'A beautiful woman,' he said.

'I'll tell her you said so,' I said. 'It will please her immensely.'

'About the speech by Abraham Lincoln' he said.

'Sir — ?' I said.

'There are phrases in here that might be used most impressively in dedications of German military cemeteries,' he said. 'I haven't been happy at all, frankly, with most of our funeral oratory. This seems to have the extra dimension I've been looking for. I'd like very much to send this to Hitler.'

'Whatever you say, sir,' I said.

'Lincoln wasn't a Jew, was he?' he said.

'I'm sure not,' I said.

It would be very embarrassing to me if he turned out to be one,' he said.

'I've never heard anyone suggest that he was,' I said.

'The name Abraham is very suspicious, to say the least,' said Goebbels.

'I'm sure his parents didn't realize that it was a Jewish name,' I said. 'They must have just liked the sound of it. They were simple frontier people. If they'd known the name was Jewish, I'm sure they would have called him something more American, like George or Stanley or Fred.'

Two weeks later, the Gettysburg Address came back from Hitler. There was a note from der Fuehrer himself stapled to the top of it. 'Some parts of this,' he wrote, 'almost made me weep. All northern peoples are one in their deep feelings for soldiers. It is perhaps our greatest bond.'

Strange I never dream of Hitler or Goebbels or Hoess or Goering or any of the other nightmare people of the world war numbered 'two.' I dream of women, instead.

I asked Bernard Mengel, the guard who watches over me while I sleep here in Jerusalem, if he had any clues as to what I dreamed about.

'Last night?' he said.

'Any night,' I said.

'Last night it was women,' he said. 'Two names you said over and over.'

'What were they?' I said.

'Helga was one,' he said.