by Jana Petken
A hostess came to the table offering cigars. Biermann took one but held it between his fingers for only a few seconds before Olga snatched it from him.
“Now, Freddie, you know what the doctor said,” she reminded him before giving it back to the woman.
To hide his embarrassment, Biermann chuckled to Hoffmann, “Wives. What would we do without them, eh?” Then he changed the subject, “Tell me, Alfred, why did they get rid of the Einstein name for the club?”
“Because of Einstein’s Jewish connections. The owner was persuaded to replace Einstein with a more appropriate name,” Hoffman answered, then tapped the side of his nose as if to say, it was my doing.
“Aren’t the Einstein family non-observant Ashkenazi Jews?” Biermann asked, already knowing the answer.
“I don’t think they’re religious at all,” Hoffmann replied.
“I know Albert attended a Catholic elementary school in Munich – I met him a couple of times.”
“I don’t know why the club was called The Einstein to begin with,” Siegfried, the Gestapo Kriminalinspektor also at their table, joined the conversation, “Einstein renounced his German citizenship in 1896 and took Swiss citizenship in 1901. Why should we name things after him? He didn’t want anything to do with us, did he?”
“Where is he now?” Olga asked.
Hoffmann replied, “Some say he’s in America. After he left Berlin’s Prussian Academy of Sciences in ‘33, he left the country and hasn’t returned since. I should know, eh?”
“Of course, you should, dear. You are head of the Gestapo, after all,” Hoffmann’s pretty, petite wife joked.
At eleven o’clock, Valentina and Olga suggested they leave. They’d eaten the birthday cake, everyone had sung happy birthday to Biermann, and the neighbour looking after Erika would be wanting to go home.
“I’ve got work in the morning, Papa,” Valentina said.
Biermann was peeved. He didn’t want the evening to end. He was exhausted but not yet ready to leave the company of men with whom he could hold a real conversation about the war and Berlin’s latest intrigues and gossip. He’d missed these discussions with his peers.
Hoffmann spoke to Greta, his wife, who suggested to Olga and Valentina that they should share Hoffmann’s car and driver with her.
“An excellent idea, Hoffmann agreed. “Let us men stay a while longer?”
“I’m not sure…” Olga hesitated.
The other women were also getting ready to leave, as were Martin Bormann’s aides. Biermann hadn’t had the chance to speak to them all night apart from a few pleasantries when he’d arrived. He urged them to stay a while longer, and they agreed, then he told Olga, “I’ll be fine, mein Schatz. Let me have this night to remember.”
“I’ll bring him home in one piece,” Hoffmann reiterated to Olga and Valentina, who placed her arm into her mother’s crooked elbow and pulled her along, teasing her about her overprotectiveness.
Sixteen men joined Biermann by adding their tables to his. The band started to kick up a storm, and as if by magic, dancing girls appeared on stage, dressed in not much more than underwear. The atmosphere turned boisterous minutes after the ladies left, and Biermann, euphoric after one brandy too many, asked the waiter for another. “Now we can enjoy ourselves, eh?” he said, full of bravado.
Fifteen minutes later, a massive explosion at street level shook the ceiling’s crystal chandeliers. Glasses on the tables vibrated, some tipping over, paintings fell off the walls, and the lights went out. Air-raid sirens wailed above ground, but then that familiar sound was smothered by more explosions that made the band’s drum skins vibrate by themselves.
Biermann and his companions finally reacted as dust particles and plaster from the ceiling rained down on them with another fierce blast that almost blew the entrance doors off their hinges.
Hoffmann went to the stage and shouted as men were dusting themselves down. “This is no ordinary air raid. It’s a full-blown attack,” he gasped as if the realisation were coming to him as he was speaking the words. “Mein Herren, we’re in one of the safest places in Berlin. We should remain here until the attack is over.”
Another blast forced Hoffmann to jump off the stage and crawl beneath the nearest table where he joined the other men. Biermann, gasping for breath and unable to get to his feet or onto his knees, remained in his chair and put his hands over his ears as they popped from the pressure waves. As he listened to the club’s walls grumble and groan under the increasing proximity, frequency, and severity of the bombs, he imagined his Berlin engulfed in flames. This was it. The massive attack the Führer and his cabinet said would never come.
