PREAMBLE
It is important to non-Jews as well as to Jews. Any nation which permits a minority to live in fear of persecution is a nation which invites disaster.
—PROFESSOR L. B. NAMIER
Fade in.
Time: July 1938, 9:00 P.M.
Exterior: An assembly hall in Depression-era America. From inside, we hear the muffled sounds of laughter and shouting. A party. Perhaps a celebration. For an instant, we see a small cluster of men outside the hall, faces darkened with burnt cork, maybe a dozen of them, dressed in dark clothes and clinging to the shadows. They move with silent steps. A tracking shot takes us through a side window for a peek inside the hall, where we see what has to be eight hundred Nazis, with their Hitler haircuts and Hitler uniforms, crammed in like riders on a rush-hour subway car, sweating through their brown shirts in the stifling heat. Though perspiring plentifully, they remain kempt to the extreme. We see a close-up of a swastika pin on one man’s brown lapel.
Interior: We see the Nazis in greater detail now, a montage of faces, ruddy and dim. The men speak in guttural voices, loud with inebriation and emboldened by their numbers. Some wave around copies of Mein Kampf as if they are magic swords.
Along the rear wall, behind the podium, hangs a red banner with a black swastika on it. Beside it, slightly smaller and hung lower, is Old Glory, the Stars and Stripes of the United States of America.
A uniformed man stands at a lectern, trying in vain to call the boisterous meeting to order. Behind him are two framed portraits, one of Adolf Hitler, the other—slightly smaller—of George Washington.
Pan to the lobby, just inside the front doors, one side of which is a bar where German lager is pouring freely, quaffed in giant gulps. The backs of soft, pink hands wipe foam from truncated mustaches.
The lights dim for a moment, letting those at the bar know that the meeting is about to begin. There is a move to enter the meeting room, but gridlock stops the men. Many will have to listen from the lobby.
Exterior: We see the cluster of shadowy men more clearly now. There are more than we thought before, perhaps three dozen, breaking up into groups, one in front of the hall, one on either side, covering all three exits.
Their pockets bulge ominously. Some are holding weapons in their hands: sawed-off pool cues, blackjacks, baseball bats. If there was one thing an American Jew is bound to learn, whether or not he makes it out of grammar school, it is how to swing a baseball bat.
We see a close-up of one man putting brass knuckles onto the fingers of his right hand.
Look closely and you can see that some of those tough guys have had their pictures in the paper—a strike force of underworld soldiers, bosses, and well-known prizefighters. Look, there’s the former bootleg king himself, air boxing in anticipation.
The three groups enter the hall simultaneously. They don’t get far inside before they hit the gridlock, and the action commences suddenly, like a fizzy chemical reaction. The crowd loosens as frightened Nazis flee out the front and side exits.
The scene instantly transforms into a seething turmoil of angry, fighting men. Teeth shatter, jaws dislocate, bruises and welts rise like sudden volcanoes.
The Nazis are getting by far the worst of it. Crimson stains blotch crisp brown shirts. Folding chairs fly through the air.
In a side hallway running alongside the main room is a glass display case filled with group photographs and trophies in commemoration of long-forgotten achievements, a display case that abruptly acquires a spiderweb of cracks when struck by a Nazi’s sloping forehead. Half-crazed with pain and fear, blood now streaming down his face, the Nazi stumbles and falls.
As the savagery escalates, a man at the podium yells into a microphone, “Halt! Halt!”
Through broken lips, a German American asks, “Who are these invaders? Who has ruined us?”
“Call us the true Americans!” a man with a rubber truncheon says with a toothy grin.
“Whenever you Jew-haters get together,” says another, examining his bloody knuckles, “we will be on the scene in a flash and send you to the hospital!” With that, he socks a Nazi across the jaw with a devastating right hand, sending his foe to the floor in a heap.
The Nazi at the podium is shoved aside, and a gangster takes the microphone. “Look, look! This is what we do to Hitler’s clowns!”