Moments later, Naomi, with her arms around Schatzi, emerged from the car park and got in the taxi.
‘You still want to go to the old Children’s Home?’ she said hoping that he’d say ‘no’.
Schatzi unfolded himself from her arms and sat upright and nodded ‘yes’.
Gerhardt followed the taxi as it made its way in a south westerly direction out into the countryside heading towards Starnberg, according to the main signposts. Gerhardt had to hang back as the road became sparsely populated of vehicles of any kind. After travelling through pine forests that surrounded the metropolitan area, the taxi slowed and took a left turn onto a minor road and headed back towards the city. Finally, it slowed and passed through tall carved stone pillars and rounded the gravel driveway and stopped in front of The Clemens Maria Children's Home.
Gerhardt drove passed the entrance and parked on the verge and walked back to the entrance. In front of him, at the end of the gravelled driveway stood and imposing white painted L shaped late 19th century manor house. Huge windows punctuated the whole of the façade including the third storey where some windows had been inset in the red tiled roof. He stood watching as Naomi and Schatzi walked up the front door and entered. A few teenage children ran in to see who the new arrivals were.
Gerhardt could not go any further and sat down with his camera and took some shots of the exterior and gardens, then read the plaque on the wall. This house was founded in 1916 by the priest Clemens Maria Hofbauer to take care of war orphans. ‘Now it should read from both wars or all wars,’ thought Gerhardt.
Inside, after Schatzi and Naomi explained that they had met here in 1945, they were allowed to tour the outside and the cloisters on their own. The supervisor went to check the historic records. The structure was very familiar to both of them as they entered the cloistered area overlooking a sunken play area that now housed modern children’s play-things, a far cry from a ball and tag that Schatzi watched from inside his world all those years ago.
‘This is where we met, Mum,’ said Schatzi sitting on his hands leaning against the stone pillar. You remember?’
‘I’ll never forget, my love. Wow!’ she joked.
‘Wow. What is ‘Wow’?’ Schatzi asked with a contrived innocent look on his middle-aged face. They laughed hysterically, so much so that the supervisor came back to see what was so funny. They explained the joke. She too laughed with them.
‘Funny,’ said the supervisor. ‘I cannot find your name in the records. I know there are some gaps, but the British and Americans had to be very meticulous because of missing persons and it’s somewhat rare for someone to fall through the net, so to speak.’
‘It was all very confused, as I recall. My husband, Captain Stuart Campbell, arranged it all. He was here in the Intelligence Section of the British Army in 1945.’
‘If he was in Intelligence, maybe that could explain the oversight.’
‘Can I see where I used to sleep?’ asked Schatzi, treading air with impatience.
Do you know where, things have changed over the last years since you were here. Schatzi led the way, never doubting his memory.
‘This is my room. Did you know that, Mum?’ Naomi shook her head.
‘There used to bunks over there, not this lovely single bed. The guy on the top used to snore terribly. I had to throw my pillow at him regularly. He didn’t give me any time to think. I tried to teach him to read but he wasn’t interested. Just wanted to run around playing ball and pestering the girls from the other section over there.’
Schatzi sat on the bed and became silent, looking around slowly methodically.
‘I like the pastel green colour now, used to be light brown, glossy to the touch. Easy to clean they told me. I wonder what happened to Ronald,’ he said with a sadness in his eyes.
‘Come on Schatzi, better not keep our taxi man waiting,’ urged Naomi, not wanting a repeat of this morning’s problem as Schatzi could easily turn from bright to dull in a flash.
Schatzi was unstoppable with memories as they drove back to Munich. Naomi couldn’t stop him from rambling from one topic of recall to another, no thread between the recalls save the time when they took place.
They checked back into the hotel just after six that night. Both were exhausted as they entered their rooms agreeing to meet for dinner at eight.
Gerhardt entered the hotel lobby, having changed into his uniform and made his way to reception.
‘Register, please?’ he asked. Not an unusual request from a police officer.
‘Anyone in particular, Officer?’
