Chapter 11 Chapter Eleven

Byron was changing tires on the side of the road when the planes strafed.He and Natalie are out of Krakow, heading for Warsaw in this rusty Fiat taxi, with Benriel Jastrow, the newlyweds, the bearded chauffeur and His stupidly fat wife. On the morning of the German invasion, several places in Krakow were on fire and filled with smoke.But the first bombing by the German plane did not cause too much damage to this elegant town.They drove around in the brilliant sunshine, looking for a way out.Therefore, although Byron and Natalie were in a hurry, they also took a good look at the famous churches and castles in the city, as well as the magnificent ancient square like St. Mark's Square in Venice.The common people were not alarmed, for the Germans were more than fifty miles away.The streets were still bustling with joy, and the train station was full of people.Bainel Jastrow finally managed to get two tickets to Warsaw. No matter how hard he tried to persuade Byron and Natalie to refuse to take them, he had to send his wife and twelve-year-old daughter to Warsaw. After sending them to the car, he skillfully took them from one business office to another, passing through some alleys and gates that were not usually used, trying to send them away safely.He seemed to know everyone, and he did it with confidence, but even then he couldn't get Byron and Natalie out.Air traffic has stopped.The Romanian border was declared closed.The trains heading east to Russia and north to Warsaw still do not have a certain time to drive. People are hanging on the train window or hanging on the locomotive.Then there is the road.

Janker, a bearded taxi driver, and his wife, poor relatives of Barrell, would go anywhere.Ben Real managed to get him an official ID to keep the car from being confiscated, but Yankel didn't believe it would last long.His wife insisted on driving the car to her house first, packed all the food, bedding, and kitchen utensils together, and tied them to the roof of the car with rope.Ben Real considered that it would be better for the two Americans to go to the embassy in Warsaw, which is three hundred kilometers away, than to risk rushing to the border to meet the German army.So the improvised gang set off: seven men crammed into a rusty old Fiat, mattresses flapping on the roof, copper pots clinking rhythmically ring.

During the night they stopped in a town where Jastrow had a few familiar Jews.They had a good meal, slept on the floor, and were on their way again at dawn.The narrow asphalt road ahead of them was crowded with pedestrians and wagons full of children and furniture and croaking geese and whatnot.Some peasants drove laden donkeys or a few lowing cows.From time to time, the marching soldiers forced the car to the side of the road.A troop of cavalry drove by, all on huge piebald horses.The dusty knights chatted as they marched; they were huge men, their helmets and sabers gleaming in the morning sun.They laughed, showing their white teeth, twirling their beards, and eyeing the scattered refugees with good-natured contempt.A company of infantrymen walked past singing.Although the sun was scorching overhead, the clear weather and the aroma of ripe corn made the travelers feel quite comfortable.When there were no combat troops in sight on the long, dark road through the yellow and orange crop fields, a lone plane suddenly swooped down from the sky and flew low along the road with a rattling sound. , Da Da violent sound.The plane was flying so low that Byron could see the number, the black cross, the A, and the fixed, clumsy wheels.Bullets hit people, horses, furniture and objects in carts, as well as children.Byron felt a burning pain in one ear, unknowingly shook a few times, and fell to the ground.

He heard a child cry, opened his eyes, and sat up.The blood on his clothes startled him—there were big, bright red drops; he felt something warm dripping onto his face.Natalie was kneeling beside him, wiping his head with a wet red handkerchief, and he remembered the plane.Across the road, the weeping little girl hugged a man's leg and stared at a woman lying on the road.She was sobbing and yelling a few words in Polish over and over again.The man, a light-haired Polish man with bare feet and ragged clothes, was stroking the child's head with his hand. "What does that mean, what did she say?"

"It's all right, Byron? What do you think?" "A bit dizzy. What is that girl talking about?" Natalie looked a little strange, her nose seemed to be thin and long, her hair was disheveled, her face was blue and dusty, her lipstick had been wiped off, and there was a bit of Byron's blood on her forehead. "I don't know, she's crazy." Ben Real stood beside Natalie, stroking his beard."She kept saying, 'What an ugly mother.'" he said in French. Byron stood up, one hand resting on the hot fender of the car, and his knees were weak.He said: "I think it's all right. How's the wound?"

