The rainbow never sets

"At least we can go home each weekend," I said, trying to see the good side of it.

"Yeah, but half of our valuable time will be spent working for the Hitler Youth!"

"Never mind, Bernd can help us. Wouldn't you like to join us in Strykowo?"

"I guess I'll have to. They want us to go to a meeting somewhere, so it might as well be at home."

The reason why we had become reluctant members of the Hitler Youth went back to the beginning of 1941. Our early enthusiasm had gone when we began to question some of its principles, especially after an incident at a weekend camp, where we went with lots of other Hitler Youth groups, older and younger ones. We slept in a barn on straw.

Early on Sunday morning we were woken up by a lot of noise and quite a commotion.

"This time we have really shown them what it means to live in Germany," I heard, still half asleep, one of the older youth bragging.

"What have you done?" I asked. "Never mind, you twerp, none of your business." I noticed that among the group was also my cousin Horst. When we were on our way home I asked him: "What has happened this morning when your group came in so late, or should I say so early in the morning?"

I could see that Horst was somewhat disturbed by my question. He really didn't want to answer, but then he said: "Promise me that you won't tell anybody. Otherwise I'll get into trouble."

I promised. "After you all had gone to sleep last night, our group got up and went around this village and to some neighbouring villages. You know how our people (the Poles) always have statues of their saints standing at all sorts of public places and along the roads and groves among trees?"

"Yes," I said, "Like the Swițety Jan in Sapowice?" "That's right. We got the order to smash them all up, and so we went from one saint to the next and did a very thorough job, with stones, sledge hammers and the like."

"You really did that?" I couldn't believe it, for I knew how important religion was for our Poles, and how we had learnt as young boys, always to respected them. We would have never dreamed of doing such a thing.

"How could you?" Horst was ashamed. "Everyone did it, and I couldn't get out of it. I was practically forced to do it, but I hate them for doing that to me."

From that moment the glamour of the Hitler Youth had gone for us. All four of us felt that this was certainly not why we had joined in the first place. We had lived with the Poles before the war, had played with them, they were our friends. During the time when the bandits roamed the country, at the beginning of the war, our Polish workers had protected

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