Winter, p.64
Winter, page 64
But today, with mugs of hot tea in their hands and the door closed against the awful Berlin cold, they were all in a good mood. Volkmann looked round at them. They were good men, although none of them had had what he would regard as proper dental care. They stood in the shed behind the mortuary that afternoon talking about the Russian advance – or, rather, about the rumours of it, for none of them had heard anything about the Red Army’s crossing of the Oder on the German radio at first hand. Perhaps some had heard the BBC, but none would admit to it, even to these close friends and fellow sufferers.
What would they do if the Russians got here, to Berlin? It was still ‘if’, despite the closeness of the enemy. ‘The Russians are barbarians,’ said Dr Weiss, who had a cousin in the army. ‘They will kill everyone if they get here.’
‘Not us,’ said the professor, ‘not Jews.’ The revolution in Russia had been founded upon the intellect and dynamism of the Jews. ‘The Red Army will not harm Jews.’
‘How will they know who are Jews?’ asked Dr Weiss.
‘We must not be afraid,’ said Benjamin the rabbi. He was the last rabbi alive and free in the whole of Berlin. For all he knew, he was the last surviving rabbi in the whole of Germany. He was always cheerful.
It was while they were talking that Boris went to the metal lockers in the side room where the men kept their street clothes. He unlocked the door of his locker and reached inside for a brown paper parcel. They watched him in silence as he laboriously untied the string around the parcel. Inside it was what appeared to be a bundle of bright-red cloth. He took it by one edge and, holding it high, let the other end fall to the floor.
There was a gasp of surprise, and of fear, too, when they saw what he displayed. It was a full-size red flag, complete with hammer and sickle.
‘Where did you get this?’ asked Dr Weiss.
‘I made it,’ said Boris.
There was no laughing at his accent now. Weiss leaned over and touched the hem of the flag as if it might explode. ‘You made it?’
They could all see now that it had been assembled from small pieces of cloth sewn together with remarkable skill. The hammer-and-sickle insignia was put together from bright-yellow cloth that shone like gold. Thousands of tiny stitches had gone into the effort. It was a labour of love, and the professor respectfully said so.
‘When they come, we will fly it from the flagpole,’ said Boris.
‘It’s a labour of love,’ repeated the professor.
‘They’ll know then,’ said Boris.
‘Put it away quickly,’ said Benjamin the rabbi, who was by common consent the voice of authority and wisdom. ‘Good work, Boris. Now put it away until we need it.’
‘Good work, Boris,’ said the others. There was a new respect in their voices. Who would have guessed that such a slow lugubrious fellow could have fashioned that magnificent flag in secret, and brought it here without their knowing?
But Issac Volkmann now thought he saw a reason for the Mischling’s exaggerated fears, and his change of name. He guessed that Boris Somló had been an active member of the Communist Party in Austria before the Anschluss. If that was the case, his fears made sense.
‘It doesn’t look like gold’
For any superstitious Nazi like Fritz Esser, Friday, April 13, 1945, fulfilled its awful promise. The U.S. Army was across the Berlin Dessau autobahn, and from Bendlerstrasse there came the order to destroy the army’s two explosives factories, which were imminently threatened by the American advance. These were the army’s last two powder factories; there would be no more ammunition for the German guns.
Berlin was a maze of fires and bombed buildings. The Chancellery was badly damaged – Hitler was in the bunker – and in the nearby Adlon Hotel, Louis Adlon walked through scorched carpeting, shattered mirror, and broken brickwork to see what might be salvaged of what had once been the most magnificent hotel in Europe. Potsdamer Platz was unrecognizable, its trees gone and surrounding hotels and offices gutted. The famous Messel façade of Wertheims department store was no more. Most of the ministries had already begun to move their documents and personnel out of Berlin. Hitler’s personal staff had gone to the Obersalzberg to prepare for his arrival there on April 20, his fifty-sixth birthday. A cake was made ready: Adolf Hitler loved cakes.
