Adolf & Ignatz

When Housepainter Adolf Hitler was a Gefreiter (lance corporal) in the German army during the War, Carpenter Ignatz Westenkirchner was a private in his squad. Many an afternoon Carpenter Ignatz cleaned his mess kit and read and reread his shirt while Housepainter Adolf talked of the things he was going to do later.

Many a time since then Carpenter Ignatz has remembered those days, particularly in recent months when, with his wife and three children, he has lived in Reading, Pa. and tried vainly to find work. Last summer he wrote to his old Corporal, and Chancellor Hitler remembered too! Last week came a letter from Adolf Hitler with passage money for the whole Westenkirchner family and the promise of a job in Naziism's Mother Church, the Brown House in Munich.

"Who would have known it!" cried joyful Ignatz Westenkirchner as he sailed on the Hamburg with his broad-beamed wife, their daughters Katherine and Johanna, and Ignatz Jr. "I read in the papers about the Putsch in 1923 when Hitler and Ludendorff tried to take over the Bavarian Government and I was real surprised. It was funny my old korps-bruder being such an important man. But he didn't forget me! "He was a brave and good soldier. I remember him well. He was a small man just about my own age. My own mustache --it's like his, don't you think? We did messenger work together. After he was wounded and made a Gefreiter he didn't take his leave but came right back to the regiment as soon as he could move about. That was a brave thing to do. Before that we were both privates together--'Gemeine Soldaten Freiwillige!' "In America I went first to Altoona. But things weren't so good. Then I go to Reading, and it wasn't much better. May- be I wasn't the--what you call it?-- type for this country. Now I go back home. Maybe I get a job, maybe I become a big man. Who knows r Hitler is for the poor man. The poor man can't get along in America. "And, also, one thing! He is a kind man, Hitler is. He is stern when he is fighting, that I remember. But all those stories about the Jews--that's not true. . . ,"

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