Albrecht Stein

Jungmann **Albrecht Stein** was a German teenager at one of the, National Political Institutes of Education, commonly abbreviated Napola, they were secondary boarding schools in Nazi Germany. Albrecht's talents layed in writing and the arts, areas his father, Gauleiter Heinrich Stein, saw as unfit for men. His mother was more supportive but was ultimately just as disinterested. Albrecht began writing for the school newspaper, taking advice and criticism from Friedrich Weimer.

Albrecht invited Friedrich to go with him to the Stein family's home, a vast mansion in the countryside. Heinrich Stein returned home for his birthday, treated to a special dinner by his wife and a group of friends from the Nazi Party, German Army, and Waffen-SS. He wasted no time criticizing Albrecht for his polite, artistic manner and lack of athletic talent. A boxer himself, Heinrich Stein was far more interested in Friedrich than in his own son, and delighted in Albrecht's inability to even compete with Friedrich when the two were taken downstairs and forced to fight a boxing match.

During the winter, a group of military vehicles arrived at the school at night. The entire seventh-year class was called outside, where Gauleiter Heinrich Stein informed them that a group of Soviet P.O.W.s had overpowered their guards, stolen weapons, and escaped from the nearby village. The boys were armed with Karabiner 98k rifles and sent into the woods to search for them. Friedrich and Albrecht, assigned to the same group, ended up deep in the frozen woods. Abruptly, a group of figures came out of hiding and tried to run back over the crest of a nearby hill, ignoring the boys' shouts to halt. The boys opened fire, shooting each of the Russians. Moving closer, they were shocked to find that not only were none of the prisoners armed, but they were all young boys, no older than the German students. A horrified Albrecht vainly tried to bandage the wounds of one prisoner still left alive, but his father arrived with a search party and shot the Russian. As the boys were taken back to Allenstein, they saw the rest of the P.O.W.s being rounded up and heard a long, rattling fusillade of gunfire in the woods.

In class the next day, Albrecht read aloud an essay in which he condemned the execution of the Soviet P.O.W.s as a criminal act and his own participation in it as "evil". Outraged, school authorities summoned his father, who coldly informed Albrecht that he would write a new essay, starting with an apology for his previous statements. Albrecht instead wrote a second essay in which he condemned his father for ordering the P.O.W.s executed. Learning that Albrecht was to be expelled from school and drafted into the Waffen-SS to fight on the Eastern Front, Friedrich asked what he would do next. Albrecht answered, "I don't know."

The next morning, the sports instructor woke the boys up early and ordered them out onto the frozen lake near the school. Two holes had been made in the ice, and each boy was to dive in one and swim to the other, using a rope that the first pulled through as a guide. Friedrich made the swim through the freezing water, but Albrecht dove in and didn't come out. Friedrich found him halfway between the holes, having deliberately halted under the ice. Hearing Friedrich's shouts, Albrecht looked up and gave a slight shake of his head. Touching a hand to the underside of the ice, Albrecht let go of the rope, sinking deep into the freezing water and vanishing from sight. Deeply grieved, Friedrich wrote an obituary for his friend and asked the headmaster to publish it in the school newspaper, but the headmaster refused, stating that "Amidst people who have died for Fuehrer, Fatherland, and Nation, there is no place for suicides."