Mirrors (71 page)

In the 1936 Olympics, Hitler’s country of birth was defeated by the soccer team from Peru.

The referee, who disallowed three Peruvian goals, did what he could and more to avoid displeasing the führer, but Austria lost 4 to 2.

The following day, soccer and Olympic officials set things straight.

The match was annulled. Not because an Aryan defeat at the hands of an attacking line, known for good reason as the Black Steamroller, was inadmissible, but because, the officials said, fans had run onto the field before the end of the match.

Peru left the Olympics and Hitler’s country won silver.

Italy, Mussolini’s Italy, took the gold.

BLACK WINGS

At the same Olympics, staged by Hitler to consecrate the superiority of his race, the star that shone brightest was black, a grandson of slaves, born in Alabama.

Hitler had no choice but to swallow the bitter pill, four of them actually: the four gold medals that Jesse Owens won in sprinting and long jump.

The entire world celebrated those victories of democracy over racism.

When the champion returned home, he received no congratulations from the president, nor was he invited to the White House. He returned to the usual:

he boarded buses by the back door,
ate in restaurants for Negroes,
used bathrooms for Negroes,
stayed in hotels for Negroes.

For years, he earned a living running for money. Before the start of baseball games he would entertain the crowd by racing against horses, dogs, cars, or motorcycles.

Later on, when his legs were no longer what they had been, Owens took to the lecture circuit. He did pretty well there, praising the virtues of religion, family, and country.

BLACK STAR

Baseball was for whites only.

In the spring of 1947, Jackie Robinson, grandson of slaves, broke that unwritten rule, played in the major leagues, and became one of the best.

He paid dearly for it. His errors were twice as costly, his good plays worth only half. His teammates would not speak to him, the fans told him to go back to the jungle, and his wife and children received death threats.

He swallowed his bile.

After two years, the Ku Klux Klan decreed that the game that Jackie’s team, the Brooklyn Dodgers, was to play in Atlanta would not take place. The move backfired. Blacks and whites cheered Jackie Robinson as he came on to the field, and when he went off a crowd chased after him.

To hug him, not to lynch him.

BLACK BLOOD

The first transfusions used blood from lambs. Rumor had it that they made you sprout wool. In 1670, such experiments were outlawed in Europe.

Much later on, around 1940, Charles Drew came up with new techniques for processing and storing plasma. In light of his discoveries, which were to save millions of lives during the Second World War, Drew was named the first director of the Red Cross blood bank in the United States.

He lasted eight months in the job.

In 1942, a military directive prohibited mixing black blood with white blood in transfusions.

Black blood? White blood? “This is utter stupidity,” Drew said, and he would not discriminate against blood.

He understood the matter: he was a scientist, and he was black.

So he resigned, or was resigned.

BLACK VOICE

Columbia Records refused to record the song and the composer had to use a pseudonym.

But when Billie Holiday sang “Strange Fruit,” the walls of censorship and fear came down. She sang it with her eyes closed, and the grace of her voice, born to sing that very song, turned it into a hymn. From then on, every black man lynched became much more than a strange fruit swinging from a tree, rotting in the sun.

Billie,

who at age fourteen achieved the miracle of rapt attention in the whorehouses of Harlem where she sang for her supper,

who hid a jackknife in her stocking,

who did not know how to defend herself from the beatings of her lovers and husbands,

who lived a prisoner of drugs and jail,

whose body was a map of needle pricks and scars,

who always sang like never before.

IMPUNITY IS THE DAUGHTER OF OBLIVION

The Ottoman Empire was falling to pieces and the Armenians paid the price. While the First World War thundered on, government-sponsored butchery did away with half of the Armenians in Turkey:

homes ransacked and burned,
columns of people fleeing without clothes, water, or anything else,
women raped in town squares in broad daylight,
mutilated bodies floating on the rivers.

Whoever escaped thirst or hunger or cold died by the knife or the bullet. Or the gallows. Or by smoke: in the Syrian desert, Armenians driven out of Turkey were forced into caves and suffocated with smoke, in what foreshadowed the Nazi gas chambers to come.

Twenty years later, Hitler and his advisers were planning the invasion of Poland. Weighing the pros and cons, Hitler realized there would be protests, diplomatic outrage, loud complaints, but he was certain the noise would not last. And to prove his point, he asked:

“Who remembers the Armenians?”

THE GEARS

German battalions swept through Poland, village by village, exterminating Jews by the light of day or in the glow of truck headlamps.

The soldiers, nearly all civilians, bureaucrats, workers, students, were actors in a tragedy scripted in advance. They would become executioners. They might feel violently ill, but when the curtain rose and they went onstage, they would play their parts.

In the town of Josefów, in July 1942, Reserve Police Battalion 101 had its first taste of combat against fifteen hundred old folks, women, and children, who offered no resistance at all.

The commanding officer gathered his troops, all novices in this sort of battle, and told them if anyone did not feel up to the task, he could give it a pass. Just step forward. The commander spoke and waited. Very few stepped forward.

The victims, naked, awaited death lying face down.

The soldiers bayoneted them between the shoulder blades, then they all fired at once.

FORBIDDEN TO BE INEFFICIENT

Home was next door to the factory. The bedroom window looked out on the chimneys.