by Olga Chaplin
She blinked, eyes swelling with tears, as the irony of Mikhaelo’s regular letters to his wife hit her. The German system of administration was remarkable, in the face of its adversity in this summer of 1944: its cities constantly bombed, its factories and railways disrupted, its people killed and maimed. Yet, somehow, the postal and communications systems continued to operate as if it were servicing a nation in peace-time conditions. For this, Hitler could thank his chief Reich architect, Albert Speer, who worked tirelessly to untangle the chaos wreaked daily through Allied bombings and underground espionage.
The commandant adjusted his spectacles, glancing again at the women’s files, then looked more closely at his captives. The older woman, Evdokia, advanced in her pregnancy, was of a similar age to his own wife, who remained safely removed from this camp and the bombings, at their country estate with their children, with little risk of attack. He thumbed the papers of Evdokia’s file, murmured questions to the interpreter, who replied in muted tones. He removed his spectacles, wiped his eyes again, leaned back in his hard leather chair. Why would this pregnant woman, who had already been through so much, take the risk of leaving this camp, to travel even closer to Wilhelmshaven, where almost certainly the bombs would destroy her and her children? They had managed to survive the horrific journey from their village in eastern Ukraine: had survived the Allies’ bombs on the outskirts of Berlin at the camp hidden deep in the forest, where for some months she worked daily in the hidden munitions factory, and had only been removed with her husband and children just in time before the January air-raid carnage in Berlin, to be brought, miraculously safely, by train to this camp at Federwader.
His militarist’s mind told him punishment was in order. But his camp commandant’s logic gave a different answer. His superiors needed all the workers they could muster, in this crisis year. Their munitions factories and fire-fighting corps from captured countries had to continue. From the many thousands of prisoners in camps in the forests surrounding Berlin, relatively few were selected to make the train journey to this north-west coast of Germany, within reach of Wilhelmshaven. Their months of initial imprisonment and harsh conditions at that first camp had singled them out. Their ‘OST’ labels were removed from their jacket sleeves and they were given more food, and now were supervised in a camp without the massive barbed wire fences.
He sighed to himself, pondered thoughtfully. These prisoners must have stood at the gate that decided their fate. They must have somehow been trusted sufficiently to step to one side, walk past the infamous gate set by Himmler and his new civilian army that, at a whim, took the remainder of trapped prisoners to concentration and extermination camps.
He wondered, fleetingly, what his own wife would do in these circumstances. He could not be certain that she would have shown the loyalty, taken such high risks, to leave the relative safety of this camp, which saw fewer bombs flying over them, than the camp towards which these women were heading. Whoever these workers were, and from wherever they came, Germany needed every one of them. His own nation was being torn apart not just from one front, but now from three. Stalin’s armies had taken back the Ukraine, were even at the eastern borders of Germany’s satellite states. Italy had surrendered, entangling even more German troops to the south. And, just weeks ago, the Allies put into action their much-suspected ‘D-Day’ invasion, forcing Hitler’s last reserves of German men to bolster France’s western coastline. He could not stop the sense of foreboding hitting him. He instinctively felt his left leg, held together by long screws, the symbol of his recent dedicated duty as commander at the front line. He shuddered inwardly, hoping futilely that his young son, not yet fifteen, was not already being groomed to train in the army reserves.
He sighed, in pensive resignation, and glanced at the ambitious SS guard at his door. Himmler’s growing power over the administrative police of the Reich had grown so silently, yet so speedily, efficiently. Now, it seemed, these SS men could wield as much power as it suited them, often pushing the camp administrators into violent acts of reprisal against their prisoners.
“Gerhardt,” he calmly directed the guard, “you may take your break now … I will deal with this matter internally.” The young guard saluted, eager to be relieved. Meddling with these emotional women, crying before them, had left him feeling uncomfortable, in spite of his rigid training. Life in these low-security camps was confusing, unlike anything his army drills had prepared him for. These people, though different in some respects, and with their incomprehensible languages, were surprisingly like the villagers he had left behind in his own outpost hamlet.
