The Road to Liberation: Trials and Triumphs of WWII

by Marion Kummerow

  “Never because of Erich. I love Erich like a brother. And I love you like a sister and you’re back now.”

  “I never went anywhere, you silly goose.”

  “For some time, I thought that you did. I was so very afraid that you did. But now I know. Now I’m sure that you shall never go away.”

  “No.” Her voice was solemn not with a simple promise but with an oath in it, which one must never break. “Never.”

  15

  Clear as day Tadek read it all in Morris’s eyes. It’ll come back and bite you yet, this blind trust of yours, boy. But Tadek stared at him with stubborn determination in his eyes. In them, hope pulsed, radiated and glowed from his very core – she’s on our side, don’t you see? She understands it all, she knows the truth. She’ll never go back to the old way of thinking…

  Morris thought him to be wrong but nodded nevertheless and even that nodding of his, Tadek understood all too well. Even if he, himself, doubted Tadek’s conclusions, Morris was too decent of a fellow to take that last hope away from the Polish survivor. The American agent didn’t start arguing and saying that he knew human nature far too well, that blood bonds were the most indestructible and therefore, who knew if it would only take Otto Neumann one word, one single touch – a loving hand on top of his daughter’s tear-stained cheek and she’d forgive him everything – the crimes, the people’s deaths, and even Tadek.

  He was her father, after all. It seemed only natural.

  Gerlinde Neumann was her father’s daughter. She could know him to be a murderer and love him still.

  Tadek saw it all in Morris’s eyes and was grateful that the latter didn’t utter any of those things and instead only instructed the two plain-clothed agents to watch Neumann’s daughter as closely as was humanly possible.

  It turned out that agent Morris needn’t have worried. Gerlinde hardly ever left his sight when not at school and recently, had adopted a new habit, which had soon grown into an obsession of sorts. It was her now, who had set up her temporary headquarters in her father’s former study and interrogated Morris while jotting down his replies in her notebook.

  “Who exactly served in the camps? Who was in charge? What was my father responsible for? And Herr Pohl? And who was above them? And below? Has anyone ever tried to revolt? Refused to carry out orders? What happened to them? Nothing at all? So, one could refuse? Depends on the rank? How high should have been the rank? Could have my father refused?”

  Most questions Morris had no difficulty responding to. Some, however, left him wondering himself and offering the girl mere speculations, which always made him feel dishonest and guilty, for no apparent reason.

  “Your father was sort of a chief accountant, attached to Amtsgruppe D of the WVHA. He was in charge of camps’ administration and was subordinate only to Gruppenführer Glücks in his Amt and Pohl himself as the chief of the WVHA. In short, your father decided how many hours each inmate would work a day and how many grams of bread they would eat.”

  “How many?”

  “A slice of sawdust bread. About twenty grams.”

  “Per meal?”

  “Per day.”

  A pause. Mechanical pencil, frozen over the page. “What else?”

  “A smear of margarine. A cup of soup. A cup of tea or coffee. The ersatz type, of course. This was a standard daily ration.”

  “Did he decide how many would have been killed? From each transport?”

  “No. Each individual camp administration and its Kommandant in charge were responsible for that.”

  “But he had something to do with deaths.”

  “He only told the camp administration how much food his office was ready to supply the inmates with and gave them the quota as to how much ought to have been produced at the factories, attached as satellites to most camps. Based on his information, the camp administration decided how many people they could keep and how many would have to die.”

  “Did he purposely make the rations so small?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think, he only gave each camp administration numbers. For the next quarter, we can supply you with this much bread and this much margarine. Each commandant decided for himself, how many people he could keep alive with that.”

  “Could he sign the orders for people’s extermination?”

  “No. Not him. He was an accountant.”

  “He couldn’t put people in the camps on his own initiative, could he?”

  “No. That was the RSHA that issued such protective custody orders.”

  “But they were related. The two branches, that is.”

