by Jana Petken
“Longer than that,” Biermann piped in.
“Yes, well, that might be true, Papa. Even more reason to pray for Stalingrad – not for the Russians that live there, of course, but for our men who are trying to take it.”
Wilmot had calmed and was now slightly embarrassed. His outburst had come from nowhere, an eruption of emotion over which he had little control. That was the reason he deliberately avoided talking about his time as a prisoner. Flood gates opened, and a torrent of hellish memories gushed from his mouth without his permission. He was, he thought, responsible for the dinner conversation becoming morbid. “I thought I might find a letter from Paul waiting for me at home,” he said, changing the subject. “I can’t understand why he hasn’t written to me.”
“I’m his wife, and he hasn’t written to me either, not even to ask how his daughter is,” Valentina grumbled. “It’s impossible to get him on the telephone nowadays. I gave up trying.” She gestured to her father. “I know Paul is all right, though, Willie. Papa is in touch with Manfred Krüger, his Kriminalinspektor in Łódź. He took over from Papa when we left Poland, and he sees Paul from time to time. You needn’t worry.”
“I’m afraid Paul was a bit of a disappointment to us.” Biermann set his water glass down with a thud. “He’s not the easiest man to work with, Wilmot.”
“He’s always been stubborn if that’s what you mean,” Wilmot said with a wry smile.
“Yes, that, too. But I’m talking about more than him having a bad attitude and a problem with taking orders. He openly disagrees with our Jewish policies in Łódź. I’m with the ladies … he has an unhealthy sympathy for them. Ach, he’d have been better off remaining a civilian doctor in one of the Berlin hospitals. He sees things differently to most of us. It’ll get him into trouble, eventually.”
“He did save your life, dear,” Olga reminded her husband.
“Oh?” Wilmot said.
“It’s nothing. I had a heart attack, but I’m feeling better now.”
“Nothing, you say. You almost died!” Olga snapped at her husband. “Wilmot, my Freddie is retiring at the end of this month. He can’t manage the tremendous workload his superiors are giving him.” Olga sniffed, dabbing her eyes with her napkin, and stared adoringly at her husband. “I’m sorry, I can’t help it, but … well, I’ll be glad to see you out of it and have you home with me.”
Wilmot, surprised to hear that Paul was not being viewed as the perfect son-in-law or husband, now worried about where this conversation was going. “I don’t think Paul would do anything to jeopardise his career. It means too much to him.”
“He did jeopardise it,” Valentina retorted. “He was smuggling food out of the hospital and giving it to Jews in the ghetto. He was fortunate my father was in charge at the time. He’ll never be a good Party member or a good husband, I’m sorry to say.”
The atmosphere had soured, and at this point, nothing would sweeten it. Valentina appeared bitter; not at all as a young mother and wife should be feeling about her husband.
Wilmot frowned with confusion. “You mentioned you were in Poland, Valentina?”
“Yes, but I wanted to come home to have the baby and see to Papa’s recovery.”
“Oh, right. Paul must have been disappointed when you left him…”
“Let’s talk about you, Wilmot, shall we?” Olga interrupted. “Where do you want to be posted?”
Wilmot flicked his eyes from a sullen Valentina to Frau Biermann. There was more to Paul’s story than they were letting on, but it wasn’t his place to ask for details. Paul was in their bad books, and he deserved to be; not writing to his wife was inexcusable.
“I suppose if I were fortunate enough to have a choice, I’d ask for somewhere warmer than Russia. I’d love to go to Paris, or anywhere in Europe that’s not to the East.” In a last attempt to steer the evening back on course, Wilmot smiled with wry humour. “I’ve already lost two toes to the cold; I’d like to keep the rest.”
Valentina gasped, horrified. The joke had fallen flat … again.
Olga’s hand shot to her throat. “How awful – two toes! You didn’t tell me that, Freddie,” she admonished Biermann.