The interpreter cleared his throat, carefully conveyed the commandant’s decision. “You must return to your barracks, and continue working in the munitions factory. You will receive your daily rations, as before. You will not be punished: on condition you do not attempt to leave this camp again. You must wait for news from your husbands … In any case, you must stay at this camp for your own safety. That is all. I do not expect to have you brought before me again. Do you understand this?”
Through her tears, Evdokia nodded. “Danke schon,” she whispered. She leaned against the table to steady herself, relieved. And she needed to know that Nadia and Mykola were safe.
“Oh Dynasha! Forgive me … I didn’t know we would cause such trouble!” Evdokia comforted her sobbing friend, who resigned herself to wait with her infant for Mikhaelo’s letters. She heard herself placating her friend. “Maria, don’t weep so, now. Your Mikhaelo will return to you, you will see … everything will go well.” She could not be so certain with her own husband, who she knew took greater risks than Maria’s.
Evdokia returned to her tiny space in the barracks building that was her family’s home these past many months. With each passing day since Peter was taken to his makeshift camp, closer to Wilhelmshaven and the increased Allied bombings, she lived in heightened anxiety. She feared she may never see her husband again. Remaining silent, she did not confide in her friends. But her deep fears were grounded in fact. The camps were strewn with forced labourers separated permanently in the chaos of Germany’s war, so many to never know what became of their loved ones. She could not tell herself, at that moment, as she looked about her and unpacked the suspect bag, what her plan would be. But she knew she had to act quickly, as each day brought greater numbers of air raids and destruction. And, in her distressed state, she could not be certain her pregnancy would reach full term.
* * *
She chose her day of escape carefully and watched the movements of the SS guards, then picked the time of their changeover shifts. The late afternoon was muted, with simple Sunday services following factory work. The children, lightly dressed, played at her side as she carried their jackets, on their permitted walk to the nearby woods, adjoining the railway.
She furtively checked the station for any guards. Fortune smiled on her, at that moment. The ticket attendant looked up at the quiet, neat woman who proffered the feniks for the journey. “Ah, Fraulein, off to Wilhelmshaven, eh? There will be little to find in the shops there these days, no?” he quipped as he gave her the ticket and change. “The train will come soon … they still come on time, just like the bombs, these days!” She smiled and thanked him, pretending to share his jesting. She found a wooden seat furthest from the ticket box, partly obscured by a bush, held her children close to her. She felt faint with exhaustion and the mounting tension, feared being recognised by the SS guards. She could not contemplate what would happen if she were caught again. “Please …” she silently pleaded into the darkening night, “let me reach my Peter safely.”
Twilight began to envelop them. She could not return to her camp now, even if she lost her nerve. The guards were on the look out for troublemakers, for partisans, working for the underground movement. By now, perhaps, she may even have been reported missing. She feared for her own unborn child, and her little children. But most of all, she feared she would never see Peter again. That pivotal thought forced he
r to remain on the hard wooden seat, her children folded close to her.
At last, she heard the rumbling in the near-darkness and heaved a sigh of relief. The train was running erratically late. A few night workers stood nearby, waiting to board it. She peered into the darkness, searching for the dimmed train lights, but none appeared. Suddenly she realised, too late, what the rumbling whooshing noise was. Her skin pricked with uncontrolled panic as she grabbed Nadia and Mykola, pushed them as far under the heavy seat as she could, lay between them and the sparks of ricocheting bullets and shrapnel, as the Allied plane swooped past. Too close, on one side of the station, the bomb exploded, as it missed its railway target. With her face pressed into the gravelled dirt of the platform, she could smell her singed hair as the cinders scattered about them. Her eyes followed a night bomber’s path as it swooped its way towards Wilhelmshaven, towards Peter’s nearby camp. Another bomber growled high above her, and another, and another. “Boje mye,” she began, pushed her body closer to the ground, to the children, as the shrapnel slated about her. Her darkened world was in a state of chaos, and somewhere amongst it was Peter, engulfed in fighting the furious inferno of reprisal.