Natalie said, "I can't tell, your hair is too thick, but you're bleeding a lot. You'd better take you to the hospital and get some stitches." The driver also hastily tightened the screws on the newly replaced wheel, and smiled at Byron, beads of sweat rolling from his pale nose and forehead onto his beard.His wife and the newlyweds stood in the shadow of the car, panic-stricken, looking at the sky, the road, and the crying little girl.Along the way, many wounded horses hopped and neighed, and poultry from overturned wagons were chased away in a panic by yelling children.People stooped to attend to the wounded or carried them to cars, shouting excitedly in Polish.In the clear sky, the scorching sun shone fiercely.

Byron staggered towards the crying little girl, followed by Natalie and Jastrow.The child's mother was lying on her back, a bullet had hit her in the face, but her motionless eyes were not injured at all, so the big bright red hole looked particularly scary.Ban Ruier talked with the father. The man's face was simple and soft, and he had a thick yellow beard.He shrugged his shoulders and hugged his little daughter tightly.Yankel's wife came over and gave the child a red apple, and the little one stopped crying immediately, and she took the apple and started to eat it.The man sat down beside his dead wife, crossed himself with his bare, dirty feet, muttering to himself, with his shoes still hanging around his neck.Byron was so dizzy that Natalie helped him into the car.They move on.Jastrow said there was a sizeable town three miles away where they could tell the authorities if someone was hurt on the road.After the bride took off her wedding dress, she became a little girl with deep glasses and freckles all over her face. She cried, pushed the pale husband away, buried her face in the arms of the driver's wife, and cried all the time Walked all the way, and wept all the way to the city.

The town was unspoiled, and the red-brick hospital next to the church was quiet and shady.After listening to Jastrow's narration, several nurses and nuns boarded a truck and set off.Byron was ushered into a whitewashed room full of surgical equipment and buzzing flies.A fat doctor in a white coat and patched canvas trousers sewed up a wound on his head, and shaving the hair around the wound was worse than the stitches.When he came out, he persuaded Natalie to get her knee bandaged too, because she was limping again. "Oh, fuck it," Natalie said. "Come on, Yankel says we can make it to Warsaw tonight, and I'll dress up there."

Tired and startled, Byron dozed off as the doctor gave him a spoonful of painkillers.He didn't know how long it had been when he woke up.On a wide cobbled square near the red-brick station, two soldiers armed with rifles stopped the car.Both the station and a freight car were on fire, and flames and black smoke billowed from the windows.Several buildings near the square were reduced to rubble or damaged.There are two houses burning.People gathered around the store to hand out merchandise and take things away.Byron was taken aback when he realized it was a robbery.wide On the other side of the field, people were pumping water into the burning station from horse-drawn fire engines (a type of fire engine Byron had only seen in past silent films), and a large crowd looked on, as if in peacetime Look at the excitement.

"What's the matter?" Byron asked. Between the two soldiers, the big young man with blond hair and a square red face with small boils walked up to the driver's window.The soldier, Yankel, and Jastrow began to talk in Polish.The soldier kept smiling with a particularly uncomfortable softness, as if he were talking to some children he didn't like.His scrawny companion came and looked at them through the yellow glass, coughing and smoking.He talked to the big man and called him Casimir many times.Only then did Byron understand that zhid means "Jew" in Polish, and zhid often appeared in their conversations.Casimir started talking to the driver again, and once he reached in and stroked the driver's beard, then gave it another jerk, apparently because the driver's answer had irritated him.

