Hitler Made Me a Jew by Nadia Gould

searching for handsome escorts. We were more interested in showing off than in pursuing the real thing. The search itself was the excitement. We laughed and had thrills looking at possibilities, or impossibilities, and imagining. This was much more satisfying than if we had found somebody. We were window-shopping. At curfew, we would get back in the nick of time and laugh ourselves to sleep, exhausted and fulfilled.
    The day the atomic bomb exploded in Hiroshima, we had picked up two toothless soldiers on the boardwalk in Long Branch. They were cooks at Fort Dix, and they told us: “The war is over.” Gloria and I laughed hysterically, left them and ran and ran. They were too ugly, and the news they gave us empowered us to be mean to them. Everything was yet to come for us: life was full of promises. We were sixteen.
    That summer also stands out for me because one day I heard the counselors talking about entering someone in a beauty contest. I was shocked to hear them mention me as a possible contestant. It sent all kinds of new emotions down my spine. I had thought that I had a terrible figure—I was still under the judgment of Luba about my lack of beauty. I began wearing a bikini, which was rare in those days; and I gave up my coat in the summer.
    In my last year in high school, I saw an ad in P.M. , a liberal daily newspaper. The only newspaper I read and loved. The ad asked for counselors to work in the first co-racial camp in America. I replied with the list of my camp experiences. Dr. Patrick, the owner of this co-racial camp, asked me to come for an interview. We met in his office in Harlem—my first visit to Harlem.
    Dr. Patrick was unusually good-looking with light tan skin, blue eyes and curly short hair, gray on the sides. He spoke with a hushed voice, so low I had to pay close attention. I was intimidated, but he put me at ease and told me about the camp: “It’s in the Catskill Mountains in Roscoe, New York, an experimental camp, a co-racial camp—the first of its kind in the States. You’ll have to attend our training sessions. I want the camp workers to know one another and to know everything about the campers and their families. This is meaningful work. I want it to succeed!”
    I couldn’t believe my luck to be even considered for a significant job like this at Camp Willowemoc. I agreed to attend the training sessions and do as much work as necessary. I told Dr. Patrick that my friend Joan might be interested. “Good,” he said. Joan decided to go with me and agreed it would be a fulfilling job and a worthy cause for us.
    We met new, dedicated people, black and white. Dr. Patrick led awe-inspiring meetings. He talked to us, and we talked back to him as we sat on the floor in a circle. This was my first participation in a democratic exchange of ideas.
    By the time we settled in camp all the counselors were friends. I was the counselor for the small boys on the hill. The hill had two sides, a side for the boys and a side for the girls. All the boys had men counselors except the boys in my tent. That was because they were only seven-years-old and Dr. Patrick thought they would fare better with a girl. My boys were openly disappointed at having me as their counselor. They wanted a man, and they told me so. To make up for this and have them save face on the hill, I promised I would look extra tough in public. When the campers in the neighboring tents teased my boys because I was a girl on the boy’s side, I went through a fit of anger and screamed at my boys so hard the surrounding tents had to agree I was the toughest, meanest counselor on the hill.
    Everything was going on well until the counselor of the nearby tent asked that I take one of his boys into my group. He had problems with him, and he thought it might be better for the boy to be with a younger group. Dr. Patrick and his nurse authorized the move, and I had no choice. They told me: “This boy is a