The Road to Liberation: Trials and Triumphs of WWII

by Marion Kummerow

  13

  November brought snow, denazification trials, and more uncertainty. The Americans were promising elections early next year and tried to explain democracy to the starving people in their zone. People listened, nodded impatiently, agreed to everything the Amis were saying and, prompted to ask any questions, asked for potatoes and coal. At school, new sociology books arrived, still smelling of ink and explaining in detail how black was white and east was, in fact, west. The former Hitlerjugend members and BDM girls stared at the pages uncomprehendingly, then at each other but diligently repeated the unfamiliar words after the new teacher. It was their third one this year – the first one, the former Nazi, was jailed by the Amis; the second was fired but this time for leaning too far left; the third one was a former friar and a concentration camp inmate and therefore, the safest choice in the Military Government’s eyes.

  Gerlinde memorized the lines but hardly recalled their meaning after reciting the lessons in front of the class. On her lap, a chemistry textbook always lay open – one of the rare sciences the Nazi Party didn’t corrupt. The biology one joined the pile to be burned later in the school courtyard – the racial study and genetics sections were “utter and complete nonsense,” according to the same Amis. Gerlinde took their word for it without much thinking; entrance exams preoccupied her much more than anything.

  She wouldn’t be alone taking them the following year. Wirths, who had ceased to be Wirths and had become Erich, for her, sometime in October, would be taking them along with her. It all started with a soccer game and Erich’s sprained ankle which Gerlinde expertly bandaged; his surprise at learning she used to be a Red Cross nurse during the war, followed by his admission that he had always envied the medic corps for they saved lives whereas he took them. And suddenly he didn’t wish to play with his comrades anymore, even after his ankle had healed but wanted to sit with his head bent over Gerlinde’s textbook instead and memorize the types of infectious diseases and the position of internal organs and breathe in the lavender scent of her hair.

  They quizzed each other on laceration types and symptoms of concussion and let each other practice bandaging their “wounds.” Her hands were always cold and his – big and a bit rough, with callouses from clearing the rubble on weekends. The hands unlike her father’s, unlike Onkel Oswald’s, unlike Alfred’s. Erich’s were a soldier’s hands, a worker’s hands, honest and clean. Gerlinde’s stomach always contracted whenever he touched her, sending waves of intoxicating pleasure through her pale-blue veins.

  Erich knew she was a Neumann; everyone at school knew who that Neumann was but unlike half of the students, Erich cared not one bit. Not because the old man was a Nazi but because he, Erich, had shot at people and killed them more often than not and did it really matter if the war was going on and that’s what happens during wars?

  “I’m a murderer, too.” That was his reason.

  “You’re a soldier.” Gerlinde tried to correct him.

  “A murderer who gets awarded for murder then.” He would smile at her; it was the smile of a very old man on the face of a very young one. “That’s the whole difference.”

  Erich was quiet and studious and always ready to help – a perfect Doktor material, Gerlinde would joke and he would smile his beautiful smile at her and hold her hand and make her feel at peace with herself for the first time in years. His comrades loved him. Tadek would kill for him and even Morris thought him to be a first-rate young man and permitted Erich to take Gerlinde to the movies for her birthday, accompanied by Tadek, though. Another reminder that Gerlinde was still a Neumann, which Erich once again thoroughly ignored.

  They sat in the very back of the theater. Over Gerlinde’s blonde head, the silver light spilled from the projector turning dust into diamonds. She smiled at Tadek who sat to her right and put her left arm on the armrest, next to Erich, hoping that he’d hold it when the cowboys would start shooting. It was some Ami Western where blood didn’t spill from the wounds and where the bandits wore black hats and the sheriff wore a white one and the plot was easy to understand.

  The lights hadn’t been dimmed yet. Behind their backs, invisible in the small window, the operator was loading the mandatory newsreel into the maw of the projector. In front of them sat women with their hair put up high and next to them, men in uniforms – American, not German ones. Whenever the women turned their heads, Gerlinde saw the red lipstick and white teeth as they smiled and wondered what they did during the war and whether their new Ami boyfriends ever asked them about it. They were young and beautiful and perhaps former mistresses of some high-ranking Nazis, or Bonbon-wearing Party members themselves, the secretarial staff or some such, or BDM leaders, or Red Cross nurses like herself… She looked at Tadek once again but he stared straight ahead, at the empty screen. Gerlinde wondered whether it was because of Erich.

  The projector purred to life. On the white screen, the screaming American letters – Hollywoodish, grotesque.

  Universal Newsreel.

  Nuremberg War Crimes Trial Opens.

  The newsreel was fresh, still untranslated into German but Gerlinde spoke English far too well to feign ignorance.

  The prosecution of the terrorists of the Nazi regime… unbelievable crimes against humanity… International Tribunal… These pictures reveal the arrogance… German warlords… Strong indictment of the defendants… the wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating… do you plead guilty or not guilty… Hermann Wilhelm Göring—

  Herr Reichsmarschall.

