CATEGORY: UNIVERSITY YEARS

Enno and Lorne were both in my design class.  Both of them were tall and nice looking.  That is where the resemblance ended.  Enno was a blue eyed blonde.  Lorne was a brown eyed brunette.  Enno was full of sunshine.  Lorne was full of anger.  Enno was German.  Lorne was Jewish.

I am not saying that their individual proclivities were in any way indicative of their ancestry.  Their personalities were individual.  Lorne liked to bait Enno and insult him because he was German and because of what the Germans had done to the Jews.  Enno’s father had been in the German SS during the war, so this was meat for Lorne.  Usually Enno would just ignore him, but late one night in the design room, Enno decided to answer back. Arguing was not his number one talent.

He said that the Germans had to do what they did because the Jews were taking over the economy of Germany.  He said the German’s treatment of the Jews was self defense.

I held my breath.  I could not believe what I was hearing coming from this friendly, likable, innocently child-like person.  I imagined his father telling this to Enno and Enno accepting it, and learning it by rote without ever really thinking, like so many children who accept religious beliefs from their parents.  Loren was a thoroughly obnoxious person, but from the minute Enno opened his mouth, he had lost the argument.

I thought afterward that it may have been fortuitous for him and perhaps made him think about that issue, maybe for the first time in his life, because he later apologized to me in a shame faced kind of way.  I told him that most of us take our early lives for granted and that many people never get to the place where they can look at their lives objectively at all.  It solidified our friendship.