What's to Become of the Boy?

Heinrich Boll's brief memoir of his adolescence in Cologne at the outset of Nazi rule is notable for its description of his family living simultaneously "below and beyond" its means. It was a big Catholic family in a time of deprivation. They detested the Nazis, but some accommodations had to be made: Among them, Boll's elder brother Alois joined the Storm Troopers. Boll's opposition to the Nazi Youth was adamantine, and he ducked into doorways when their parades went by. He hauntingly describes a time not entirely devoid of joy, "However, that gaiety was often of the desperate kind seen in some medieval paintings, where the laughter of the redeemed is sometimes akin to the expression on the faces of the damned."