His shoulders sagged as the tension flowed out of him. He enfolded me in his arms, his body trembling, and I knew he was finally shedding all the tears he’d been holding back since the death of his father.
24
As soon as we arrived in Berlin, we visited Captain Snopov at the Soviet Military Administration headquarters in Karlshorst. Although the Soviets had liberated Berlin, it had been agreed that all four Allied liberation forces – Soviet, American, British and French – would govern the capital together, each through their own separate sectors.
Captain Snopov was part of the Soviet team of administrators sent in to create order in the eastern part of the devastated city that the Soviets now controlled, but from what I’d already seen on our journey in, it seemed that they were barely treading water. Little had changed since my nursing days – there were crumbling and blackened ruins everywhere we looked and the streets were filled with scurrying people with shocked or wary expressions. Berliners had always been resilient, but the city had descended into some kind of post-apocalyptic hell and it needed all the help it could get.
Snopov couldn’t believe what had happened with the Commission for Land Reform, but was helpless to overturn its ruling. Instead he offered us work as translators.
‘Just as well you weren’t here any sooner.’ He looked terribly tired with black smudges below his eyes. ‘Berlin’s still recovering from those last terrible days of the war,’ he explained. ‘At first there was no electricity, gas or fresh water. The sewage overflowed and made its way into the waterways and river. Then bodies piled up in the streets along with the uncollected rubbish.’ He shook his head. ‘It was a nightmare. It didn’t take long for disease to spread across the city. Of course we arranged for local residents to be organised into teams to remove rubble from the streets and thoroughfares, and to find housing for those who were homeless. We worked around the clock to get services up and running as quickly as possible so that there was clean water and some power, not to mention organising ration cards, but we didn’t account for the flood of people arriving every day.’ He shrugged his shoulders in helplessness. ‘People are living in bunkers, ruined buildings – even tunnels. Infectious diseases are on the rise again and the sanitation problems don’t seem to be improving quickly enough. We can’t stem the public health issues and now winter’s here I don’t know how many will die because of disease, or simple exposure.’
I was shocked at the state of the city. ‘I have to go back to nursing,’ I said. ‘Even if for only a few months before the baby comes in March. You need all the medical help you can get.’ Although we were now planning our emigration to America, and would likely be gone within six months to a year, Berlin needed the help of every one of its citizens to get back on its feet.
‘Very good,’ said Snopov, nodding. ‘Try the Charité. It was damaged during the bombings, but it’s still the most prestigious hospital in Berlin. They’ll be grateful for someone like you.’
I went to see the senior sisters at the Charité. The German Red Cross had been dissolved, but many of the nurses I had worked with before were still in Berlin.
‘We’re desperate for nurses,’ said one of the sisters I had worked with at Beelitz, as she pushed a trolley down the long corridor. ‘The Soviets have dismissed all staff with Nazi membership or previous dealings with the party.’
‘So you’re recruiting?’
She nodded. ‘We’re lucky here at the Charité. The Soviets consider it an important hospital and some departments have been given new premises.’
‘Aren’t all hospitals important?’
‘You would think so, but many of them have been dismantled, and equipment and supplies sent back to Moscow for reparations. Everything’s remained intact here and department heads continue to run the hospital as they’ve always done.’
‘That’s a relief.’
‘There’s plenty of work. The most pressing problems are the infectious and venereal diseases. Soviet administrators are overseeing the new public health program and clinics have been set up all over the city. Anyone can go to them. We’re still dealing with typhus, dysentery and typhoid fever outbreaks from the refugee camps, not to mention tuberculosis. Then there are the casualties from the building collapses and fires. The majority of the city’s residential areas have been bombed out, and with the flood of displaced Germans from the east, people will live in anything – anywhere – just to have a roof over their heads. We’re short-staffed and the wards are overflowing. There’s a shortage of beds, drugs and equipment and still patients keep coming, but you’re lucky you weren’t here a few months ago when it was hell on earth.’
