Stalin’s ‘Attrition’ applied not only to the people of Breslau, but to every building of importance left standing that through a wonder, had remained whole in the three-month siege. Everything had to be destroyed, and so a wave of destruction rolled through the city. Bands of drunken Reds tottered through the city burning everything that took their fancy and that was still standing.
On 11 May, it began with the Barbara Church and six days later the Church of Magdalena. They burned them to the ground. Frederick the Great’s palace in the city had already been destroyed by fire. This type of war had replaced the one that we knew, and as feared it was followed with plundering and rape. Many in the city asked themselves whether the former was not the more bearable of the two, although they had thought that it was the most terrible that they had lived through, thinking that it could not be worse. They were wrong!
For both the military and civilian populations, 8 May was not a day of freedom, nor one of being freed. On the contrary, it was the beginning of hell, and the realisation of their half-joking phrase, “Enjoy the war, for freedom will be hell”.
On the fate of the female staff, we dare not think, for they were fair game. All women and girls were ‘fair game’ for the Russians, like game running wild in the woods. Even when now and then a decent Russian officer was to be found, who could and did deter single acts of rape, there were hundreds to follow. The women of Breslau fell victim to the same fate as hundreds of others in East Prussia and other German provinces.
According to the reports received in the Ministerium für die Vetriebenen it was stated in 1974 “that sadly there are not enough words in the German language to reconstruct for others the experiences written down and sent to us from the people of Breslau. Words are inadequate”.
Prelate Lange, the curator of the ‘House of Good Shepherds’ reported that on 7 May, a group of Russians climbed over the damaged wall of the convent in Kaiserstrasse, where two elderly nuns were to be found. One of them escaped, but the other did not even try, thinking that her great age would save her from any physical abuse. Sister Felizita was overpowered by the group, was shot and then raped. “We buried her in the garden of the convent. She was 81 years of age.”
Mrs Hedwig Goering reports that, “At first the Russians gave us a good impression, but we were fooled. My niece was raped by Russian soldiers on the third day of occupation. She was only eleven.” Other women fled to their allotment gardens, thinking that they were safer there than in the city. Mrs. A. Hartmann was one of them. “We made a mistake, for we women were raped time and time again, just like the women in the city. I lost my nerve, with the continual cries of the women and ran into the city. I must have been in a state of shock for it was only afterwards that I realised that I was witness to seeing women jumping from the windows of the houses, dying, rather than being the subject of rape from one soldier after the other”.
This report contained uncountable pages describing experiences, not only from the suffering of the women, but of children and old men. Every Russian at this time was a Tsar and he could do what he liked with ‘the Germans’, without repercussions. It was allowed, and from General Niehoffs ‘conditions of surrender’, the guarantee of the ‘victors’ was nowhere to be seen.
8 May was also no happy day for the anti-fascists. Even his loudly announced membership of the KPD, did not hinder the execution of Herr Langwitz, in Neukirchen a suburb of Breslau, or that of Mrs. Sacher in the same city. The membership books of both were torn into pieces by grinning Red Army men in front of these ‘old Communists’ before they were both murdered. The former Jewish mayor Heinzelmann, who luckily escaped deportation, angrily asked, “and we Anti-fascists? We feel betrayed and cheated, and we always promised that Communism would free the population from the yoke of Fascism!”
The author (far right) at Sanitätsstützpunkt 5, the Hotel ‘Monopol’, Breslau, early May 1945. At this time the Soviets had not yet taken them prisoner.
Music from the Russian loudspeakers was continually interrupted with announcements in the German language, ordering prisoners to gather at certain points in the city and then to wait for further orders. Officers who demanded the freeing of their men were laughed at. “Dawai dawai, i.e. faster, faster!” was the order and the long field-grey columns marched into POW camps. For some it was to lead to their deaths.
