When the Fuhrer learned of the breakthroughs we were having he asked our director to send him his best animal psychologist to work with Blondi and Bondi. When told I was Jewish he said that didn’t matter as long as this information was kept secret.
I first meet Hitler and his dogs in his apartment above the Reich Chancellery. The dogs took to me immediately. I dread to think what would have happened if they hadn’t. Blondi and Bondi frolicked on the floor with me much to Hitler’s amusement.
I told him that we’d need to work gradually to establish rapport before serious training could begin. He was impatient but understood when I told him that this had to be a gradual process, which was true. By reputation I knew that one did not try to deceive Hitler, but when in his presence you knew that his penetrating gaze was nothing less than a foolproof lie detector.
I typically visited the dogs once a week. Hitler made every effort to be there with us and on occasion rescheduled out appointments so he could participate in the training since it was crucial that he be able to communicate with Blondi and Bondi as well or better than I could.
One day have a good training session with the dogs I admired a beautifully carved chess set on a side table. Hitler asked me if I played chess and I told him I did, but was hardly a chess master. His eyes lit up and he told me about the time he was only 20 and he played chess with Lenin who was 40 at the time. He told me he beat him.
He pointed to a picture on the wall which I’d noted before but had thought nothing of. He said that it was an etching made by his art teacher Emma Lowenstramm, a Jew, who witnessed the game (reference). I was taken aback that there was no sense of prejudice when he casually noted that she was Jewish.
As the war took up more and more of his attention he had less time for our training sessions. The dogs had made progress. They had learned at least 100 command words, nothing more than tricks, but Hitler was delighted. To some extent they could communicate their wishes. Ranked against the dogs in our program they would be mid-range in talent.
As far as our chess games went I was clearly the lesser player. I did win from time to time and Hitler was very gracious. The rumors that if you played chess with Hitler you’d better allow him to win were unfounded. For one thing, he was a good enough player to know if you missed an obvious move. For another, he enjoyed the challenge of playing against someone of near, if not equally, as talented as he was.
After the war of course I learned about what the Israeli Declaration of Independence calls the extermination of six millions Jews the Nazi holocaust,* I discovered once the camps were liberated that the Nazis systematically murdered my brethren and almost all my extended family.
My wife died a natural death in 1943. I managed to escape from Germany to Switzerland and then made my way to England with the help of an SS Colonel and fellow animal psychologist from the SS unit where worked. I feel we are lucky we had no children.
As I write this I feel relieved that I too am terminally ill. I no longer want to live. I know that it is cowardly to want to escape my guilt. But so be it. I will die knowing that I am one of the few people who was as close to being a friend to Hitler as anyone could have been.
By Hal Brown, 2016
Authors note: The word holocaust only appears once in the Israeli Declaration of Independence where it is not capitalized.