User:Tahirjon

I was born in 1930 in Pittsburgh. My father, a Polish immigrant who spoke no English, worked in a factory there until he died when I was 8. We had more money than anybody in the neighborhood, mostly from my mother's side of the family, but my father had insisted on saving that to buy a house. When he died my mother left the church, bought us a car and moved the family to McKeesport and she and my older brother Isaac raised me from then on. Isaac went to a trade school in Philadelphia for two years, but after Pearl Harbor he joined the army. I was left to tend to the family. My mother, luckily, was healthy and strong-willed. She went to work at a bomber-assembly line near home, and she took free English lessons from one of my sister's school teachers. My sister Carol was the light of the house and kept us all in good spirits. I would listen to the radio with her every chance I could, and she'd even imitate and act out some of the skits and serials we heard. My favorite show was Beat the Band because of the music, but Carol liked the Superman show. My other sister, Mary, was a year older than me. She went to school and did most of the house work. She spoke Polish better than any of us (I've forgotten most of it) and had a great relationship with our dad. She was smart, really smart and even though I never thought of him that way, I guess dad was too. I really didn't do much in this time. I'd run most of the daily errands, and I had two part time jobs: one with the WPA laying cement for new highways and the other delivering magazines. When the war ended I was 16. My brother came back a different man. He wasn't cold or cruel, and must've spent a good five minutes hugging mom. But he was stiffer, more mature and there were times when I'd catch his gaze moving downward, thinking about something terrible. He took me to New York City a lot of weekends. He used his ARMY and College experience to "finesse" (as he put it) his way into New York University for advertising. I met a girl there, the first girl I had sex with, who really liked music. She played saxophone and was enrolled in some kind of music-studies program. I thought I'd give anything to spend my life studying and working in music, but I couldn't play anything. We talked about musicals, the WPA and Truman. She promised to take me to a broadway show but never did. I stopped visiting my brother after a while. When I turned 18 I joined the ARMY too, against my mother's wishes. I trained in Virginia for a couple of weeks and then shipped out to Bavaria in Germany. I conducted night patrols for months on end, drank a lot in my free time and slept with four different women. Most of the soldiers hadn't seen combat but they all lied about it to each other. I told the truth since I looked too young to get away with it, and caught some grief for it. In 1949 I was guarding the border checkpoint into the French sector. It was here that I encountered Philip Willand. Willand was a bone-thin school teacher with bags under his eyes. He gave me his passport, which asserted he was a French citizen, and told me he was observing the different methods of occupation in each country for a book he was writing. I knew immediately he was German and terrified. We see fake passports all the time and normally we'll let them pass but something was off about this instance. I alerted my C.O., James Douglas, who gave me a booklet with the emblem of the Marines on it. Inside was a list of German fugitives with photos attached. I told Willand we were running a check on his passport and had him wait in a large closet. I thumbed through the list until I came across him on page 14, plumper but still with bags under his eyes. Heinrich Statler - Rank Unknown - Member of SS for 3 years - Wanted for War Crimes. I don't know why, but I went to Willand before Douglas. The instant I walked in he confronted me. "I will give you one-thousand dollars to let me through. I am on the list I know and I was a member of the SS yes, but I did nothing. I worked at no camps, I never saw combat. I was a desk clerk in Berlin for three years, I took phone calls and typed memos like a secretary. My uniform meant nothing." I swallowed. I couldn't match his words, I couldn't say anything. I put the offer out of my head and turned around to talk to my C.O. "Two-thousand dollars. Two-thousand four hundred and fifty six. Its all I have. Please. I just want to get to Spain. I have a wife and daughter waiting for me there, they're not even German. I'm not even German. I was born in Switzerland. Please. They will kill me, they will hang me."