Some workers had been conscripted. Others had been abducted—swept up like dirt filling a Nazi dust pan.
An account by an Italian stated the factory where he worked was raided and two thousand workers had been stuffed into cattle cars. Once in Germany, they were divided up and distributed to various factories. Most of the Italians allocated to Daimler-Marienfelde had been assigned to Workshop 40, the part of the factory that made tanks and military vans. It was also the same part of the factory, I would eventually learn, where Marcel worked. My heart ached at the thought that those workers had not been able to say goodbye to their loved ones, or that their families might not have known for days or weeks or months—if they ever found out—what had happened to their husbands, sons, fathers.
Marienfelde was described as a collection of fourteen wood and stone barracks on Buckower Chaussee. The camp, called D4, was divided into three sections, each surrounded by barbed wire. D4 East housed Soviet “East Workers,” including women and children. D4 South housed Belgian, Dutch, French, and Italian workers. D4 West primarily housed French and Italian workers.
D4 West. My heart skipped. D4 West had been the return address on Marcel’s postcard! When I initially provided that address to Wolfgang, a shadow of doubt existed whether Marcel’s letters were even real. But this meant not only had I provided a return address of a godforsaken but actual camp, I had provided a return address for a section of the camp that held French workers! Within seconds, though, the soaring, validating joy of discovering the corroborating information was replaced by shame. How could learning about D4 West result in any kind of joy?
“By the end of 1943,” the chapter said, “most of D4 had been destroyed.” Workers were moved to Mariendorf, a camp composed of twenty-three stone buildings. The larger Mariendorf camp held six to seven thousand workers. Some were assigned to Daimler. Others were assigned to the machine and tool factory Fritz-Werner-Werke, or to the electrical part manufacturer Siemens. The chapter mentioned other locations, too: camps on Albanstraße and Benzstraße, and additional camps for East Workers on Daimlerstraße and Säntisstraße.
Daimlerstraße! Wolfgang had listed Daimlerstraße as Marcel’s “home.” But that was for East Workers. My head began to pound.
I read the paragraphs several times, but making sense of the names and locations felt like trying to see detail while looking through gauze. It wasn’t until I studied a map of Berlin that I finally understood: Marienfelde was not just the name of a camp or a factory. Marienfelde, and its neighbor, Mariendorf, were suburbs. They were places. Albanstraße, Benzstraße, Daimlerstraße, Säntisstraße, and Buckower Chaussee were roads—roads that were still there.
Months earlier, when I first learned 170 camps had been located in Berlin, the number seemed too preposterous to be true. But by the count in Wolfgang’s chapter, it seemed Marienfelde and Mariendorf alone had been home to eight or more camps.
Perhaps the first description I found—the one that said Berlin-Marienfelde was a camp with “six or seven” barracks—referred to one section of D4. Perhaps it referred to a camp on Albanstraße or Benzstraße. The two descriptions did not match, yet in some inexplicable way things also began to make perfect sense. Workers, it appeared, had been shuffled around based on which companies needed their labor, and based on which barracks, which workers, remained after bombings. The workers were no longer individuals with names, families, histories; they were playing cards to be shuffled, dealt, then played again.
By February 1944, the standard workweek at Daimler’s factory was seventy-two hours. Saturday shifts were mandatory. Prisoners worked two or three Sundays each month. When not toiling in the factory, the German army might force them to clear rubble or dig anti-tank trenches.
French workers initially received the same rations as German workers, but those larger rations were eventually suspended. After that, one French worker described his daily ration as “a portion of margarine, some sausage, one soup, and that was all.” One Italian worker recalled a day he received a small piece of sausage with his soup. “It was really something special,” he said, until he cut it open and noticed worms in the sausage. He ate it anyway. “We were that hungry,” he said.
The same man explained, “On the way to work and back I was always looking down on the road, hoping to find a potato peel, a piece of carrot or some other root. We were also taking grass or herbs from the side of the road or from hedges. Whatever was possible to eat.”
