by Leo Maxim
Gerhard tells him that he was to be brought to Paris, where he would probably have been condemned to death and shot. “And none of that happened,” says the partisan with the clear voice, whose name is Michel, and who hugs Gerhard. Gerhard feels as if he’s in a dream, he looks around in disbelief, into the young faces of the partisans, who laugh as they clap him on the shoulder. A paramedic dabs Gerhard’s ear with iodine, it’s really just a scratch. If he hadn’t twisted his head to the side he’d be dead now. But it’s no time for brooding, they’ve got to hurry because the Germans are probably on their way. Jo, the head of the partisan unit, says there’s a smithy opposite the station, where he’s sure Gerhard could have his cuffs taken off. The smith, a squat, muscular man, breaks the chain with a blow of his hammer. His daughter, a pretty, dark-haired girl, runs into the house next door and comes back with a big tin of liver pâté. “To make sure you have a quick recovery,” she says. He hugs her by way of thanks and bursts into tears.
Gerhard’s liberators are members of the Resistance group Francs-Tireurs et Partisans Français, which is run by the Communist Party. “We are all Communists,” says a sixteen-year-old who still looks like a child, and whom everyone calls Toutou. They leave Allassac and walk northwards for hours along paths through forests and fields. They stop in an abandoned barn. Now they have time to talk. Gerhard tells them what’s happened to him over the past few months, and the others listen excitedly. They decide to accept Gerhard into the partisan army. His code name is “Le Rescapé”, the Escapee. He is given an English sub-machine gun, and Michel shows him how to use it. The same day, via his commander, Gerhard applies to become a member of the Communist Party. He is now determined to belong to the people who have saved him, and who are fighting with him against the fascists. This day of liberation must have been like a second birth for Gerhard. The Party will become something like a community of fate to Gerhard, a family that even decades later will be more important to him than anything else. He will devote the rest of his life to it, and no doubt will ever be as strong as the gratitude and joy that he felt that day at the station in Allassac. Others became Communists because they felt drawn to the world of ideas. For Gerhard it’s a matter of experience, of feeling, of friendship.
Allassac railway station
After another three hours on foot they reach the partisan camp. Under cover of the trees there are tents made of red, green and blue parachute silk. There are several fires and field kitchens. There are peasant loaves on linen cloths, mutton with haricot beans is boiling in big pots. About 200 fighters are gathered here. Gerhard sleeps next to a farmer from the Corrèze who has just been given an automatic pistol. He proudly shows his gun and lets the cartridges jump out of the magazine like a cowboy. As he does so a shot goes off, the bullet flies right past Gerhard’s head. He has been lucky once again.
12
Victors
TWO DAYS LATER Michel comes charging into Gerhard’s tent early in the morning. He’s very agitated. Several times since five o’clock Radio London has broadcast the coded message that the Allies have landed in northern France. The message is: “Dans la forêt normande il est un lieu-dit.” (In the Norman forest there is a hamlet.) Gerhard reflects that the Belgian officer in St Michel prison might have been right. The battalion commander explains to the fighters that the offensive of the Resistance groups begins across the whole country. It is now a matter of interrupting all northbound rail and road connections, and deliberately attacking Wehrmacht bases. Gerhard’s unit, together with other groups, is to attack the département capital, Tulle, where 100 or so heavily armed Wehrmacht soldiers have positioned themselves in a school building. The partisans drive to the edge of town in two trucks and a bus. Along with Michel, Gerhard is assigned to a reconnaissance troop that is to explore the roads. Crouching, he walks after Michel. What is about to begin is his first real battle. In his memoirs Gerhard writes: “It took me quite a while to admit to myself that the feverish excitement that completely takes hold of me when guns are fired or a skirmish is imminent must actually be described by the word ‘fear’. But I’ve always tried to reveal nothing of my agitation. So on that day Michel probably doesn’t know how hard it is for me to go with him.”