The doctor in our medical centre decided to wait, for there were no special orders for the wounded. We used the last hours of freedom to sit or lie in the sun, in the back yard of the Hotel Monopol. With the three other walking wounded, I climbed on to the flat roof, to take a last look at the city. We were discovered finally, on 9 May.
It was in the morning, as we were suddenly ordered ‘to show ourselves’ to Russian soldiers not trusting themselves to come into the dark cellar. They were waiting at the entrance, with cocked machine-pistols. “Come out with your hands up!” (Idi sjuda! Rucki verch!) The walking wounded walked up the cellar steps blinking at the sunlight. Before climbing those stairs I was a regular soldier. But it occurred to me that in the moment my feet left the last tread, I would become from one second to the next, one of those nameless prisoners of war. It was not to be, at least not on that day, for seeing that we were wounded, we were not taken away, nor was there an examination of our pay-books. We were uninteresting in seemed, at least for the time being.
Once more, for all of us in the cellar, it was not long before a husky cry echoed through the cellar. A single Russian soldier tottered down the cellar steps, like a Russian bear looking for honey. He thoroughly searched in all the corners of the cellar rooms and suddenly his eyes fixed on me, or perhaps it was my bed. We were ‘freed’ of our personal possessions on that day by this one soldier. My bed was obvious for it was the only one with a blue and white gingham cover plus a white curtain as extra warmth. The pale colour made the presence of lice more visible for me to destroy. For him however, it meant that I was someone special. “Uri, uri!” he screamed, and I answered “nix uri!”. It didn’t do me any good for he found my ‘Uri’ anyway, for he was on the lookout for plunder. He tore my bedding off my bed finding my knapsack and my silver pocket-watch. Taking it by the chain, he swung it under my nose, waving his pistol at me at the same time. My watch had been a going-away present from my father upon entering the army. It had accompanied me throughout the duration of the war, till now. From the six sons in the family, I was the only one named after my father and this watch had my name engraved in the lid. This ‘bear’ of a man, because of his ungainly movements, ‘freed’ all of my comrades from their watches too, adding them to those already decorating his arms, up to the elbows, one on top of the other.
This however was not triumph enough and with his gun in my back, he forced me upstairs. I really thought that my time had come and that I was to be ‘honoured’ with a quick death, a bullet in the back of the neck under a waving Red Cross flag. In daylight we took stock of one another. He looked at me, and I looked at him. He was a little man, short and stocky. His bow legs ended in leather boots. A grey fur cap, with its red star, was sloppily slanted on his head and sat atop a pockmarked face, which was not shaved and a stubble of red hair which didn’t hide the deep pits of his skin. Not a pretty sight! An array of colourful medals adorned his brown shirt, and because there was no gold to be seen on his shoulder epaulette, I guessed that he must have been a sergeant. Upon seeing my own medals he suddenly grasped me to his breast in a bear-hug saying “good soldier”. Then, releasing me, he laughingly pointed firstly to his own medals and then to mine. Then this bear of a man kissed me on both cheeks, declaring “Vaijna kaput?, i.e. war has ended, and “Hitler kaput?, i.e. Hitler is dead.
In contrast to his own dark suntan, I must have appeared rather pale. I swallowed the frog in my throat and tried in my depressed state, to grin at him. He must have seen the runes on my collar, but they did not seem to bother him. As one of the ‘victors’, when only of a lower rank, even he must have known that my runes distinguished me f
rom the others as ‘one of those’. If I am honest it did not, at that moment, occur to me either that this would most definitely distinguish me in future.
I then had to go with him once more into the cellars, like a fox in a chicken-run, frightening some women who screamed in panic and fled. It amused him and he let loose a shot or two into ceilings, walls and the tiles in the Monopol kitchen. I was happy that he had not shot at me. Taking a bottle of vodka, he took a long swig, he turned to me and said “Cheers! war has ended, now you can go home”. I didn’t need to be told a second time and returned to my comrades.
