by David Young
Tilsner began to protest. To retell the story about how he had saved Verbier, how he was only obeying orders. How he hadn’t been a Nazi – that teenagers had no choice but to be members of the Nazi Youth.
Müller raised her hand. ‘I’m not interested, Comrade Hauptmann. It’s over. We’re finished.’
*
The chance to talk to Jäger alone wasn’t immediately forthcoming, so Müller took matters into her own hands. ‘Could you leave us for a few minutes please, Comrade Hauptmann?’ She wasn’t going to call him Werner, she wasn’t going to bend and be friendly to the two men. She was resolute in what she planned to do.
‘I hope you two haven’t fallen out, Karin,’ said Jäger, trying to lighten the mood.
‘It’s no concern of yours whether we have or haven’t. What I want to know from you is how much you knew of what Winkler – or Pfeiffer, if you prefer – was up to.’
Jäger protested his innocence. Of course he would, thought Müller. He claimed Winkler had been acting on his own, a rogue Stasi officer trying desperately to cover his own back. Killing the others in a way meant to mimic the barn massacre, creating fires that produced smoke so that death – from asphyxiation and smoke inhalation, rather than burns – would be long and lingering, lashing their hands so they couldn’t get away. Ronnebach had only freed himself thanks to burning off his wrist bindings, burning himself in the process. But he had then found that his escape was blocked, just as escape routes from the barn at Isenschnibbe had been blocked by the SS guards, and – in his small way – by Pfeiffer, a.k.a Winkler. Everything had been carefully constructed so that the finger of suspicion would point at Verbier, as it did. And more importantly, to get rid of witnesses to his own involvement. If she took this fine tale at face value, then Jäger himself was exonerated. Only she knew that Jäger . . . Harald Scholz, like Tilsner, could have chosen to play no part in the massacre at all, could have refused to guard the convoy, refused to have lain in wait, guns aimed, in case prisoners tried to break free from the death trap. Others had refused. Jäger and Tilsner hadn’t.
It sickened her, but at the same time she knew it was something she could use to her advantage. In the realms of the Stasi, Jäger was still a powerful man. Perhaps even more so now that Winkler was out of they way. The Stasi colonel might even get promoted to take the place of the man whose suicide he’d faked.
She felt no guilt as she reached into her pocket for her natural mother’s metal box that she always kept close to her.
‘Remember this?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘And what’s inside it?’ The box had contained a photo of her teenage mother cradling Müller as a baby, before she was taken away for adoption by the Russian authorities who controlled this part of occupied Germany in the immediate years after the end of the Second World War. She’d already removed that photograph to a safe place. The box also contained the metal dog tag belonging to a Red Army soldier – the man Müller believed was her natural father. Several months ago, she’d asked Jäger to help her trace him when they met at the Soviet war memorial during the Guben medical experiments case. He’d failed to provide her with any information – though Müller remained convinced that Jäger could discover it if he wanted.
‘Yes,’ said Jäger. ‘But I haven’t had the chance to do anything about it yet.’
Müller gave an ironic laugh. ‘I asked you last year. You’ve had plenty of time; you just haven’t had the inclination. This time I’m not asking.’ She opened the box, and removed a piece of paper on which the details from the dog tag were written. ‘Here are the details again. Make sure this time you get the information I want, and if my father is still alive, make sure you arrange all the necessary visas, tickets, and travel documents to allow me to visit him, wherever he is. Get one of your messengers to deliver them to me at my apartment in Strausberger Platz.’
‘That’s a big ask.’
‘As I say, it’s not a request. If you don’t do it, then a dossier about your wartime activities, and the fact that you were a Nazi and yet you’re now a senior officer in the Stasi, will be made known to the West German press.’
Jäger took the piece of paper with the details, folded it, and put it in his wallet.
He didn’t give Müller a reply.
He wouldn’t even meet her eyes.
*
Müller left the bar soon afterwards, and didn’t bother to say goodbye to either of the men. If she could help it, she had no intention of seeing them ever again. Neither would be missed. She wanted to move on with her life.
She had one more person she wanted to meet before returning to Helga and the twins. But first she stopped at her office at Keibelstrasse.
It was late now, and the typists had long gone home. Müller loaded a sheet of Volkspolizei headed notepaper into the Optima electric typewriter and began to compose the letter she needed to write. The words came easily, and she typed slowly and carefully – not wanting to have to use correction fluid and go over anything again. It seemed a natural process. It seemed the right thing to do.
*
Reiniger was still in his office.
‘You always seem to catch me at the end of the day, Karin. Perhaps we both need to go home to our families sooner. Family life is just as important as work life, I’m sure you agree. And I’m glad all this Gardelegen stuff has finally been sorted out.’
Müller shrugged. ‘Was it really sorted out, Comrade Oberst? Our case is over. But I’m sure that the stain on that town, and what happened there at the end of the war will always be there.’