The streets are deserted, and a few hundred metres away salvoes can be heard; clearly the other units have already reached the school. They work their way to the school building, find cover behind a low wall and fire at the windows and doors of the school. Gerhard hears voices from the school building, orders are shouted in German, and then a heavy machine gun starts hammering on the second floor. On Gerhard’s right a comrade is hit in the neck, he topples to the floor, bellowing with pain. Gerhard tries to staunch the blood with a cloth, but he can’t. Grenades scream into the ground, soil and stones fly through the air. Two men who have been hit fall to the ground behind him. “Let’s get out of here!” yells Michel, and the unit retreats.
They don’t start again until the following morning. They manage to set the roof of the school alight, the Germans make an escape attempt that ends in a hail of bullets from the partisans, and about forty Wehrmacht soldiers surrender. Gerhard gets his first glimpse of defeated German soldiers. They stand there exhausted, heads lowered, surrounded by partisans at the school entrance. Gerhard translates the words of his commander, who assures the prisoners that nothing will happen to them. “Even though many of us who fell into your hands were murdered.” In his memoirs Gerhard writes: “I translate this, and add of my own accord that we are the French People’s Army. The Germans don’t dare look me in the eye.”
What did Gerhard himself feel he was at the time? German? French? He was ten years old when he had to leave Germany, now he’s twenty-one. He’s grown up in France. He has known the Germans as persecutors, as murderers and sometimes also as saviours. In his notes he sounds deliberately detached when he speaks of “these Teutonic criminals who have spread so much evil across the world”. It’s as if he wanted to shake off all suspicion that there was any connection between these people and himself. On one occasion a partisan refuses to shake his hand when he finds out that Gerhard is a German. “How can I explain to him that there are also decent people where I come from?” Gerhard wonders. It sounds as if he himself has problems believing it. Before the court martial in Toulouse he had said that he felt like a German with strong connections to the French people. “That’s out of the question,” the presiding judge had yelled at him. “Anyone who makes a pact with the traditional enemy is no longer a German.” Gerhard envies his French comrades, for whom everything is much simpler and clearer. “I would love to hate as they do, but I can’t,” he notes in Tulle.
In the streets of the town young women are dancing with partisans with sub-machine guns over their shoulders, to the sounds of a musette waltz. French flags hang in the windows. The people of Tulle are celebrating the Liberation—a little prematurely, as becomes apparent two hours later, when the sound of heavy gunfire and tank engines is heard. At this point Gerhard’s unit has already taken up a position on a slope to the north of the town. From there they can see the tank columns rolling in from the south. Gerhard thinks of the twenty or so wounded partisans lying in the hospital in Tulle along with the wounded German soldiers. A few comrades from Michel’s group have commandeered two Gestapo limousines full of explosives, weapons and ammunition. The cars have to be brought to safety as quickly as possible. Gerhard is to drive one of the cars.
Michel says he will drive ahead of him in the other car because he’s more familiar with the area. They lose sight of each other on the bendy roads. Just before Perpezac-le-Noir there are women standing in the street waving their arms in the air. Gerhard brakes and throws open the door. One of the women cries, “Lads, turn round. Another car has just crashed into a German tank stopped in the road just around the next bend.” Gerhard and his three companions jump from the car, and at that moment a German soldier drives at them on a motorcycle. They fire their sub-machine guns at him and the motorcyc
list falls into the ditch. A tank comes round the corner and fires a machine gun at them. Gerhard and the other three flee into the woods. Bullets smash into the branches above their heads. They run until the forest grows denser, and then slump to the ground, exhausted, on a little knoll. Gerhard wonders whether Michel and the others have been able to get away.
They manage to get to the camp. The comrades there already know what’s happened. They say Michel and his two companions have been arrested by the SS and taken to Uzerche. An hour later Michel was hanged from a street light before the eyes of the villagers. Gerhard can’t listen, he lies down in his tent, shuts his eyes and wants to be a long way away. It’s five days since Michel freed him at Allassac station. And now his liberator is dead. If Michel hadn’t insisted on driving the first car, Gerhard might be hanging from a street light himself.