I had to stop to take a few deep breaths. In the second letter Marcel mentioned cooking veal bones and potatoes. Marcel said he made crêpes! Maybe it had been true; maybe Marcel had been able to steal or buy those items. But maybe he lied. Maybe he claimed to have veal bones and potatoes to protect his wife from the truth. “Hunger haunted the barracks,” I read elsewhere. “[Inmates] fantasized about cooking the dogs of SS men. Often, prisoners talked about lavish meals, seasoning and frying imaginary steaks.”
Wedding rings, I would read elsewhere, were sometimes traded for bread.
“Civilian workers were entitled to leave at any time,” the chapter stated, a claim that surprised and confused me. On weekends, Western European workers could go swimming or meet other foreigners at Alexanderplatz (a large public square in Berlin) or the Friedrichstraße station (a major railway station). I speculated trips outside the barbed-wire perimeter were to buy food and supplies. I guessed swimming was more for hygiene than recreation.
The chapter listed movies and soccer games as favorite diversions, and stated that factory management organized occasional outings for music or theater. That was surprising and confusing, too, since it seemed impossible that lice-infected, unshowered foreigners would be welcomed into any venue used by Berliners. “Participation was, as is obvious, under constant watch,” the chapter stated.
The only clothes some workers in Marienfelde had were the garments they had on the day they arrived. “The few things we had with us wore out very fast,” one man said. One worker traded his watch for a shirt, which wore out in weeks. After that, he cut a hole in a blanket, draped it over his shoulders, and tied a string around his waist.
When Marcel told Suzanne, Denise, and Lily he had “quite a bit of mending to do,” I envisioned reinforcing a frayed cuff, replacing a button. I had not imagined fibers and seams dissolving like salt in water, and I berated my naïveté.
“We protected our feet with rugs because we had no socks. No work clothes were given out by Daimler-Benz,” another worker claimed, though the chapter contradicted that by noting management provided clothes to some foreigners after everything had been lost in a bombing.
“Employers are only permitted to issue these clothes when absolutely necessary, that is … [if] the worker would not be able to continue his work,” I would read elsewhere. And in 1942, the policy changed from giving clothes to workers to renting clothes. “In order to prevent foreign workers from taking working clothes with them … a certain sum shall be deducted from their wages as deposit. … For the use of the clothes, the worker must pay a fee, which is to be deducted from his wages,” read an Order by the Reich Director for Clothing and Related Industries.
When it came to wages, Western European workers like Marcel were paid directly. And they were paid more than other workers based on the perception that Western European workers were more productive. For East Workers, companies like Daimler paid the SS “for the privilege of using the camp inmates.”
Wages, I would read elsewhere, were a farce. Any mistake was a pretext for a fine. Deductions were made for lodging and food, and up to 30 percent of a worker’s wage might be withheld for taxes, compulsory “donations” to various German funds, or mandatory membership fees to the German Labor Front, the Nazi organization that replaced individual trade unions.
Hygiene inside the Marienfelde and Mariendorf camps was catastrophic. Tuberculosis, typhus, and meningitis were rampant, yet people were forced to work even if they were seriously ill. Clothes were boiled to kill lice. Cotton wa
s stuffed in ears to prevent parasites from crawling inside. Showers required a permit issued by the factory foreman, though showers were “generally avoided” since people had to undress outside and soap was unavailable. Trips to the toilet were “always urgent” because they often ate only soup.
As bad as it was for Western European workers, conditions were profoundly worse for East Workers. East Workers were beaten bloody for not understanding orders barked in German, or locked up for work infractions as minor as “leaning back for support.” Their camp was infested with vermin. Hygiene was disastrous. Their food situation was dire, and they were unable to afford food on the black market. East Workers were also not allowed to join French and German workers inside air-raid shelters, which made aerial bombings even more treacherous.
A selfish relief washed through me that Marcel, as a Frenchman, was better off than others. Compassion should have poured out of me for the East Workers, but it did not, and its absence made me feel horrible and ugly. Yet my mind kept circling back to a brutal truth: better conditions increased the probability Marcel might have survived.
