Diary of a Dead Man on Leave

by David Downing

  This morning at work I shall find the chance to give Müller the number I won’t be using, along with a warning that he may find Moscow’s welcome less effusive than the one he deserves. I shall also post the letter I’ve written to Jakob, in which I tell him what a pleasure he’s been to know.

  A last piece of Nazi news before I go: our government has forbidden Jews from keeping carrier pigeons. One wonders what message they fear might be sent.

  Afterwards by Walter Gersdorff

  The chain of events that brought Josef’s diary into my possession was one of those that make people wonder whether some things are simply fated.

  Because of its importance as a railway hub, Hamm was heavily bombed in the war, and the fact that our house survived was something of a miracle. And when it was finally demolished in 1987 to make room for new apartments, how fortunate it was that someone should not only notice the plain-covered book in the wreckage but also take the time and trouble to hand it in at the local library. Where, in turn, the current librarian would pass it on to his friend and predecessor, an eighty-year-old named Willi Holstein who had lived and worked in the town throughout the Nazi era.

  Holstein had reported on Hamm’s denazification after the war, and he remembered hearing about the Gersdorff family—the arrest and death of the mother, the subsequent flight of the sons. Sensing that the diary was an important historical document, he thought about trying to get it published, but with his health already failing, he soon came to realize that the task was for someone else. And when he discovered that one of the Gersdorff sons was actually a historian, he decided to send the diary to him. Which is how I came, in July 1988, to open my mailbox in upstate New York and find a German-stamped parcel inside.

  To say I was surprised would be the mother of understatements. To say I found reading the diary an emotional rollercoaster, much the same. It was, as Josef wrote in another context, like a journey in H. G. Wells’s time machine—I was whisked back to witness my own growing up, in a time and place that had come to seem so distant but now felt far too real. I hadn’t tried to forget that long-ago summer and fall, but I had succeeded in remembering it in ways that spared my heart. Coldly, dispassionately, as if it were a story that had happened to someone else.

  First, I must take up that story where Josef left off. More than half a century has passed since the night we said goodbye to Hamm, and when I try to remember it, I’m struck by how much I’ve forgotten. Some moments remain remarkably vivid, while hours at a time are only a blur.

  I do remember the walk to the depot, the dark silent houses, the sound of our feet and our breathing. I was crying most of the way, having just said goodbye to my granddad and knowing how unlikely it was that I’d ever see him again. I remember squeezing through a hole in a wire fence and following Josef across the dimly lit yard to our chosen train. The car he chose was covered, and the coils of wire underneath the cover were large enough to leave human-sized spaces into which we could squeeze ourselves. The wire was for searchlights, Erich said, which somehow made the frontier seem nearer.

  There was only a short wait before the train clanked into motion. Josef, who I now assume was accustomed to clandestine travel, was soon asleep, the occasional snore faintly audible over the noise of our passage. The rest of us just hugged ourselves and shivered as the train threaded its way across the Ruhr. Josef woke with a start when we rumbled across the Rhine, and I remember thinking that all we really knew about him was that he wasn’t the man we had thought he was. That this made him seem almost glamorous didn’t sit well with the resentment I felt about having been deceived.

  He woke up again when the train was shunted around in a yard. After we heard our engine leave with most of the cars, we waited for what seemed an age for another to pick up those left behind. Another round of buffeting followed its arrival, and then we were off again, chugging down the branch line toward Hellenthal.

  The sky was only just beginning to lighten when we arrived, the town and station still asleep. Fortune favored us where the setting was concerned—the yard backed onto woodland, and once the train was stationary, it took no more than a minute to get us all into the trees. Erich told us the road to his camp and the border continued on down the valley, and we should follow the edge of the wood until it was safe to rejoin the road outside the town.

  He gave the impression of knowing where he was going, and I imagine everyone else was wishing and hoping that this was the case. The road was certainly where he had said it would be, and we walked along it for at least an hour as the sky grew steadily lighter and the birds in the forest found their voices. After one look up at the heavens, Josef led us off into the trees, where we soon found a dense enough copse to shelter us through the day.