I began at the Charité almost immediately. And I was quick to discover the true situation of the city when Leo and I began our search for accommodation.
‘I can’t believe it,’ I whispered to Leo as we walked the suburban streets, navigating dangerous debris and ruined buildings wherever we went. Only a few years earlier Berlin was the most glamourous and vibrant city in Germany and now it was a wreck. It was so much worse than I had imagined – the artillery attacks of the last battles through the streets had been the final blow to the grand city. Now it was broken and scarred. ‘It’s like another planet.’
‘Sewage pipe,’ warned Leo in a strangled voice, guiding me around a gaping hole in the footpath. I gagged, putting my hand across my nose and mouth.
‘How are we ever going to find something?’ I cast my gaze around the dilapidated apartment buildings, noticing groups of people huddled in sheltered doorways and behind walls where there previously had been rooms intact. ‘We can’t even find a couple of rooms with running water and a functioning bathroom.’ Although the Soviets were our liberators, the price for our freedom from the Third Reich was steep and so many had paid the ultimate price with their lives: dying in the weeks and months after the war finished from disease, sickness, exposure and starvation. Life for most was more difficult than it had been during the war.
‘Don’t worry. We’ll find something,’ said Leo, squeezing my hand in encouragement. We stayed with friends from the resistance until a few weeks later when we met up with one of the contacts who had hidden Leo after his breakout from Ohrdruf.
‘I’ve been a communist all my life and looked up to the Soviets, but I never imagined anything like this occurring at their hands,’ the contact said, shaking his head. ‘They’re as bad as the Nazis. We’ve gone from the frying pan into the fire. The sooner we set up our own German government, the sooner our Soviet occupiers will be gone.’ He went on to tell us of the rapes and beatings the Soviets had committed with the fall of Berlin.
‘I can’t believe the state of the city,’ Leo said. ‘It’s going to take some time to get Berlin back on its feet.’
‘I don’t know that it can ever be the same again,’ the contact said with finality. ‘Too much has happened here.’
But it seemed we were in luck, if luck was what we could call it. The contact showed us an apartment in one of the Wilhelmine buildings in Prenzlauer Berg surprisingly still standing. The area had had its fair share of air raids but had escaped the devastating damage of other districts. The apartment block next door had been bombed and was nothing more than blackened ruins and rubble. One side of our building was damaged, with the lower apartments exposed to the open, gutted by fire and filled with loose debris. Fire had destroyed the fifth-floor apartment and partially damaged the ceiling of the fourth-floor apartment we were looking at.
‘I don’t know,’ whispered Leo, shaking his head as we surveyed the apartment. ‘I don’t want to bring you to a place that’s unsafe.’
‘Leo, we have to take it,’ I said, grasping his arm. ‘We’ve just about outstayed our welcome where we are and we might not get another chance to find something like this. We have running water, a working stove and, beside the ceiling damage and a few cracks in the walls, an intact apartment.’
‘Haven’t you heard of the building collapses across the city? I
couldn’t put you and the baby at risk.’ I thought immediately of Johann trapped under the rubble of his house after the air raid. But I refused to live in fear of what might be any longer.
‘All the apartments in this building are taken and everyone’s been living in them for months without any problems. It can’t be too bad. We’ve seen people live in much worse.’ Leo’s frown told me that I hadn’t completely convinced him. ‘Please, Leo. Let’s give it a try.’ I gazed up at him beseechingly. ‘We won’t be here for long and I want to be settled well before the baby comes.’
Despite all its problems, we knew how precious and sought after this apartment was and we soon moved in. Frau Kraus and Hans, who had been retained on the estate as forester, brought across the rest of our boxes and a few pieces of furniture.
‘Now it feels like home,’ said Frau Kraus, surveying the results of our day’s work. We had three rooms: a kitchen, a bedroom and a sitting room. The toilet was off the stairwell and shared by four other apartments on the same floor. The small sofa and table were dressed with cushions and tablecloth. Candles sat in each room as the electricity was intermittent, often only on for a couple of hours in the morning and in the evening.