  “Yes. One wouldn’t function properly without the other.”

  Outside the window, the snow shimmered softly. In the fireplace, the wood crackled from time to time, issuing sparks that died almost at once behind the screen and up the chimney.

  Chimneys… Tadek told her a lot about them and about people going up them as well.

  Morris did his research and had the correct information. The two branches were closely connected. Closer than he could have imagined.

  Gerlinde shifted in the chair, faces of those RSHA men who sat exactly where she sat now suddenly alive in her memory. It appeared as though it happened only yesterday. They sat right here and drank their cognac and smoked Vati’s cigars and laughed at the inside jokes told in undertones and followed by chuckles. If she closed her eyes, Gerlinde could see it all clearly before her. The tall door, with a gilded handle, opened just a crack and her stealing a glance in passing. Vati’s voice, a bit louder than usual due to the cognac and less strained due to the same thing: “Maus! Come here, Maus; don’t be shy. Say hello to Gruppenführer—”

  How many of them passed through these doors? How many held her hand in theirs and shook it with all the seriousness of adults indulging a comrade’s favorite child? “Herrgott, Gerlinde! How much you have grown! You’re not married yet, are you?”

  When she was little, they’d sit her on their lap and turn their head away from her when exhaling gray ringlets of cigarette smoke. In the past couple of years, they stood up whenever she entered, bowed at her a bit theatrically, kissed the back of her palm and offered her cognac – she was never too sure whether in jest or not.

  Morris stirred in the chair where Vati used to sit. Gerlinde looked at him.

  “My father was never an anti-Semite, you know. My mother was but he wasn’t.”

  “No?”

  “No. That is, he never taught us to hate Jews. I know you probably don’t believe me.”

  “I believe you. Many of them didn’t care one way or the other about Jews. They just didn’t mind when those Jews died.”

  “Yes. Precisely,” she agreed surprisingly easily. “He never taught us to hate Jews but there were plenty of others who did and he did nothing to counter that common opinion.”

  “I suppose, it would be stupid of him.”

  “Yes. I think so, too. I think…” She looked away, suddenly ashamed of a new thought that had just entered her mind. “I think I would have reported him myself if he’d said something of that sort, just a year ago. Just twelve months ago, I would have reported him.”

  Despite the steel-like certainty in her voice, Morris doubted she’d actually do such a thing. Just like he doubted that she would give him Neumann, had he indeed risked to resurface. But just like with Tadek, he said nothing at all. Perhaps, just like with Tadek, he secretly wished to be mistaken.

  Inside the youth center, the heat was always on, unlike in the rest of frostbitten Berlin. Visiting such Amis-installed centers wasn’t mandatory but encouraged by the school administration and Gerlinde compliantly lined up for her hot chocolate and snacks, along with Tadek. Next to them, former BDM and Hitlerjugend members shuffled and murmured and observed the Amis with mistrustful yet curious eyes. Uniformed men bared their white teeth in wide grins whenever any such youth gathered enough courage to practice their English on them and mumble an uncertain, “how do you do, Sir?”
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  Such attempts at civility were invariably met with chocolate bars, gum, and cigarettes that instantly disappeared into the youths’ patched-up pockets. Unlike the Soviets across town, who preferred to beat the love of communism into the population with rifle butts and fists, the Amis conditioned their new charges much like Professor Pavlov and his dogs. Democracy – good. Totalitarian regimes – bad. Amis – chocolate. National Socialism – jail.

  “The simplicity insults any educated person’s intelligence but one has to give it to them, it’s easy to follow and it does work,” Gerlinde noted to Tadek, her face pulling to a sly smirk.

  “It appears so. Social Democrats just won the elections in the American zone. Take a guess who reported it.” Now Tadek was grinning too.

  “Not Margot?”

