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begins to caress me, starting with my hair and moving on down my
back. A middle-aged man dreams, Hitler appears at the Berlin Zoo wearing high
patent-leather boots like an animal trainer but also wrinkled, purple satin
trousers like a circus clown. Hitler first charms some children by exaggerated
gestures, then displays a stern attitude toward some teenagers, shifts to being
coquettish with a group of old maids, and winds up with theatrical moves as
he concludes with a song from the imaginary opera, "Magika."
As the dream progresses, the dreamer comes to relax his opposition to Hitler,
decides maybe he’s not so bad after all, and at the dream’s end is
carrying a collection box for the Nazis.
Many of the dreams in Beradt’s collection came from Jews. Here is one from a doctor. It reveals a desperate wish that the dreamer will be viewed as an exception to the way other Jews are perceived: I cure Hitler, the only one in the Reich who was able to. "How much money do you want for curing me?" asks Hitler. "No money," I tell him, whereupon a tall, blond man in Hitler’s entourage snaps, "What! You crooked Jew—no money?" But Hitler says in a commanding tone, "Of course, no money. Our Jews are not like that." The culmination of the shameful way that Jews were treated is brought out in this dream that a 60-year-old Jewish lawyer reported in 1935: Two benches are standing side by side in Tiergarten Park, one painted the usual green and the other yellow (in those days, Jews were permitted to sit only on specially painted yellow benches). There is a trash can between them. I sit down on the trash can and hang a sign around my neck, like the ones blind beggars sometimes wear- also like those the government makes "race violators" wear. It reads, "I Make Room for Trash If Need Be." We see chronicled in these dreams the gradual dissolution of a nation’s moral fiber. Initially the Jews, who have been selected to be scapegoats, vainly try to ward off the recognition that their time is marked ("Our Jews are not like that"); later, the numbing awareness that they are being perceived as a subhuman form and can be moved to "make room for trash if need be" sets in. Can slaughter and extermination be far away? The Germans, who witness this disturbing chain of political events, feel the urge to protest but mail off "a blank sheet of paper" and find themselves, as was described in one dream, Inch by inch, raising my arm in the Nazi salute. Dreams of capitulating to the Nazi cause generally 180
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