Three days later it is revealed that the SS division “Das Reich” had hanged ninety-nine civilians after marching into Tulle, in revenge for the attack by the partisans. The injured comrades in Tulle hospital were killed with shots to the back of the neck the same evening. A couple of days later that same SS division raged through the little town of Oradour-sur Glane, not far from Tulle. Within a few hours 642 men, women and children are murdered. The orders for this crime were issued by SS General Heinz Lammerding, who lived out his life undisturbed in Düsseldorf, and died peacefully in his bed as an affluent businessman in 1971. In France, Lammerding was sentenced to death in absentia after the war, and no trial was brought against him in Germany. Only years later Gerhard discovered that it was Lammerding in person who had Michel strung up. The general lived in the house in Uzerche with the street lamp standing outside it. Eyewitnesses later reported that he had watched the partisan’s death struggle from the windows of his drawing room.
Once—I must have been about fourteen—I talked to Gerhard about the Wall. I mockingly pointed out that the so-called “anti-fascist protection rampart” had only prevented the citizens of the GDR from getting to the West, but the so-called fascists could cross over to us whenever they wanted. Then Gerhard told me the story of Michel and General Lammerding. In the end Gerhard said he was glad there was a wall to keep criminals like that away from him. I was so shocked by the story that I never again dared talk about the Wall in his presence.
On 16 August the partisans drive back to Tulle. The Wehrmacht garrison has declared itself willing to capitulate. Gerhard stands with his comrades on the bed of a truck. The atmosphere is relaxed, they tell each other funny stories and sing fighting songs. Two weeks previously, Gerhard has been appointed lieutenant, and now leads a group of fighters who have the task of guarding the surrender of a Wehrmacht base. In the afternoon a Wehrmacht envoy reports to the partisans. He suggests taking along a French officer to check the state of the preparations. Gerhard accompanies the envoys and they drive into the forest where the base has been set up. The guards by the gate are startled when they see the partisan with his sub-machine guns. But they let him through. Gerhard thinks for a moment about whether it mightn’t be a mistake to come here alone. It could also be a trap, but now it’s too late. The head of the base, a colonel, hurries towards him and greets him exuberantly. Gerhard introduces himself as “Lieutenant Rescapé” and the colonel says, “I’m so grateful to the lieutenant for coming so quickly. My warmest thanks again.” He even bows. Gerhard doesn’t like the man’s submissiveness. He knows how the officer would have treated him just a little while ago if he’d got hold of him. The colonel walks ahead of him and points to four gun placements that are still fixed in the ground. “We won’t be able to dig these up before the agreed handover, Lieutenant. We need another two hours.” Gerhard says those two hours will be granted, but it can’t go on any longer than that. “Fine,” replies the colonel, clicking his heels.
Gerhard is driven back along the forest path. It all seems so unreal. All of a sudden he is among the victors, and these Germans, who were very much in charge only a few days before, are now saluting him. As if in a time-lapse the pictures race through his head. The prison in Toulouse, the station of Allassac, the tanks in Tulle. He thinks of Michel and the other comrades who didn’t have the chance to experience victory. Two hours later the Wehrmacht regiment comes down the path. Six hundred men in rank and file with the colonel at their head. The partisans escort the column on either side. When they arrive in Tulle, the sound of singing reaches them from the centre of town. It is the Marseillaise, sung by hundreds of voices.
13
Toys
I’M SITTING IN THE CAR, driving to see Werner in Berlin-Karow. I’m nervous, far too nervous. I’d actually thought it wouldn’t be much of a problem to visit him, because I’m coming not as a grandson but as a genealogist. But it isn’t as simple as that. It’ll be my second meeting with him. Last time, fourteen years ago, my father was there, and that made things easier. I was the observer of a reunion. Now I’m meeting my grandfather. That sounds normal. But what do I know about this man? What does he know about me? On the phone I have to explain to him who I even am. He had forgotten my name. “I’m Wolf’s eldest son,” I said. Then there was silence for a few seconds. I heard him breathing. “Ah, Wolf’s son. Then come by,” he said.