They looked at me in utter surprise thinking that I had risen from the dead, certain that in hearing the shots, that I had ‘knocked on heaven’s door.’ Who can explain this experience? Who understood the Russian character, this almost infantile mentality, spiced with brute-force, naivety, good-heartedness and unpredictable arbitrariness? Later I was to have plenty of time to learn about the unreasonable and contradictory characteristics of the Russians.
We were most certainly never in doubt as to the influence that alcohol played in the day-to-day routine of the Russians. But we were about to be given undoubted proof it and at first-hand. For our sins, we were much too close to the wine cellar of the Monopol, this treasure-chest being found soon enough by the roaming Reds. We were witnesses to the utter depredation of men, in a uniform, who called themselves soldiers, who drank themselves into unconsciousness, or started punch-ups and then, in their stupor, were uncontrolled in the use of their revolvers. They behaved like animals. We were often collected and forced to drink with them. We used to be landed in ‘bau’, i.e. close arrest, for misuse of alcohol when we were caught legless. After that excess, we were nearly all self-confessed teetotallers.
One evening we were forced to witness the raping of one of our nurses. Three drunken Reds tottered down the cellar steps, with their caps sitting crookedly on top of their shorn heads, in search, so we thought, of more alcohol. That was not what they were looking for. With “woman, come here!” they caught hold of Angel, the pretty nurse, with the lovely smile and who laughed so easily. With her cries of protest, her fiancé, a sergeant medic, sprang at the three, regardless that they were armed with machine-pistols, and who beat him to the ground. He was lucky, for they did not shoot him.
We had all been standing in the ante-room immediately behind the outer cellar door and now the machine-guns were trained on us, as they threw ‘Engelchen’ on to the table. She tried desperately to defend herself, to no avail. We had to witness the shameful scene of rape, from the three, with our hands in the air. Just a few days before, we had been armed and had shown no mercy to such beasts. Now we had no choice but to witness those so-called human beings in face and form. They did not earn the title and we were not able to help. The agitator Ilya Ehrenburg would have been proud of the students of his propaganda. After that sexual gratification, the three then disappeared. ‘Engelchen’ disappeared during the night too, for the shame and degradation, in front of witnesses, was just too much for her. We never saw her again.
We were sold and delivered, we were ‘wares’ for the ‘victors’ and we, our lives, were of no worth. We could live today, but die tomorrow, today or in the next few minutes. We lived with that realisation, day after day. One roaming Red suddenly appeared, and just as suddenly shot at us so that we had to hit the ground or dive for cover under the bunks. Fortunately, no one was hit on that occasion, it was a ‘game’, a game with only a hair’s breadth chance.
We also had visitors who, in comparison, were relatively harmless, such as the up-and-coming ‘speaker’. He wanted to practise and needed an audience. So he appeared, waving his revolver nonchalantly in the air and politely asked us walking wounded, to go with him into the ante-room. There he stood on a chair and started to deliver his speech, in Japanese, for all that we knew. He must have not iced that his words were falling on barren ground, for we only understood the words, Communist, Lenin, Stalin and Russian culture, without showing any resonance. He asked for a translator and one of our chums from Upper Silesia was given the job of translating his preaching of political propaganda. He waited in the pauses, wiping the sweat of stress from his brow and taking strong swigs from his bottle of vodka.
Our Silesian friend gave us an evening that we could hardly forget, for he translated the very opposite of what was being said. We listened, we applauded at the achievements of the Communists in their Soviet paradise. We laughed, and our speaker thought that he had the audience of a lifetime and why not, for he had been very polite in asking us to attend. We were a very patient audience and we let him speak, until he fell off his chair, full to the brim with two kinds of Russian spirit, the intellectual and the liquid sort. There he stayed until the next morning. He was then found by one of the officers, and with a leather whip forced into consciousness, on to his feet and then outside, being brutally beaten as he went. In comparison, we thought that a couple of days in German ‘bau’ was not so painful and we could feel sorry for him.