The morning of Friday, April 13, dawned blood-red. The RAF squadrons that had lit up the skies with marker flares, and the ground with their phosphorus bombs and high explosive, had gone. In the street Fritz Esser, in his big six-wheel Mercedes, steered carefully around the huge mountains of old rubble and fresh wreckage. He was on his way to pick up Pauli Winter. Public transport could no longer be relied upon, although the efforts of the transport workers were almost superhuman. Esser’s car passed a large group of children – fourteen-, fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds – straggling along Keith Strasse towards their homes in badly damaged Schöneberg. It had been a bad night: some were to find their homes had disappeared. They were dressed in absurdly ill-fitting uniforms and carried helmets too heavy for them to wear comfortably on their heads. They were the schoolchildren lately assigned to crew the heavy anti-aircraft guns in Tiergarten. The last of the children were crossing Cornelius Bridge. Under it the Landwehr Canal was dry, the machinery that controlled its flow bombed and useless.
Fritz Esser stopped his car and backed up. He felt a sudden impulse to give the children something: they looked so pathetic. They stared at the car – it was the same model that the Führer had used in the days when he could be seen riding through the city. They realized that Esser must be a high-ranking official. They grouped around him respectfully. In the boot of the car was a large box of chocolates that he’d obtained for Inge. He gave them to the children and they ate them ravenously. Some of them had never seen chocolate before. One pale-faced fifteen-year-old, discovering the taste for the first time, laughed as if someone had played a joke upon him, as, in a way, the little Austrian corporal had played a joke upon all of them. Fritz laughed, too. What else was there to do except cry?
‘Goebbels is still sitting in his office in Wilhelmsplatz, drinking champagne,’ said Fritz. He was in the car with Pauli, outside the Interior Ministry building. They were waiting for the offices to open and the staff to arrive. ‘He phoned the Führer and told him that it was written in the stars that mid-April would see a change in our fortunes. He says the death of Roosevelt corresponds to the death of the Tsarina during the Seven Years’ War, and it will bring victory to the Führer as it did to Frederick the Great.’
‘I’m sure that went down well,’ said Pauli. The doorman came out and opened up the ministry at exactly 8:30 a.m. and an organ grinder began playing in the hope of getting a few coins from the office workers.
‘He’s had someone dig out the Führer’s horoscope for January 30, 1933. It says the same thing.’
‘Does Goebbels believe in all that horoscope stuff?’ said Pauli.
‘Goebbels is shit-scared of the Russkis,’ said Fritz. ‘He’s doing everything he can to convince himself that they’ll never get here.’
‘But Goebbels is an educated man.’
‘Goebbels believes his own propaganda,’ said Fritz. It cast a new light on the Reichsminister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Pauli had always thought Goebbels, with his virulent anti-Semitism, was a cynic like Fritz.
‘I never realized that,’ Pauli coughed. They were both smoking, and the interior of the car was blue with tobacco smoke.
‘They are all mad,’ said Fritz. ‘That’s why I’m clearing out.’
‘I thought you were going to the Obersalzberg with the Führer.’
‘He’ll never go. I should have seen that before. He’ll stay down inside that damned bunker until the Russian tanks roll over us.’
‘I thought he’d arranged to be there for his fifty-sixth birthday.’
‘That’s what he said, but he’ll not go now. I should have realized what he really intended when Eva Braun arrived here back in January. He usually keeps her locked up in the Berghof.’
‘Who’s Eva Braun?’ said Pauli.
‘The Führer’s mistress: his fancy woman.’
‘Mistress? The Führer? Are you sure?’
‘It’s been a well-kept secret, hasn’t it? He’s had that lovely little piece tucked away in the Berghof for twelve years or so, yet very few people know.’
‘Where will you go?’
‘South. Once the American spearheads join the Russians, we’ll never get through.’
‘Through to where?’
‘I don’t know . . . Switzerland, or Italy. I want false papers. Do you think Lothar Koch could fix something for me?’
‘I should think so; he’s done it for others, and for himself. He has papers to show he’s been a clerk for the last twelve years, and a hotel reception clerk before that. Who knows, someone might believe him. Go up and see him now. He’s been sleeping in his office since the S-Bahn stopped.’
‘I want you to come, too, Pauli.’
‘I can’t, Fritz.’
‘Wait until you see what I’ve got.’ Fritz grinned. ‘Look in the sacks.’ The whole rear seat was taken up by small sacks tied loosely with rope. Pauli grabbed one and looked inside. At first he couldn’t distinguish what was there. It was damned heavy but it looked like scrambled egg – dirty scrambled egg.