  At once, Gerlinde was on her feet, pushing her way out of the theater stuffed with far too many people, far too many eyes staring at her in condemnation, far too many mouths murmuring their disapproval. Somewhere behind her, Erich was moving and apologizing to someone in English. In front of her, only darkness, darkness and the familiar faces in place of the faceless crowd.

  Herr Reichsmarschall. Herr Speer. Herr Minister. Faces from the photos in her album.

  Men who always had bonbons for her in their pockets and who found her a delightful little darling and who interrupted important conversations just to admire a new book she’d bring them and deposited, quite unceremoniously, on their lap and demanded that they read for her.

  Men who posed for her camera during her Margot von Steinhoff/Leni Riefenstahl phase and who signed those photos for her and her album.

  Men, who spoke of their children and dogs and never about war or politics, never in front of her.

  Outside, the whirl of snow hit her square in the face and Gerlinde gulped it, along with tears and the realization that her father would have been there along with Onkel Oswald had they both not been officially missing. The Amis said something about Oswald Pohl being tried in absentia, for crimes against humanity – the last thing she heard before she tore herself out of that theater. Gerlinde didn’t hear whether Otto Neumann’s name was listed right after, with the same charge against him.

  Erich’s arms held her up when she was already sinking to the ground, drowning in the words of the prosecution and the scale of the crimes. Erich was saying something but she suddenly couldn’t make out his words. Through the darkness of the night, she was reaching for Tadek’s hand instead but he towered over her and regarded her the same way the prosecutor was regarding the defendants in that newsreel, with cold detachment and carefully veiled disgust.

  “The newsreel should end soon,” he said, arms still crossed over his chest. It appeared, he suddenly didn’t wish to touch her or to have anything whatsoever in common with her, the arch-criminal’s daughter. “Then you can go in and watch the movie.”

  Why such a change all of a sudden? Why such resentment? Why now? Because she couldn’t bring herself to face the truth? Gerlinde was searching his face, pleading him with her wet eyes but he looked at her fur collar, on the snow around instead – anywhere, but her face.

  “Tadek, forgive me, please… I didn’t expect it, is all. I shall go in at once.
I will watch it together with you—”

  “What for? Why torture yourself?” His tone was thick with ice.

  “I owe you at least this much—”

  “You don’t owe me anything.”

  The words stung. Gerlinde stumbled onto her feet and pushed Erich away when he tried saying something reasonable. Her eyes still full of mist, she picked her way back into the darkness, made herself walk all the way back to her seat through more shame and whispers. Behind her, Erich was once again apologizing to the same people and Gerlinde felt the urge to turn around and slap him and make him stop it with that pleading tone. She took her seat and bore her eyes into the screen, her face – an unyielding mask, as the war raged inside of her. With a chilling clarity, she realized that she no longer knew which side she ought to be on, the defense or the prosecution; whether the men, so familiar and terrifying, were the criminals or Vati’s good friends; whether she returned out of guilt or to prove that she had nothing to be guilty of.

  Two hours passed. The lights went on. Lost in thought, Gerlinde sat, without budging, as people moved past them and brushed her knees with their coats.

  “How did you like the movie?”

  Erich had to repeat his question twice before she turned her head to him, as though emerging from a deep, troubled dream. She remembered the horses, the shootings, the swinging doors of the saloon but had not the faintest idea how it all ended.

  “It was good.”

  In the street, American GIs were smoking and laughing. Their dates were reapplying their lipstick. Someone was trying to arrange a car to take them all to the dance hall. Gerlinde listened and listened but no one mentioned the newsreel or the trials even once. She regarded them all with suspicion, as though it was all one big conspiracy against her.

  Tadek moved to stand in front of her. Gerlinde waited for him to say something, something about the defendants or her father but he only asked if she was up to walking Erich back to his dormitory.

  “Yes. Yes, of course,” she replied, disappointed and relieved at the same time.

  She circled her arm through the crook of Erich’s but let the other one hang by her side. Some of the lampposts spilled the long-forgotten yellow light on top of their heads from their brand-new lamps. Yellow, the civilian light, not the chilling anti-aircraft blue – the official light of wartime. Among the few newly fixed lampposts, long black gaps stretched but even they crawled with life, invisible yet audible. The voices from the cellars, the clattering of the pots, the smell of cooking dinner, all hidden, secretive. Gerlinde thought about Nuremberg, the old one, where Vati took her for the rally, not the bombed-out one, with the court and the jail. Over her head, Erich and Tadek marveled at the Hollywood stuntmen’s skills.

  “To leap from the horse straight onto the roof of the train car! I tell you, we had fellows in the equestrian regiment who could do handstands on their horses’ backs but nothing of this sort!”

  “Not a moving horse?”

  “No, not a moving one.”

  Both laughed, without a care in the world.

  “Their horses were trained not to get spooked when one shoots straight from their backs but I doubt any of our hot-heads would attempt what that fellow did, with the train!”

  Gerlinde waited for Tadek to say something about the train or the soldiers – he told her about SS men traveling with them on top of the train cars and shooting anyone who would attempt to escape, from their vantage points – but Tadek only laughed carelessly again.

  “Would you try to do something of that sort? If they offered to pay you?”