‘Not for too long,’ I said, glancing at the peeling wall plaster and the tar-paper-covered hole in the ceiling. ‘We’ve submitted our emigration papers and we’ve been assured that we’ll be granted priority for an American visa because we’re both displaced persons and Leo’s a Jew who survived Nazi persecution.’
‘When will you go?’ Frau Kraus asked as she poured tea at our tiny table.
‘It could take some time to hear back. It has to do with quotas. I doubt it will be before the baby’s born.’ I placed my hand over my belly. I’d begun to feel little flutters. ‘But I’ll continue working for as long as I can. We have to save for the passage and to start again in New York.’
She squeezed my hand. ‘You’ll soon finally have what you’ve always wanted: your own family. That’s what’s most important. The rest will fall into place.’
I nodded. ‘After everything that’s happened, I don’t care where we are, as long as Leo and I are together. And when our baby arrives, my world will be complete.’
* * *
I was working in one of the new clinics set up to treat girls and women. Venereal disease, including gonorrhoea and syphilis, had skyrocketed since the end of the war as a result of the many rapes perpetrated by Soviet soldiers.
One day a young girl of sixteen came in to the clinic. ‘I can’t tell my family I’m here,’ she said desperately. She was thin like most Berliners, but not as bad as some girls whose ribs and pelvis were sharply defined under the worn fabric of their dresses.
‘I’m not one of those girls,’ she whispered, when I told her she’d contracted a venereal disease. ‘I had no choice.’ I helped her sit up on the cold hard surface of the gynaecological table. ‘Soviet soldiers came to our house when I was alone and raped me. I’d never been with a man before and I couldn’t tell my mother when she got home,’ she said, her voice breaking. ‘When more soldiers came I begged their captain to let me become his girlfriend. It was the only way to protect my mother and me and ensure our survival. He’s good to me and gives us gifts of corned meat, sugar and butter. It’s a small price to pay, but he’ll toss me aside if he finds out I’m infected with a disease.’ She began to sob and all I could do was put my arm around her in comfort.
We all did surprising things when our survival and the survival of our loved ones depended on it. But it didn’t erase the guilt and the shame. I knew that much. Thoughts of Julius and all that he’d done to me and to our family came rushing back. Although I had no idea what had happened to him after the war, I could only hope that there had been justice for his crimes. At the very least, it would be a cold day in hell before I would ever forgive him.
I was desperate to share my despair and deep sadness for these women and girls, and I missed Marika more than ever. There was only so much I could do to help their wretched situations and some part of me felt guilty for being happily married and pregnant, excited to be starting a family. I could have been one of those raped girls if I’d stayed in Berlin.
Thankfully I could speak to Leo.
‘It’s been a terrible week,’ I said, one night in November as we huddled in bed under the eiderdown we’d brought with us from home. Coal for the stove was hard to come by and we could only buy enough to cook one meal and heat the room in the evening. It didn’t help that the cold seeped through the cracks in the external wall of the kitchen, which I had to seal with wet newspaper every now and then. Overnight the temperature dropped and the water was frozen in the pipes by morning. ‘It’s bad enough seeing the desperate state of women and girls pregnant as a result of rape, or even those who’ve chosen to stay with a Russian soldier for protection, but when I see uterine infections and gynaecological problems after badly performed backyard abortions, it’s too much. What’s worse is that penicillin, the most effective drug of choice, is in short supply in the Soviet zone and there are such strict protocols about its dispensing that many aren’t even treated properly.’
‘After everything that’s happened to them.’ Leo shook his head and sighed. ‘But people will do anything to make it through,’ he whispered. ‘I saw it at Ohrdruf many times.’ I knew then that he understood what I’d come to learn. ‘We’re the fortunate ones.’
