On the right stood the guillotine, all gleaming brass and polished wood.
She turned to the minister, wistful, heartbroken. “Und ich habe Deutschland so geliebt!”
And I have loved Germany so much.
The guards led her to the guillotine and forced her to kneel. Her thoughts flew to Arvid. With her last breath, she too would pray to the power of love. Everything she had done to bring her to that moment had been done out of love—for Arvid, for the Germany that once had been, for her friends, for the many innocents who suffered.
It could not all have been in vain.
A man spoke, and the blade fell.
Chapter Sixty-two
1943–1946
Greta
Winter reluctantly gave way to spring, but Greta caught only glimpses of the changing seasons during her brief walks around the paved courtyard of the Alexanderplatz prison. The piles of dirty snow in the corners between buildings melted. Soft breezes defied the high walls to caress the wan faces of the prisoners, evoking memories of cherished gardens with the scent of distant flowers and overturned earth. Slender shoots of grass grew up between cobblestones; anywhere else they might have been trodden underfoot, but here the prisoners took care to avoid them. Let something thrive in that dismal place, the women seemed to say as they stepped over a patch of green here and another one there. Greta savored the glimpses of color as much as she did the fresh air and warm sunshine on her face. As springtime dragged on in tedium and dull fear, she expected each day to be her last, and she doubted she would see the summer.
On the last day of March, a guard banged on a metal door for attention. “Kuckhoff, Buch, Terviel, Brockdorff, Van Beek, Berkowitz!” he called out as he passed along the corridor unlocking cell doors. “Collect your things and report at once!”
Seized by dread, Greta swiftly gathered her few possessions and stepped out into the corridor, where several of her comrades stood clutching their small bundles and glancing around with trepidation. Like Greta they were all Todeskandidaten, death candidates, and she saw in their eyes her own terrified certainty that they were about to be transported to Plötzensee and the guillotine. Then the guard called out the names of Elfriede Paul, Lotte Schleiff, and others sentenced to prison terms, and Greta’s certainty faltered.
As they were led from the processing office to the exit, Erika paused before the commissioner, whom she knew from the preliminary investigation. “Excuse me,” she said, with her usual confidence, “where are we being taken?”
He scowled, annoyed by her boldness. “You’ll find out when you get there.”
The guard ordered the prisoners to proceed outside. They obeyed, but as Greta passed the criminal secretary, he murmured, “You’re going to a place where you’ll have it much better.”
After she and her companions were loaded into the green police van, Greta repeated the secretary’s comment, but they regarded it as skeptically as she did. The secretary could have meant it cynically, in that death would be more merciful than their wretched lives. They tried to discern their route from turns and sounds, and from glimpses of pavement visible through a crack in the wheel well, but it was impossible. Only after the van halted and the doors were flung open did they discover that they had been transferred to the women’s prison on Kantstrasse in Charlottenburg.
Greta’s heart raced as they were led inside and processed. She looked about surreptitiously, risking a beating for her curiosity, but desperate for a glimpse of her dearest friend, whom she knew had been held there before and might be there yet. As she was being led off to her cell, something in the matron’s firm but rational manner compelled her to blurt, “Please, Frau Oberin, is Mildred Harnack here?”
Something that might have been sympathy passed over the woman’s expression. “Frau Harnack was executed at Plötzensee in February.”
Greta heard gasps from the other prisoners and a low moan of anguish, but she could scarcely breathe, torn apart by shock and grief. Dazed, she stumbled along in the line of prisoners to her cell, where she sank upon her bunk and wept for her lost friend.
One April morning, moans of pain echoing down the corridor woke her a few hours before dawn. Later that morning, she heard through the prison grapevine that Liane Berkowitz had gone into labor. A frisson of excitement and anticipation circulated throughout the cellblock all day and into the evening. Bets were placed, prayers offered. One of the more lenient guards divulged that Liane was in the prison infirmary and she seemed to be progressing well. Flooded with memories of cradling sweet newborn Ule in her arms, Greta had to bite the inside of her mouth to keep from weeping.
Then, during exercise three days later, she spotted Liane shuffling around the courtyard, leaning heavily upon her cellmate’s arm. Greta maneuvered through the ragged circuit of women until she reached the teenager’s side. “I had a baby girl,” Liane told her, her eyes glowing with joy in a pale, wan face. “I named her Irena. She’s beautiful, so beautiful.” Suddenly she grasped Greta’s thin sleeve. “They took her away from me. Do you think she’ll be all right?”
“I’m sure she’ll be fine,” said Greta, although she knew nothing of the sort.
“Maybe they’ll let my mother take her.” Liane shook her head, frowning thoughtfully. “No, they wouldn’t do that. Maybe they’ll give her to a nice family to adopt. I could find her after the war.”
“I’m sure she’ll be well looked after,” her cellmate soothed. “After the war, or sooner if we’re released, I’ll help you search for her.”
“So will I,” said Greta, thinking of Ule, cherished and protected at her parents’ home, as safe as any child could be in wartime.