  I must have fallen asleep almost instantly, because the next thing I remember Erich was waking me up, and it was getting dark again. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as cold as I did in those few moments, but a round of stamping, shaking, and hugging myself brought more relief than expected, and once we were back on the road I slowly began to warm up.

  The sky above was clear, and for the first couple of hours, a sinking moon offered some light. This was generally welcome, but had the unfortunate effect of showing us one another’s faces. The first thing I noticed was the fear in Verena’s eyes, the second that Marco was worried for her. I don’t know why, but I felt neither frightened nor especially anxious. Maybe it was Erich’s confidence, maybe Josef’s calm. Maybe I was still feeling numb from losing my mother.

  There were no sudden shocks. The minutes and hours rolled by in a muted dream: the road winding on through the wooded hills, faintly trickling streams and rustling wildlife providing the meager soundtrack. Only once was this disturbed, when we heard the swelling growl of a motor up ahead and noticed the glow from its lights in the distant trees. We were all off the road before the headlights appeared, twin yellow orbs bouncing up and down as the lorry approached on the rutted track. The cab window on our side was open, and as it went by, a man took a drag on his cigarette, lighting his and his partner’s faces. I can still see the two of them, fifty years later.

  In the middle of the night, long after the moon had gone down, the road took a turn to the south. The camp was that way, Erich explained, about three kilometers further on. The lesser road in front of us, which looked like a recently bulldozed path, would take us across the frontier.

  On we went. I was exhausted by this time, and I could see that Marco and Verena were too. But no one complained or asked to stop—we knew the dawn wasn’t far away. We’d seen no signs of habitation for several hours, and when, in the early morning twilight, we finally came across something man-made, it was a pair of concrete emplacements perched atop the flanks of the narrow valley we were following. There was no indication they were occupied—no lights, no sound, no warning rounds fired.

  They had been built for the coming war, Erich told me later, not to stop people escaping the Reich. A visiting army major had explained that to him and his comrades while they were mixing cement for the one on the left.

  We continued on down the path, which almost disappeared before growing back into a farm track. It was almost light when we crested a slope and saw houses ahead. Erich said they were Belgian, and Josef went forward alone to make sure. When he came back with thumbs upraised, Erich and I had tears in our eyes. Tears of relief, no doubt, but also, on my part at least, tears for our mother.

  As far as I knew, we had no Belgian money, but Josef somehow persuaded the farmer to drive us in to the nearest town in his truck. Once we got there, Josef parked the four of us at a bus stop and went off on his own—something he would often do throughout our stay in Belgium. On this occasion I assume he was buying some local money with the emergency cache of gold coins he mentions in his diary.

  At the time I was probably paying scant attention. This was my first foreign country, and I was entranced by how different everyth
ing was—the sound of the language (which Josef, it turned out, spoke fluently), the smells of the food, the look of the streets, with their strange architectural styles and surprising paucity of flags. A bus took us to another small town, which I now know was Verviers, and from there a one-carriage train took us into Liège. The journey took a couple hours, and with every mile that passed, Verena and Erich grew more relaxed, as if the fact of our escape was finally sinking in. We might not know where we were going, but we knew we weren’t going back.

  We arrived in Antwerp late that afternoon. I’m not sure how long we spent there—it felt like weeks, but was probably less than two. We stayed in two rooms in a small hotel near the docks, Josef and Erich in one room, Verena, Marco, and I in the other. The clientele were all workers, and they probably included a prostitute or two—at that age I wouldn’t have noticed. I imagine that Josef thought the guaranteed privacy more than made up for the dirty sheets and cobwebs.