Jastrow muttered something to Natalie in Yiddish and glanced at Byron. "What did he say?" Byron asked. Natalie whispered: "He said that Poles are good and bad, and these Poles are bad." Casimir gestured with a gun and ordered everyone to get out of the car."They want our car," Jastrow said to Byron. Byron had a terrible headache; a bullet had scratched his ear, and the place where the cut was hot and throbbing was worse than a needle wound on his head; , drank dirty water, so he felt a faint throbbing pain in his body; and the medicine he had just taken was still anesthetizing; he had never felt so uncomfortable. "I tried to talk to the red-faced guy, he seems to be in charge." He said and got out of the car. "Hi," he walked towards the two soldiers, "I am an officer of the United States Navy, I am going back to the embassy in Warsaw, where they are waiting for me.This American girl—” he pointed to Natalie—“is my fiancée, and we are here to visit her family.These are her relatives. " Hearing the English and seeing the thick bandage on Byron's head covered with blood, the soldiers frowned. "American?" the big man asked.Jastrow, leaning against the car window, translated Byron's words. Casimir scratched his chin, looked Byron up and down, with a courteous smile on his face.He addressed Jastrow, who tremblingly translated his words into French. "He said no US Navy officer would marry a Jew. He didn't believe you." "Tell him that if we don't make it to Warsaw tonight, the American ambassador will take action to find us. If he doesn't believe it, we'll go and call the embassy together." "Passport," Casimir said to Byron when Jastrow finished translating.Byron handed over his passport.The soldier looked at the English, the photo on the green cover of the passport, and then at Byron's face.He said something to his coughing companion, and went away, beckoning Byron to follow. "Brani, don't go," Natalie said. "I'll be right back. Everyone keep calm." The short soldier leaned on the fender of the car, lit another cigarette, and after coughing desperately for a while, he grinned at Natalie with a smirk. Byron followed Casimir up a side road and into a two-story stone building with official notices and posters hanging outside.They walked through rooms filled with filing cabinets, counters, and desks before coming to a frosted-glass door at the end of the hall.Casimir walked in, and after about ten minutes, he poked his head out again and beckoned the Americans to go in. Behind a large desk by the window sat a dumpy man in a gray uniform, smoking from an amber holder.From the colored symbols and brass badges on his uniform, he was clearly an officer.He had the open passport in front of him.As he sipped tea from his glass, he glanced at his passport, dripping onto Byron's photograph.In the cramped, dingy room, metal filing cabinets and bookshelves were piled into one corner, and dusty legal books were strewn about. The officer asked him if he could speak German.They talked in this way, and of course they didn't speak very well.He made Byron go over the situation again, and asked him how it was possible for an American naval officer to get involved with the Jews, and how he was wandering around Poland during the war.He was on the last puff of his cigarette and lit another.He desperately questioned Byron about the injury on his head. Hearing that they were bombed on the road, he raised his eyebrows and gave a wry smile.Even if these were true, he said, Byron's actions were foolish enough to be easily caught and shot.During the long silent intervals of question after question, he wrote Byron's answers with a sticky pen, pinned the scribbled note to his passport, and threw them together into a paper-filled wire basket. "Come back here at five o'clock tomorrow afternoon." "That won't work. I have to go back to Warsaw tonight." The officer shrugged. Byron wished his temples wouldn't keep twitching like that, it's almost impossible to use your brain, especially in German, and it's clouding your eyes. "May I ask who you are? What authority do you have to confiscate my passport and what authority does this soldier have to take our car?" The nasty smile that Casimir had shown just now—Casimir had been standing transfixed by his desk while they talked—was now on the officer's face. "Never mind who I am. We've got to figure out who you are first." "Then please call the American embassy and find political secretary Leslie Sloter. It won't take long." The officer drank his herbal tea in one gulp, began to sign the papers, and muttered something in Polish to Casimir, who grabbed Byron's arm, pushed him out the door, and led him Go back to the car. White smoke was rising from the train station and from the wagons, and the street smelled of wet, burnt wood.The robbery is over.Police officers stand in front of the distressed store.The faces of the three women watched Byron nervously through the yellow glass of the car.Casimir's companion knocked on the glass again and winked at the bride again, scaring her away from the window.Now Casimir said a few words to him and they went away. Byron told Natalie what had happened, and she told the others in Yiddish.They could spend the night at a friend's house in the city, Jastrow said.Yankel seemed pleased when Byron got behind the wheel and went back to