That’s all this trash is good for anyway.”‎Carts were used to wheel it all in. It was dumped in the middle of the town square and dowsed with something‎sweet. Books and paper and other material would slide or tumble down, only to be thrown back onto the pile.‎From further away, it looked like something volcanic. Or something grotesque and alien that had somehow‎landed miraculously in the middle of town and needed to be snuffed out, and fast.‎The applied smell leaned toward the crowd, who were kept at a good distance. There were well in excess of a‎thousand people, on the ground, on the town hall steps, on the rooftops that surrounded the square.‎When Liesel tried to make her way through, a crackling sound prompted her to think that the fire had already‎begun. It hadn’t. The sound was kinetic humans, flowing, charging up.‎They’ve started without me!‎Although something inside told her that this was a crime—after all, her three books were the most precious‎items she owned—she was compelled to see the thing lit. She couldn’t help it. I guess humans like to watch a‎little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that’s where they begin. Their great skill is their capacity to‎escalate.‎The thought of missing it was eased when she found a gap in the bodies and was able to see the mound of guilt,‎still intact. It was prodded and splashed, even spat on. It reminded her of an unpopular child, forlorn and‎bewildered, powerless to alter its fate. No one liked it. Head down. Hands in pockets. Forever. Amen.‎Bits and pieces continued falling to its sides as Liesel hunted for Rudy. Where is that Saukerl? When she looked up, the sky was crouching.‎A horizon of Nazi flags and uniforms rose upward, crippling her view every time she attempted to see over a‎smaller child’s head. It was pointless. The crowd was itself. There was no swaying it, squeezing through, or‎reasoning with it. You breathed with it and you sang its songs. You waited for its fire.‎Silence was requested by a man on a podium. His uniform was shiny brown. The iron was practically still on it.‎The silence began.‎His first words: “Heil Hitler!”‎His first action: the salute to the Führer.‎“Today is a beautiful day,” he continued. “Not only is it our great leader’s birthday—but we also stop our‎enemies once again. We stop them reaching into our minds. . . .”‎Liesel still attempted to fight her way through.‎“We put an end to the disease that has been spread through Germany for the last twenty years, if not more!” He‎was performing now what is called a Schreierei—a consummate exhibition of passionate shouting—warning‎the crowd to be watchful, to be vigilant, to seek out and destroy the evil machinations plotting to infect the‎mother-land with its deplorable ways. “The immoral! The Kommunisten !” That word again. That old word.‎Dark rooms. Suit-wearing men. “Die Juden—the Jews!”‎Halfway through the speech, Liesel surrendered. As the word communist seized her, the remainder of the Nazi‎recital swept by, either side, lost somewhere in the German feet around her. Waterfalls of words. A girl treading‎water. She thought it again. Kommunisten.‎Up until now, at the BDM, they had been told that Germany was the superior race, but no one else in particular‎had been mentioned. Of course, everyone knew about the Jews, as they were the main offenderin regard to‎violating the German ideal. Not once, however, had the communists been mentioned until today, regardless of‎the fact that people of such political creed were also to be punished.‎She had to get out.‎In front of her, a head with parted blond hair and pigtails sat absolutely still on its shoulders. Staring into it,‎Liesel revisited those dark rooms of her past and her mother answering questions made up of one word.‎She saw it all so clearly.‎Her starving mother, her missing father. Kommunisten.‎Her dead brother.‎“And now we say goodbye to this trash, this poison.”‎Just before Liesel Meminger pivoted with nausea to exit the crowd, the shiny, brown-shirted creature walked‎from the podium. He received a torch from an accomplice and lit the mound, which dwarfed him in all its‎culpability. “ Heil Hitler!”‎The audience: “Heil Hitler!” A collection of men walked from a platform and surrounded the heap, igniting it, much to the approval of‎everyone. Voices climbed over shoulders and the smell of pure German sweat struggled at first, then poured‎out. It rounded corner after corner, till they were all swimming in it. The words, the sweat. And smiling. Let’s‎not forget the smiling.‎Many jocular comments followed, as did another onslaught of “ heil Hitlering.” You know, it actually makes‎me wonder if anyone ever lost an eye or injured a hand or wrist with all of that. You’d only need to be facing‎the wrong way at the wrong time or stand marginally too close to another person. Perhaps people did get‎injured. Personally, I can only tell you that no one died from it, or at least, not physically. There was, of course,‎the matter of forty million people I picked up by the time the whole thing was finished, but that’s getting all‎metaphoric. Allow me to return us to the fire.‎The orange flames waved at the crowd as paper and print dissolved inside them. Burning words were torn from‎their sentences.‎On the other side, beyond the blurry heat, it was possible to see the brownshirts and swastikas joining hands.‎You didn’t see people. Only uniforms and signs.‎Birds above did laps.‎They circled, somehow attracted to the glow—until they came too close to the heat. Or was it the humans?‎Certainly, the heat was nothing.‎In her attempt to escape, a voice found her.‎“Liesel!”‎It made its way through and she recognized it. It was not Rudy, but she knew that voice.‎She twisted free and found the face attached to it. Oh, no. Ludwig Schmeikl. He did not, as she expected, sneer‎or joke or make any conversation at all. All he was able to do was pull her toward him and motion to his ankle.‎It had been crushed among the excitement and was bleeding dark and ominous through his sock. His face wore‎a helpless expression beneath his tangled blond hair. An animal. Not a deer in lights. Nothing so typical or‎specific. He was just an animal, hurt among the melee of its own kind, soon to be trampled by it.‎Somehow, she helped him up and dragged him toward the back. Fresh air.‎They staggered to the steps at the side of the church. There was some room there and they rested, both relieved.‎Breath collapsed from Schmeikl’s mouth. It slipped down, over his throat. He managed to speak.‎Sitting down, he held his ankle and found Liesel Meminger’s face. “Thanks,” he said, to her mouth rather than‎her eyes. More slabs of breath. “And . . .” They both watched images of school-yard antics, followed by a‎school-yard beating. “I’m sorry—for, you know.”‎Liesel heard it again.‎Kommunisten.‎She chose, however, to focus on Ludwig Schmeikl. “Me too.”They both concentrated on breathing then, for there was nothing more to do or say. Their business had come to‎an end.‎The blood enlarged on Ludwig Schmeikl’s ankle.‎A single word leaned against the girl.‎To their left, flames and burning books were cheered like heroes.‎