  “The very same. I’m actually rather surprised you missed the newest issue of Der Tagesspiegel. You, Berliners, finally have your first post-war newspaper that doesn’t spew Goebbels’s propaganda right and left and you treat it so scornfully.”

  Gerlinde made a painful face. “The preparations for the exams take up all my time. I’ll read it as soon as we get home, I promise. Speaking of elections though, why haven’t we had any elections here yet? I know we don’t technically belong to the actual American Zone but we do live in the American sector of Berlin. It ought to count for something.”

  “Why don’t you ask them?” Tadek nodded in the direction of the GIs.

  He’d meant it as a joke but Gerlinde, it appeared, took the suggestion with all seriousness and was already walking across the room, her steps resolute and loud against the music playing softly in the background. Her voice was just as loud and sure of itself when she addressed the GIs after a well-mannered, excuse me, Sir.

  “My friend and I were wondering why we haven’t had elections in Berlin yet? The people of the American Zone just had theirs.”

  The room fell suddenly silent. From the Americans, two beaming smiles. “You want the elections?”

  “I consider it would only be fair if we had our say as well. As of now, it appears as though the opinion of Berliners doesn’t particularly count for anything even though we do fall under your jurisdiction and deserve to exercise our right for free elections as your Military Government had initially promised.”

  The cut-glass English accent and the confident look in her eyes produced the desired effect. The Americans threw themselves on their new poster child, interrupting each other and offering simultaneous explanations and assurances that Berliners would definitely have their elections as soon as the city occupation forces’ affairs were sorted with the Soviets; that they were delighted to learn that the new generation was so eager to demand their voting rights even though their particular age group weren’t allowed to vote just yet but next year – then, it was definite and she mustn’t worry—

  Tadek hid his grin behind the paper cup of hot cocoa. Gerlinde took the mandatory offering of chocolate (democracy – good), handed it to some youngster drowning in a much-too-big coat and took her place next to Tadek once again. “They said, later this year. Something to do with the Russians. After they sort it out, we’ll have our own city elections here.”

  He didn’t know what moved him but, on the spot, he confessed that Morris was working on an American visa for him. Gerlinde gave him a long wistful look but nodded her acceptance and declared that he would be better off there.

  “You have no one in Poland anyway, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Any property?”

  “It’s all Soviet property now.”

  “Then, go.”

  “Not at once. I still have—”

  He stopped himself but it was much too late. She saw that, unfinished business, written loud and clear in his eyes.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” she said softly. “I don’t think Morris will rush you.”

  “I have to take my exams next summer anyway.”

  “Yes.”

  “And I would miss Erich and you.”

  “Yes.”

  The name of her father hung in the air between them, transparent yet thoroughly ignored by both parties. With a stone in the pit of his stomach, Tadek realized that it would always be there, a barrier, invisible, like the Soviet demarcation line, yet treacherous and deathly; a silent promise and a silent threat, all wrapped into one.

  The bus was stuffed and thick with breath but Erich’s former comrade from the Wehrmacht had just made it back to Berlin from the camp in the French zone and Erich would be damned if he didn’t greet him properly and clap him on his bony back, like in the good old times. He chattered incessantly and pressed the box, in brown wrapping paper, to his chest.

  “Sardines and coffee. Four packs of cigarettes and lemons,” he recited its contents to his companions. “A bar of soap. A very good wrist-watch I found clearing the rubble last summer – the Soviets trade them on the black market for just about anything. He’ll buy himself and his Mutti whatever he wants. His mother was in the Frauenschaft – a muss-Nazi, joined just for the sake of the benefits but who now cares? Ration card category five and that’s that. Eat your own shoe soles, if you want to survive.”

  “Someone did,” a woman’s voice chimed in from somewhere behind Gerlinde’s back. The bus was much too packed to allow any privacy and Berlin was hungry not only for food but for news and for gossip as well. “In Leningrad, during the blockade. People boiled their belts and shoe soles and ate the soup.”