the back next to his wife. Under the guidance of Ban Ruier, Byron drove towards an intersection.At the intersection there is a large arrow pointing to the left to a main road passing through a field full of bales of corn stalks, and it says: Warsaw, Km 95.Jastrow told him to turn right, onto a road past many small houses that led to an unpainted wooden church.But Byron shifted gears, turned the car to the left, and headed out into the fields. "It's not a good thing to go backwards," he told Natalie. "We'd better move on." Natalie yelled, "Byron, stop, don't be crazy! You can't get through these people without a passport." "Ask Ben Riel what he thinks." A burst of conversation in Yiddish ensued. "He said, it's too dangerous for you. Go back." "Why? If there is any trouble, I will say that during a bombing, I lost my passport and left such a hole in my head." Byron stepped on the accelerator pedal to the end, and the overloaded old car The Fiat hits its top speed, around thirty miles an hour.The pots and pans jingled overhead, and Byron was obliged to shout, "Ask him if it's safest for you and the others to get out of here." He felt something touch his shoulder, and when he looked back, he saw that Benriel Jastrow had dozed off, his bearded face looking tired and gray. It took them two days to cover the ninety-five kilometers.When the incident first happened, Byron felt that the truth was an epic, and if he survived, he must tell his children and grandchildren.But then it happened so much that the five-day journey from Krakow to Warsaw soon became a fragmented and distant memory: once, the water pump of the car broke down, leaving them in a lonely road in the forest. We were delayed half a day on the road, and at last Byron, in a dazed state, fixed it and put it back into use again, without even thinking of it; the tank leaked, and they had to risk great danger to buy more gasoline; They spent the night in a dry grass field, and the slightly nervous bride suddenly disappeared, and it took a long time to find her (she wandered off to another farm, and fell asleep in a stable); Boys, about eleven and fourteen, were sleeping on the side of the road, and they told an incomprehensible account of falling off a truck and sitting in a squeaky Fiat. Walked the last thirty kilometers to Warsaw on the wooden slats on the hood.He was indifferent to all this, but he never forgot how bad his stomach was at that time, causing him to run away into the bushes and embarrassment; , more and more tired, but still so unwaveringly happy; especially, what he will never forget is the hole in his breast pocket, where he used to keep his passport, and now this place It seemed to jump more than the wound on the ear and the head, because he knew that the Polish officer could order him to be shot at this moment, and the soldiers would carry it out.Under Jastrow's guidance, he drove the car to avoid towns and detours on remote stone and dirt roads, although the longer distance made the car that was falling apart worse. They came to the outskirts of Warsaw in the cold dawn, and moved slowly among hundreds of carriages.In all the stubble fields, women and children and stooped old men with white beards were digging trenches and building anti-tank barriers of tangled wire.Clusters of buildings against the pink northeast horizon look like holy Jerusalem.The driver's big wife, who smelled more and more like a heat-burned cow, squeezed Natalie day and night with an intimacy the girl had never felt from anyone else. ; she hugged Natalie, kissed her, loved her.The whining and clanging car traveled for more than three hours before arriving at the US embassy.The two boys jumped off the hood and ran down a side road. "Come on, get in here quickly," the mushroommonger said to Natalie in Yiddish, getting out of the car and kissing her. "Come see me later if you can." When Byron said "goodbye," Baenriel Jastrow could hardly let go of his hand.He held Byron's hand tightly with both of his own, looked sincerely at the young man's face and said, "merci. mille fois merci①. Thank you a thousand times. America is going to save Poland, isn't it, Byron ? Save the world." Byron laughed. "This is an important order, but I must convey it, Baen Real." ①French: Thank you.Thank you a thousand times. "What did he say?" Ben Riel asked Natalie, still holding Byron's hand.As soon as she translated it, Baen Riel laughed too.Then he hugged Byron like a bear and surprised Byron with a quick kiss. A lone Marine stood guard at the closed embassy gate.Along the yellow gray walls were rows of gray sandbags, unsightly x-shaped wooden battens distorted the windows, and a large American flag was painted on the red-tiled roof.All of this seemed strange, but what was even stranger was the disappearance of the long queues.With no one standing outside except the Marine, the American embassy was no longer a refuge or an escape route. When the guard listened to what they said, a smile appeared on his clean-shaven, rosy, puzzled face. "Yes, miss, Mr. Sloot is here, and he's in charge now." He took the phone out of the metal box nailed to the door, and looked at them curiously.Natalie smoothed out her unkempt hair, and Byron stroked his thick, stiff red hair, and they both laughed.Sloter ran down the wide steps below the embassy's coat of