Werner comes to meet me on the stairs. He has thick, white hair and eyes that lie deep in their sockets. He’s ninety-five years old now, but when he smiles he looks younger. Werner smiles a lot. I tell him I want to write a book, and I’d like to ask him a few questions about his life. He doesn’t hear very well, and I have to say it twice. Werner leads me unsteadily to a glass case in the living room, which contains a faded yellow ID. The passport photograph, stamped with a swastika eagle, shows a serious-looking boy with a shaved hairline and a pomaded quiff. It’s Werner’s identification papers as a participant in the 1936 Olympic Games. “That was the most lovely time,” says Werner. “Lovelier than anything else.” Werner took part in the opening ceremony. He performed with thousands of other gymnasts on the pitch of the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. He has a photograph of that performance, taken from the back row of the stadium. The athletes can only be made out as tiny white dots. They form a huge cross and five Olympic rings. I don’t know what the cross means, whether it turned into a swastika in the course of the performance. But I can imagine how well Werner, that tall, dark-blond adolescent with the grey-blue eyes, fitted in with that spectacle. We try to talk a little, and I ask him how he met my grandmother Sigrid. Werner thinks for a moment, closes his eyes, and his jaw works back and forth. He tries to concentrate, to settle on a memory. But then there’s nothing more. Eventually he gives up, opens his eyes and shrugs with embarrassment. It seems I’ve come too late.
Werner’s identification papers for the 1936 Olympics
Werner gets photograph albums out of a cupboard. Perhaps that will bring the memories back. The black-and-white photographs are neatly mounted and captioned. Skiing holiday in the Tyrolean Alps in 1938, Werner on a sun-lounger. His training with an anti-aircraft unit in Lankwitz in 1939, Werner proud and bolt upright in his corporal’s uniform. Fresh air on the Wannsee in the summer of 1936, Werner and Sigrid cuddling in their wicker beach chair. “My summer holiday” is written in German script in the margin. Bürgerpark, Pankow, 1940, Werner laughing in his army coat in the snow. Whitsun 1937 in the Müggelberge, Werner playing handball with members of his gymnastics club. In these photograph albums the so-called “Third Reich” looks like a cheerful dream holiday.
I feel myself becoming uneasy. There’s none of what I associate with those years. Those laughing faces, that carefree attitude, it all baffles me. I can’t help thinking of Gerhard, who was on the run at the time. Werner smiles dreamily, lost now in those pictures of his youth. “It was lovely,” he murmurs, running his fingers over the yellowing photographs. I don’t dare ask him my questions. I tell myself that he probably wouldn’t understand them anyway. I tell myself that everyone tries to transform his youth, however disagreeable the circumstances really were. So Werner was
a long way from being a Nazi. But the idea doesn’t really reassure me. He throws my whole image of the family into disarray. It was clear to me that I came from a Jewish Resistance family, and now Werner turns up and shows me how great things were under the Nazis. Everything within me rebels at the idea of getting close to this man. Of accepting that he belongs to my family. That I belong to his family.
Still, I take a closer look at the pictures. The resemblance between him and me is striking. He has the same thin legs, the same slightly bent posture, the same nose, the same mouth, the same profile. Now I understand why Grandma Sigrid always said I was like her “Wernerle” long ago. There is a photograph in which Werner lies on his side outside a tent, supporting himself on his left elbow and eating. That’s exactly how I’ve often seen my father eat, and exactly how I lie when we’re having a picnic. I can’t simply reject this man. He’s too close to me. I want to know who he is.
Above all I want to know if Werner was a Nazi. He takes a few boxes of papers out of a cupboard. Werner has carefully saved and filed everything. That at least. I find a CV that he wrote in the Fifties when he was applying to join the SED. He writes that his political attitude in the Third Reich was “vague and emotional”. “My father’s political outlook inclined towards National Socialism at the time. In conversations he would instil great doubts and conflicts in me. I always refused all exhortations to take part in demonstrations. I adopted a critical wait-and-see attitude.” In another file is Werner’s Ahnenpass, his “proof of ancestry” from the register office and the church archive, in which it is attested that he “has been of Aryan blood for at least three generations”. Werner gives me a book covered in grey linen. He himself has printed and bound it. It’s his life story, which he recorded “for posterity” at the end of the Eighties. Werner’s vanity is my good fortune.