‘What is it?’
‘Gold.’
‘Gold? It doesn’t look like gold,’ said Pauli.
‘Teeth and stuff, gold spectacle frames, a lot of junk the SD had stored in the Reichsbank.’
‘How did you get it?’
‘Reichsminister Funk has ordered that all gold, silver, foreign paper money and valuables stored in their vaults be moved south.’
‘Where to?’
‘It’s all being put in salt mines and caves. Hidden away.’
‘And this?’
‘It doesn’t belong to the Reichsbank: it belongs to us. I gave them a receipt on Sicherheitsdienst notepaper. No one cared as long as they had a receipt.’
‘The SD? There will be terrible trouble when they find out, Fritz.’
‘Don’t be so stupid, Pauli.’ He lit a new cigarette from the butt before stubbing it into the ashtray with exaggerated force. ‘It’s all over. And this is what we need to finance us. Reichsmarks are not going to be worth a thing once we stop fighting.’
‘But you’ve stolen it.’
‘Who else needs it? Come along, we’ll share. Feel the weight of it.’
‘Teeth? Gold teeth?’
‘From prisoners who died in the camps.’
‘Ugh!’
‘Don’t go squeamish. You fought in the war, didn’t you?’
‘Prisoners? People who died in the camps? It’s horrible. They stored it in the Reichsbank?’
‘There’s tons of it there. This is all I could manage. Come with me, Pauli. I have plenty of gas for the car.’
‘I have to stay here, Fritz. I have to look after my mama.’ Pauli wound the window down to let some of the smoke out. The sound of the little barrel organ sounded louder.
‘You’ll never have a chance like this again, Pauli. The Russians will kill everyone in the city.’
‘My mother’s too old to go anywhere.’
Fritz didn’t argue that point. He had no intention of taking Pauli’s mother anywhere. Hell, she must weigh at least fifty kilos, and think what that would be worth in gold.
Pauli closed the neck of the sack. He found it disturbing to look at these pathetic and grotesque bits and pieces now that he knew what they were. He tied the sack carefully and pushed it aside. ‘Thanks again, Fritz, but I have to stay here with her. There’s no one to look after her now that Papa is dead.’
‘I’ll need a gun, Pauli.’
‘I thought you had one.’
‘Something more effective – a machine gun.’ They looked at each other and Fritz said, ‘People will kill for this much gold.’
‘Will they, Fritz?’
‘Not here in the city . . . not yet. But I’m going south, where the fighting is.’ People were arriving for work. A bus stopped and a dozen or more clerks got off it. It was amazing how people just carried on, despite the imminent collapse of the nation.
‘See Koch. Tell him to phone the armoury at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse – he knows who to speak with – and say I said it was all right for you to have whatever you want.’
‘I knew you’d be able to fix it, Pauli.’ He tugged at the steering wheel, as if impatient to start.
‘Then it’s goodbye?’
‘Yes. I’m off as soon as I get documents and a gun.’ Fritz tapped ash from the end of his cigarette in the little ashtray. It was an unusual gesture for Fritz, who usually let ash fly where it might.
‘We had some good times, Fritz.’
‘And we’ll have lots more, Pauli. It will work out, you’ll see. I’ll write to you at your parents’ house. Okay?’
‘Is Inge going with you?’
‘She left yesterday. By train. I managed to get her a seat and papers. I’ll meet her in Mittenwald on the weekend.’
‘Tell her good luck, too.’ Pauli opened the car door and got out. ‘Goodbye, Fritz.’ The organ was playing ‘Lily Marlene’. Pauli had lots of work to do. Perhaps it would be more sensible to get false papers and flee, the way Fritz was doing, but for Pauli work came first. It always had.
‘A time to be brave’
On April 20, Adolf Hitler’s birthday was celebrated in Berlin, and all the top Nazi leaders were with him in the bunker: Göring, Himmler, Ribbentrop, Bormann and Goebbels, as well as the senior military commanders. But that night many of them left the city. Göring, in a long caravan of motor vehicles, was taking some choice pieces of plundered art to the Obersalzberg, while Himmler headed north to Lübeck, where he was to discuss peace terms in the Swedish consulate.
