As I walked home alone, I tried to bring back the town of my childhood, but all I could see was Hamm and its modern streetlights, the host of bloodred flags shivering in the wind.
Thursday, October 6
Last night I dreamt I was in Sofia, walking down Maria Luiza Boulevard with Vyara and Yasen. I could see the Saint Nedelya Church up ahead, but no matter how far we walked it never seemed to get any nearer. And then a tram went past, ringing its bell like an ambulance, so loud it woke me up. And as I lay in my bed here in Hamm, feeling the tendrils of sadness twine around my heart, I knew I had to tell the story, if only to exorcise the ghosts.
Grozdan Bozhidarov and I arrived in the Bulgarian capital in the dying days of 1924. We had been traveling for more than a week, having taken a long and circuitous route from Moscow: a train to Odessa, a boat to Constantinople, and another train to Sofia. According to our papers, I was a German businessman, my Bulgarian comrade an expatriate from Thessaloníki visiting distant relatives, but these identities were only for travel—once ensconced in Sofia we would not be walking the streets in daylight.
We were met at the station by two party members masquerading as members of Bozhidarov’s fictional family and swiftly taken to our separate lodgings. Mine were only a short walk away, in a block of flats just north of the Slivnitsa Boulevard. My hosts were a young married couple, Yasen and Vyara Marinov, both rank-and-file party members. Staying with such comrades, rather than a better-known senior figure, was considered safer for me.
I took to them both immediately and felt slightly guilty about occupying half of their flat, but they couldn’t have been more welcoming, and looking back now, I know I enjoyed the glamour that went with the role of a Comintern rep. I was only a few years older than them, but I’d seen a lot more of the world, and I’d fought in the two revolutions that mattered most, those in Russia and Germany. I came from the party of Luxemburg and Liebknecht; I had breathed the same air as Lenin, Trotsky, and Bukharin. In Sofia I was a celebrity, albeit one who could leave home only after dark.
The background to our mission was this: Two years after the war, in which Bulgaria had been one of the losers, the peasant party had won elections and formed a government. Despite violent opposition, some reforms favoring the poor were introduced, and our party supported these as a first step toward the wider transformation it championed. But when the nationalist right violently overthrew the BZNS government in 1923, the Bulgarian comrades decided not to offer the latter any active support but to stand aside and let the other two forces fight it out. This proved a serious error of judgment, because the moment the right was in power it came after our party with all guns blazing. And when, too late, the Bulgarian comrades rose in their own defense, the cost was terrible. The leadership was virtually wiped out by arrests and executions, leaving those they had led arguing over how best to respond, with some insisting that a strategic retreat was unavoidable if the party wished to survive, others insisting, with equal fervor, that attack was the only form of defense with any chance of success, that fire must be fought with fire.
This was the argument that Bozhidarov and I stepped into in January 1925, the one that was rehearsed again and again over subsequent months in unlit back rooms and shuttered cafés, every ear half-cocked for the sound of a warning whistle outside. And we weren’t just another two comrades—we were the envoys from Moscow, the voice of the Comintern, and we had come armed with Zinoviev’s instructions. I don’t remember the precise wording, but I do recall the confusion they created—Zinoviev was a great orator, but he was never the brightest of sparks, and most of the comrades I’ve met who worked with him had trouble understanding how he had reached the positions he had. He urged the Bulgarian comrades not to repeat the “opportunism” of 1923, which our more fiery members took to mean the spineless abandonment of the peasant party and our more moderate members assumed was a reference to the doomed rising that had followed a few weeks later. The former option was given more credence by the instructions to construct an underground organization, establish ties with the more revolutionary peasants, and counter police persecution through armed resistance. The party was ordered to prepare itself for—in a favorite phrase of the times—“the inevitably maturing revolutionary situation.”