“I found out five minutes ago, dear.” Biermann lay down his fork, narrowed his eyes in thought, and tapped the table with his fingers. “Hmm, you know, Willie, I might just be able to steer you away from Russia and towards Central or Western Europe. I have friends in the Wehrmacht who owe me favours. Leave it with me. I’ll get onto it first thing tomorrow.” Biermann cocked his head. “Tell you what, why don’t you stay with us tonight?”
“That’s a lovely idea, darling,” Olga said.
Wilmot wanted nothing more than to be in his own bed, in his own bedroom, in his own house … but every mattress in his house had been ripped open and gutted. He couldn’t face the house, not tonight. “Thank you, sir. I admit I didn’t relish the thought of going home.”
“Really? Why ever not?” Valentina asked.
“The Vogels have had even more bad luck, dear,” Biermann said, then he told his daughter and wife about the break-in.
Chapter Seven
Freddie Biermann
Biermann sat on a wrought-iron chair in the Vogels’ back garden, watching his men uncover what had been Dieter’s insipid attempt at making a bomb shelter. Dawn had yet to break, and the men worked under portable gas lights, but he had been determined to get a head start on young Vogel, who would wake up this morning, eat one of Olga’s most elaborate breakfasts, and then come home to find that the hole had been disturbed. What if he did? Dieter was a boaster. He didn’t hide his art collection, and one of a hundred people could have broken into his house and messed up the hole in the garden looking for the paintings. The boy wasn’t stupid. He knew the value of each piece, just as his father had.
Next month, life was going to become difficult for the Biermann family, Freddie thought, staring up at the Vogels’ numerous bedroom windows. The letter forcing him to retire had arrived when he’d least expected it. Granted, he looked frail, and often took days off because he couldn’t get his body to function in the mornings without pain or needing oxygen, but he was still useful to the Gestapo and commanded respect from his men. He’d given everything to the Führer, the Third Reich, and the Fatherland, and they were tossing him aside like an old shoe.
He’d lose his men upon retirement – a disaster – being able to command them was his true source of power. A nobody; he’d drown in bitterness and his need for revenge. He already felt the resentment building like a mountain of bile in his stomach. Göring, his mentor, and Himmler, the sycophant who wanted to control everything and everyone, wouldn’t give him a second glance once he cleared out his desk. They’d forget his years of service, his excellent police work, the sacrifices and steadfast loyalty. No one would thank Kriminaldirektor Fredrich Biermann. He’d be like the thousands of old soldiers who went cap in hand every week for their measly pensions. No. Not me. Why should I? I deserve more, much more.
“Hurry up and get the damn hatch open. Blow it off if you have to!” he shouted at two Kriminalassistents trying to prise the steel panel on the ground off its hinges with crowbars. Blowing the hatch open was not an option, of course. “Just hurry up, will you.”
When the hatch was finally removed, Biermann got off his chair and peered into the hole. Its dirt floor and walls had not been reinforced, but the hollow was intact and dry. “Get down there,” he ordered one of his assistants.
Biermann’s heart was thumping as he waited for the good news. The hunched over Kriminalassistent disappeared, meaning the hole was quite deep and longer than the hatch. Freddie slumped in his chair again as his heart began to race. If he had one of his scary episodes, where he couldn’t breathe and got dizzy, he would have to lie down, and he no time to waste on health matters.
“It’s about two metres in length and width, sir,” the dirt-blackened assistant said, as his head peeked over the lip of the hole.
“Well, what did you see?”
The other two Kriminalassistents helped pull the man up. He brushed his fingers through his soil-matted hair and said, “Nothing, Herr Kriminaldirektor. There’s nothing but dirt and worms down there.”
Biermann stared at the man, willing him to retract what he’d just said. “Nothing? No floor covering of any sort?”
“No, sir, just soil that hasn’t been dug out yet.”
“Damn you. Damn you to hell, Vogel!”