For some time I ignored the well-meant advice of my chums, to discard my uniform, not wanting to march into POW camp in hospital clothes. As more and more of the Russian soldiers began to take a closer look at my runes however, I exchanged my SS-Untersturmfiihrer’s uniform, for that of a Wehrmacht NCO. At the same time and with a very heavy heart, I burned my pay-book, with all of the entries of my army career in it, plus details of close-combat activity within the city. I was not only thankful to have survived those battles, but was also more than a little proud to have been a part of them, to have made my contribution. Therefore, I kept my medals.
According to my diary, the medical centre was closed down on 18 May and we were transported to Herrenstrasse, to provisional POW quarters. There we said a sorrowful farewell to everyone, with the now common Breslau expression of goodwill “stay healthy”, and “stiff upper lip”! We had no idea if we would be kept together, or if we would meet again one day. It was noticeable that the shiny eyes of the successful defenders were now cloudy and sad, like tired wolves.
My mind was plagued with thoughts of escape, but my splinted arm was a disadvantage. There were no chances of success. But, to end my days as a convict in the unending swampy Taiga forests of Siberia was not for me. I had no illusions about the type of POW conditions that were waiting under the Soviets. I knew that they had refused to sign the Geneva Convention of 1929 and also that many of the German prisoners taken by the Russians between 1941/42 had been executed. I had no other choice but, for the time being, to wait for an improvement in my bodily movements. However, I would be on the alert as soon as the possibility of escape arose.
Other thoughts rushed through my mind. In my gratitude for my survival, I asked myself if there really was a war-god who guided the bullets when he chose. Perhaps, although invisible, he was now looking after me and us?
The sky was a deep blue, the clouds puffy and white that May day. We left the centre and started our march as POWs, joined by other units of the garrison. The wounded who could not walk were transported in German ambulances, under guard from the Russians. Those able to walk made up a column of si1ent, miserable souls, without the customary in-step march, without a happy song on their lips, and without conversation. They went where their feet led them, behind the man in front, exhaustion in many cases having taken control. We were joined by those from the infantry, air force, Volkssturm and Hitler Youth. The boy-soldiers’ uniforms were much too large for them. They quickly sought the nearness of the older men as comrades, which was where they belonged.
We wore or carried only the necessary, or at least what we had left for possessions, a mug and plate, wallet for necessary papers, and a bundle of underwear. Others carried a blanket, despite the warm weather. It was very cold in Siberia! I did not even possess a coat. Our guards carried cocked machine-pistols across their chests, typical for the Russians, with a circular magazine of the sort that we had collected by the dozen. The guards were nervous, some so much that t
hey let loose a shot or two, just by fingering the trigger, although we had given them no reason. Those unable to keep up with the column and who attempted to fall out for a pause were attacked with rifle butts and verbal abuse. They were forced to the extreme limits of physical reserves in order to put one foot in front of the other, and carry on. Sometimes the instincts of animals can be more human than the human being, for I remember that one of the horses carefully picked up its hooves to avoid a fallen soldier, although its rider had manoeuvred to trample over the unfortunate man. One of the guards tried, in broken German, to show us some compassion, to pump some optimism into us, declaring “war, not good, you go home, that good”! This naive sort was however few and far between, but his intentions were well meant. Those in the column, who were still aware of their surroundings, noticed a torn poster advertising the new film, in colour, of the film-star Kristina Sodermann. We noticed that the top half of her laughing face was torn off, but also noticed the title, and felt the pain of disgust in the pit of our stomachs. The newest film of the blonde, laughing lady was entitled, Sacrifice.
We had only reached Striegauer Platz as it became dark. Striegauer Platz was where my friend had died in a bunker and where there were already long columns of men. The remainder of Regiment Besslein were to be the first to leave the city, perhaps because of fears that they could still pull a trick or two out of the hat. In the light of tank headlights they stood, like ghosts, their abnormally elongated shadows stretching over the rubble-filled square to high on the walls of the bunker.
In the Fire of the Eastern Front Page 27