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Professor Carrelli

lawrencebush
May 2, 2011

by Robert Schwarz

In spite of the Italian name, he was a proud member of the “German Teachers’ Guild.” He was also my homeroom teacher, as well as my mathematics instructor, in an Austrian middle school before World War II. I was afraid of him and of the subject matter he taught, but not half as afraid as I was of my mother. More about her later.

To give Professor Carrelli his due, his widely known Nazi sympathies and my religious and ethnic background were never in open conflict, for he treated me with painstaking fairness. When he had to give me a low grade, it always matched my low performance, and while he may have enjoyed awarding me an occasional C, I can neither prove this nor will I condemn him for it. My work deserved no better. In this respect, he differed from a few other Nazi teachers who openly mocked and humiliated Jewish students.

As I said, I was even more scared of my mother than of geometry and algebra. Even in a society that grossly overrated the importance of report cards, my mother stood out as an uncompromisingly severe guardian of high academic standards for both her sons. This meant that every time we had a mathematics test, I was — as I later in life heard some Americans put it — as nervous as a turkey in November. My mother never failed to aggravate this state by badgering me for 72 hours before the examination with uninterrupted carping on the need to pass “or else.”

The tragedy — for in my eyes it was nothing if not that — began when, in my last semester before the Nazis took over the country and I was moved to a “non-Aryan” school, a decisive one-hour test in geometry and algebra was scheduled. I studied as hard as I could and came to believe that I would pass if there was a God in heaven. The trouble was that instead of the two algebra questions everyone expected, only one could be defined as such, while the other was a “text problem” for which an equation had to be crafted, the kind of problem I abominated. The professor announced that in order to pass a student had to solve at least one geometry problem and one text problem.

I had a chance of succeeding with the two geometry options, but as we reached the midpoint of the test time, I had not finished even one of the four text problems. By the time Herr Carrelli collected our papers, I had gotten one problem right but had only begun to tackle the other three, without completing any.

The image of repairing shoes for the rest of my life froze my insides. The threat of flunking out of middle school was seen as a death sentence for a university career, so a manual job (cobblers were a favorite parental example of failure) would be my only realistic future. The “dignity of labor” turned out to be an empty political slogan of progressive parties when an F on one’s report card could mark the beginning of the end of the academic promised land.

A week later I received my expected grade. Though expected, it blew my mind. Despite my weakness as a mathematics student, I had never been “awarded” an F. When I came home from school that day, I lacked the courage to confess what I had nursed all the way home from school, to face the music and get it over with. Coming clean and promising improvement may have worked for other youngsters, but not with my mother. Stupidity and fear made me decide to lie, even though I knew that the lie would not dismantle my fear except in the event of sudden death, hers or mine.

When she asked the dreaded question, whether the tests had been returned, I said no, not yet. In the next few days this scene was repeated frequently, each time adding to my mortification and my mother’s suspicions. I found it especially painful that she received my laconic answers with a face of disbelief but with no verbal contradiction. That she had gone through my satchel and books I was sure, but not until the following Monday did I realize that in spite of her seeming acceptance of my lies she had not believed them from the beginning.

During the 10:00 break that morning, when the students had to walk the corridors until resumption of instruction was announced by the bell — a practice justified by the need to air the stuffy classrooms and for us to get some exercise — the drama began. On my second round down the length of the hall, I spotted my mother in conversation with Carrelli. As I approached, weak-kneed and without a plan, Carrelli signaled for me to drop out of line and join them. I left my chattering fellow-prisoners and made the short, jerky bow that Central European schools expected from students facing teachers.

My mother immediately asked me, point-blank, whether the examination papers had been returned or not: a yes-or-no question, as heard in courts of law. The scene that followed has never left my memory. Professor Carrelli look at my mother’s face, then at mine. His own face was somewhat agitated. Then this Nazi, who wore the party badge openly the day Hitler marched into Austria, said, “No, not yet,” nodded, and walked away.

Saved for another day, perhaps for another week! As the bell rang, I explained that my geography class was beginning, and my mother, obviously relieved at my “honesty” yet somehow perplexed, quickly smiled and went home.

I was counting my heartbeats for the rest of the morning. How and when should I put an end to this hellish circus without compromising my professor? Why had he lied for me?

The first question was a practical matter. I decided that Saturday afternoon would be the best time to confess all, because then my mother often helped out in my father’s store, and, God willing, her harshest rage might be limited to a couple of hours. But what of the more mysterious question? I let the scene in the school corridor pass through my mind at least five times. Finally, as I shambled home for lunch, it came to me: Professor Carrelli, underground Nazi and therefore, by definition, a dedicated anti-Semite, he whose pan-German sentiments were an open secret, had pitied me. His on-the-spot decision was not to abandon me to the mercy of the woman who must have impressed him, in a moment of direct illumination that knew no doubt, as a parent to be mortally feared.

I was reminded of a story my father once told me about a Prussian major in World War I who informed a Russian prisoner that he would have mercy on him if the prisoner could tell which one of the major’s eyes was made of glass. When the POW pointed to the left eye and was therefore spared, the Prussian asked him how he knew the right answer. The Russian replied: “Your left eye showed a glimmer of compassion.”

Despite his Italian name, Carrelli was an illegal member of the National Socialist Party and, as I learned after the war, was killed in action on the southern front, the same front where he had also fought in World War I, judging from the war stories he used to tell us boys on special, non-mathematical occasions.

As for my mother, before she died many years later, she and I talked, openly and freely, of many moments in our European past. She confessed with many a tear that she was too demanding, and I replied with many a tear that she was the best mother — and both of us agreed with the Eastern wisdom that we ourselves are part of the knots we seek to untie.

Robert Schwarz is professor emeritus in the Schmidt College of Arts and Humanities at Florida Atlantic University.