There was an endless stream of people seeking her advice on all issues ranging from paperwork completion to unrealistic expectations of finding family members. Madelaine took it all in her stride, but amidst the urgency of daily demands, she was always curious about the nagging issue of Brunner’s whereabouts. It was a casual remark one morning that triggered her initiative. One of her workmates, Jean Claude, said that he was taking an hour off to attend mass. She knew that he was very religious and was a daily communicant with strong connections to the local parish priest. With an outward indifference disguising the urgency of her question, as she had perfected many times in the resistance, she requested Jean Claude to ask the parish priest to provide some background information on Bishop Alois Hudal in the Vatican. Without any hint of curiosity he just said, “Sure, I’ll let you know”. She knew that her next move in tracking Brunner would be to contact Hudal and she wanted to be well informed on his background if she was to win his confidence and establish if indeed Brunner had made contact. She was aware that the rumours in the clandestine SS led to Hudal as their escape route.
After the liberation of Rome, Pope Pius X11 had sought Hudal's expertise in categorising refugees which had started as a trickle of humanity but had within a short time become a torrent. He had been appointed the director of Assistenza Austriaca, the pontifical commission exclusively concerned with refugees. This was an endorsement of his activities to provide refuge and succour to all among the destabilized suffering seeking solace, including National Socialists. Madelaine had established that Hudal had devised a network of escape routes through monasteries, principally in South Tyrol leading to the port of Genoa. Hudal was even audaciously suggesting that a ‘general amnesty’ be extended to all German military. This was a man with substantial influence and would be a dangerous foe.
The remainder of the morning seemed to drag by for Madelaine. She abstractedly went through the seemingly endless mountain of paperwork and kept glancing at the clock in anticipation of Jean Claude’s return. He was later than the hour he had suggested, but eventually she saw his slight boyish figure with dark tousled hair emerging through the doorway. She wanted to rush up to him and enquire about Bishop Hudal, but restrained herself and waited respectfully as he resumed his seat some twenty feet away. After ten minutes, with no outward sign from Jean Claude, she could contain herself no longer. Avoiding the various clerks and other messengers that moved about the large room, she approached his desk. Looking up at her, he smiled and handed her a piece of white paper.
“That’s his private telephone number, he is a German sympathiser, be very careful”.
THIRTY
PRAGUE: 1945
The small entourage of Lina Heydrich, her three children, accompanied by Maria and Anna, plus three SS guards, had made steady but slow progress towards Bavaria. The remaining body of the SS from the estate, nine in all, had said their official goodbyes on the outskirts of Prague saying that they intended to disperse unless further instructions were forthcoming from their Battalion Commander, who had not made contact for two weeks. Travelling mostly at night to avoid being hit by the ever-increasing threat of Allied aircraft, they managed to hide in wooded areas during the day and slept in three cars. The journey was fraught with danger. Apart from the threat of being strafed randomly from the air, the roads were full of displaced people using every conceivable form of transport.
They had managed to avoid roadblocks by travelling upon uncharted side roads and they were alerted to identity checks by passers-by. On the fourth day of this torturous odyssey, the SS driver in the front car pulled into a clearing beside a wooded area and said as they were now within the German boundary, they could not proceed any further in the cars as they were low on gasoline and it was too dangerous. The three SS men proceeded to shed their uniforms and don civilian clothes. Ever deferential to the widow of Heydrich, they formally extended their good wishes to the women and children. Then in unison, they raised their right arms in the Hitler salute and turned to disappear into the woods.
They had left the city of Usti Nad Labem on the Czech frontier behind just before crossing the border into Germany. The nightime air raids had been terrifying with Allied bombing destroying the infrastructure of this important and busy river port. Lina privately recalled to herself that the last time she had been in this city, she was attending a theatrical evening with her husband Reinhardt and she had been treated with the deference due to a queen. She remembered the pomp and ceremony of the occasion and hearing the boast of the Nazi figures in attendance that the city and general area was now Judenfrei ( Jew-free). Looking at the children and the dishevelled state they were all in, she stopped herself from wondering what insane political decisions had led to this catastrophe.