Biermann, the only man not taking cover, grunted his hatred of the Allies. Weeks earlier, Joseph Goebbels, the Reich’s master of propaganda, had called for total war in the Berliner Sportpalast newspaper. Well, it appeared he was getting what he wanted: the destruction that war brought was now on their doorstep.
As another bomb dropped, Biermann finally got down onto his knees and covered his head with his hands again. He and a few other men came out of hiding, however, when the doors were thrown open, and two SS drivers followed by one Gestapo chauffeur ran in to take cover.
“What’s happening up there? How bad is it?”
The SS Hauptmann, a man Biermann had been fond of when he’d worked in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, checked his driver’s wound. All three drivers were bloodied, having been caught by the blown-in window glass from their vehicles.
“Herr Hauptmann, we’ve shut the doors up top. There are fires everywhere,” the shaking driver said while pressing a napkin against a cut on his hairline. His voice was quivering, almost inaudible at times, despite there being a lull in the bombing. “I think the whole city is on fire, sir. We ran for it when bombs took out the streets parallel to the club. We can’t get out of here until they douse the flames and clear the rubble. It’s a mess, sir, and if the fires spread, the top floor of this building will burn.”
“We can walk out of here,” Hoffmann said, as another Royal Air Force attack on the German capital began and brought down part of the ceiling.
Chapter Forty-Four
At dawn, an hour after the last bomb had struck Berlin, Biermann and the other four remaining partygoers left the Victory Club. Most of the men, including members of the staff and entertainment group, had left at 0300 during a pause in the air assault. They’d believed it was over, but it was not, and the bombs continued to fall for several more hours. As Alfred Hoffman had noted earlier on the stage, this was unlike anything Berlin had ever seen.
At street level, Biermann, Alfred, and one of Martin Bormann’s aides looked to commandeer transport to take them home. All three men were desperately worried about their wives who had left the club some twenty minutes before the first strike. Biermann and Hoffmann, aware that their wives and Valentina had left in the same car, discussed possible routes the driver might have taken. Did he go east and drop off Frau Hoffmann first, as Biermann had suggested, or did he take Olga and Valentina west to their house and then carry on to the Hoffmann’s home? Speculating over this and that was agony, for the telephone lines were down, and only when the men reached home would they know if the women were safe.
The area was a mess, the street-level shop above the Victory Club a burned-out shell. Fires were still blazing from all directions, and the streets were littered with cement, bricks and rubble, which were already being cleared away by soldiers.
Biermann sat on the window ledge of the damaged clothes store next to the club’s entrance while Hoffmann went in search of a driver and vehicle. ‘I am a Kriminaldirektor,’ he had growled three times to Biermann, ‘and if I want a driver and car, or whatever drives with wheels, I will damn well get one. And if the worst comes to the worst, I’ll get a horse and cart!’
When he eventually returned to Biermann half an hour later, it was in a Wehrmacht car bearing the registration number of the engineers and demolition branch and carrying a Haupt
mann der Pioniere – engineer captain – and his driver.
“I’ve given the driver your address. He’ll try to get you home first, Freddie, if the road is clear enough, of course,” Hoffmann said after Biermann got in the car.
“That’s kind of you, Alfred … I hope our houses are still standing. Hauptmann … driver … I appreciate this, very much.”
“I will try my best, Herr Kriminaldirektor,” the driver called out.
“I can’t believe what I saw when I left you,” Hoffman said, getting into the back seat beside Biermann. Then he spoke to the Hauptmann sitting next to the driver, “Tell Herr Kriminaldirektor Biermann what you’ve seen since you left your barracks.”