‘No, just a random check we do now and again.’ He took out his reading glasses and scanned the information of all the guests currently registered in the hotel.
‘A copy of these pages please, for the records at the station.’
Back in his office, he discarded most of the copied pages, retaining the one with Naomi and Schatzi Campbell’s information, full UK address and telephone numbers, exactly what Johann may need. He parcelled them together with the best images he taken and addressed them to Johann. After speaking to the Supervisor of the Clemens Maria Children’s Home, he wrote a small note and added it to the parcel, beckoning his secretary, he told her to post them immediately.
Chapter 46
Munich Germany
Johann Bron opened the small parcel and took out the contents, placing the photographs side by side on his desk. His hands trembled a little as he sorted them. One particularly caught his attention. Gerhardt had captured Schatzi with his hands and arms over his head as if trying to block out the present. He remembered this pose as if it was yesterday despite looking at a grown man. He held the photograph to his cheek recalling the comfort he’d given back in those days.
Gerhardt had checked with the Children’s Home supervisor after he got back to the office. He was able to confirm that their records did not show that Schatzi was sent to The Clemens Maria. There was no record of his stay there. And yet the supervisor had listened to most of the conversations between Naomi and Schatzi and was certain beyond doubt that he had lived there during the latter part of the war. All those who worked there during those times would be impossible to trace as most were volunteers from the Allied Army staff. He concluded that the records had been tampered with. Schatzi’s name had been expunged, but by whom and why.
He took another photograph and looked deep into the eyes of Schatzi. Yes, this was definitely, his grandson. ‘What am I going to do about it after all these years?’ He said to himself under his breath.
That night Johann slept badly. Names, places, hidden memories came to the surface, he suppressed for years. Nightmares of fire, blinding light, shivering with fear. Faces melting in and out of focus, grotesque images of the dead, all with faces he recognised, all smiling like loved ones then pleading with him to help them, then the faces turned to anguish. His arms held out, beckoning for them to come to him as they melted away consumed by the night. He fought to touch them, yet his own feeble body didn’t have the strength of youth to help.
‘Captain, what’s wrong. You all right. I heard the screams and came.’
Johann looked up blankly at the night sister, blinking away the horrible images and wiping the perspiration from his face and hands.
‘Had a bad nightmare. Memories of years gone by,’ he murmured quietly. ‘I’m all right now.’
‘I’ll get you some tea and take these, they’ll relax you. It’s one o’clock in the morning and you need to rest.’
Morning came later than usual. He felt rested despite the trauma of the night. He had lain awake for about an hour mulling over what he should do. He had made his decision and needed to make a few telephone calls.
Chapter 47
Hampshire England
The rain incessantly washed against the panes of glass as Stuart Campbell looked out, holding a cup of tea in one hand. It had been raining for days and the garden was sodden, and the array of flowers planted this spring looked forlorn. Out of
the corner of his eye he saw a taxi approaching up the gravelled driveway coming to a halt by the front doorsteps. He wasn’t expecting any visitors and watched as a stranger, someone he’d never seen before, slowly got out of the rear seat. He was carpeted in a long green raincoat and slowly mounted the steps to the front door. The bell rang. Annie, the housekeeper opened the door.
‘Is Mr Campbell in?’
‘Which Mr Campbell, older or younger?’ she asked curtly.
‘Older.’
‘Who shall I say wants him?’
‘An old acquaintance. I’ve come all the way from Munich, will do, I think.’
‘Wait here, I’ll see whether he’s in.’
Stuart Campbell who had overheard the conversation, came to the door.
‘How can I help you?’
‘May I come in out of this awful rain?’
Stuart Campbell stood aside and let the stranger inside and watched the taxi disappear into the rain.
‘I’m afraid I haven’t had to courtesy to introduce myself. My name is Johann Bron, Captain Johann Bron.’
Campbell’s face flickered with disguised horror as he ushered him into his study and closed the door as Campbell took the wet raincoat and hung it on the array of pegs on the inside of the door.