In the fiery furnace raging about her, she did not think she would survive another moment. In self-protection, her mind went into slow motion, like a fragmented newsreel inexplicably unravelling at great speed, her mind’s eye gathering fractions of moments of her life one last time: parents, siblings, children, Manya … an icon and priest before whom she and Peter had given their vows. She moved her parched lips in prayer, for her children, her husband, before yet another bomb crater burst nearby.
Her mind would take no more. She could feel her consciousness shutting down: the fear, the imminent presence of death too great. In those last moments, her mind tried to reason with the events. If there was any justice in this world, of country fighting country, totalitarian dictator against dictator, then it was that, perhaps, the chaos Hitler brought on Europe, that now hounded him back to Germany, would eventually one day cease, with the Allies’ bombings. Her comfort—as her mind went into blackness—was that she and her loved ones would die on God-given soil and not in the gas chambers so ingeniously planned and executed by the brains of Hitler’s regime. At last, in this death, she and her children were closer to the heavens, could look for the distant stars, could draw themselves even closer to their All-Seeing Maker.
Chapter 30
Like primeval creatures trapped by their hunters, the camp sirens shrieked out their death-warnings to the inmates. Peter, disoriented for a few moments, jumped from his bunk; his senses, body, numbed by fitful sleep, the torturous duties still impacting on him since the previous air raid only hours earlier.
“Dyna!” he called out, his mind foggy but sharpening in the urgency. He peered down the dim mid-afternoon light shaft of his barracks block as men, dragging heavy jackets, hurled themselves towards the far open door. With only seconds remaining before the revved-up fire trucks would charge to their destination, he pulled back the board covering the glassless emergency-exit window, forced himself through its narrow opening and ran to the women’s block.
“Dyna! The truck’s leaving early! This could be your only chance! Leave everything—the women,” he nodded to her traumatised inmates, “will take care of the children!”
He helped Evdokia to move as best she could. Though panicked, she had waited for such a moment. None of the women in this makeshift camp, treacherously close to Wilhelmshaven, had experience of delivering a child. She gasped for air in her severely uncomfortable state, paused again to catch her breath, then followed Peter’s running outline to the fire truck.
It was imperative she go, this time. The fire truck was permitted only one deviation from the Wilhelmstrasse route to the smaller hospital on the fringe of the city. The shrewd camp commandant, calculating the risks—the disruption to the camp and the men should this woman Evdokia have an unfortunate birth—had made his decision. The hospital authorities would do what they could in these extreme circumstances.
“Schnell! Schnell!” Hermann, their crew leader shouted at them, his commands drowned out by the siren’s shrill warning. Seeing Evdokia’s condition, he ordered his men to help her onto the truck, raised his arm for the driver to go. In the choking fumes of their over-revved exhausts, the trucks crawled stealthily from their forest camouflage, waited while yet another squadron of Allied bombers passed over them, then charged out from the natural bunker of heavily-foliaged trees.
Peter breathed in deeply, rubbed his eyes, prepared for the coming debacle. He held in his emotions as he looked at Evdokia, held her shoulder firmly as the fire truck rumbled along pitted roadways towards the bomb-blasted city. “You’ll be safe in this hospital, Dyna,” he whispered reassuringly, smiling at her determined stoicism. “Don’t worry, everything will work out well here.”
He would not allow himself to think that this may be the last time he would see his wife, or his children. Such all-too-realistic thoughts would only undermine the duty which lay ahead of him, could even inadvertently affect his split-second judgment in the impending danger. He squeezed her shoulder, his taut muscled arms feeling the vulnerable compliance of her over-stretched body, and grinned confidently, his smoke-dusted face eliciting a smile from his anxious wife. He would remember that smile, he told himself, to come back to, to the safety of their prison camp. His eyes followed her heaving body as the hospital receded from view, returned sombrely to his prisoner compatriots in the fire truck as they prepared for their next life-or-death ordeal of duty.
