dinner with Nazis it's hard to smile when you're having dinner with Nazis there were Nazis all up and down the long table talking and laughing and eating there were Nazi soldiers in their gray German army uniforms there were SS officers members of Adolf Hitler's private protection squadron and their black uniforms and red armbands there were regular civilian Nazis who didn't fight in the military who ran banks and factories and newspapers and wore suits and ties and Nazi pens and then there was me Michael o Shaughnessy wearing my brown long-sleeve shirt black shorts white knee socks and black hiking boots polished to a shine and just like the SS the most fearsome killers in all the land I wore a red armband with a big black swastika in the center of it the hooked cross symbol the Nazis plastered all over everything I wore the uniform of the Hitler Youth Germany's version of the Boy Scouts because I was a Nazi too or at least I was pretending to be more cake the Nazi next to me asked offered me another slice light from the chandelier glinted on the silver skull pin on his collar sure Thanks I said that's very kind of you I remembered to smile even though it took effort I hated pretending to like these people hated pretending to agree with their awful hatred of the Jews hated pretending I wanted them to win the war and conquer the world but I smiled because I had to if they ever discovered I wasn't really one of them my family and I would disappear into a concentration camp never to be seen or heard from again your German is so good the woman on my other side told me she was the wife of a captain in the German army if I didn't know your father was the Irish ambassador I would think you grew up here in Berlin I sagged in my chair I heard this every time my family attended one of these dinners I wasn't exactly the blue-eyed blond Gared Aryan ideal but with my flawless German accent and my brown hair that fell like a mop into my brown eyes I could pass for at an average German boy any day I wasn't proud of it but it was definitely useful Michael's always had a good head for languages my father said in German he said across from me at the table my mother two seats down from him we've only been here for six years but he already speaks better German than I do 1937 that was the year my father was named Irish ambassador to Germany and we moved from London where he'd been stationed to Berlin it was 1943 now and I was 13 years old things had changed so much in those six years Berlin had been a wonderland when I first arrived all towering columns with eagle statues on top and red flags fluttering from every building and parades 10,000 people strong Hitler was already the Chancellor of Germany and the Nazis his political party were well in control Germany wasn't at war yet and not everybody was a Nazi back then but it was hard to argue with their success everywhere I'd looked I'd seen faces of full of smiles and laughter but then overnight the party had ended not the Nazi Party they had only gotten stronger the other party the feeling of unbounded German cheerfulness was gone I'd finally seen the horror behind the smiles and so had the rest of the world what happened that one night still haunted me Michael's always had an exceptional memory haven't you son masa and breaking into my thoughts it's true my father said Michael reads in German tells jokes in German I think he even dreams in German the adults around us at the table gave him a polite chuckle died the diplomat doing what he did best his mustache widened as he beamed at me but the eyes that peered at me over his glasses weren't smiling they were reminding me to smile to be friendly to play my part I picked up my glass of grape juice and took a drink to hide my frown you are a better German than some Germans the Nazi who had offered me cake said his name was Trumbauer and his rank within the SS was obersturmführer which meant senior assault leader he was a tall thin man with slicked back jet-black hair and a nose like a parrot's beak just today we raided the home of a German couple who were hiding a Jew in their attic right here in Berlin he shook his head as if he couldn't believe the stupidity of some people how did you know they were hiding a Jew the woman next to me asked ss obersturmfuhrer Trumbauer cut out a bite of cake with his fork and lifted it their son reported them I shuddered their own son ratting them out to the secret police I couldn't imagine ever doing something like that to my own parents what happened to them I asked mm-hmm ss obersturmfuhrer Trumbauer said swallowing his cake oh the Germans were taken into protective custody at Dachau of course the Jew was shot while trying to escape the ss obersturmfuhrer 'he's words rattled me and i knocked over my glass trying to set it back down it struck the rim of my plate and shattered sending glass and grape juice everywhere i caught my reflection in every one of the tiny shards half a dozen little michael o'Shaughnessy's looking up at me in horror suddenly I was back again on that Berlin Street that night four years ago when everything had changed when I'd finally learned what monsters the Nazis really were