  “Not a chance!” Erich was shaking his head. “Even if they threatened me with the firing-squad!”

  Again, Gerlinde waited for Tadek to say something and again, he didn’t.

  “When I was little and we were boarding the train to go see Oma and Opa,” Erich continued his cheerful banter, “I slipped from my mother’s hand and fell through between the edge of the platform and the train. They got me out of there, of course, but I was so terrified that the train would start moving and would cut me in half. I’ve had a fear of trains ever since.”

  Gerlinde held her breath. Now Tadek would say something. She looked at him but he had a wistful smile on his face, his gaze lost somewhere in the ruins. “I love trains. Always did. We traveled a lot when I was still a child and I always looked forward to those trips. I shared the bunk on top with my brother and he would tell me stories long into the night, scary ones. He thought to frighten me – he would seize my sides under the blankets whenever a witch appeared and grabbed a child or a giant would catch his prey – but I only laughed and I had such a stupid laugh, it would make him laugh too…”

  Gerlinde thought about the train they took to Nuremberg. They had an entire compartment to themselves and a table reserved for their family in the dining car. Her brothers constantly fought over something but Vati was too busy with reading countless reports to discipline them. Her mother would try to settle them down but they simply didn’t acknowledge her authority and she would take out her frustration on little Gerlinde instead and yank her hair painfully with the silver brush. Gerlinde winced and tolerated the pulling and the stinging pain in her scalp but wormed her way out of her mother’s arms as soon as she could and dashed for her Vati’s lap instead and he’d kiss the top of her head absentmindedly and make the pain go away at once.

  “What about you?” Erich gave her a prod with his elbow in a playful attempt to bring her out of her reverie. “You must have traveled quite a lot by train.”

  And by plane, too and by car, always with the driver, but Gerlinde kept it all to herself, not to make it even worse between her and Tadek.

  “What’s your favorite memory?” Erich pressed, oblivious to her desire to keep her past thoroughly buried.

  Who was she trying to deceive though? She had no right to keep any such past resting peacefully in her memories only. It was everyone’s past now. It belonged to the world so that they could dissect it in pieces and demonstrate each part of it to the public and declare gravely that this was what led to the genocide, that this was the type of a person who commits it, that these were the signs that they should have noticed, and these were the crimes they ought to hang them all for…

  She was forever branded, an arch-criminal’s daughter and no matter what she did, no matter who she became later in life, her family name would forever be stained with blood.

  But was it really fair for her to carry such a burden? She did nothing wrong, nothing whatsoever, she wanted to scream into the night until her voice would grow hoarse. She was a mere teenager and a nurse at the most; she treated the injured Ivans along with her own compatriots and she never hurt anyone…

  And yet, for some inexplicable reason, the heat of shame colored her cheeks with red at the mere thought that she was considering what was fair and what was not when she walked next to Tadek, whose entire family was annihilated and it was her own father who was complicit in it.

  Gruppenführer Neumann. Vati.

  “They aren’t the same people.” Gerlinde’s head was pounding. A desperate need to explain pulsed under her skin, asked to be cut open, like a vein with a razor. Through the film of tears, everything suddenly appeared double – the streetlamps, the road splitting in two, the buildings falling apart, crumbling like she was now. “He’s not the same man. Do you understand? Vati and Gruppenführer Neumann, it’s not the same man, just like Reichsmarschall that I knew and Hermann Göring on the screen is not the same man. Gruppenführer Neumann is guilty of those crimes, not Vati. Vati was a good man. He loved animals and played the piano for his guests. Gruppenführer Neumann wore the uniform and kept people in camps. Vati played chess with me and let me win almost every time just to make me happy. Gruppenführer Neumann didn’t care one way or another if little girls like me died in their hundreds just because their blood was the wrong type. How can they be the same man? They’re so entirely different!” Her whisper died in the night, stifled wit
h tears that threatened to suffocate, yet never spilled from her eyes, full of anguish.

  “I’m sure your father was a good father,” Erich said quietly. “It’s just, he wasn’t a good person. But I’m also sure, quite a few mothers, who’d lost their sons to my bullets, think me not to be a good person either.”

  “That’s different.”

  “I actually killed men. Your father only signed the papers.”

  “You did it honestly.”

  “Is there an honest way to take someone’s life?”

  Gerlinde didn’t see his face but knew that he was smiling.

  “I don’t know what to think anymore,” she said at last and wiped her eyes with the heels of her palms.

  It felt good to finally admit it.

  14

  “Tadeusz?”

  Tadek turned around. They were back at the Neumann’s estate. He wished desperately to be left alone, to process all he had seen on the screen and sort his own feelings out but she had called his name and now there was no escaping from this conversation, which would only set him against her. He knew what was coming. More justifications of what her father had done, more apologies for something that there couldn’t have possibly been any excuse, more lies dripping like poison from that seemingly innocent mouth.

  Poisoned. Everything around him, inside and out.

  “Can you come up to my room?” Gerlinde’s eyelashes were wet with snow. The melted drops of it shone in her hair, on top of her coat, like dew. “I want to show you something.”