Every day after that, she looked for Liane in the corridors and the courtyard, but a week passed without another glimpse of her. Uneasy, Greta asked around and was told that she had been transferred to the Berliner Frauengefängnis Barnimstrasse, a prison that provided slave laborers for the munitions industry. Greta hoped Liane would be given light duties until she had fully recovered from childbirth.
In May, Greta too was given new work—making paper butterflies to be used as decorations at Nazi rallies. She had to choke back laughter at the absurdity of it. Dozens of her friends had been killed, her husband was awaiting execution, and she herself lived in daily expectation of losing her head to the guillotine, and yet there she sat from morning through night, day after day, folding and cutting and pasting colored pieces of paper into the shape of pretty insects. It was surreal. She could not think of anything more poorly suited for one of Hitler’s ugly, hateful speeches than a kaleidoscope of paper butterflies. She was tempted to write to Göring and urge him to stick to the usual black eagle with oak wreath, although anything menacing and cruel would do.
She was adding fuzzy black antennae to a gold-and-black butterfly when a guard entered the workroom and called out her name. Her heart thudded and she stood, keeping her eyes downcast in the usual posture of deference. “Come with me,” the guard ordered. She had no choice but to obey, and as she followed him through corridors and down stairs, with every step she became more afraid and more certain that he was escorting her to Oberin Weider’s office, who would inform her that she was being transferred to Plötzensee for her execution.
But suddenly the guard halted in front of another door, unlocked it, and gestured for her to enter. “You have twenty minutes.” When she merely stood there, bewildered, he gestured again impatiently. Quickly she entered the sparsely furnished chamber, much longer than it was wide, with four high, barred windows on the long wall casting light upon a few scattered tables and chairs. A man and a woman seated beneath the farthest window rose stiffly from one of the tables, and when the faint sunlight shone on the man’s silver hair, recognition struck her with almost physical force.
“Papa?” she said, voice breaking. “Mutti?”
A moment later they were in one another’s arms.
Twenty minutes was too brief a reunion for all they had to say, but a fortnigh
t later Greta’s parents were permitted to visit her again, and at the end of June they returned, bringing Ule with them. Greta wept as she embraced her son, anxious that he might have forgotten her but reassured by his shy, delighted smile that he knew her on sight. How her parents had managed to get permission for these family visits, she did not know; when she asked, they made evasive replies about a favor from a friend, and she knew not to pursue it. Whoever was responsible, however it had come about, she was profoundly grateful.
Her parents promised her they would come whenever they could, but she saw them only once in July and not again until early August, and on both occasions, Ule was not permitted to come. One day at the end of the month, she was reading in her cell when she heard a key in the lock, and her heart leapt with anticipation. She quickly rose, hoping she was being summoned to the visiting room, but whereas the guards always opened the door quickly with a sharp clang of metal, this time the door opened slowly. When the prison chaplain entered, her heart went into her throat and she sank back into her chair.
“Now they are all dead,” the priest said hollowly. “Your husband and the girls. All of them.”
She stared at him in silence for a long moment. “When?”
“August fifth.” The priest paused to clear his throat and mop his forehead with a handkerchief. “Your husband was hanged at a few minutes past five o’clock. Marie Terweil, Hilde Coppi, Cato Bontjes van Beek, and Liane Berkowitz soon followed.”
She felt something inside her chest crumple, like a sere brown autumn leaf crushed in a fist. “Do you know what will become of their children?” she asked, her voice sounding strangely distant over the roaring in her ears.
He did not know, but he offered to make inquiries. Nodding her thanks, she forced herself to rise and stumble to her bunk, where she lay down as gingerly as if she were broken and bruised and might shatter on impact.
Adam was gone. Mildred was gone. Arvid, Libertas, Harro, Elizabeth, Cato, Liane—they were all gone. Dead. Surely she would be next. But when? Why was she still among the living?
What a cruel punishment it was to be the last of her friends alive, knowing her own death was imminent.
A few weeks later, she was called to Oberin Weider’s office and handed a summons to return to court on September 27 for a new trial. Full of dread, suspecting a trap, Greta would have torn the notice into tiny shreds if the matron had not been observing her so closely.
“We need a sympathetic librarian here,” Oberin Weider remarked, an odd non sequitur, or so Greta thought. “Maybe also a medical assistant. Work like that would make the time pass more swiftly. See if you can stay in Charlottenburg. We—that is, all of us, including the sergeants—hope that your new sentence will not be more than three years, in which case we can keep you here.”
Greta nodded respectfully, hiding her confusion. The matron spoke as if Greta could choose her verdict and where she served her time. And when in the history of Nazi justice had a death sentence been overturned in favor of a three-year prison term? Perhaps Oberin Weider was trying to soothe her so she would be easier to manage, but babbling nonsense at her was not the way.
Greta had no choice but to report to the Reichskriegsgericht. This time, however, she had no fear, only anger and defiance. What more could they do to hurt her? They had already separated her from her son, killed her husband, murdered her friends, sentenced her to death. They had captured and executed everyone in the resistance that she could possibly betray, so torture would be pointless. What could be worse than the death sentence she had already received? They could not chop off her head twice.