‘You may be right, Karin. But it’s important we remember, and make sure a cold-blooded massacre like that never happens again.’
She sighed. ‘Unfortunately, once again no one is facing justice. No one is on trial.’
‘That isn’t your fault. You did all you could. The culprit committed suicide. Obviously, given who it was, nothing about the case, or about the murders, can now be made public. But several people can rest easier in their beds at night.’
She stared hard at Reiniger. Perhaps he hadn’t thought about his choice of words. Perhaps he genuinely believed them. They were, of course, true. Several people would indeed rest easier in their beds. There was one problem.
They were all Nazis.
They had all been involved in the horrific massacre at Gardelegen.
Müller could only hope that what they’d done came back to haunt them in their dreams, night after night.
That was her wish for all of those involved, no matter how small their part. And that included Tilsner and Jäger.
She’d been holding the envelope in her hand behind her back. But now she leant forward and pushed it towards Reiniger across his desk.
He frowned. ‘What’s this?’
Müller smiled. She felt a huge weight being lifted from her shoulders. She couldn’t wait to get back to the apartment in Strausberger Platz to smother Jannika and Johannes in kisses, and open a celebratory bottle of Sekt with Helga. Her grandmother had money saved from not paying her rent in Leipzig for well over a year – they could manage on that for a few months. After that, who knew what the future held? But it wasn’t something she worried about. It was something she looked forward to.
Reiniger had started to open the envelope.
Müller turned towards the door without answering.
She glanced back once before she left the room, and watched as Reiniger read her words – the words of her resignation letter – with pursed lips, and ever deepening furrows on his brow.
Her own thoughts had already raced ahead, anticipating the reunion with her little family.
Her own face was creased, too, in a broad smile.
EPILOGUE
Snow lay on the ground in this part of the far north-east, though it was only October. One of the two weekly flights from Moscow had even been cancelled due to a fierce blizzard. These were the first blasts of winter after a few short weeks of summer.
Viewed from the air as they descended over the Chukotka peninsula – almost within touching distance of the United States – the patches of wind-blown snow looked like splatters of white emulsion paint; an abstract explosion over the fast-freezing tundra. Then the bumpy landing on the Ugolny airstrip, and finally – after nearly ten hours – she could stretch her legs. Her marathon journey hadn’t started in Moscow either, but in Berlin – at Schönefeld – on an Interflug Ilyushin Il-18 before the change of plane in the Soviet Union, to another Ilyushin, the much larger Il-62.
The woman felt elated and nervous at the same time. When she’d discovered the address she’d been given corresponded to a Soviet military base in the far north-east, she’d almost given up hope. A citizen of the Republic would never normally be permitted to come here. But now here she was.
The taxi driver didn’t understand her instruction in schoolgirl Russian at first.
‘Anadyr-1,’ she said. ‘I need to you to take me to Anadyr-1.’
‘Anadyr town?’
‘No. Anadyr-1. The military base.’
‘Gudym? The base? I can’t take you there. It’s not permitted.’
The woman got the Russian translation of her authority document from the folder. The driver read it, then shrugged.
‘It’s up to you. But they will stop us at a checkpoint before we get there. And if I get arrested, you will have to pay to cover my wages. I can’t afford to lose a day’s work.’
*
The taxi driver wasn’t arrested, but the woman thought she might be. Instead, after paying the man what seemed a ludicrous amount of her fast-diminishing supply of roubles, the woman was taken to a holding area at the checkpoint and ordered to wait.
Telephone conversations in too-rapid Russian followed, which the woman couldn’t understand. She knew her trump card was the rank of the man she wanted to see. As far as she knew, he was the man in charge. His rank: Podpolkovnik. The equivalent of the German Oberstleutnant. Lieutenant Colonel. She couldn’t imagine there were many more senior in this far-flung place.
After a few minutes, more Red Army soldiers arrived at the checkpoint and she was ordered (at least she felt she was being ordered) into the front of a Soviet Gaz four-wheel-drive. Then they were through the gates, heading towards one of several three-storey concrete buildings lined up in terraces up the low hill which overlooked the base. The soldiers had Kalashnikovs over their shoulders and marched her into a bare office, with just one table and two chairs. Again, she was ordered to wait.
Only a matter of seconds later, a fit, balding, wiry man in perhaps his early fifties, entered the room. The woman got to her feet. She felt her throat constricting, and tried to say all the words she’d rehearsed.
In the end, she didn’t have to. The man approached her, a broad smile on his face, and pulled her into a tight hug. She could feel him trembling just as much as she was, could feel the moisture from his tears as well as the stubble on his cheek rubbing against her skin.
Still holding her, he pulled back slightly, and began to speak in broken German.
‘Karin, Karin. This is the most wonderful day of my life. To meet the daughter – my only daughter, my only child – that I never knew I had.’
GLOSSARY
Anti-Fascist Protection
The euphemistic official East
Barrier
German term for the Berlin Wall
Aussteigen!
Get out!
