EXCERPT Think about what it would have felt like to be a fourteen-year-old in Germany in the 1930s as the Nazi party was spewing hate and lies and Adolf Hitler was rising in popularity and power.

Rev. John Zehring wrote this —

German Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in 1938, welcomed confirmands – usually fourteen-year-olds – into the full membership of his congregation. Try to imagine what fourteen-year-olds are like: freshly minted teens who are no longer children but not yet adults. They are struggling with their identity, appearance, acceptance, and ideas or worries about their future. They are developing interests in sports, music, art, and hobbies. Friends and peers appear always in the forefront of their minds.

And then, there is their commitment to religion.

I asked a colleague what it was like to teach fourteen-year-olds. He replied, “When you go to a fish market and look down and see those fish lined up on the ice with their mouths open and their eyes bulging out… that’s what it feels like when you begin teaching fourteen-year-olds in church.”

Think about what it would have felt like to be a fourteen-year-old in Germany in the 1930s as the Nazi party was spewing hate and lies and Adolf Hitler was rising in popularity and power. Kids that age were being “persuaded” to join the Hitler Youth – the Hitlerjugend, or HJ, the Nazi-organized youth movement.

— You and I’ll pick up here next Monday.