******
Biermann got into the back seat of his Gestapo staff car, furious and exhausted. Two weeks earlier, he’d searched Dieter’s Dresden factory and house and had found nothing. The previous week, he’d shut down Dieter’s Berlin premises for a morning under the pretext of some security issue. His Gestapo had searched the manufacturing plant from top to bottom, but they also had found nothing. Dieter’s brother-in-law, Hermann Bergmann, a dour-faced man with zero personality, had reported him. He had been reprimanded by Herr Himmler’s office for halting the production of ammunition shells for four hours – a Kriminaldirektor of the Gestapo reported by a low-class factory labourer! That was how far he’d fallen.
He’d run out of time and places to look, he admitted bitterly. Without Gestapo resources to command, he would flounder. Dieter had won. He was a hero, remembered for his magnanimous donations to the Nazi Party and his partnership with the SS in the fledgling Zyklon-B gas programme. He was victorious and probably laughing his head off in London or wherever he’d fled to. No one would listen to the truth.
When Biermann arrived at the Reich’s headquarters, he went straight to his office and placed a call to the offices of the Wehrmacht Chief of Operations Staff, under Generaloberst Alfred Jodl.
Biermann’s contact at Operations was Major Karl Hess, a regular at the Einstein Club, which had recently been renamed the Der Siegerklub – The Victory Club. The man was a dog. It was well known he loved all women, skinny, fat, short or tall … except for his wife.
Hess answered with a terse, “Good morning. Kriminaldirektor, what can I do for you?”
Biermann explained why he was calling with a slew of untruths about Wilmot. “… I realise this is none of my business, Karl, but I promised Dieter Vogel – you remember Herr Vogel?”
“No, at least not personally … a good man, by all accounts.”
“Yes, he was. That’s why I feel responsible for his son. Ach, Wilmot is a bit of a troublemaker, always has been. He spent time in Dachau for trying to kill a fellow SS Schütze and was thrown out of the SS. To tell you the truth, he didn’t perform well in Russia, either. I’m afraid he’s going to get himself into serious trouble …”
“Yes, Herr Direktor, this is all very interesting, but why are you telling me?”
Biermann scowled at the mouthpiece. “I want you to give the boy a posting where he will finally learn some discipline. I was thinking North Africa, under General Rommel. I know they’re desperate for reinforcements. I spoke to someone last week who said men are being pulled from other postings across Europe to shore up the Afrika Korps. If any commanding officer can put the fear of God into young Wilmot Vogel, it’s Rommel.”
“Just a moment, Herr Direktor.”
Biermann waited for the response. He would get what he wanted; he always did. What he wanted was Wilmot Vogel to suffer the fires of the desert. He wouldn’t forgive the lad’s outburst at the dinner table in front of Olga and Valentina – the patronising, little scheisse – he was proving to be as rotten as his older brothers after all.
“I shouldn’t get involved in military personnel postings, Freddie,” Hess said when he came back on the line. “This sort of thing is done two floors down. It might seem as though I have a personal stake in this…”
“I’ll make it worth your while, Karl,” Biermann cut the man off. “I have a fine bottle of Scotch sitting in my office drawer with your name on it,”
“You do know what’s happening in North Africa?”
“I hear the news, Karl. I know Rommel’s men are getting ready for something big, and I’ve also heard you’re shipping reinforcements out to Libya this week – do this for me?”
Another silence, then Biermann heard disappointing news.
“I’m sorry, Freddie, I can’t help you. As you pointed out, reinforcements for the North Africa campaign are shipping out in a couple of days. I won’t be able to get the paperwork done in time. I will have to locate him … his commanding officer, find Vogel’s military records…”
“Rubbish. You’re taking men at short notice from everywhere without desert training. Wilmot Vogel is in Berlin on leave. You can get him out to Afrika whenever you want. He’s rested – look, Karl, this is important to me, so don’t let me down … the way you let your wife down with every prostitute you sleep with. I’d hate her to find out about your weekly extramarital liaisons.”
Silence on the other end, then Hess said, “Send over Vogel’s contact details immediately. I’ll make sure he’s on the list for Libya – anything for you, Freddie. Have a good day.”
Biermann sighed with satisfaction as he hung up the telephone. He sat back in his chair and folded his arms. Wilmot Vogel wanted somewhere warmer than Russia; well, he couldn’t get anywhere hotter than the Western Desert in July. Good riddance. The smarmy bastard probably wouldn’t make it out of there alive.
