Author's Note: A Letter From Berlin

As a rule, I don’t like interrupting a reader’s experience of a story with my footnotes, but with “A Letter from Berlin” I feel additional context may be needed.

The character‘s name is Erinnern Stolperstein, which is bad German for “remember stepping stones,”. The ‘stepping stones’ being a reference to a somewhat controversial holocaust memorial by German artist Volker Spitzenberger.

Ernnern is a young member of the National Socialist party, a Nazi, and he writes his fiancé at around 2 am on 11 May, 1933. His day had been spent in Berlin, preparing for the bon fires where he and his fellow students would burn some 20’000 books deemed unGerman and immoral.

To create this letter, I pulled from three main sources which a Nazi student in May 1933 would likely have been aware of:

1) The Twelve Theses Of the Student Union, transcripts of which I found on Wikipedia.

2) Goebbels’ speech at the Women’s Exhibition in Berlin March 1933 (research.Calvin.edu/German-propaganda-archive/goebmain.htm)

And, 3) Fragments of Goebbels speech at the Berlin book burnings found through readings on encyclopedia.ushmm.org.

This character is so engrained in the Nazi ideaology that his letter is brimming with references to the source material, and while his world view is ultimately White German Supremicist, my aim is to make him uncomfortably relatable. To that end, I have made an effort to bring the noble qualities of family, hope, and patriotism to the forefront, while keeping most of his nationalist racism just beneath the surface.

The reason I’ve attempted this, is because we live in an moment when political divides run deep. The Right works to ban anything that doesn’t agree with it’s agenda, calling it woke and corrossive; while the Left works to cancel everything against it as bigoted and fascist. There is no room to negotiate a best course, and no room for dissent within the political groups.

If our moral codes are candles to light our paths, then they lose their value when they set fire to books, or buildings, or people. So let us take care to use our lights to illuminate the darkness, helping people understand their weaknesses through the knowledge of our own; lest we become like the young Nazi who takes the good candles of patriotism, faith, and family, then uses them for a Holocaust.