20th Century Wars • Racism and Civil Rights

In 1992, 240 years after Daniel Bowsher and wife, Anna Drach Bowsher in 1752 applied to immigrate to America, I traveled to Germany (and France) to visit site of that immigration fffice in Darmstadt, Germany. I had gone to research Anna Drach’s family. I can’t describe the thrill of being the first Bowsher relative in eight generations to stand on the very stone step from which Daniel left for America! My research of Drach family was fruitless. (Those German researchers assisting me promised to contact me if uncovered anything.) During other research, I discovered adresses of two German (English speaking) Bowshers to interview.

First one was a professor with large house full of artwork and shelves of books. Wagner record played as he poured me glass of French wine. Our lively conversation suddenly turned cold after I had informed him I was an author and lecturer aginst all forms of racism and man’s inhumanity to man. He announced to me proudly he had been a Nazi officer! Seeing my negative facial reaction, he had said “Lets have a last, parting toast.” He lifted his glass to mine. “We should have killed all those Kikes!” I sat down my full glass and walked to the door, where he said “Your parents had done the injustice of teaching you Jews are human!” Before leaving, I said back to him “And your parents did the injustice of teaching you that Jews are inhuman!”

The second interview (which is the concept behind this frame.) was with a Bowsher who was also a young man during WW2. He answered the door, ushered me into a room containing portraits and photos of generations of Darmstadt policemen. He spoke proudly of his family’s background in law enforcement. When I told him about my life of hunting down, collecting stories and related objects of racism and inhumanity; he had smiled and left the room? After my first encounter with a Bowsher, I was a little nervous. He had returned with an SS Nazi dagger and laid it on the table. He then began rapidly relating the following incredible story!

“When Nazis were rapidly rising to power, I was a city policeman. My beat was near the Jewish sector of Darmstadt. I was raised without prejudice and had developed friendships there based on my speaking a number of languages. As antisemitism increased, my duty included protecting Jews near the Synagogue from being harassed by young street ruffians. Each day I’d drive the antisemitic toughs away by threatening arrest. One day as Jewish school let out, a car of toughs pulled up right in front of me! The boy I knew as leader of that gang walked up to me, pulled pocketknife, tapped swastika armband, said “You are no longer in charge, the law…WE ARE NOW!” As more thugs arrived, I walked away to screams of Jews!

When I arrived back at police precinct, I discovered the racist teenage thug had been right. The Nazis were in charge. They were now the law. All police personell were given the choice to work for them, or not work at all in law enforcement. I went home and cried in my wife’s arms; being the first time in hundreds of years one of our family was not on duty as a Darmstadt police officer!

During the war I supported my family as a security guard and a night watchman. At the end of the war, I was contacted by American occupation troops, explaining since I spoke a variety of European languages, I was needed to perform as a translator for inmates of a Nazi camp. I had heard rumors, but had no personal knowledge of concentration camps. When we arrived at Flossenburg concentration camp, I was dazed by nightmarish sight of starved dead, and skeletal Jewish survivors! While I awaited orders, I walked about the camp in shock. I stooped to talk with young inmate. He told me his name, then with laugh pointed to narrow space between buildings where a dead Nazi guard laid face down. He told me how he was one of the most sadistic guards, who on the run from advancing allied troops, was stripping off his ss uniform when he was swarmed and beaten to death by a throng of hate-filled, vengeful Jewish inmates! When the Jewish young man staggered away laughing to himself, I went between those buildings, stooped down and took a closer look at the dead SS Nazi guard. Suddenly I recognized beyond the cuts, blood swelling of that face THE VERY LEADER OF THOSE DARMSTADT ANTISEMiTIC RUFFIANS FROM WHOM I HAD PROTECTED JEWS, WHO THAT FATEFUL DAY HAD TOLD ME TO LEAVE BECAUSE THEY WERE IN CHARGE, THEY WERE THE LAW! The hate-filled, violent boy had grown into a deadly, heartless racist man. Seeing the SS dagger hanging from his belt, I knew immediately what I must do! I took out my pocketknife and cut dagger sheath off the belt. With tears running down my face, I tapped my police armband with that SS dagger and said out loud to dead Nazi “You are no longer in charge, no longer the law…WE ARE AGAIN!”