As a blueprint this was all utterly useless, but of course no one dared say so. Our underground organization was constantly being undone by arrests, the revolutionary peasants were mostly already in jail, and anyone thinking he’d stumbled across a “maturing revolutionary situation” was deluding himself. In this situation the ideological response—working out which of our choices was theoretically correct—seemed less and less relevant. The Bulgarian comrades were literally fighting for their lives, and if they didn’t kill the enemy, the enemy was going to kill them. After each new meeting to discuss what Zinoviev actually meant, more became convinced that he was in favor of action.
In hindsight, this was when I should have intervened. Because of what we represented, Bozhidarov and I had influence, I more than he because he was just another Bulgarian. But I was torn. The action in prospect involved the killing of someone high enough in the government or army to warrant a state funeral, and then an attack on the funeral itself, which many other political and military leaders would perforce be attending. This scheme felt nihilistic, anarchistic, anything indeed but Bolshevist. Assassination had never been a Bolshevik tactic and neither had mass murder. Added to which, in the likely absence of Zinoviev’s “maturing situation,” a lot more people on our side were going to die for little if any gain. But—and it was a big but—the authorities were running riot, arresting and executing comrades on what felt like an hourly basis. The situation was certainly desperate, and I didn’t feel sure enough of my doubts to veto the only response we had planned. I did communicate my misgivings to Zinoviev, but his dismissive reply felt almost instant given the distance involved, and I didn’t press the argument any further. I doubt it would have made any difference if I had, but I should have tried. It was my first major mission abroad, and Zinoviev was the head of the Comintern. I say this to explain, not to excuse.
Life went on, winter turning to early spring. I spent many an evening with Vyara and Yasen, answering their questions about the world beyond Bulgaria and, to my shame, rarely asking any in return. Vyara was expecting a child in the summer, and was working only half days as a typist, so the two of us would talk away the afternoons until Yasen came home from his job as an office clerk. With her sleek blonde hair, catlike face, and shapely curves, Vyara was extremely attractive, but they were both such lovely people, and such a well-matched couple, that I made sure to keep my desire to myself. I may have killed them in the end, but I didn’t insult their hospitality.
Outside the war continued. More arrests, more rumors of torture, the latter often confirmed when a comrade’s mutilated body was found in some field or forest outside the city. Our plans were made, discussed, remade. A sexton at Saint Nedelya cathedral had already been recruited, and with his help the twenty-five kilograms of explosive were smuggled inside and carried up to the rafters. The bait was selected—a high-ranking policeman named Nachev whose funeral would prove a magnet to his senior colleagues. Nachev was killed, but on the day of the ceremony, there were so many guards around the cathedral that the attack had to be called off.
Another victim was chosen, General Konstantin Georgiev. He was gunned down in front of another church sometime in mid-April, and two days later his funeral took place at Saint Nedelya. Many government ministers were in attendance, along with most of the highest-ranked officers from the police and armed forces. And this time, for reasons that were never explained, there was hardly any security.
The service had barely begun when two comrades lit the fifteen-meter fuse and made their escape. The explosion brought down much of the roof on the mourners, killing a hundred and fifty, and injuring five hundred more.
Across the city, having taken
the risk of a short trip outside in daylight, I heard the crack and the thunder, saw the cloud of smoke and dust smudging the clear blue sky. I should have been elated, but all I felt was dread.
It’s late now, and if I am to sleep, I must leave the rest of this story for another day.
Friday, October 7
Over dinner we learned that Buchloh’s younger brother has joined the SS and that his parents are less than pleased. Buchloh didn’t explain the latter, but from things he’s said in the past, I would guess that Social Democrat sympathies are a more likely reason than bourgeois snobbery.
Gerritzen, meanwhile, has bought a new car, which he keeps at his new fiancée’s house, partly because it’s less likely to be vandalized on her middle-class street, mostly, I suspect, to impress her father.
According to the wireless this evening, the occupation of the Sudetenland is almost complete. The next victim is yet to be announced, and the ugly, strident tone of September’s editorials has noticeably softened. The beast is resting between hunts, temporarily sated.