arms. "Hey! My God! It's so good to see you." He put an arm around Natalie and kissed her on the face while keeping his eyes on Byron's bloody, dirty bandage on his head. "What's the matter? It's all right?" "Nothing. Any news? Are France and England at war?" "Your news is so bad? They first scolded Hitler for three days, asked him to be more sensible, withdrew the troops from Poland, and declared war on Sunday. Since then, I have not seen anything else except distributing leaflets." something happened." They had a good breakfast of ham and eggs, the first hot meal they had had in days, and then related their experience.Byron felt that his desperately tossing stomach was quite right for this pure young man's meal, and he would stop making trouble after eating it.He and Natalie ate the meal at the ambassador's large desk.As soon as the bombing began, Washington recalled the ambassador and most of the embassy staff from Poland. Slote, the only bachelor among the third-class officials, was selected to stay behind.The diplomat was horrified to hear that Byron had thrown away his passport. "My God, man, this country's at war! You're lucky you didn't get jailed or shot. And while there's a real reason you're running around here, it's almost as if you're a German spy." It's more reasonable. It's hard to believe that you two are a couple. It's hard to believe that you are so lucky." "And it's unbelievably dirty," Natalie said. "What do we do now?" "You're just in time, dear. We can't do without Poland at the moment. The Germans are ravaging the Polish countryside, bombing them. We've got to find you a place to live in Warsaw until, uh, until things get better." Let’s talk when we have an idea. At the same time, you have to dodge bombs like us.” Sloter shook his head at Byron. "Your father is worried about you. I have to send him a telegram. We can still communicate through Stockholm. He can tell Ellen Jastrow that at least Natalie has been found and is alive." "I really want to take a shower," Natalie said. Slote scratched his head, then took a bunch of keys from his pocket and slipped across the table. "I've moved here. You can use my room. It's on the ground floor, it's the safest place, and there's a deep basement. When I left there, there was running water, and we still had electricity. .” "What about Byron?" Byron said, "I can go to the Lyric Guest House." "It was bombed there," Sloter said. "We had to move everyone out the day before yesterday." "Would you care if he lived with me?" Natalie said. Both men startled and looked embarrassed."I think my mother would object," Byron said. "Why, whimpering like a child, Byron. Just because we were running all the time in the bushes together, and all that stuff, I don't know what secrets there are between us. ’ She turned to Slote and said: ‘He’s a little like my faithful brother.’ "Don't you take her word for it," Byron said irritably. "I'm a hot-tempered beast. Is there a YMCA here?" "Look, I don't care," said Sloter, speaking with distinct lack of enthusiasm. "There's a sofa in the living room. Natalie decides." She grabs the key. "I'd like to take a shower and sleep with him for a few days—he'll blow him up. How do we get out of Poland, Leslie?" Sloter shrugged, cleared his throat, and laughed. "Who knows? Hitler said that if the Poles didn't surrender, they would blow Warsaw to the ground. The Poles shouted that they had driven the German troops back and were advancing on Germany. This could be nonsense. According to Stockholm Radio, the Nazis had Breaking through all fronts, encircling Warsaw in a week. Here the Swedes and Swiss are trying to negotiate safe passage for neutral nationals across the German lines. We may all have to leave this way. Safest until this is done The place is here." "Then we did a smart thing by coming to Warsaw," said Natalie. "You are the embodiment of all ingenuity, Natalie." As the trolleybus weaved its way through the narrow streets of the residential area, Byron and Natalie saw much more damage here than in Krakow—bombed or burned houses, sidewalks craters, and the occasional rubble-filled street roped off—but overall, Warsaw still looks more like peacetime, which, although less than a week away, seems to be from another era up.The Germans threatened to wipe out Poland, and if they could, at least not yet.The other passengers didn't pay attention to Byron's bandaged head and beard. Several of them were also bandaged. Most of the men's hair was like a hedgehog. The whole car was full of human body pain. smell. As soon as they got out of the car, Natalie said, "Oh, the fresh air! We've got the same smell, maybe worse. I've got to take a shower right now, or I'm going crazy. On the way I fell Don't care. I can't bear to wait another minute now." A ray of sunlight streaming in through the closed shutters made Sloter's house an oasis of half-darkness and tranquility.The books in the living room gave the room a dusty library smell.Natalie flicked a light switch, obviously familiar with the place. "Do you want to wash first?" she asked. "Once I'm in that tub, don't let me out for a few hours. There's only cold water. I'm going to boil some hot water. But I don't know. Maybe first you have to go to a hospital and get your head checked .” As soon as this sentence came out, both of them thought it was