Nazi Priest?
Lunch time was a treat -- you could sit where you wanted most of the times, well, kind of….The nuns always interrupted us and broke Pavlo and me apart whenever we got too loud or rowdy. And Pavlo was always in trouble…I got in a food fight with him and the nuns dragged us apart and we had to stand in the hall.
He was only half Ukrainian on his mother’s side, on the father’s German side he was nothing but a Nazi, which the boys talked about but none of us ever knew for sure. Many of our parents had been beaten and tortured by the Nazis and we were sure Pavlo’s dad was a mean bastard, but none of dared mention it to him.
After the usual banter of who’s a sissy and a fag I called Pavlo a Nazi. “You’re a Nazi,” I said, expecting angry denial but he looked at me and said, “Yeah? So what?” And he raised his arm in a Heil Hitler salute and stood there. Was I supposed to salute him in return? Was this a game he was playing? When out of the door leading to the teacher’s lounge came Father Josophat, his face reddening, looking angry and fuming…as if he’d been caught after years of being successfully hidden…which we all suspected he’d been doing anyway…
Much later I still thought about that uneasy moment; was Pavlo showing off he was a Nazi to the now-priest or saluting someone who he actually knew was one?
But I’ll never know…no love in them or from them…so it’s best that I forget it...well....
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