Todd Pliss: American Reich

“Let me say what I have to.”

Dr. Hoffmann sat down on the couch across from Wayne silently for a few moments, deep in thought. “I was born in 1933 in a small village near Frankfurt,” she said softly. “By the time I was four, Adolf Hitler was in full control of Germany,” she continued, “ He controlled the government, the media, everything. My parents, being Jewish, had virtually no rights. My father was still able to run his small food market, though. He thought Hitler was simply another phase that Germany was going through and that he would soon be overthrown. He thought that Hitler’s talk of ridding Europe of all Jews was just posturing. But, just in case, he sent my brother and I here to live with our aunt. That was in 1937.”

Dr. Hoffmann picked up an old scrapbook that was laying on a small coffee table in front of her and started to flip through the yellowed pages.

She removed an aged looking letter from the scrapbook. “This is a letter that my father wrote to me shortly before my brother and I left Germany,” she said. “Dear Lisa,” she read from the letter, “You and your brother, Arnold, are about to embark on a journey. This journey will take the two of you to America, where you will be able to get a good education and live happily with your Aunt Rose until we can send for you. If something should ever happen to your mother and me, I want you to remember that we will always love you. Please try to understand why we did this. Goodbye. Your father, Josef Hoffmann.” Dr. Hoffmann put the letter down. “Three years later, after a raid on our village by the Gestapo, both my mother and father were sent to Dachau.” Dr. Hoffmann’s eyes teared up. “I never saw them again.”

Wayne had never seen his professor so emotional before. He understood now where most, if not all, of her emotional and inner pain had come from. Maybe, Wayne figured, that is why she had never gotten married and had never let herself get close to anybody in her life, even as far as simply having a close friend or two as people normally do. Her parents left her very early in her life. In a sense abandoned her. Lisa Hoffmann, at a young age, had decided that she’d be damned if anybody would ever hurt her that way again. No, it was better as a kid to throw herself into her hobbies in a fanatical way, as she had done with her stamp and butterfly collections. Then, in college, neither dating nor having any fun, but rather compulsively working at maintaining her perfect 4.0 average. And, for the past 27 years, working on her research and experiments. Her work would never leave her, never abandon her, the way her parents had so long ago.

Wayne gave her a supportive hug. “I am very sorry to hear that.”

Dr. Hoffmann cleared her throat and collected herself. “Thank you,” she said. “I want to use the time machine to send you back in time to kill Adolf Hitler before he has the chance to destroy millions of lives.”

“Kill Hitler! Adolf Hitler?” Wayne could not grasp what he had heard.

“That is correct.”

“I couldn’t kill anyone, even a psychopath like Hitler.”

Dr. Hoffmann stood up and started to pace around the room. “Think about it,” she said convincingly, “you would be eliminating one man to save twenty million others, including nine million innocent victims who perished in the camps. You would also save dozens, hundreds, of European towns from having been destroyed during the war.”

“Why me?”

Dr. Hoffmann remained silent and looked away from Wayne. Finally, after a minute, she talked, “You are a level headed person. That will be important. I feel that you can keep your calm in what might be a tough situation. I also feel that you can get the job done quickly, without arousing suspicion. For those reasons, I feel I can entrust this very important task, the culmination of a lifetime’s work, to you.”

“Are there any other reasons?” Wayne’s gut instinct told him she was keeping something from him.

“No.”

Wayne was reluctant to press the issue. “I wonder,” he questioned, “if it’s right for the past to be tinkered with. We don’t really know what we’re dealing with here.”

Dr. Hoffmann sat down beside Wayne. “I think, that for the good of humanity, it would be wrong not to change the past. Do you not agree?”

“Yes. And no. I mean, maybe things in history happened for a purpose. Maybe they were lessons for mankind.”

“I doubt it. Have we learned anything since the war? One only has to look at what has occurred in Cambodia, Vietnam, Bosnia, and many other places of war and mass murder to see that nothing has changed since Hitler’s era. The mistakes of history keep repeating themselves.” Dr. Hoffmann saw she would have to talk him on a more personal basis. “Wayne, you’re Jewish. Was your family in any way affected by the Holocaust?”

“Well, sure, I lost family. My grandparents came from Europe. There were a lot of people who waited too long to flee; they didn’t make it. .”

“Tell me, what one good thing for humanity came from Nazism?”

“What if something goes wrong?”

“I have been planning this for many years. Nothing can go wrong.” “Will you do it, Wayne? Will you be the one to erase the saddest chapter in the history of the human race?”

“You’ll have to get somebody else.”

“I really need your help, Wayne. Please?”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Hoffmann.”

Wayne got up and left her house without another word. Asking someone to lend you a few dollars till your next paycheck or to go to the market and pick up a quart of milk for you is one thing, but asking someone to commit murder? That’s too much.

Wayne wandered down toward the main road. He turned the corner and looked back at Dr. Hoffman’s house. He shook his head and headed into the convenience store.

Still stuck in his thoughts he headed to the back of the store and grabbed a can of beer out of the refrigerated display. He looked around and saw no one.

“Hello,” he called out. Nothing. Wayne walked over to the counter and tugged his cash out of his wallet. As he dumped it on the counter, he saw a pool of blood. He leaned over and saw the Korean cashier sprawled out on the floor beaten to a pulp with a massive knife wound in his abdomen in the shape of a swastika.

“Oh shit!” Wayne exclaimed. He knelt down and checked for a pulse — nothing. The blood around the man had begun to congeal.

“I’m sorry, buddy.” Wayne swallowed hard against the rising bile in his throat and reached for the phone on the floor.

The paramedics arrived on the scene within five minutes. The New York Police Department took an additional seven minutes to get there. The paramedics checked for a pulse and breathing before taking note of the bruises, contusions, and brutal stab wound on the victim.

Officers Duncan and Hall threw the customary questions at Wayne (why was he there? Did he see anything? Did he live in the area? Etc.). He told them what he knew, which wasn’t much.

As the paramedics wheeled out the stretcher with the body in a bag out of the market, Wayne asked, “Has anyone told his family?”

The paramedic nodded his head no and said, “Not yet. That’s a social worker’s job. They’ll contact the family soon. Did you know him?” Wayne shook his head and the paramedics left without the sound of a siren. Another homicide in the city was added to a record year.

“Okay, thank you very much for your time. I have your statement taken down. You can go now, but someone might contact you with additional questions,” Officer Duncan said.

Wayne was still feeling queasy from all of the blood. “Do you have any idea who did this?” he asked.

“Nothing’s really missing and the cash register wasn’t emptied. That’s all that I can say,” Duncan said.