They were on the outskirts of a small town which they could see in the distance. It looked inviting and promised to provide temporary solace. They had been sleeping in the cars and their appearance was now approaching bedraggled refugee status, in company with the injured throngs of shifting humanity they were encountering. “It’s only about two miles to that town and I have a farmhouse contact where we can stay the night.” Lina was still very much in charge and Maria and Anna nodded their agreement and looked forward to the promise of a warm sojourn later in the evening.
The roadblock they encountered at the approach to the town was controlled by the United States military. Heavily armed American soldiers manned an area of the road completely blocked by sandbags. Hastily erected notices in German and English warned everyone to obey the authorities and disclose all firearms, also to have identity papers ready for inspection. The women and children stood in line and shuffled slowly towards the barrier. The staff sergeant in charge of the checkpoint was the first non-German uniform they had seen. He was assisted by two other younger soldiers who were heavily armed and looked with surprise on the approaching line of men, women and children. At the barrier, the Sergeant gave only a cursory look at Lina’s group including the children and waved them on through, to their collective relief. He appeared to be only interested in the men and as Anna looked behind her, she could see that two men were being detained for further examinations amidst their loud vocal protestations.
Continuing on through the town, they all followed Lina who seemed to know her way and walked with self-assurance. She had remembered being in this area of Germany many years ago and knew that if she followed the river Elbe it would bring her to the area where she had a contact. Turning up a small side street, Lina told them that they were almost there but they were in for a shock. On reaching the entrance to the farmyard, they saw that it was heavily guarded by U.S. Army personnel. The property had been requisitioned as an army base and was full of soldiers, jeeps and military equipment. At the sight of all the alien uniforms, Lina was tempted to stall, but the small group had been spotted and were approached by a young smiling staff officer. He greeted them with very limited German, spoken in a southern state drawl and he enquired as to where they were going. Lina quickly gathered her thoughts and replied slowly so that he could understand. She told him that her friend had owned the farmhouse and had told her to come for a few nights as they had come from the Prague area to avoid the Russians and had no place to stay. He laughed and said that the only spare space was the poultry house and if they could suffer the smell of hens and chickens then they were welcome to stay a couple of nights. Greatly relieved, Lina accepted and they followed him to their new sanctuary. He had also looked at their identity papers but did not seem particularly interested. He even gave some chewing gum to the children which they had never seen before. In the poultry house, the straw-filled bags that they found in the corner were a welcome comfort from the awkward car seats of the past few nights. On settling down, Lina said to them in a low voice, “When we leave here, we have to split up, there are too many questions to answer with a group. I will travel separately with my children, while you, Maria and Anna will have a better chance to travel alone together. We cannot always exp
ect to be as lucky as we have been so far, particularly if we come across Russians, they will show us no mercy’’.
With that, she took out of her pocket a large key and handing it to Maria, she said, “This is the front door key to a safe house on the outskirts of Hamburg. As far as I know, it is still intact. It was used by my cousin as a clothing factory and if you make your way there, you will be safe. The building is old and will provide refuge for you both’’. She added, ‘’I also told my trusted SS guard that you will be going there as further protection’’. She described to Maria how to get there and then continued, “Our ultimate destination is the island of Fehmarn on the Baltic in Schleswig-Holstein and that is where we will meet when this nightmare ends”. She then settled down to go to sleep.
The next couple of days passed uneventfully. They were left alone in the poultry house and were offered occasional food by the U.S. soldiers who were really too busy with other activities to bother about them. Finally, it was time to leave. Lina had plans to continue on to Munich and she had heard that some train services were still operating towards northern Germany. She hugged Maria and Anna and said she would meet them in Fehmarn and then she was gone. Maria held Anna's hand and squeezed reassuringly. With her other hand, she felt the large key of the door of the property in Hamburg and silently committed herself to use it as a stopover on the way to Fehmarn.