  And of course he was hardly ever there. At the start of our stay, he told us he wouldn’t be asking us where we wanted to go until he had some idea of what was actually possible, and that that was something he’d need several days to find out. So off he went each morning, returning briefly with food, but otherwise leaving us all to our own depleted devices. To top things off, we all had head colds, caught no doubt on our freight-train ride to freedom. We should have been feeling elated, but instead we felt anxious and miserable.

  After three or four days of this, Josef relented and took us out for an after-dark walk. The nearby city center was full of beautiful buildings, the docks seemed to stretch for miles, and the sidewalks were packed with sailors of so many different skin colors that Marco and I had trouble not gawping.

  Further days of seclusion followed, relieved somewhat by the pack of cards and German books Josef picked up in a pawnshop nearby. Our colds receded and the hours went by a little quicker, but I can still see the peeling walls and the imaginary countries I conjured up from the shapes of the stains on our ceiling. It must have been our seventh or eighth day in “captivity” when Josef finally said he had several possible destinations for us to consider.

  We could take a train south into France or a ship bound for England or America. He advised against the former—France was too close to Germany and might end up occupied if the war he was expecting finally broke out. England would be safer, but he had no contacts there to help us. In America he did. He told us about this family in Pennsylvania whom he’d stayed with years before and who he was certain would find us a home. He admitted he hadn’t heard from them “lately”—seven years, I later discovered—but said that the father and mother were only in their fifties and wouldn’t have moved.

  After all the Westerns I’d watched at the cinema, I was an easy sell, and I don’t think Verena had ever considered anywhere else as a final destination. Erich’s only objection was a fear that we wouldn’t get in.

  Josef assured him our arrival would not be noticed. And that once we got to Scranton, his friends would find a way to legalize our presence. They had, apparently, been helping immigrants like us for years.

  It was at this point—somewhat belatedly, as now seems obvious—that I realized Josef wasn’t coming with us. I asked him why not, feeling, I seem to remember, more surprised than upset.

  He said he had things to do here, by which I assumed he meant Belgium, but in hindsight he probably meant Europe. When I asked him what things, he smiled and told me, “Better you don’t know.”

  We left the hotel just after midnight—by this time being out in daylight would have felt like a novelty—and walked through the docks to a sailors’ bar. It was closed, but hadn’t been for long: the proprietor was still sweeping away the evening’s debris, his wife rinsing out glasses. He nodded Josef toward a back room, where a sailor was waiting to collect us. He was Dutch and spoke a little German.

  Josef hugged us each in turn and wished us luck. I felt sad to see him go, but, to be brutally honest, probably more from fear of how we’d survive without him than any sense of emotional loss. Perhaps I was suffering from a surfeit of the latter; more likely it never occurred to me that I might never see him again. I don’t believe twelve-year-olds think that way.

  We spent the next ten days in the hold of a freighter named the Surabaya Queen, sick as dogs for much of the time. Our sailor—a Communist, of course—brought us food and water each day and on one memorable evening took Erich, Marco, and me onto an open deck for a view of the ocean. The waves weren’t as high as they felt in the hold, and the moon sliding in and out of the clouds was beautiful, but having no land in sight was scarier than I’d imagined. I took the opportunity to dispose of my Hitler Youth dagger—I don’t know what had possessed me to bring it along in the first place, and Erich had pointed out the obvious, that should we run into the American authorities, they were unlikely to consider it a suitable import.

  Being smuggled off the ship in New York was much like being smuggled on in Antwerp—done in the early hours of the morning with only our sailor for company. We were quickly passed on to another comrade, who looked like a Hollywood gangster but spoke better German than our previous guardian. He took us to the train station, bought our tickets, and gave us a handful of dollars for food. It was still growing light when we left the city, and try as I did to take a look back, a sight of the famous skyline escaped me.

  That afternoon, we found ourselves outside the house in Scranton, each with a shoulder bag of belongings, all looking up at a door we didn’t dare knock on, in case we should find that Josef’s friends were gone. And then a woman came out—older than my mother, younger than my granddad, with a face that said, “Welcome, whoever you are.”