‘Do sit down and tell me why you’re here and…’ Campbell never finished the sentence as he started to put names and year together.
Bron sat opposite Campbell and crossed his legs with a painful sigh. Bron opened his briefcase and laid the unopened file on Campbell’s desk.
‘We are all much older now and I hesitated the make the journey unannounced particularly at my age. I kept asking myself whether it would be better to write beforehand to explain who I am and what I am here for, but now that I am here, I feel I made the right decision. He consulted the file that Gerhardt Steiner had helped compile then lifted his head and looked directly into Campbell’s eyes.
‘Your wife, Nadine, and your son, Schatzi, visited Munich a few weeks ago. Is that correct?
Campbell nodded, still thinking in the back of his mind about 1945 and since.
‘I am a resourceful man, Captain Campbell. I see you are beginning to realise that I did not die in my escape from Stalingrad. You have my grandson actually here. I came to meet him with his and your permission, of course.’
Campbell sank back into his chair, head in his hands, never, for one instance, believing this could ever have happened, but it now had. Bron handed over the photographs of Nadine and Schatzi showing them in Brienner Strasse and Clemens Maria and the most telling of Schatzi in the carpark where he survived the bombing in their apartment’s former garden shelter. Campbell looked at each one with gathering emotion, as Bron watched his face.
‘He is the son of my late daughter, Roberta.’
Campbell leaned forward with his head in his hands. Falteringly, he said. ‘You were never found. We had no record of you from the battlefields of Stalingrad. You went missing in action according to the Wehrmacht unit you served in. I did all I could to ensure, like all the other orphans, that there were no relatives alive. I assure you of that, Captain Bron.’
‘I am sure you did. I returned from the Soviet gulags in 1956. It had been transit camp after transit camp. The journey took months and first brought me to Moscow, then westward. In the December cold the train reached Frankfurt an der Oder. I was on my way to Munich but as that station was a designated meeting point for us, ex-prisoners. I still felt like a prisoner. I was issued new clothes by the Red Cross and given my release papers and 50 marks. I arrived back home in Munich after six days of arduous travel. No one showed any interest in the home comers. We were greeted as unceremoniously as we were captured, without a word, nothing. No one wanted to give me work. My CV was almost empty and even in some cases threatening. It was only when I found the Steiners, my friend Helmut Steiner from army days had been killed in the war, that Gerhardt, his son, took me in and I started slowly getting a life. Captain Campbell if you hadn’t hidden Schatzi’s records, my life would have been very different. Why did you do it? Please explain to me why you removed the records from the Children’s Home.’
Johann Bron held his hands in the air and then placed them on the desktop, pleading for an answer with his eyes.
‘Captain. Schatzi was not an ordinary child, you must have known that. He was at an age when he needed a great deal of help to recover from losing his entire family and his mental condition was very unstable. My wife fell in love with him on sight. We couldn’t have children. She was warned that fostering a child with Aspergers, as it is now known, would require a lifetime of commitment but she was willing to try.
‘In Germany, in the aftermath of the Nazi regime where any form of disablement, was viewed with… What shall I say, distaste at best, ridicule and horror at worse? If we hadn’t rescued him, I am certain no-one else would have and I dread to think what life he would have had. Rather than let him be institutionalised, I took the decision, after no relatives could be traced, to expunge his time in Munich and start all over again.
‘Furthermore you must understand that when I was in Germany trying to locate Nazi war criminals, there were a series of trials held in connection with the Nazi euthanasia in Dresden, Frankfurt, Graz, Nuremberg and Tübingen.
In December 1946, an American military tribunal prosecuted twenty three doctors and administrators for their roles in war crimes and crimes under your ‘AktionT4’ regime. These crimes included the systematic killing of those deemed ‘unworthy of life’, including the mentally disabled, the institutionalized mentally ill, and the physically impaired. I cannot now remember the exact details, but I can tell you that the courts pronounced over ten of those charged defendants as guilty.of crimes of murder. They were executed following year. You must realise, Captain, that your grandson, Schatzi would, in all likelihood, have been one of those chosen to die even in later stages of the war and its immediate aftermath.