When she was brought before the judges, she met their gazes steadily, determined not to let them see any nervousness or intimidation. The prosecutor, Dr. Linz, began by addressing the court, noting for the record the reason for the new trial. After the first trial had concluded, one of the lead defense attorneys, Dr. Rudolf Behse, had so strongly objected to the verdict that he had submitted an official protest. The court chairman had been sufficiently impressed with his argument to pass on the recommendation to the legal inspector, who had called for a new trial, a new sentence.
Then, as Dr. Linz continued speaking, he mentioned something else that sent an electric jolt through Greta’s body. She stared at him, stark incredulity overtaking every other emotion.
Her death sentence had been revoked in May.
Although no one had informed her, the Reichskriegsgericht had canceled her execution four months before.
She struggled to compose herself as her new trial commenced, her thoughts in a tangle of confusion and indignation. Much to her relief, Manfred Roeder, the original prosecutor, had been transferred and would not be involved in these proceedings, and her first impression was that Dr. Linz was nothing like Hitler’s Bloodhound. She was astounded when he announced that he intended to pursue a sentence of a maximum of five years in prison, without loss of honor but not including time served. But just as she felt a faint kindling of hope, the other judges sternly assured her that they intended to do everything in their power to disregard his recommendation.
The judges interrogated her vigorously for four hours, throwing statements from the original trial in her face, as if it were her fault that they could no longer extract incriminating testimony from the dead. They turned and twisted every word that she spoke, until finally, overcome with lethargy, she fell silent. They would believe what they wanted and do as they wished. Finally the judges withdrew to deliberate, and when they returned, they announced that she was sentenced to ten years in prison and ten years’ loss of civil rights for assisting in the preparation of a treasonous undertaking and aiding and abetting the enemy.
When court was adjourned, Greta stood as ordered, wondering what had just happened. She was taken from the courtroom to the police van to the prison to her cell, too bewildered and mistrustful to allow herself even a fleeting moment of joy or relief. They had vowed to execute her once. They could easily change their minds. She would trust that her death sentence had been commuted when she walked out of prison a free woman, and not one hour before.
Her wariness seemed prescient a few days later, on October 5, when she was informed that she must return to the Reichskriegsgericht to meet with the judicial inspector. Immediately skeptical, Greta found herself thinking of Harro and the sham courier mission to the Russian front that had culminated in his arrest. She was tempted to remind the warden that no pretense was required in her case. She was already their captive. If they intended to take her to Plötzensee and the guillotine, she could not stop them.
Outside, the sky was cloudless blue, the air cool and crisp, a perfect autumn day. Her escort handed her off to another guard waiting outside by the police van. “Are you Frau Kuckhoff?” he asked, eyeing her curiously.
“I am.”
He nodded, opened the back of the van, and offered his arm to help her inside. She raised her eyebrows at his strange show of courtesy, but she accepted his assistance. He must be new, she decided. He would change. Absolute power over helpless prisoners would corrupt him the same as it did everyone else.
Until the guard halted the van and opened the door, she did not know whether he had driven her to the Reichskriegsgericht or to Plötzensee. Never before had she felt such relief upon seeing the imposing courthouse. Inside, she was taken before the judicial inspector, who brusquely led her through some official formalities before signing off on her new sentence. Then, unexpectedly, he removed his glasses and sat back in his chair with a sigh. “I regret that the other defendants who were tried with you have already perished at Plötzensee,” he said. “Better to be still alive, albeit with a long prison sentence.”
“Yes, sir,” Greta murmured, looking down at her hands in her lap to conceal a surge of anger. How dare he feign sympathy. Her husband was dead, her friends were dead, and he felt regret? Poor him. She hoped remorse ate him up from the inside out.
“It vexes me that my proposal concerning your sentence was not acce
pted,” he continued, oblivious. “However, any judgment handed down by this court will stand until the end of the war—may that not be too long in coming.”
Greta looked up sharply. No doubt his version of victory included Nazis marching along Downing Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. How strange it was that they could both yearn for peace and yet envision it so differently.
The same guard was waiting outside the chamber door to escort her out to the van and back to prison. Suddenly, a few meters away, he halted and regarded her squarely. “It’s a beautiful day, and we’re often urged to conserve petrol. We’ll walk back to the prison instead.”
Greta looked at him askance, immediately wary, but he jerked his head in the direction of the pedestrian gate and started off, and since she had nowhere else to go except back into the loathed courthouse, she followed after him. As soon as they had turned the corner a block away, he said, “Who would you like to share your good news with first? Do you have any friends who live nearby?”
Suspicious, she hesitated. She longed to speak with her family, but she dared not implicate them. Then she thought of Hans Hartenstein. The court already knew he was her friend, and that she had given him legal guardianship of Ule earlier that summer, when she realized that she must appoint someone to be responsible for him if her parents passed away before he reached adulthood. Hans had been one of the witnesses at her wedding, and she had known him since her student days. He had been a prominent official at the Ministry of Economics until he had resigned his post in 1937 rather than join the Nazi Party. Although he had supported their resistance network in secret, acquaintances in the Reich hierarchy believed him to be apolitical, and he still had many friends in positions of influence.
Resistance Women Page 61