Was it Marcel’s fault French workers had privileges others did not? Was it his responsibility to forfeit any advantage he had?
Charity, I read, could be “suicidal.”
After reading the translation of Wolfgang’s chapter, it was impossible to turn my attention back to client work. For the rest of the day I was in a stupor, my mind churning through the camp conditions and testimony provided by survivors. That night, as I attempted to fall asleep, one particular passage rattled around inside my head: “Civilian workers were entitled to leave at any time.”
I had spent months being angry at Daimler, at Germany, at the Vichy regime, at STO, at the entire war. For the first time, my anger was directed at Marcel. The unkind thoughts were gone nearly as fast as they appeared, but I could not deny I had them. If Western European workers were entitled to leave at any time, why the hell didn’t Marcel pack his belongings and go home? Why didn’t he escape when he ventured out to buy food? Couldn’t he have walked back to France? Why didn’t he do something—anything!—to avoid going to Germany in the first place?
Within France, I would learn, “in areas where there was a heavy German presence”—areas that included both Paris and Berchères-la-Maingot—men stood little chance of evading STO. German officials “would enter French factories and choose workers by name, or demand lists of workers from the French employer.” Selected workers would be summoned to appear before a German labor office representative. “If he failed to appear, the French labor inspector signed a contract in his stead.”
French police ruthlessly enforced summons. “If the worker did not appear at the appointed place and time, he was brought forcibly to the station; if he could not be found, a relative was conscripted in his place or his family was deprived of its ration cards.” Those who refused to appear for their summons faced five years in prison and a fine of up to thirty thousand francs. Radio broadcasts warned that the family members of those who evaded STO might face reprisal.
French workers were led to believe they could return home once their term of service expired. But “as time went on, it became more obvious that STO was a one-way ticket.” In late 1943, the Germans authorities made that formal by announcing, “all French workers … had their ‘contracts’ extended … for the duration of the war.”
Once someone was inside Germany, it seemed they were caught in an inescapable web. Any foreigner leaving or entering Reich territory needed a police-issued visa. Soldiers guarded roads and bridges. The tattered clothes covering Marcel’s back might have been painted with a red acetone X identifying him as a prisoner. Bounties were paid for the arrest of fugitives.
Even if he had made it to Berchères-la-Maingot, he would have been unable to stay. Breaches of labor contracts could be punished by “hard labor, imprisonment or fine, and even, in serious cases, by the death sentence.”
So as unbearable as life in camp seemed, perhaps the most clear and certain path for survival—perhaps Marcel’s only chance for survival—was to do what he was told, try to stay healthy, and wait for the war to be over.
I let out a long sigh. There did not seem to be a single thing clear or certain about that path.
In the days that followed, I often caught myself staring at my computer monitor. Routine tasks were bewildering. Simple client revisions felt like Herculean puzzles. I made several humiliating errors: I sent a proof to a client with “Minneapolis” spelled wrong; I released a project to a print vendor, then had no recollection of doing so.
Guilt began to gnaw at me when I ate, when I put on clean clothes, when I indulged in the obscene luxury of a daily hot shower.
Night after night, I searched for Marcel until the wee morning hours. Other nights, I would awake with a start when images of the camp filled my dreams. On those nights, I would slip out of our bedroom, settle into the living room couch, and resume the search. If I was lucky, I would fall back asleep by 4:00 or 5:00. Mornings when Aaron got up early for work, he would wiggle my foot to wake me and send me back to bed so I would be near the alarm when it began to chirp. Other mornings, Hoover roused me when it was time for our walk.
After showering and dressing, no amount of under-eye concealer could mask my gray tiredness.
Hoover trotted to the kitchen to greet Aaron when he got home from work. I remained cocooned inside the zigzag afghan, my laptop balanced on my outstretched legs. I glanced at the clock; it was just before midnight.
Aaron walked into the living room, folded his arms onto the back of the stuffed chair, and kissed the top of my head.
