As we grew into adolescence, the Nazis became more than historical characters. They formed the demonology of our own storytelling. Our comic-book heroes, like Sgt. Rock, fought the Nazis, whose goose-stepping sadism lent itself to boyish parody. At the age of 12, without saber scars or monocles, we could still affect the evil accent of the German commandant or storm trooper.

Mementos of the war were everywhere: in family photo albums, on the shelves of bookstores, on magazine racks, on television in the form of old black-and-white war movies, even in cartoon spoofs. On every block on Long Island, there was a dad who had a drawer filled with war souvenirs, some marked with swastikas.

I always hated this photo, for the obvious reasons. The big ears. The monkey suit. The death-grip of hands with cute little Theresa. She was flower girl and I was ring bearer at the wedding of my Uncle Pete and Aunt Millie. Then one day, more than 30 years after the event, I noticed in the top right corner the face of my Grandma Sadie. The light almost makes that smile beatific. It reveals all you need to know about her feelings for family and children.

So it was with an affable, bookish, towheaded boy -- I'll call him Nicky Lynch -- whose fascination with things German verged on the obsessive. His father had died, we never knew how, and his mother worked. So Nicky's house became a convenient refuge from parental supervision. It was a good playhouse, filled with comic books, war novels, toy soldiers, play pistols and rifles, men's magazines glutted with action stories and girlie photos and lots of cut-out images of the Nazi war machine: German Lugers, Gestapo badges and the "Sieg Heil" salute.

Next to the house, Nicky had built a tree fort. We played in it for days, daring each other to drop to the ground from tree limbs, some more than 15 feet high. We'd yell "Geronimo," paratrooper style, and tumble into piles of crispy leaves to break our fall.

Nicky invited us to stay the night, something common now, but unusual in those days. He told us we could sleep in his tree fort, that he would have lots of good things to eat and drink, and that he was planning a special surprise for us. The offer was too enticing to pass up.

At nightfall, we climbed the ladder up a sycamore tree into Nicky's fortress. It was spacious enough for four of us to fit comfortably. He passed around a cardboard carton of goodies: candy bars, bottles of soda and popsicles. For some reason, my mother disapproved of those double-sticked treats we called "ice pops." Here, outside her influence, I had my fill, taking an outlaw's pleasure in the blue ones that had an unnatural look and taste.

When it was completely dark, Nicky lit a candle in the corner. Its glow illuminated what until now was invisible: a small but elaborate shrine constructed of Nazi images.

We would all pledge ourselves to the Third Reich, he explained. We would have code names: He would be The Fuhrer, and the rest of us could choose from Goering, Goebbels, and Himmler. We would constitute ourselves as a club: The Jew Haters.

And the Jew we would hate most of all was a kid named Ronald. Nicky scribbled Ronald's name on a piece of paper and then scrawled the word "Kike" over it. The word was new, but just the sound of it suggested a terrible meaning.

Nicky took the paper and attached it to his shrine. He explained that Ronald was like all Jews. He had a lot of money, but was cheap. He also had a big nose and a fat ass.

We laughed at the "fat ass" remark.

I continued to gorge myself on candy and blue ice, but did not join the others in their ridicule of Ronald.

I knew Ronald from Boy Scouts. He seemed friendly, but was overweight and odd enough to be excluded from our clique. He lived on my street, and he had invited us once into his house. He had found a record in his parents' room. We listened with delight to a series of off-color jokes and comedy sketches. The one I remember involved a waiter trying to figure out how to remove an olive that had fallen down the front of a lady's low-cut dress.

Beyond that, Ronald meant nothing to me. I held some vague notion that his was the only Jewish family on a street filled with Italian, Irish, and Polish Catholics. But there were many other Jewish families in the area. And, by then, I knew that my own Grandma Sadie was Jewish.

It started to rain, just a drizzle at first, but then more steadily, until water began to drip through the roof of the tree fort. The leak eventually extinguished the candle in front of Nicky's Nazi shrine.

I didn't join the Jew Haters club, but I didn't speak out against it. Maybe I didn't know if this was serious hatred or comic-book hyperbole. Maybe I didn't want anyone to think that I liked Ronald, because I didn't.

But I did learn something. For the first time, I connected German fascism with a specific act of anti-Semitism. I knew some people hated Jews. One of them had spat at my mother and called her "that Jew!" But it had never occurred to me, until that night in the fort, that hatred of Jews could be turned into a system of belief, a club, a kind of religion turned upside-down.

A feeling of deep revulsion swept through me. I felt dizzy, and a wave of nausea passed up from my stomach into my face, resolving itself in a sweaty chill.

The rain had ruined our plans to spend the night. So we climbed down from the fort and headed home, hugging ourselves as we walked quickly through the downpour.

I made it into the house and into the bathroom, shedding my wet clothes and toweling my hair dry.

The junk I had eaten had its revenge. Sickly images of blue food sloshed in my mind. I turned toward the toilet and fell to my knees in a violent sickness. The vomiting came in heaving waves, each more painful and wretched than that before, until all I had consumed that evening had been expelled from my body.

From her bed, my mother heard the sounds of retching.

"What the hell did you eat?" she asked. I was too young to be drunk or hung-over. That would come a few years later.

"It must have been the ice pops."

But I knew in my heart it was something more.