There was once an SA man, his name was Meyn. As a relic of the days when he drank gin all day and played the trumpet too beautifully for words, Meyn still kept four cats, one of which was called Bismarck. One day when SA Man Meyn came home from the funeral of his old friend Herbert Truczinski, sad and sobered, because someone had withheld his sympathies, he found himself all alone in the flat with his four cats. The cats rubbed against his riding boots, and Meyn gave them a newspaper full of herring heads. That got them away from his boots. That day the flat stank worse than usual of the four cats who were all toms, one of which was called Bismarck and was black with white paws. But Meyn had no gin on hand and that made the stench of the cats more unacceptable. He might have bought some gin in our store if his flat hadn’t been on the fifth floor, right under the roof. But as it was, he dreaded the stairs and still more he dreaded the neighbors in whose presence and hearing he had sworn on numerous occasions that never again would a drop of gin cross his musician’s lips, that he had embarked on a new life of rigorous sobriety, that from now on his motto was order and purpose, away with the vapors of a botched and aimless youth.

There was once a man, his name was Meyn. One day when he found himself all alone in his flat under the roof with his four tomcats, one of which was called Bismarck, the smell was most particularly distasteful to him, because he had had an unpleasant experience earlier in the day and also because there was no gin on hand. When his thirst and displeasure and with them the cat smell had reached a certain point, Meyn, a musician by trade and a member of the Mounted SA band, reached for the poker that was leaning against the cold stove and flailed out at the cats until it seemed safe to assume that though the cat smell in the flat had lost none of its pungency, all of them, including the one named Bismarck, were dead and done for.

Once there was a watchmaker named Laubschad who lived on the second floor of our apartment house in a two-room flat, with windows overlooking the court. Laubschad the watchmaker was unmarried, a member of the National Socialist Welfare Organization and of the SPCA. He was a kindly man who liked to help all tired humans, sick animals, and broken clocks back on their feet. One afternoon as the watchmaker sat pensively at his window, thinking about the neighbor’s funeral he had attended that morning, he saw Meyn the musician, who lived on the fifth floor of the same building, carry a half-filled potato sack, which was dripping and seemed wet at the bottom, out into the court and plunge it into one of the garbage cans. But since the garbage can was already three-quarters full, the musician had trouble getting the lid back on.

There were once four tomcats, one of which was called Bismarck. These tomcats belonged to a musician by the name of Meyn. Since the tomcats, which had not been fixed, emitted a fierce, uncompromising smell, the musician clouted them with a fire poker one day when for particular reasons he found the smell particularly distasteful, stuffed their remains in a potato sack, carried the sack down four flights of stairs, and was in a great hurry to stow the bundle in the garbage can in the court beside the carpet rack, because the burlap was not water– nor bloodproof and began to drip before he was even half down the stairs. But since the garbage can was a bit full, the musician had to compress the garbage and his sack in order to close the lid. No sooner had he left the court in the direction of the street—for he had no desire to go back to his flat which though catless still stank of cats—than the compressed garbage began to expand, raised the sack, and with it the lid of the garbage can.

Once there was a musician, he slew his four cats, buried them in a garbage can, left the house, and went out to visit friends.

There was once a watchmaker who sat pensively by his window, looking on as Meyn the musician stuffed a half-filled sack in the garbage can—and quickly left the court. A few moments after Meyn’s departure, he saw the lid of the garbage can beginning to rise and slowly go on rising.

There were once four tomcats; because they smelled particularly strong on a certain particular day, they were knocked dead, stuffed into a sack, and buried in a garbage can. But the cats, one of which was called Bismarck, were not quite dead; they were tough customers, as cats tend to be. They moved in the sack, set the lid of the garbage can in motion, and confronted Laubschad the watchmaker, who still sat pensively at the window, with the question: what can there be in the sack that Meyn the musician threw in the garbage can?

There was once a watchmaker who could not look on with indifference while something was moving in a garbage can. He left his flat on the second floor, went down into the court, lifted up the lid of the garbage can, opened the sack, took the four badly damaged but still living tomcats home with him, and cared for them. But they died the following night under his watchmaker’s fingers. This left him no other course than to enter a complaint with the SPCA, of which he was a member, and to inform the local party headquarters of a case of cruelty to animals which could only impair the party’s reputation.

There was once an SA man who did four cats in with a poker. But because the cats were not all-the-way dead, they gave him away and a watchmaker reported him. The case came up for trial and the SA man had to pay a fine. But the matter was also discussed in the SA and the SA man was expelled from the SA for conduct unbecoming a storm trooper. Even his conspicuous bravery on the night of November 8, which later became known as Crystal Night, when he helped set fire to the Langfuhr synagogue in Michaelisweg, even his meritorious activity the following morning when a number of stores, carefully designated in advance, were closed down for the good of the nation, could not halt his expulsion from the Mounted SA. For inhuman cruelty to animals he was stricken from the membership list. It was not until a year later that he gained admittance to the Home Guard, which was later incorporated in the Waffen SS.

There was once a grocer who closed his store one day in November, because something was doing in town; taking his son Oskar by the hand, he boarded a Number 5 streetcar and rode to the Langasser Gate, because there as in Zoppot and Langfuhr the synagogue was on fire. The synagogue had almost burned down and the firemen were looking on, taking care that the flames should not spread to other buildings. Outside the wrecked synagogue, men in uniform and others in civilian clothes piled up books, ritual objects, and strange kinds of cloth. The mound was set on fire and the grocer took advantage of the opportunity to warm his fingers and his feelings over the public blaze. But his son Oskar, seeing his father so occupied and inflamed, slipped away unobserved and hurried off in the direction of Arsenal Passage, because he was worried about his tin drums with their red and white lacquer.

There was once a toystore owner; his name was Sigismund Markus and among other things he sold tin drums lacquered red and white. Oskar, above-mentioned, was the principal taker of these drums, because he was a drummer by profession and was neither able nor willing to live without a drum. For this reason he hurried away from the burning synagogue in the direction of Arsenal Passage, for there dwelt the keeper of his drums; but he found him in a state which forever after made it impossible for him to sell tin drums in this world.

They, the same firemen whom I, Oskar, thought I had escaped, had visited Markus before me; dipping a brush in paint, they had written “Jewish Sow” obliquely across his window in Sütterlin script; then, perhaps disgusted with their own handwriting, they had kicked in the window with the heels of their boots, so that the epithet they had fastened on Markus could only be guessed at. Scorning the door, they had entered the shop through the broken window and there, in their characteristic way, they were playing with the toys.