quite funny.They both laughed and laughed and laughed. "Well, while we're both still smelling," gasped Natalie, "come here," and she put her arms around him and kissed him. "You bloody fool, you don't even want a passport to protect a few stupid Jews." "My head is all right," Byron said.Dirty and tired as they were both, the girl's lips touched his as birds sang and flowers did. "While you boil the water, I'll wash up first." While he was shaving, she carried buckets of steaming water into the bathroom and poured them into the cracked yellow tub, humming a Chopin polonaise.This music always plays before the noon news program.Byron understood only a few of its place names: a handful of small towns and cities less than halfway from Warsaw from the western and southern borders. "My God, how pale your face is, Braney," she said, looking at his clean-shaven face; for the lines were drawn with cold water. "And how young! I keep forgetting that you are a child." "Oh, don't exaggerate. I graduated from graduate school." Byron said, "Isn't this something grown-ups do?" "Get out. I'm going to jump in the tub." About half an hour later, the air raid siren sounded clearly outside.Byron was dozing on the sofa with an old copy of Time magazine when he woke up abruptly and took the binoculars from his handbag.Natalie came out of the bathroom, flushed, her hair still dripping, wrapped in Slote's white terry bathrobe. "Are we going to the basement?" "I'll go take a look first." The streets are deserted: no cars, no people.Byron was at the door, examining the sky with his naked eyes; after a while he saw the plane.The fleet emerged from a white cloud, passed through scattered black smoke, and moved slowly across the sky.He heard muffled rumbles, rumbles in the distance, like thunder without an echo.As he reached the sidewalk and raised the binoculars to his eyes, there was a whistle; and in the street a short man in a white helmet and armband was waving at him angrily.He backed into the doorway again and found the planes with binoculars: they were black planes, larger than the one that wounded him, another chunky shape, but painted with the same cross and a pattern, the fuselages Extra long, it looks a bit like a little flying van in the iridescent frame of the telescope.The electricity went out, and Natalie combed her hair by candlelight in front of a mirror in the hallway. "What's going on? Is it bombing?" "Bombing. They're not coming this way. I see the planes." "Well, I don't think it's better not to go back into the tub." The thud thud got louder.The two of them sat on the sofa, smoking cigarettes, you looked at me, I looked at you. Natalie said tremulously, "It's really like a summer thunderstorm coming at you. I never imagined it like this before." The whistle in the distance grew louder and louder, and there was a sudden boom that shook the house.I do not know where the glass shattered, crashing a large piece.The girl screamed, but sat there very still, motionless.Nearby were two more explosions, one immediately followed by the other.The street was full of voices, shouts, screams, and the sound of brick walls falling in through the shutters. "Brani, shall we go down to the basement?" "Better sit still." "Ok." This is the most powerful.Then there were thuds and thumps again, some were far away, the sound was softer, and some were closer, but it was no longer felt in the air, on the floor, or in the teeth.They fade away.On the street outside, bells were ringing, footsteps were running on the gravel road, and people were shouting.Byron drew back the curtains, opened a window, squinted in the strong sunlight, and saw two houses on the street that had been bombed and burned.People milled around the piles of rubble and burning houses.Pour buckets of water onto the raging fire.Natalie stood beside him, biting her lip. "These damned German bastards. Oh my God, Blaney, look, look!" The people began to lift the dead man out of the puffs of smoke.A man in a black rubber jacket was holding a child with his arms hanging down. "Can't we help? Can't we do something?" "There must be a volunteer team. Natalie, neutral country personnel can participate in nursing, rescue, and cleaning. I will inquire about it." "I can't bear to see this." She turned and walked away.Barefoot and no heels, Natalie Jastrow was an inch or two shorter, wrapped in a bathrobe that was too big, her unpowdered face turned up, her eyes watery, looking Younger and less stubborn than usual. "That close, it's likely to blow us both up." "The next time we hear the sirens, we should probably go down to the basement, now we know." "I did it to you. I've been upset about it. Your parents in Berlin must have been sick about you, and—" "We've got the Navy in our family, so it's pretty commonplace. As for myself, it's kind of fun." "Fun?" She frowned and glared at him. "Damn it! Stop talking childishly." "Natalie, I've never been this excited, that's what it is. I don't believe I'm going to be blown up. I don't want to miss this opportunity as hell." "Byron, hundreds of people may have died there in the last half hour! Didn't you see the children they dragged out of the house?" "I see. You see, I mean—" Byron hesitated, because he said he meant it was amused. "It's stupid and insensitive to say that. A German would say that."