When they left the temporary refuge of the poultry house, the outside world seemed to be awash with groups of refugees, all inured with the urgency to flee the terror advancing from the east. Exhausted POWs and liberated victims of concentration camps digging into their last vestiges of physical reserves, made up this overflowing mass. They joined the moving exodus, all shifting westwards trying to put as much distance as possible away from the fast approaching ‘Ivan’ as the Russian’s were referred to.
Maria did not know, but that about this time, Alois Brunner was receiving information from the SS contact that Maria and Anna would be going to the house in Hamburg and he could expect them within a couple of days. Lina also had discussed her possible routes through Germany with her SS guard, seeking advice primarily on avoiding Russians. Even though she was very familiar with most of Germany, she wanted to know where the best route options would be for this hazardous journey. Meanwhile in Hamburg, Alois Brunner had received the information of Maria’s itinerary from his loyal underling in the SS.
Smiling satisfactorily when he received this news, Brunner mused, “Soon I will no longer be a dispossessed Camp Commandant reviled by victors, but one of the wealthy elite!”
THIRTY ONE
HAMBURG: 1945
When Alois Brunner arrived in Hamburg, on the evening of Friday 13th April 1945, he heard on the Berlin radio broadcast that his beloved city of Vienna had fallen to Soviet troops. As he settled into a comfortable position on a lounge chair, he had a first class view of the building across the street from the long narrow second-floor window. He knew that the German cause was now hopeless and once he had dealt with the matter of Heydrich's legacy, he intended to exit incognito with the assistance of Bishop Hudal in acquiring false identity papers. He listened to the ranting on the radio of Goebbels, that deformed dwarf, calling it providential intervention that the United States President, Roosevelt had died the day before. Goebbels had enthused to Hitler that the death was a divine deviation which would alter the Allied strategy and see that the real threat to world order was Bolshevism. The fantasy continued when his speeches invoked the ageing population and the underage to form the Volkssturm, the ‘people's storm', to resist unto death the Red Army hoards. His propaganda and fanaticism had never wavered from the principles of the Nazi cause. His oratory in street speeches to the capacity-filled Sportpalast in Berlin had always demanded total loyalty to the Führer and the party, as did his writings in Der Angriff, the newspaper he founded. But public morale and appetite for more resistance and deprivations had waned because of hardship and rationing. To all but the most deluded, it was a lost cause. Members of the Volksstrum added little to resistance, being inadequately equipped and poorly trained, their enthusiasm was no compensation for ineffectual reality.
Brunner turned off the radio in disgust. He had been to the city of Hamburg many times; the last time some months before, when he paid an inspection visit to the concentration camp at Neuengamme in the Bergedorf District, some twenty-five kilometres south of the city. Brunner's inspection of this camp at the time was to ensure that the Nazi policy of exterminations through labour was functioning efficiently. Thousands were succumbing daily due to inhumane conditions, disease, hard manual labour and violence from the SS guards. The Allied bombing had practically incinerated the city and his pent-up hatred for the Jews surfaced every time he saw the destruction of the great German cities. He blamed the Allied bombing strategy on the Jewish dominated United States forces. “Well”, he thought to himself, “At least I did my bit to rid Europe of the vermin”.
He had lost count of the many thousands of Jews that he had personally escorted on transport duty to the extermination camps. He thought back to the trains leaving Drancy for Auschwitz and how he crammed them into carriage wagons fit for cattle. Also, he thought of the great Jewish purges that were carried out in Salonika; the estimates there were 140,000. He smiled when he remembered how he directed the Jewish graveyards to be razed and the headstones and marble coverings to be used as paving stones for the roads.