“There’s almost total devastation in some areas. The Tiergarten and Charlottenburg, Schöneberg and Spandau were all hit,” the Hauptmann said, twisting in his seat to look at Biermann. “Fires from the explosions are still burning, and several firestorms have ignited. The KaDeWe department store took several direct hits, and an allied bomber crashed through its roof. Its entire upper floor is engulfed in flames. I got reports that the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church is badly damaged, as well as the residential areas to the west of Tiergarten and Charlottenburg. I’m afraid our journey of a few kilometres may take quite some time.”
“Hauptmann, do we have any idea how many casualties there are so far?” Biermann asked, trying to settle his breathing and the nauseous gurgling in the pit of his stomach.
“It is too early to know, but we have to assume it will be in the thousands, with hundreds of thousands made homeless … but they’re estimates going on what we’ve seen.”
“Mein Gott – dear God, no,” Biermann moaned. “This is inconceivable.”
The journey had taken hours, but at 1000, the army engineers’ vehicle arrived at the bottom of Biermann’s tree-lined street. The trees were not on fire, the houses were still standing, but the church and a row of shops were burning at the street’s entrance, and rubble blocked the vehicle’s way, as it had many times on the journey that had been painstakingly slow. The driver cut the engine. “I’m sorry, I can’t go any further,” he said.
“I’ll walk you to your door, Freddie,” Hoffmann said.
“I can manage, thank…” Biermann began, but then he relented and allowed Hoffmann to help him into his house, through his front-door frame devoid of glass.
When they entered. Biermann shouted up the stairs. The place was freezing and as quiet as the despair he felt. Both men stared at each other, thinking the same thing but afraid to say the words: Olga and Valentina were not at home, and neither was Frau Mayer, the neighbour who was babysitting Erika.
“I’m betting your Olga and Valentina are at my house,” Hoffmann finally broke the tension between them. “They probably dropped Greta off first and then decided to stay there when they heard the aircraft.”
Biermann let his tears fall; the worry and fear leaving his body with loud, gut-wrenching, panicking sobs. “We’ve gone through this scenario several times, but now that I’m home and they are not … I feel … I don’t know…” Biermann then pulled himself together and apologised, “Go on, get yourself home to Greta. I’ll wait for my Olga and Valentina to come back. Promise me, Alfred, if you hear something … anything, send news?”
“Herr Biermann, Frau Biermann!” a woman’s voice shouted through the broken door. “It’s me, Frau Mayer!”
Biermann sat in his armchair, done in, unable to exert himself further.
Hoffman went to the open door and returned with Frau Mayer, who carried Erika in her arms. “You’re not alone now, Freddie,” he said, his relief palpable. He nodded to Frau Mayer, then made his exit.
Frau Mayer burst out, “Mein Gott, I was worried…”
“Have you seen them?” Biermann asked, even though he knew it was a stupid question.
Frau Mayer looked confused. “No. Erika was with me all night. We spent most of it in our garden bomb shelter – God bless my husband for insisting we get in it. I was terrified, but this little thing didn’t cry much at all. She was as quiet as my eldest granddaughter, and she’s just turned seven. Where are Olga and Valentina?”
Biermann was inconsolable. Hoffmann had left, and he had no idea how he was going to look after Erika on his own until Olga and Valentina came home.
Frau Mayer was making them a drink, crying as she did so. When she brought it to Biermann along with his long-overdue medication, he took them off her with shaking hands.
“Please, can you take Erika across the street with you again, Frau Mayer? It’s a lot to ask, I know, especially after the night you and your family have had, but I really don’t feel well. To be honest, I can’t see me coping, not today … not until I know my wife and daughter are safe. Please … I’d be grateful?”
She didn’t want to. He noted her tired face and disappointment.
“Please, Frau Mayer. I might be able to do something for you one day,” he said, stooping to begging.
Before she left with the baby, saying she’d be back that afternoon, Frau Mayer helped Biermann to the couch, and when he lay down, she covered him with a blanket.
Biermann instantly fell into a procession of nightmares that woke him up every few minutes. He could neither stay awake nor gain proper rest. Olga … her dear face kept swimming in and out of his mind. His heartbeat was dangerously fast, the beat pounding in his head, yet he was also drowsy and light-headed, feeling sick and more scared than he’d ever felt in his life. He was as weak as a mewling kitten and helpless to act; that was the worst of it. They will come home soon, he kept telling himself. And when they did, they’d tell him of their close call with death, for they would not be unscathed. Then after the shock had died down, all three of them would thank God they were alive and well. That’s what will happen.