Autobahn
Motorway
Barkas
East German manufacturer of the B1000, a small delivery van or minibus
Bezirk
District
Boche
A pejorative French term for Germans
BRD
Bundesrepublik Deutschland. West Germany
Compiègne
A WW2 internment and detention camp located in the northern French town of the same name
Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR)
The German Democratic Republic, or DDR for short, the official name for East Germany
Fallschirmjäger
Paratroops
FDGB-Heim
Free German Trade Union holiday residence
Grenzübergang
Border checkpoint
Hauptmann
Captain
Hauptstadt
Capital city (in this book, East Berlin)
Interhotel
East German chain of luxury hotels
K
See Kripo below
Kaffee Mix
‘Coffee’ with 50% made up of ersatz ingredients in response to the 1977 East German coffee crisis
Kameradschaftpolizei
Comrade police force – prisoners who served as guards in labour camps
Kapo
Short form of the above
Keibelstrasse
The People’s Police headquarters near Alexanderplatz – the East German equivalent of Scotland Yard
Kommando
A detachment or detail of slave labourers
Kreisleiter
Nazi Party county leaders – the fourth rank of the Party, below Gauleiter
Kriminalpolizei
Criminal Police or CID
Kriminaltechniker
Forensic officer
Major
The same rank as in English, but pronounced more like My-Yor
Milice
Paramilitary organisation formed by the Vichy regime to combat the French resistance
Ministry for State
The East German secret
Security (MfS)
police, abbreviated to MfS from the German initials, and colloquially known as the Stasi – a contraction of the German name
Mutti
Mum, or Mummy
Oberleutnant
First Lieutenant
Oberst
Colonel
Oma
Grandma, granny
People’s Police
The regular East German state police (Volkspolizei in German)
SA
Sturmabteilung – literally Storm Detachment – a paramilitary wing in Nazi Germany
Scheisse
Shit
See
Lake
SS
Schutzstaffel – literally Protection Squadron – the Nazis’ foremost agency of security, surveillance and terror
Stasi
Colloquial term for the Ministry for State Security (see above)
Tierpark
East Berlin’s Zoo
Unterleutnant
Sub-lieutenant
Vati
Dad, or Daddy
Volkspolizei
See People’s Police above
Vopo
Short form of Volkspolizei, usually referring to uniformed police officers, as opposed to detectives
Wehrmacht
The German armed forces from 1935 to 1946
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Although this novel is a work of fiction, the events up to and including April 1945 are based on historical facts and accounts of the survivors of Mittelbau-Dora, and the Gardelegen and Estedt massacres.
Philippe Verbier and his brothers are fictional characters, but all of the things that happened to them – up until Philippe’s escape – did actually happen according to the handful who survived the massacre. Verbier’s story up to and including 1945 is an amalgamation of some of those experiences.
One of the fullest accounts of the massacre that I used as source material is Dr Karel Margry’s excellent twenty-five-page article in the After the Battle ma
gazine, issue number 111. For life in Mittelbau-Dora and some details about Isenschnibbe, I consulted André Sellier’s superb A History of the Dora Camp – notable not just because it was the first book-length English-language account of conditions there, but also remarkable because Sellier was himself an inmate. Another valuable source for me was The Death Marches – The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide by Daniel Blatman.
What of the perpetrators of this atrocity? The SS officer responsible for the transport of the prisoners from Mittelbau-Dora who ended up at Gardelegen, Erhard Brauny, was tried and sentenced to life in prison. He died in 1950. But the man considered to be the main architect of the massacre, Gerhard Thiele, reportedly escaped on 14 April by disguising himself as a German soldier. He found sanctuary in West Germany using false papers until his death in 1994, aged eighty-five. But his wife continued to live in the GDR – and never gave away the whereabouts of her husband.
Accounts differ, but it’s thought some dozen or so prisoners survived the massacre, hidden under bodies, clinging to rafters or by tunnelling out. They included Poles, Russians and one severely injured Frenchman.
Although the site of the Gardelegen massacre was on territory which became part of the Soviet zone, and then East Germany, I would stress that the 1977 East German police case and investigation is entirely fictional. I thought long and hard about the ethics of bolting a fictional story onto a horrific real-life event. In the end, I concluded that anything that serves to raise the profile of the Gardelegen massacre must be a good thing. If I’m wrong, I apologise.
Despite the fictional nature of the 1970s end of the story, the idea of Nazis being recruited by the Stasi is rooted in reality. For example, Der Spiegel in 2014 published research about Auschwitz SS guard Josef Settnik and how the Stasi made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: his past in the SS would be forgotten if he cooperated with the Ministry for State Security and spied on members of his own Catholic community. There are several other examples. The article quotes Henry Leide of the Rostock branch of the Federal Commissioner for the documents of the State Security Service of the GDR as saying: ‘Nazi perpetrators had a great opportunity in the GDR to get away scot-free if they behaved inconspicuously or cooperated.’