My first job after getting out of photo school was at Vander Veen Photography.
The studio was owned by David Vander Veen, who was one of the most likeable guys I've ever met. So much so that he didn't like to have to deal with employee issues. Instead, he left that dirty deed to his girlfriend, Gabrielle.
Gabrielle brought some impressive credentials to running what would become a multi-million dollar business: she was a former model, attractive as they come, and very sexy. Plus, she'd worked previously for two years as a dental hygienist.
I suspect she learned her management skills from reading the SS training manual that her father brought with him when he and his wife moved to America from Germany after WWII.
Gabrielle was more than proud of her Germanic heritage; she regarded anyone who wasn't German as almost sub-human. At the end of my nine-year stint there, we had a full crew of photographers, assistants, etc. I was the only one who wasn't German, a fact that she took no small pleasure reminding me of.
As manager of the studio, it was part of my job to interview and recommend job applicants. Once I was interviewing a photographer who had worked extensively for National Geographic in Israel. That's a pretty hefty resume.
She walked into the room, looked at him, then waved me into her office.
"No n*ggers, no sp*cs, no Jews," she said. There was no emotion in her voice, no inflection, nothing. Just "no."
Gabrielle wanted to help keep the world populated with Germans by having children of her own.
To his credit, David thought it might be a good idea to test her child-rearing abilities by getting her a dog. It was a yippy little Yorkshire Terrier. It didn't take long before everyone hated that little ankle-biter.
Let's just say that dog-training wasn't one of her strong suits. I once saw her throw the dog into a snowbank. When I asked why she did that, she said that she didn't want the dog to grow up to be a sissy.
If they went to the movies, Gabrielle would either lock the dog in the car trunk, or just stuff it in her purse.
Apparently, dog-throwing and such fell within David's definition of good mothering skills. They got married.
The marriage sealed David's fate, my fate, and the fate of the entire business, much like Hitler becoming Chancellor.
It was only a week or so after the wedding that she said to me, and very coldly, "this is my studio now, and I'm going to run it my way."
Then came the proud day when she announced that there was going to be a little Nazi coming in nine months.
The first step was to hire a nanny, as Gabrielle didn't want to deal with things like changing diapers or feeding the kid. You know, all that motherhood stuff.
The nanny was--surprise!--an older German woman, Doris, who had grown up in Berlin in the 1930's and 1940's. She had a glass eye, but I could never remember whether it was the right or the left, which made me uncomfortable when talking to her: was she looking at me, or at the ceiling?
One of Doris's first tasks was to teach little Adam to speak German. I tried to assist in that effort as often as possible by teaching him German swear words.
Sometime in the early 1980's, one of the TV networks ran a mini-series on Hitler. It was a popular topic of conversation in the employee lunchroom.
But not for Doris. Upon listening to our lunch table discussions, she said, "Everybody in Europe hated the Jews. At least Hitler had the courage to do something about it."
I was shocked, but I didn't say anything.
And certainly not to Gabrielle.
