Crossing Hitler

by Benjamin Carter Hett
published in 2008


I'm pretty much the average guy walking down the street. My childhood has been pretty much the same as the average guy. Hans Litten is the not the average man, he wasn't even the average kid. He was a child prodigy one could say. Litten as a child, had an amazing memory and “could hold in his memory everything he had ever read in his memory, and he could recite hour on hour of the works of favorite authors, such as Rainer Maria Rilke. That is incredible. Litten could very much well be an actor at his age because of his memory alone. If I could memorize things as easily as he could, I'm sure life would be much easier for me. I could memorize all the formulas I would ever have to know just by looking at a piece of paper a few times. Why stop there? I could also memorize all the steps to writing a good essay. I lack skill in the art of essay writing and my memory of the key elements to essays could make me understand how good essays are made. There is no question that Hans Litten was extraordinary, but there were consequences from his choice in the course of his actions. Those actions caused him to get hated my a dictator and then sent to a concentration camp.