by Albert Holl
And once more the train rolls on to the west. The rattling of the wheels sounds very friendly but I can still detect the traces of the invisible fist of the NKVD in the background.
THE LAST STAGE
On the morning of the 25th of April we arrive at Brest-Litovsk. It is a sunny Sunday morning. After a brief search, in which I was able to conceal and thus keep the receipt for my wedding ring, we are loaded into the waiting German goods wagons that provided a shuttle service between Frankfurt/Oder and Brest-Litovsk. Even here eight prisoners of war experienced the power that the NKVD still held over us. They were isolated and taken away in a green Minna. I knew that I would only feel truly safe once I had crossed the border near Göttingen.
With about 1,400 prisoners of war we travelled across Poland on the morning of the 26th of April. The journey lasted three days and took us by the shortest way via Warsaw to Frankfurt/Oder. Some of the home-goers soon forgot their care regulations and even sold the items of clothing that they did not want to take back to Germany. But the Russian escorts were only interested in taking us to Frankfurt. The behaviour of the Polish people towards us was in general very friendly. Some even asked when we would be coming back. They had learned the difference between the German and the Russian soldiers of occupation.
Early in the morning we arrived at Zielenzig station, the first German place that now belonged to Poland. Polish border officials checked our wagons and finally gave the train permission to carry on. We soon reached the Oder and tore open the doors that had had to be kept closed until then. On the Polish side stood a Polish guard, on the German side a Russian one. Oskar pointed out his home to us.
ON GERMAN SOIL
After more than seven long years I am back on German soil. The train slowly goes round the curve into the main station. I am overwhelmed and my throat is dry. My first picture of German soil with German people makes a big impression on me. On a big heap of coal stand twenty to thirty women in men’s clothing, with careworn discontented faces, watching the passing train, which is decorated with garlands and pictures of Pieck and Grotewohl. Scarcely a hundred metres further on I see an old woman with a pickaxe and a spanner dressed as a Red female worker, also in men’s clothing. As we drive into the station we see an old woman sitting on a rail eating a piece of bread.
Meanwhile youths from Frankfurt have climbed into our wagons begging for food and cigarettes. Unfortunately we cannot give them these things as we have none ourselves. Hunger has remained our constant companion until now. They tell us some of the jokes that have developed among the Frankfurt city people and conceal a bitter irony. It is shattering when one sees what the distress of the past has left in the faces of these children.
In Gronenfelde we also notice that the Germans have already completed their organisation but the Russians have not. They no longer appear. We are deloused for the last time, and given money and food. Before the release papers are distributed, the camp commandant, a representative of the German Socialist Unity Party, uses the opportunity to make a speech. He praises the merits of their party’s progress and urges us to do the same in the west, especially telling the truth of what has been achieved in the eastern zone!
Together with those being released to the French and American Zones and travelling to Thüringen or Saxony, we go in a collective transport to Leipzig. In Kottbus I send off a telegram to my wife: ‘Will be home soon, calling at the next opportunity.’
In Leipzig I have a night in which to see the distress and unhappiness of the population, as people stop at the station to ask about conditions in the Soviet Union. Early in the morning we go on through Thüringen to Heiligenstadt. There we get food for the journey again, although we have already been given ample for the three days in Frankfurt, so that we will not arrive in the west without food. But most of my comrades give the food to the children of the refugees from the east waiting for travel permits to go to the west. East German policemen deployed in large numbers escort us to the barrier. Red Army soldiers are deployed on the roof of the building immediately on the Zone boundary looking at the west through binoculars. As I cross the zone border a feeling of relief sweeps through me. Now at last I am safe! Life can carry on!
‘TELL THE TRUTH’
After more than seven years’ imprisonment in the Soviet Union I am again a free person. My pleasure is saddened by some news passed on by some friends who have returned from the Soviet Union – that ‘Workers’ and Farmers’ Paradise’ – but are now lying ill in hospital, having not yet recovered from their time of slavery. My comrades Colonel Wolff, Lieutenant Colonel G. von Gueldenfeld, Captain Schmidt, Captain Knauff, Lieutenant Gerischer, Captain von Wenczowski and others are being arbitrarily retained in the Soviet Union and being kept in custody contrary to all peoples’ rights.
They have only done their duty as soldiers, like everyone else who, as a son of his people, fought the enemy on the battlefield. They are no more guilty than any other soldier in the world who did not betray his country. And this is the real reason why they have to eke out an existence somewhere in the wastes of Russia under the worst of conditions. They are being kept as prisoners only because they remain the true sons of their people and are not traitors! And with them are still hundreds of thousands of Germans!
I can still hear the words of the SED speaker at Gronenfelde: ‘Tell them in the west the truth of what you have seen under the signs of progress!’ Yes, I will tell them the truth: that hundreds of thousands of our brothers are buried there in the endlessly wide expanse of Russia while their relatives wait in vain for news, and that several thousand more – who knows the exact number? – are still scratching out an existence under conditions of slavery and yearning to be given back their lives.