26
PARTISAN REVIEW
"I'll be a son ·of a bitch," continued Slim, "The Heiny is sore about
somethin'.'
Wh:It's the matter, Shorty, did Lizzie leave you?"
Slowly and deliberately Hans went over closer to Slim and said
quietly: "If you are a
dum.kopf,
Slim, it is your pizziness.
The time for
joking is over."
Slim and myself went into the
"Lilliput"
to have a glass of beer.
We had just sat down at the table when we heard the rattling of a
machine gun.
It rattled for a few minutes and stopped.
There was a
strong commotion outside of the cafe.
We went out into the street;
Several Brownshirts were running in disorder.
A man was lying on the
sidewalk, groaning.
Some one was waiting.
Some one was crying.
We
walked over to a group that gathered in front of Chassal's drygoods store;
Shorty was lying on the sidewalk, gasping.
"What happened?" I asked a little shrivelled-up woman who was
wringing her hands in despair.
"Weisst du nicht,"
she replied,
"weisst du nicht?
That is Hans,
Hans Maurmeyer, the secretary of the Seaman's Union.
The Nazi were
going to destroy the Jewish stores in Altona, so our boys went out to
protect them."