“How’d your shift go?” I asked.
Aaron began to tell me about his last patient, but he stopped mid-sentence as the grid of information displayed on my laptop drew his attention.
“What are you looking at?” He did not even attempt to mask his irritation.
I knew he would not like the answer, and I hesitated before responding. “Bombing records of Berlin.”
The chapter Wolfgang provided on Daimler-Marienfelde listed the results of several aerial bombing raids. In one August 1943 nighttime attack, forty-five or more East Workers had been killed. A thousand foreign workers lost housing. Parts of Workshop 40, the section of the factory where Marcel worked, burned. Another part of the factory, Workshop 90, was destroyed. Afterward, some of the Workshop 90 workers were transferred to a factory in Poland.
I became convinced the answer to Marcel’s fate hid behind the questions: When was the factory bombed? and How bad was it? Maybe military records would reveal the entire Daimler-Marienfelde complex had been destroyed. Maybe I would find a list of casualties. Maybe I would learn Workshop 40 workers had been transferred, too. Maybe I would learn all French workers had been released. Or that French workers had been shipped to an extermination camp.
“Carolyn—” Aaron said as he abruptly stood. “Stop. Just stop!” I flinched at the anger in his voice. “He made it home. He didn’t make it home. It doesn’t—”
“Don’t say it doesn’t matter,” I snapped. It mattered. Marcel mattered. For several long seconds, we glared at each other.
“I was going to say …” Aaron sharply enunciated each syllable to emphasize his irritation, “it doesn’t change anything.” He stormed out of the room, muttering, “You’re never going to sleep tonight.”
He was right.
I did not care.
During the first years of the war, strategic bombing raids of Germany and occupied Europe were conducted by the Royal Air Force. In November 1943—the same month Marcel had written the third letter—the RAF began an intense, four-month-long bombing campaign of Berlin. By February 1944, Berlin had seen sixteen major raids.
In late February 1944, the US Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces joined the RAF in targeting aircraft factories and airfields across Germany. Immediately after, their combined sites shifted to Berlin. In the first week of March, the Eighth Air Force launch
ed three major attacks on Berlin. In the third of those attacks, a 125-mile-long column of 730 heavy bombers targeted the city.
I scoured records for any mention of the Daimler-Marienfelde plant. Most records, though, listed frustratingly unspecific “war industry targets” or targets “to the south of Berlin.” That description—“to the south of Berlin”—incited a wave of anxiety each time I saw it; Marienfelde was eight miles due south of Berlin’s city center.
The anxiety was heightened by a fundamental conflict: the same bombings that were bringing Germany to its knees, and in turn an end to the war, were the same bombings killing workers like Marcel.
One of few documents I found specific to a bombing of Daimler’s Marienfelde factory was a black-and-white montage of aerial reconnaissance photos in the US Library of Congress archive. Along the top edge, handwritten block letters identified the target: “Marienfelde—in Berlin—August 6, 1944. This plant specializes in Panther Tanks.” On that hot summer day, more than one thousand B-17 and B-24 US Army Air Force bombers, escorted by seven hundred fighter planes, attacked oil refineries, aircraft factories, and other sites in Berlin, Poland, and France. From what I had been able to sort out, eighty-three of those B-17s targeted Daimler’s Marienfelde factory. “The bombing is very effective and ten major [targets] are severely damaged during one of the best days the Eighth [Air Force] experiences,” the mission record stated.
The first photo in the montage—the before photo—included a thick, hand-drawn border around the massive factory complex. Sections were labeled: Tank Factory, Communication Equipment, Machine Tools.
The photo taken during the attack reminded me of a satellite image of a forest, not unlike satellite images I had viewed of the countryside surrounding Berchères-la-Maingot. But instead of lush canopies of foliage, every plume was a cloud of smoke and debris. Overlapping plumes of white, gray, and black filled the perimeter. Fifty or more plumes billowed from residential-looking areas beyond the factory.
Marcel's Letters Page 11