<Begin Segment 5>

JF: But it, considering that World War I was just over by a few years, it's, since I've been thinking about this, it seems to me that we did a hell of a good job of getting together with the German people who were our neighbors. My first boss at the newspaper was a lady named Deutsch, and she was saying that her family had been subjected to some FBI questioning during World War I. Now whether or not, I don't, I don't know about any of my neighbors.

The only one who would come to mind would be a man who lived right next door to us. And actually he had a lot-and-a-half, so he didn't, his house was 25 feet away from ours easily, 30 feet. He was a locksmith, and apparently a very good craftsman. And I remember the feather in his cap. He got to redo all the locks in the, I guess it was the Baltimore City Jail or some such, but anyway, it was a pretty big institution. So in view of his lineage, I mean, he was, he was a German. There was no doubt about that. I think he was born in Germany, but I'm not sure. But I mean, he spoke very, very little English. But he was a very intelligent man. Always a nice guy. Seemed to be a good neighbor. It seemed to me if there had been any of that feeling that was very hard, then he never would have gotten a city contract or county contract, whichever it -- well, it had to be city because Baltimore's a city. So that's the only thing that -- one thing that I've always been sorry for, his name was Hobbicht, and I'm not sure how to spell it anymore. H-O-B-B-I-C-H-T or something like that. But one time when I was about six years old he gave me a, cutout puzzles were -- well, they're still popular today -- but they were pretty popular then. And he gave me a cutout puzzle. And the subjects were all German battleships of World War I. I mean, you can imagine how valuable that thing would be if my Irish grandmother had said, "Put this away somewhere." [Laughs] I might still have that today. But unfortunately, it got lost. And I've always regretted it because they were really authentic pictures of the battleships, in color, that had been made into puzzles. But, strange.

JB: Now, Joe, in a previous conversation you had shared with us a story about the first time you heard of German soldiers' actions during World War I. I think you had mentioned you were in the sixth grade at that time.

JF: Yeah. That was our, that was our famous Alsace-Lorraine, janitor. We would periodically, I guess, sixth grade would, each class studied World War I, which was just been over not very long. And the teacher would call on him to speak, and he told of seeing these atrocities wherein the Germans would cut off the right arm of all the Alsace-Lorraine kids or anybody else, any other young boys that they captured, to prevent any further war. I, I don't know whether that's ever been documented or not, but, and I always thought that it probably hadn't been. This was just some propaganda that he, I think, that he had swallowed, and he was passing it on to us as remembrances. And we were certainly swallowing it hook, line, and sinker because it really is something that you'd want to, would remember as a twelve-year-old kid. It'd make a hell of an impression on you. You can just picture these guys whacking off the arms of these kids. And I just, I've always wondered about the wisdom of a teacher who presented this man as being someone who was there and who had actually seen this firsthand.

JB: Did you consider asking your German neighbors if those stories might be true or...

JF: That never occurred to me. No.

SF: You think that that might reflect kind of the, kind of the hyper sort of Americanism that might have taken place after World War I when the, victorious over the Germans, and were sort of, sort of take great pride in that?

JF: Well, I think that probably, I mean, there are several ways to look at it. One would be that, that you would be happy to hear that the people that you defeated at such cost were truly as bad as that. It makes you feel pretty good that you have -- in World War II, there was no question, but World War I, I'm not sure where the propaganda ended and the, and the truth began and vice versa. I, I would think that certainly that we were over there and all the songs were pretty euphoric about the fact that we had pretty much had a large hand in winning that, that war, although you, pretty hard to tell the French that. But I would think that would have been a part of it. But anything, anything bad that you could nail at the Germans' feet was kind of, made us look a little bit better.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.