At 1400 hours, the front door opened. Biermann, who was still drowsing on and off, had failed to hear the knocking. He struggled to sit up. Two Gestapo officers in civilian clothes, their fedoras in their hands, walked into the living room.
Biermann recognised both men. “Müller … Schmidt?” he stuttered.
“Herr Kriminaldirektor,” Müller said. “We are very sorry, sir. Your wife and daughter died in the air attack, as did Kriminaldirektor Hoffmann’s wife. Please accept our heartfelt condolences.”
Biermann lay under the blanket and remained there long after the two messengers had left. For hours, he mouthed, “My Olga – my love. My Valentina – my little girl…” then, occasionally, he’d remember that Frau Hoffmann had also been killed, and mouth, “So very sorry.”
Frau Mayer came with Erika and left again with the baby as soon as she heard the news. Biermann hoped she’d never come back with his grandchild. What good was he to her? His Olga – his Valentina, his little girl – they were gone. He was broken, never to be whole again. He could not conceive of the tragedy at all, for it was unimaginable that his wife and child had been taken from him forever. He did not deserve this horror.
“Mein Gott, why?”
Part Three
We fight today so that tomorrow men can be free to love whomever they choose, worship whatever Godly presence sustains them through their darkest days, and walk untethered by religious labels, badges, or racial stigma.
We fight so we can wake one day to a brighter dawn.
Kurt Sommer
Warsaw, August 1944
Chapter Forty-Five
Wilmot Vogel
POW Camp Concordia,
Cloud County, Kansas,
United States of America
20 April 1944
After finishing his first woodwork project, Wilmot tidied his workspace, said goodbye to the American guard called Bill, and then left the hut known as the Hobby Hall. Apart from the time he’d made rough, crude spears from branches in the Russian forests, he had never carved anything. He was proud of himself. His twenty-centimetre tall horse, with tail and mane being the hardest parts to create, was ready to be painted. It would be black; Dott
ie’s father had a black horse, she’d told him. Ah, Dottie … he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
It was a dry spring evening with a strong wind that brought wheat seeds across the plains and into Camp Concordia. Kansas, a state located almost dead centre of America, was flat and so vast that the fields seemed to go on ad infinitum. The change of scenery and his day job at Mr Barrett’s farm made Wilmot feel he was more than just a prisoner of war. A guard waited beside Mr Barrett’s truck each morning and accompanied the eight German labourers to and from the massive farmlands, which were situated two miles from the camp, but their presence was not threatening. Unlike the Russians, they didn’t train their rifles on the prisoners but were more subtle in their approach, as if they were convinced no German would want to escape even if he found the opportunity. They were probably correct in most cases. With no money or identity papers, where would they run to? There was a big wide ocean between Camp Concordia and Germany, and he, like many other fellow prisoners, was glad he was out of the conflict. He already had enough nightmares to last a lifetime.
Wilmot loved the outdoors; being in a field without Kübelwagens, motorbikes, tanks, and rocket launchers was significant. Having no soldiers, machine guns, or aircraft overhead buzzing and dropping bombs every five minutes was more peaceful still. Being a prisoner of war in the hands of the Americans was not what he’d hoped for, but, in retrospect, it was a damn sight better than what he’d left behind in the desert.
His easy stroll back to his barracks halted when he reached the camp’s hospital. She might be there – Dottie, the trim brunette with coquettish dimples and open, expressive face that lit up when she spoke – she had recently graduated nursing school but was already a supervisor in the POW camp’s surgery department.
He had gone through a medical examination upon his arrival at Camp Concordia from New York. When he saw her, he’d thought her pretty, but when she opened her plump ruby-red lips to speak to him, she disintegrated his gloomy cocoon of defeat. ‘Good morning, Staff Sergeant. How are you doin’ today?’ she’d asked him.