Such extra space made available in the Führerbunker meant that the entire Goebbels family was invited to move in from their damaged house in the Wilhelmstrasse garden. Two days later, Russian tanks broke through the outer defences and got into the city limits. By this time artillery shells were falling in the centre of Berlin.
The men who worked at the Weissensee cemetery continued to go to work even when there was German field artillery in nearby Berliner Allee firing at targets in the open ground at Wartenberg, to the north of the freight railway lines. The shots were falling in the vegetable patches, and the loose earth made great black clouds as each one exploded in the dry dirt.
‘Infantry,’ said Dr Volkmann. The others listened respectfully. In the first war he’d won the Iron Cross first class while serving on the Western Front. ‘High-explosive shells; and that sort is used against soft targets. Russian infantry.’
‘Poor devils,’ said Benjamin the rabbi.
The poor devils must have been radioing for help, for hardly were the words out of his mouth when great fireballs began arcing across the dark sky, their trajectories ending in the approximate position of the German guns. The mysterious fiery missiles made loud screaming sounds as they came racing through the air.
‘Counterbattery fire,’ said Dr Volkmann. ‘Rockets. They call them “Stalin Organs”. I think we’d better get back to the mortuary. There must be tanks behind the infantry. One of the guns has started to fire armour piercing rounds. Can you hear it?’
‘The infantry will be behind the tanks, surely,’ said the professor, who never liked to be left out of a conversation too long.
‘No, no, no,’ said Volkmann. ‘Infantry first, then tanks.’ He didn’t intend to turn it into the sort of academic discussion that the professor enjoyed. ‘I’m getting back.’
Boris Somló had been carrying his big red flag wrapped in brown paper. Now he untied the string and was ready to unfold it. The others stayed close to him.
Dr Volkmann asked if anyone was coming with him.
‘We have to face them sometime, Dr Volkmann,’ said Benjamin the rabbi.
‘Better here in the open,’ said Dr Weiss. ‘Perhaps they’ll give us some form of laissez-passer that will keep us safe. By tomorrow everyone will be clamouring for special treatment.’ He looked at Boris. There was a hard, determined expression on his face, a look the others had never seen before.
‘I’m going back,’ said Volkmann. ‘Who’s coming with me?’ No one answered.
‘This is a time to be brave,’ said Benjamin the rabbi.
As Benjamin said it, Boris moved forward, with the flag thrown over his shoulder like a blanket roll. The others followed him, heading for the railway lines. Boris had decided that the embankment would be a good place to confront the oncoming Soviet soldiers. They would have enough time to see the flag if it was draped across the embankment. By tacit consent Boris had become the leader of the group.
Dr Volkmann went back. He didn’t want to confront the Red Army soldiers. He wanted to get back to his wife and baby son.
Volkmann hurried along Berliner Allee, hoping for a lift into the centre of town, but the only traffic on the street was the army: trucks filled with infantry, some ten-centimetre guns being towed behind big half-tracks, and five tanks coming down Virchow Strasse from the Friedrichs Hain, which had been made into a vehicle park for the army. The tracks were damaging the road surface, but it didn’t matter now, he supposed. Nothing mattered. When he got to the Horst Wessel Hospital on Landsberger Allee he saw men strung up on the lampposts. The bodies were swaying in the breeze and on each one a hastily scrawled white card was tied. It said, ‘I deserted my post and paid the price’. He’d heard that there were ‘flying tribunals’ serving out summary death sentences in the streets, but this was the first evidence he’d seen of their work. He shuddered and hurried on, skirting round a place near the Alexanderplatz where a bus had fallen into an exposed section of the underground railway. Teno crews – specially trained and equipped engineers – had erected lifting tackle and were working to release people trapped in the twisted wreckage.
On the west side of the wide intersection two streetcars had been shifted off their tracks to improvise a barrier. Hitler Youth and elderly men wearing old Imperial Army greatcoats, ‘Africa-Corps’ caps, and Volkssturm armbands were filling the streetcars with rubble and bits of broken paving. In the middle of the road were three dead horses and the pieces of an army wagon scattered around the shallow crater that marked the place where the stray round from some Red Army gun had found them.
