FFF - Dita’s Bear

Frank Sinatra-like voice narrating......

Before the summer of ’39 in Berlin you might know Dita as “the Vivian Leigh of Germany, except with seductive ‘smoky hazy’ blue eyes slightly different from the violet eyes of the Gone with the Wind star.”

For a boy from Hoboken, studying film in Europe, she represented beauty and intrigue beyond what I could comprehend.  What I didn’t know was that she owed her beautiful dark hair to a maternal grandmother named Orenstein making Nazi Germany an unsafe place.

At the time she was protected by her sometimes lover General Henning von Tresckow.

But on that sunny afternoon the general was far away and I was a flower she picked on a whim; a student who had the enviable task of a photo shoot to promote a hopeful star.  And just charismatic enough to temp her into that naughty picture that is now my only image from a passionate afternoon at a Bavarian Inn.

Years later I learned that her lover took his life after trying to save the lives of others and perhaps charmed into the hope of saving her as well.

I don’t know what became of Dita but her beauty is imprinted onto my soul and the passion of that afternoon is always playing in the cinema of my memories.