The labyrinth of bureaucratic divisions set up by the Reich Security Service to cleanse Europe of the Jewish problem saw him advancing to the position of Director of the Berlin Zentralstelle, working within IVD4, a section with responsibility for emigration and evacuation. It was also charged with the elimination of all opposition to the Reich. He thought, with some justification, that it was an ideological war. Now, his thoughts were on his own self-preservation once he had dealt with the Heydrich account. He knew that he could approach Bishop Hudal to obtain travel documents and in the myriad of fugitive organisations being spoken about by SS colleagues, he felt that the Vatican route would be his best option.
He stretched out in the chair and caught a glimpse of himself in a small dusty mirror on the opposite wall. It was the first day that he had discarded the uniform of SS Captain and he got a minor shock at seeing the civilian clothes he was wearing. He had a dark tunic-type coat over a dark high-button shirt, all of which blended perfectly with his swarthy features. He was satisfied that he would be unremarkable among the hordes of refugees criss-crossing Germany. He would never wear the uniform of an SS officer again.
He sat comfortably as he began to doze, thinking that when his quarry arrived at the building opposite, his personal war would be over. In his right hand, he held firmly onto a key of the hall door - exactly the same as the one Lina Heydrich had given to Maria.
THIRTY TWO
PARIS: 1945
For the remainder of the day, Madelaine found it difficult to concentrate on her civic office duties. She looked anxiously at the piece of paper which contained Bishop Hudal’s private phone number. Questions arose in her mind. If he was a Nazi sympathiser, how could she elicit some information from him regarding Brunner’s whereabouts. Since his name had been casually mentioned by her SS contact, she had made discreet enquiries into his activities in The Vatican from some of her old Resistance colleagues. She found out that he was in charge of the Austrian-German office in the Vatican and in that capacity, he was in charge of Carta di Riconscimento – these were cards necessary for migration to the Arab States and South America.
She discovered the book, The Foundations of National Socialism, which he had dedicated to Hitler by inscribing it: ‘To the architect of German greatness’. He saw the Church as a natural ally of the objectives of the German state. A convinced anti-semite, he had welcomed the Nuremberg racial laws of 1935. These laws reduced Jews to ‘non-persons’ and were in effect laying the foundation for the Holocaust. Hudal founded the Austrian Liberation Committee, which was an organisation i
ssuing Austrian identity papers, and he knew that if a person was stateless they could be eligible for a Red Cross travel document. He was an ideal and sympathetic source to be approached by desperate elements of the ravaged Reich fleeing the hovering hand of Allied justice.
Madelaine felt sure that Brunner would contact him. After much hesitation, she eventually booked a telephone call to Hudal’s number in the Vatican. Her approach to engage him in conversation would be to seek his support and sympathetic understanding for any displaced persons of Austrian nationality seeking refuge. This would not be an unreasonable request to the Church authorities in the turmoil and upheaval of the times.
She was signalled by the telephone operator to pick up the receiver as the connection was made. Surprisingly, he spoke in German with a strong guttural intonation. She recognised the Austrian influence in the accent. “Good evening to you Bishop Hudal”, she began in German, which raised some eyebrows from nearby colleagues within earshot. ‘’Your Excellency, I am telephoning you from the office of UNRRA in Paris. I am Director of a Department here and I was given your name by a member of the Wehrmacht”. She lowered her voice appreciably being conscious of nearby office workers. “I studied in Munich and I was the assistant to Carlos Niedermann in the Paris branch of Chase Bank”. She heard a faint signal of recognition on the other end of the line. She continued, “During my time in the Bank, I met many hierarchical figures from Berlin and elsewhere in Europe and I am telling you this so that you will be aware of my background when I seek your services through this office”. “Did you know the German Ambassador, Otto Abetz?” Hudal enquired. Madelaine gambled; she had met him occasionally. “Very well indeed, a wonderful man who functioned under very difficult circumstances”. She had no idea whether Otto Abetz was a friend or foe of Bishop Hudal but her reply seemed to prompt a satisfactory response. She went on to say, “He was very helpful to me in a number of transactions during his time in Paris”.
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