‘We are.’ I kissed him deeply. The bone-deep weariness I felt after a long shift at the clinic disappeared instantly. Even the gnawing ache in my belly from the constant hunger faded so it was barely noticeable. I sighed with pleasure as he kissed my neck and throat and I left the troubles of the day behind me as I surrendered to the joy of Leo’s touch.
* * *
The next morning I was finishing writing up some notes at the clinic when our receptionist came in to see me.
‘There’s someone here to see you.’
‘One of my patients?’ I asked, looking up from the patient records.
She shook her head. ‘A man, Herr Siebenborn. He said he knows you.’ The room swam in and out of focus. It couldn’t be.
‘Susie, are you all right?’ She put a hand on my arm.
I nodded and swallowed hard. ‘Tell him I’m too busy,’ I said curtly. ‘And if he comes back, tell him I don’t want to see him.’
She nodded. ‘Of course. I understand.’
So Julius was alive and well. I was shaking with fury now that I was over the shock. He had no right to come back into my life. The sooner we left for America, the better.
I felt fortunate indeed when I was transferred to the maternity ward in early December. My work at the clinic gave me insight into the situation so many of the new mothers had found themselves in, giving birth to babies of unknown Soviet soldiers or their Russian lovers. Amidst the chaos of Berlin, and despite the often difficult circumstances they were born into, babies were still a joy, a new life to celebrate, and I couldn’t help but look forward to my time as I cared for the new mothers and helped support them as they came to terms with their new life and responsibility. The wards were full and the work was relentless, but I was happy.
‘I didn’t expect to feel this way,’ said a first-time mother. I was showing her how to swaddle her baby girl on the crisp white bed sheet and checking her over in the process. She hadn’t lost much of her birth weight and was doing well. She raised her little fist into the air like a defiant rebel and broke out into a loud cry before I had finished.
‘What do you mean?’ I brought the baby to her to breastfeed. Other babies’ cries punctuated the soft murmur of new mothers across the ward.
‘I didn’t want her,’ she confessed. ‘I’m on my own. I was a flak helper and I went home at the end of the war, but our home was bombed out and I couldn’t find my family. I decided to come back to Berlin, thinking they might be here, but they’re not. I filed missing persons’ reports with the Red Cross but I’ve heard nothing yet.’
; We still hadn’t heard about Onkel Tedi either.
I nodded. ‘Don’t give up hope yet. It’ll take time.’ The Red Cross were bringing in sick and injured people who’d been found to the hospital all the time. They were the good stories, but they couldn’t cope with the numbers of enquiries about missing people, especially when those who were lost often had no official papers with them. Between the dislocation of families at the end of the war, missing soldiers, families fleeing before the Red Army, people returning home to find their homes destroyed and loved ones gone, and then the expulsion of Germans from the east making them displaced people, it was a logistical nightmare bringing families together. It was no wonder people were missing everywhere.
‘I know,’ she said sadly. ‘I got pregnant then. The baby’s father and I aren’t married and I was worried he’d abandon us, but the minute I saw her, I knew that everything would be fine. I love her more than I’ve ever loved anybody and I’ll do everything to make sure she’s safe and looked after.’ I readjusted the pillows around her so that the baby’s head was at the right height, showing her how to place the baby’s mouth around the nipple. Immediately the infant’s crying stopped.
‘What about the father?’ I asked gently.
‘He fell in love with her too, and he’s asked me to marry him. We’re going to be a family.’ She’d lost her family and was desperate to create her own. I knew the feeling.
‘I’m so happy for you,’ I said, patting her arm. Babies brought hope and joy and we could all do with a little more in the world.
At the end of my shift, I looked up from the notes I was finishing to a familiar face. It was Marika. I couldn’t believe my eyes, and it was only when I was hugging her tightly that I really believed she was there.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked, tears sliding down my cheeks. ‘I thought you were with your parents in Trebbin.’
Letters from Berlin Page 32