Sunday, October 9
Today I took Walter and Marco to see Walter’s beloved Schalke 04 play Rot-Weiss Essen. The train trip to Gelsenkirchen took almost two hours, and we were inside the ground with more than one to spare, which at least ensured an excellent spot at the front close to the halfway line. Neither Walter nor Marco had been to a professional game before, and I hadn’t seen one for more than fifteen years, so it was a journey of discovery for all of us.
The boys took the wait in their stride, taking in the atmosphere as the stadium slowly filled up. The visibility was poor, and I spent most of the hour silently begging the fog not to thicken and cause a postponement. My prayer was eventually answered just before kickoff when a pale lemony sun forced its way through the mist.
I’ve rarely seen Walter look happier than he did when his heroes ran out. He recognized all the Schalke players from the album of pictures he has at home, and gleefully shared their identities with Marco and me, along with potted histories and sundry statistics. Most of the Schalke players had also played for the national team at some point, and one, Fritz Szepan, was the current national captain.
Even I could see Szepan was a special player, but the muddy pitch clearly favored powerful players over skillful ones, and the Essen team seemed full of young giants. One of these scored early in the second half, and we were bracing ourselves for defeat when Walter’s other favorite, Ernst Kuzorra, scored a dramatic last-minute equalizer. Given the circumstances, the draw felt like a win, and our walk back to the station verged on the triumphant.
We had stepped outside our troubles for an afternoon, and on the train coming back, I saw the look on Walter’s face that I’d been half-expecting—part confused, wholly guilty.
It was okay to enjoy things, I told him. His mother would want him to.
“I know that,” he said. “It’s just hard to do.”
Monday, October 10
Andreas has given me a shock this evening. He has known for quite a while that my political leanings are, like Anna’s, the sort best kept under one’s hat in National Socialist Germany. And since, unlike Anna, I have no children to care for, Andreas might well have suspected that I was still actively involved in some way or other. But nothing was said, no questions asked, until this evening.
When I took him a cup of what passes for chocolate these days, he asked if I had a few minutes to talk, and when I said yes, he suggested I close the door.
“Josef,” he began, “I’ve been doing some thinking.” He said that during the week he’d been really ill, he hadn’t been able to stop worrying about what would happen to Walter if he died. Who would look after the boy? He knew that Verena would be willing, but she would have no legal standing, and he doubted the state would provide her with one, given her son’s unfortunate ancestry. Erich should be back soon, but it was far from certain—the boy might do something stupid again, or the regime might simply decide they liked his forced labor. And if war came, they’d put him in uniform and take him off to fight. As for Anna, it would probably be years before she came back. If she ever did.
He looked at me, or at least turned his milky eyes in my direction.
I didn’t know how to reply. I wanted to say I’d look after Walter but knew I’d be making a promise I might not be able to keep.
And that was when Andreas surprised me.
“I may be wrong,” he said, “but I think there may come a day when you will have to leave us. And Germany too,” he added pointedly. “And I’m hoping you might consider taking Walter with you.”
I was stunned.
“He likes you,” Andreas continued. “He trusts you. And I trust you to bring him back to his family if and when that becomes possible. If he stays, and I die, and Erich isn’t here, then the bastards will take him. He’ll end up in an orphanage, alone and at anyone’s mercy until he’s old enough to wear a uniform.” He gave me the blind man’s stare. “Well, say something.”
I laughed, which made him do the same. “Andreas,” I said, “I like Walter. I love Walter.” I hesitated, but only out of habit. “And you’re right—I may have to leave in a hurry. But I don’t know where I’d be going,” I added with rather less candor, “and I’m not at all sure—”
“Wherever it is,” he said, cutting me off, “he’ll be better off with you than on his own. But I realize it’s a lot to ask.”
I told him it wasn’t. That being asked was an honor. But that I’d have to think about it.