It was yet another fire storm, wreaked on Wilhelmshaven by the combined Allied bombings. He sensed something was changing in this never-ending conflict. It was as if the Allies had cranked up another notch in their aim of fire against this important German city. These bombings were no longer the regularly-expected daytime and night raids. They were more frequent, punctuated by shorter and irregular intervals and seemed, almost, to come from all directions. Though there was no knowing the true situation of Germany’s military might, he had heard of Goebbels’ excited speeches on behalf of the Fuhrer, predicting that the enemy Air Forces’ collapse was imminent, now that Hitler’s ‘secret weapon’ was ‘eliminating’ their dwindling air power.
But Peter sensed this was far from the reality. The desperate measures being taken in the city and satellite towns of Wilhelmshaven by Himmler’s newly-ranked Gauleiter Commissioners pointed to a very different reality. Goering’s Luftwaffe was still game and seemed indomitable, but was, with each week, less and less effective against increased Allied bombing raids. His mind flashed back to Germany’s retreat from his Ukraine: to Russia’s increasing fire power, spear-headed by the Russian Air Force, which grew daily as their production lines improved. Germany, now, was facing a similar situation of retreat, right here, on its own territory. Even Albert Speers’s genius in munitions and production organising could no longer outwit the Allies’ chessboard moves in this deathly game.
His skin pricked with tension as their trucks reached their targeted part of the city. Massive plumes of black smoke warned them this was another monstrously successful sortie unleashed on the city. Whatever Goebbels’ and Goering’s daily propaganda churnings, whatever Goering’s right-hand man Milch had devised in the return flak, using Russian prisoner gunners conscripted for these air attacks, Hitler’s war against the Allies was flagging.
Peter braced himself in this contrast of military and political wills, his stomach tight, drum-like. He realised he had not eaten that day, was relieved, as his body prepared for a battle of survival. He knew that each day, each time the fire truck left the camp’s relative safety he, or any of the prisoners, may not return. There was a sense of entrapment over this once-great, free-spirited coastal city, now made incomparably dangerous by the ‘shuttle’ bombing raids devised by the Allied powers, and even more so since Hitler lost control of Rumania and its vital oilfields, allowing the Allied squadrons to extend their ‘country-ho
pping’ from British to Italian and Soviet soil.
And the liberation of Paris in these past days had made a cataclysmic difference to both sides: the Allies bolstered by eventual victory, Hitler’s Reich more shrill, determined it would succeed. Peter felt a conflicting foreboding: each day, each hour would be more risky, treacherous, for all those within the reach of this city; yet he hoped, somehow, peace could come quickly to this beleaguered continent. Hitler’s erratic manoeuvres had already cost Germany a million soldiers’ lives in the western Europe campaigns alone this year, similarly the enemy soldiers’. D-Day, the hoped-for salvation to end Hitler’s madness in Europe, was long gone. The Allied leaders had not counted on the blinded vision and vindictive power-wielding of the Fuhrer to over-rule even the most hardened and experienced realism of his rotating generals.
A wall of fire met the trucks as they converged on the bombed-out building. The Allied bomb had met its target, made a direct hit on the manufacturing plant, its diesel oil, hidden in bunker-like storage now adding to the massive caustic fumes, choking all nearby.
“Stand back!” their crew leader shouted, gesticulating. “The Volkssturm crew is checking the tanks—they have to save them! The Fuhrer’s orders!” Peter pulled out the large sooty rag, tied it around his face, but his eyes, blinking away the flying embers, revealed the reality that his tightened stomach could not. Before them, the whole building was in flames. As he stepped back, waiting for his orders, he could see through a bombed-out chasm of rubble men in bright blue protective jackets feverishly working. Himmler’s newly-extended Volkssturm crew had somehow managed to reach the central yard of the burning building, and were desperately trying to contain a leaking tank, hosing, shovelling earth in an attempt to stop the holocaust.