‘Captain Bron, this is the background, we were living in. In fact, I was with part of a team that visited the children’s ward of Kaufbeuren-Irsee hospital, state run, in Bavaria with some American troops in July 1945. They told us that the last child to be killed under Aktion T4 was Richard Jenne on 29 May 1945. Can you believe that?’
Captain Bron started to cry and through the tears said that he’d known Schatzi was unusually intense, very intelligent and at times uncontrollable and inconsolable and that is one of the reasons they originally lied to the authorities about the birth because of Aktion T4, but also the scandal that would have ensued if it was known that his daughter had given birth to an illegitimate child.
‘I am so sorry to accuse you. I had no idea what was happening thousands of miles away in Russia for all those years. I should have thought more. Forgive me, Captain. I was not a Nazi and never would have been, but times were treacherous for everyone in Germany.’
Bron started to rise and offered Campbell his hand conciliation. Campbell hesitated as there was a knock on the door. Naomi appeared. She saw Bron standing at the desk and noticed the photographs of her and Schatzi laid out.
‘What on earth is this?’ she said accusingly as she looked at herself and her son on the steps of the Clemens Maria.
‘Darling, let me introduce you to Captain Johann Bron from Munich. He’s Schatzi’s grandfather.’
Naomi dropped the photograph and gasped. She dropped onto the sofa by the window.
‘Why! Why, did you follow us?’ she shouted uncontrollably.
Campbell took her hand and sat by her side. He explained the conversations that had passed between them. Cautiously, she regained her composure and looked at Bron.
‘We thought you been killed, Captain Bron.’
‘I know. Sometimes I wish I were. Surviving the Stalingrad battle and the walk back to our lines only to be taken to Siberia. There were many times I thought that death would be a familiar friend I could rely on. All those I loved had been lost to me. Only Schatzi is left in my tw
ilight years.’
Campbell started to say something but held himself, trying to consider what to do next.
Chapter 48
Hampshire England
Naomi went to speak to Schatzi in his quarters on the ground floor about the arrival of his grandfather. They had decided amongst themselves that this was the best way to avoid a meltdown. Surprisingly, Schatzi took the intrusion in his stride and came running towards the study and threw his arms around a very surprised grandfather who didn’t know quite what to do with his arms until he gently embraced Schatzi whose head rested firmly on the old man’s chest.
Stuart and Naomi looked on at the reunion after decades of absence, there was a sadness in Naomi’s eyes that she couldn’t hide. Stuart put his arms around her in comfort as she had taken a step back in a confusion of emotions. Nobody moved for several moments until Schatzi finally disentangled himself from his grandfather and came over to Naomi and gave her a huge hug.
‘Mummy, this is wonderful. My two families together for the first time,’ he said. There was a long pause before he continued. ‘My two other mothers died while you were away in Russia. I found that very sad that you didn’t know what happened. Why did they send you away, grandpapa?’
‘After gathering his thoughts, Bron turned to look at them one by one and finally said, ‘Some things went badly, Schatzi. Someone, I have never found out who, told the local Gestapo at 45 Brienner Strasse, the Nazi Headquarters near where we lived, that you were not our child and that you were the son of our daughter who had been pregnant outside marriage. In those days such a scandal was unacceptable for a ranking officer and we paid the consequences.’
‘So being forced to move from our apartment and you been sent to Russia would not have happened if I hadn’t been born.’
Silence pervaded the study. The statement was true enough on the face of it, but an innocent child could not be blamed for being conceived during an act of love. Voices in Schatzi’s head were telling him all sorts of things, confusing his mind. He held his hands over his ears. He’d not done that for years at home, but now the sounds were back with a vengeance, exploding in his head. Naomi saw the signs that she hadn’t seen for years, save the one time recently in Munich. She rushed to his side cradling his head in her arms and soothed his hair.
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