And I have been now for a couple of hours. I would love to believe that Walter would be better off with me, but when I leave here, it will probably be for Moscow, where prison, death, or another Comintern mission awaits. All would involve leaving Walter, and I can’t persuade myself that a Moscow orphanage would be any improvement on one in Hamm. At least he speaks the language here.
I could of course refuse Moscow’s recall. But that would mean spending the rest of my years one step ahead of Yezhov’s assassins. Which is not a life I would want to inflict on anyone else, let alone a twelve-year-old boy.
Tuesday, October 11
With a heavy heart, I must complete my account of events in Sofia.
Our bombing of the cathedral killed a lot of prominent people—a former minister of war, an army commander, mayors and governors, the chief of police—but nowhere near enough of the ones that mattered. Too many of those we were after were pulled alive from the rubble, in some cases with barely a scratch. We had wounded the beast badly enough to enrage it, scared it enough to invite a terrible vengeance.
For twenty-four hours the city seemed stunned by the enormity of what had happened. But this wasn’t the calm before a revolutionary storm. There was no popular uprising, no waves of strikes or demonstrations. Zinoviev’s “maturing situation” was nowhere to be seen.
The forces of reaction showed no such reluctance to assert their strength, and soon the streets were full of police and soldiers, the cells filling with comrades. I was smuggled out of Sofia in a farmer’s cart and three night marches later was safe in Yugoslavia. But there was no escape for most of those comrades I’d come to know during my four-month stay. Those shot on the spot were often the lucky ones; torture and slow hanging were meted out to many who were captured alive.
By the time I got back to Moscow, the Bulgarian party was all but extinct in Bulgaria, and the Russians were asking why. I was lucky—before the catastrophe, Zinoviev had shown others my letter advising caution, claiming it exemplified a less than wholehearted approach, so he could hardly use me as a scapegoat for his own rash adventurism. I found myself on the same side as Comrade Stalin, which then as now was the safest place to be.
It was only much later that a comrade I met in Moscow told me what had happened to Yasen and Vyara. The Bulgarian authorities, in their determination to prove that the Soviet Union had been behind the cathedral
bombing, had tortured their way to learning that a Comintern rep had indeed been present in Sofia and then tortured their way to finding out which locals had harbored him. Yasen they hanged with wire; Vyara they raped and burned, before cutting out her unborn child.
When I consider abandoning my Comintern duty to take care of one German boy, it’s people like them who give me pause. I owe them, every last one of them over the years, who suffered and died for a world not run by the rich and the powerful. I owe it to them to continue the struggle.
Thursday, October 13
Ruchay and I passed each other on the street today. He hesitated when he saw me, as if he had something he wanted to say, but then lowered his head and hurried on.
Sunday, October 16
Setting down my memories of Sofia cured me of wanting to write for several days. Not that there’s been much to write about—the house has been ticking over, adults and children alike seeing to their daily duties at work and school. The only bad news has been a lack of good news.
This morning, while the boys were playing football outside, Andreas, Verena, and I had a conversation about Walter. We agreed that all things considered he’s bearing up well and that expecting anything more would be foolish. Verena has her son as an unwitting informant, and according to Marco, Walter is keeping very much to himself at school, keeping old friends at a distance, and refusing to be provoked by his enemies. But “he’s still Walter,” as Marco puts it. Out of the mouths of babes.
We talked about my taking another trip downtown to see the Gestapo, but agreed that if Kriminalsekretär Appel had any news, he would let us know, and that pestering him would be counterproductive. I felt relieved, then guilty for feeling it. If we don’t hear anything by the end of the month, I will pay them a visit.
I have of course been thinking about what Andreas said last week, that if I have to leave, I should consider taking Walter with me. And since writing about Bulgaria, I’ve also been agonizing over my mission. Neither requires an instant decision, and I realize I’m letting things drift until circumstances force my hand. Andreas may fall ill again and die. He may not. With each passing week, the day set for Erich’s release grows closer, and I can only hope that they actually let him go.
Diary of a Dead Man on Leave Page 22