To celebrate that small victory, Biermann asked his secretary to bring coffee. Olga didn’t allow him to drink it at home. It wasn’t healthy for him, she repeatedly told him; neither were most things in life, according to her.
Whilst waiting for the coffee to come, he made another telephone call; this one to ask a favour of Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, subordinate to Rudolf Höss, the Commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. The Gestapo had dirt on him as well.
Paul Vogel will like it there, he thought, waiting to be connected.
Chapter Eight
Paul Vogel
Łódź-Lidmannstadt, Poland
1 September 1942
Łódź was in blackout, but a birthday party hosted by the Gestapo was in full swing in the Gęsi Puch nightclub, situated on Dworska Street near the Łódź House of Culture and a few blocks from the ghetto. The joint eatery and cabaret club was within easy walking distance of the German military barracks. It rarely had the food items posted on its modest menu, but the men who went there were looking for alcohol and a good time; a place to blow off steam and celebrate special occasions away from the stifling confines of the officers’ mess hall.
During the initial occupation, prominent Jewish restaurants had been boarded up by order of the Gestapo. Later, Christian Polish businessmen saw a marvellous opportunity to make money by reopening them as clubs or bars that specifically targeted the German occupiers’ wallets. Cabaret girls were brought over from Germany to entertain the men and were accompanied on stage by well-known musical talents straight from the heart of Berlin. Gęsi Puch, by far the most popular and easily accessible restaurant in the vast city, also hosted the highly sought-after Emilia Fischer, the Golden Goddess of Dresden, as German men called her.
Manfred Krüger, the party’s host, had invited Paul. The latter had tried twice to slip away unnoticed from the gathering but had been hauled back inside by two inebriated Gestapo Kriminalassistents bent on keeping him there. No other Wehrmacht officer was present, but four SS officers, including Gert Wolfe, had reluctantly accepted Krüger’s invitation.
Krüger was even more unpopular than Biermann had been during his tenure. The former was respected, but not liked by his SS and Wehrmacht colleagues or his raw recruits, who feared his violent temper. Like Biermann, Krüger had a loose, self-aggrandising tongue. Brimming with self-importance, he couldn’t stop himself from verbalising his strategies, which evoked dutiful compliments from his subordinates and the more obsequious of the arse-licking SS junior officers. He liked to shock people with his sadistic brilliance.
In conjunction with the SS, the Gestapo had tight
ened security in the ghetto by closing its hospitals’ mortuaries and ordering regular curfews, more searches for contraband, and twice daily roll calls of the population. He had also directly damaged Paul’s ability to function by diverting the hospitals’ supplies and pharmacy contents to the German military hospital in Warsaw. He’d alienated German soldiers by conducting inspections of their barracks without giving prior warnings to the ranks on watch rotations. Rumour had it, the Ornungspolizei, the Orpo, was looking for Jewish contraband being sold on the black market.
Paul peeked at his wristwatch; the one Max had given him when he’d come secretly to Berlin in 1940. It was 2300, and his hospital shift began at 0700. He sat at the end of a long table, set up with a collection of small square tables joined together and covered with a red and white squared tablecloth that irritated one’s eyes after a while.
Every man in the place was German, except for the waiters, kitchen staff, barmen, and coat check hostesses, who also served as waitresses at the tables when required. Polish customers had been refused entry by order of the Gestapo, but even if they were permitted entry to the Gęsi Puch, now frequented by the occupation army they detested, why would they want to go there?
Krüger looked relaxed, holding court, lounging in his chair with his small glass of brandy in one hand and a cigarette in the other. His jacket hung over the back of his chair, his collar was undone, and a circular red wine stain spoilt his otherwise pristine white shirt and the edge of his trouser braces. Paul, ordered to attend by a note left under his billet’s door, wasn’t fooled by Krüger’s laidback façade. Like all Gestapo, the man watched, listened, and held information over others like nooses around their necks.