  “What nonsense! Whoever told you such a thing?” a man’s voice boomed from somewhere further back.

  “My sister and her mother-in-law live in the Soviet sector. The Soviets told them. They saw the films, too, the documentary ones. Frozen corpses lined up on the streets of Leningrad. Hundreds of them. Starving children…”

  “Mhm. Just like the ones about the concentration camps they showed at Nuremberg and here, until they were blue in the face. Hollywood nonsense.”

  “Someone ought to report you for what you’re saying!”

  “I’m only saying what everyone else is thinking.”

  The entire bus was suddenly in an uproar. Tadek stared at the faces around him, each screaming their own truth about what precisely had happened and who was at fault and what ought to have been done to prevent it and why they were being punished now – justly—

  “Not in the slightest! Victors’ justice! A ridicule!”

  “The Jews have suffered—”

  “And we didn’t? Incendiary bombs! Forgotten already?”

  “Justified!”

  “Un-justified!”

  “We started it!”

  “They started it with Versailles!”

  Amid the shouting and shoving, Gerlinde stared at Tadek and only at him. In her Krupp-steel eyes, the fire was raging. Tell them! Tell them at once! Why are you silent? You’ve been there, you are the living proof! Tell them or I will…

  The bus swayed to one side as it took a sharp turn and he, thrown against her body, could almost hear himself whispering in her ear a miserable and frightened, “please, don’t.”

  The stop was announced. It wasn’t theirs but Gerlinde was already shoving her way out of the crowd with her elbows. In the doors, she swung round and clasped them with her gloved hands, her foot wedged firmly on the first step to prevent the driver from closing it.

  “You know nothing at all, you miserable herd! People did die and they died in the millions! We, our own armies and government agencies and whatnot; it was us, who did it! My own father did it! He starved those people to death! The camps, the hundreds of dead in Leningrad – all true! Stop denying or justifying it, you cowards! Face it! We’re all murderers here!”

  “Speak for yourself! My father didn’t kill anyone!”

  “Don’t strain your voice, your new Ami masters can’t hear you from here.”

  “Where were you when he was doing it? At a BDM meeting?”

  “Shut your beer trap!” It was Erich shouting this time, his pale cheeks
warm with blush just like Gerlinde’s. “Where were you, yourself?”

  “I worked for a newspaper—”

  “Then you’re a Nazi!” Gerlinde jabbed her finger into someone Tadek couldn’t see, from where he stood. He didn’t realize what he was doing, he just felt his feet back away, further and further away from the bus. “All the press was state-owned! You all worked under Goebbels’s Promi!”

  “A Nazi’s daughter calling me a Nazi! Ha! What about your boyfriend? Look at his coat! I haven’t had such a coat even on my best days! He didn’t fare so badly for himself, judging by the looks of it!”

  “The coat is from the Red Cross!” Erich was thoroughly enraged now. “And I was fighting in France, you sorry scribbler with a Party card!”

  “Was that your SS division that massacred those Amis then? Have you reported it in your Fragebogen or have you forgotten, you dandy with chevrons?”

  A policeman’s whistle prevented furious Erich from going after someone on the bus. Tadek never thought he would be so relieved to see the greenish overcoat and the helmet that remained frighteningly unchanged from Hitler’s Germany’s days.

  They ran along the snow-bleached streets, breathing heavily through the layers of scarves and tangling themselves in the hems of their coats. Soup kitchens replaced ruins, as ruins turned into tenements with smoke coming out straight from the windows – resourceful people had long since acquired little house stoves in exchange for whatever valuables the occupying forces didn’t liberate from them. Under a poster with a smiling soldier on it, Gerlinde stopped to get her breath and suddenly burst out laughing, her hand still holding her left side. Soon, Erich joined it, his breath transparent-white against the soot-covered wall of the building. Tadek regarded them both in stunned silence. In Gerlinde’s eyes, tears shone. She wiped them subtly and smiled at him.