  She asked if we were lost.

  Erich asked if she was Esther Brennan, and when she said yes, he passed her the letter Josef had given him.

  She opened it, read it, and when she looked up, her face was smiling. “You’d better come in.”

  After reading Josef’s journal fifty years later, I knew I had to go back to Germany. I had never before felt any desire to do so—I was and am an American, and though I sometimes indulge a nostalgic interest in how Schalke are faring in the Bundesliga, I’m far more invested in baseball and hockey scores. But the journal hadn’t so much piqued my curiosity as sent it into overdrive, and when a publisher told me that readers would want to know what had happened to Josef’s “cast of characters,” I had the excuse I needed. My wife wasn’t happy at the length of separation entailed, but commitments of her own prevented her from joining me, and in the late fall of 1988, I took a solitary flight to the land of my birth and childhood.

  I won’t go into the hows and wheres of my research; as this is not an academic tome, I intend to cut straight to the findings. My first port of call had to be Hamm, and I must admit to having been shocked. After fifty years the place was almost unrecognizable. I already knew our house was gone, but so were all the surroundings. The configuration of roads had changed, and I found it hard to overlay the new urban landscape of spaces and blocks with my memory of how things had been.

  The railway depot was still in existence, but hugely shrunken in size. A couple of windowless concrete buildings sat inside acres of overgrown sidings; a line of rusting cars covered in graffiti that looked like a permanent fixture. My school was gone, a multicolored high-rise block soaring in its place. The library was still there, but the toy shop where I’d spent all my pocket money was now a Turkish takeout place. Like they say, you can never go back.

  And so to the people. Most of those that Josef mentioned in his diary were older than thirty in 1938, so even a peaceful half century would have drastically thinned out their ranks. Germany, of course, had not been so lucky, and I wasn’t expecting to find many survivors.

  All of Josef’s fellow lodgers died in the war. Gerritzen died at Stalingrad. Buchloh—whom I only vaguely remember—was “shot trying to escape” by a British
unit in Normandy. Ruchay, whose job at the depot saved him from conscription, was killed when a bomb destroyed his lodging house in February 1943. Poetic justice, I couldn’t help thinking—if he hadn’t betrayed my mother, he might still have been living in our house, which never took a hit.

  Jakob Barufka was one of the more than forty thousand civilians killed in the Hamburg firestorm a few months later. I couldn’t find out whether he’d moved there or was visiting his family, all of whom died in the same attack. As Josef points out in the diary, Barufka was not the sort of man to inspire a twelve-year-old like I was at the time, but reading it fifty years later, I can see what a decent man he was.

  Four of my teachers and my school principal are named in the diary, but Berndt Skoumal is the only one I remember well. He, Memering, Scheringer, and Bodenschatz were all killed in the war, Skoumal in North Africa, the others in Russia. Principal Huelse survived, taking charge of three more schools before he retired in 1965. He died in 1981.

  The almost sympathetic Gestapo officer Kriminalsekretär Appel was one of fifteen Gestapo officers summarily executed by American soldiers during the Battle of the Ruhr Pocket in 1945. Kriminalinspektor Jagusch was sentenced to five years by a denazification court in 1946, and following his release in 1950, he lived on his wife’s earnings as a kindergarten teacher. He died in 1968.

  I have had considerably less success in tracing Josef’s political contacts. And for an obvious reason: he used false names—and I think false descriptions—for all but one of them. I have been unable find out why he made an exception of Dariusz Müller and can only assume it was because he knew that Müller was already known to the Gestapo.

  It’s not a very satisfying answer, but it’s the only one I have. Müller did escape that night and not only found his way to Moscow but also managed to persuade the Russians and his fellow German exiles that he was a man worth keeping. He returned to Germany with the victorious Red Army and for several years played a not insignificant role in the new East German regime. Perhaps his spirit proved too independent, or perhaps he simply backed the wrong horse, because he died in the purges that followed the workers’ rising of 1953.