Nuremberg 1959-60 Remembered

This memoir by the author is a true story of his ten -month tour of duty as a 19-year-old Jewish-American soldier in postwar Germany in 1959-60 when he was stationed in Nuremberg, city with strong ties to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. He is at Merrell Barracks, about a mile from Zeppelinfeld, the former Nazi Party Rally Grounds before the war, where Hitler, standing on the Tribuene Grandstand, reviewed Wehrmacht and SS troops and spoke to hundreds or thousands of spectators. This is where Hitler sounded warnings of war to the world and spoke of a "final solution to the Jewish problem." The Rally Grounds were not damaged during the war and is now called "Soldiers' Field" by the Americans who hold their parades here. Before he leaves home, the author is warned by his mother, an immigrant from Poland, not to get involved with the German people because they are still Nazis, and warned by his Gentile boyhood friend, who just returned from the Army in Germany, not to get married. The two admonitions stay with the author, and they haunt him. He gets involved with local German women and witnesses the conflict between white and black G. I.s, especially over sexual relations with German women. He meets and gets involved with a 23-year-old German girl, who never went with G. I.s before, who pressures him to get married, but he lies to her about his age and misleads her into thinking he may get married in order to continue an affair with her. Eventually, he tells her that he can't get married because he does not want to re-enlist in the Army to support a wife and wants to go to college next year after his discharge from the Army. But, so as not to hurt her feelings, he holds back from telling her he can't marry a girl four years older than he his and one who is Catholic, and also a German that would never be accepted by his family. She is angry and makes a hurtful remark about Hitler and the Jews. The author then leaves without saying goodbye, and never sees her again. The breakup with the German girl stimulates the author to prepare for the College Boards test given at a nearby Army barracks. On his travels to France and Italy, he has interesting intimate encounters with prostitutes. Before he is transferred to Munich in January 1960 he goes on a Jewish retreat in the Bavarian mountains, not far from Hitler's chalet and own retreat, and learns more about Judaism and the new state of Israel. The memoir ends with his transfer to Munch, another city with strong ties to Hitler and the Nazi Party.