Winter Men

by Jesper Bugge Kold

  So the Gestapo had constructed the list themselves. The 1,034 who’d been chosen were ordered to meet at a building near the university owned by the Gestapo the day before the train would depart for Lodz. More than one hundred of the names on the list were volunteers who wanted to leave the country and escape the fear they felt as a result of being Jewish in Germany. The next morning they were loaded onto trucks and driven to Hannoverscher Station, where the train was waiting.

  Gerhard had ordered the train cars. He’d requested twenty passenger cars, unable to bring himself to ask for freight or stock cars. That meant fifty to each car, two automobiles for the SS guards who would escort them to Poland, and five freight cars for baggage. What he was given was a grand total of twelve passenger cars.

  Friedrich Olmo had planned the train’s route together with an employee of the German Reich Railways: from Hamburg over to Berlin via Frankfurt an der Oder, Reppen, Kutno, and Görnau to Lodz. Seitz-Göppersdorf had notified the relevant stations that a through-passing train would arrive on October 25. Troop transports and other supplies moving to the front were the top priority, and that meant the train would have to hold for other trains along the way.

  “Names?”

  “Eduard and Anna Beer. And this is Martin, Frieda, Lotte, and Siegfried.”

  Gerhard looked at the family. The father was wearing a suit. It had been a fine suit once, probably at the time of their wedding, but now it was frayed and faded. The mother held herself with grace, standing tall and proud before the table where the man who now administered their lives was seated. They’d done nothing to deserve being thrown out of their own country. It was their country, too, after all. But their lives were no longer their own. They had no rights. And yet the woman had her pride. He studied the four children. They all looked like German children, and they had traditional German names. The youngest, who was probably around twelve, had dirty-blond hair. That had to be Siegfried. It could just as easily have been Maximilian. But this boy was a Jew, and he was therefore undesirable. Gerhard shook his head and glanced around, hoping no one had noticed the disapproving gesture. Glienicke stood, his gloved hands behind his back, beside a few other commanding officers on a small podium so that he could observe the entire crowd. He seemed satisfied.

  “Names?”

  “Carl, Helene, and Herbert Maidanek.”

  Next to the Gestapo man with the jutting ears sat a second man; he leaned back just slightly in his chair, looking pleased, then glanced at Gerhard and blinked. Gerhard shifted uncomfortably and eyed the throng. The platform was filled with well-dressed people. Everyone had donned their best clothes, but with their bowed heads and anxious body language, they resembled a burial procession. Their arms were filled with suitcases, bags, and sacks. Even the children carried all they could.

  “Names?”

  “We are the Kahan family. Philipp, Matilde, Gustav, Rachel, and Rosi.”

  That’s when Gerhard saw him. His long, lanky figure towered above the others. Standing there with his soft trilby on his head, he seemed filled with sorrow. Like someone who had no idea how to act in this crowd of people. A short, stocky woman with her hands full of baggage shoved him peevishly, and Gerhard watched him apologize. He lifted his brown hat and looked shamefacedly at the woman, who appeared to repay him with a hurtful remark; the man’s expression wrenched in brief, genuine pain. Everyone was nervous and testy.

  Gerhard started in the man’s direction.

  “Aaron.”

  The man took a long time to react. In his profession as a watchmaker, he’d earned his living whenever time stopped. Now it was as if he himself had stopped.

  “Aaron. Don’t you recognize me?”

  The man squinted as if the strong sunlight kept him from seeing clearly. His face revealed no trace of recognition, and a small, apologetic smile pushed at the corners of his mouth. But then all at once his expression indicated that he remembered.

  “Gerhard,” he said finally. “Gerhard Strangl.”

  “Listen up. Keep your eyes down and look remorseful. It has to appear like I am scolding you.”

  Aaron nodded. He removed his hat and stared at the ground.

  “Where are Hannah and the children?”

  “They got away,” he said in a raspy voice. “Except for Rachel. She was taken from us, a lung infection.” He grimaced. “What’s going to happen to me?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “Can you help me?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t. I don’t have the authority.”

  Aaron gazed at him, baffled. “Then you needn’t bother explaining why you’re wearing that uniform.” He raised his head, and Gerhard could feel the contempt in his angry glare. “I thought you were a good man.”

  Just then, Gerhard noticed out of the corner of his eye Otto Glienicke watching him and Aaron.

  “Go on, Aaron.”

  His former upstairs neighbor held his gaze and didn’t move. Gerhard finally averted his eyes and saw Glienicke nodding at him as if to ask if everything was all right. The detective chief superintendent leaned toward one of the other Gestapo men and pointed down at him and Aaron. The Gestapo man leaped deftly from the little podium and started toward them. But wedging his way through the dense crowd wasn’t easy. With his eyes, Gerhard tried to force Aaron to walk away. He felt the heat going to his head and Glienicke scrutinizing him. He didn’t know what they would do to him once they realized he knew a Jew. The Gestapo man approached, snarling at the crowd to clear a path. For a brief instant Gerhard wondered whether slapping Aaron would make him disappear. He made a last, desperate attempt.

  “Go on,” Gerhard hissed through his teeth.

  With defiant slowness, Aaron finally started moving. He slung his canvas bag, probably containing all of his possessions, over his shoulder and turned his back on Gerhard.

  Gerhard felt that back mocking him, expressing the very same contempt that he’d witnessed in Aaron’s eyes. What could I have done? he asked himself. I couldn’t have done a thing to help him. But it was as if that slim back were ridiculing him, spitting at him. Who does he think he is? I am a good man. I’m not like them. He glanced toward the small podium. I am a good man.

  “Is there a problem?” The Gestapo man was right behind him now.

  “No. Not at all.”

  “Who was that man?”

  “Just some dumb Jew.”

  An elderly man bumped into the Gestapo man, who nearly fell over. Gerhard waited for the angry eruption that would surely follow. But the officer just turned and accepted the apology from the shrinking, guilt-stricken man. These Gestapo men were completely unpredictable, Gerhard thought. Another officer might just as easily have beaten the old man with his cane. Instead the Gestapo man now helped the elderly man over to one of the tables, where he was asked to give his name. People had begun to climb into the waiting passenger cars, and the officer now helped the man onto the train.

  It was immediately clear to Gerhard that there weren’t enough cars for so many people. They were already crowding onto the footboards and would soon be swelling out the windows. But people continued to pour through the narrow openings until the doors were shut by a couple of soldiers.

  German shepherds on leashes sniffed along the edge of the train, their trained snouts scanning beneath the cars to detect runaways. When they were finished, the soldier at the head of the train signaled to the conductor, who wiped his forehead on his sleeve, put on his cap, and climbed the four iron steps. The train emitted a shrill screech and was slowly set into motion.

  Gerhard watched as the overfilled cars glided past. People were squeezed against the windows, and the frightened faces looked at him. He heard children crying inside the train, which suddenly halted, brakes whining, only to immediately begin moving again. He remained on the platform watching the train grow smaller and smaller until, finally, he could no longer see it.

  Two weeks later Gerhard stood on the same platform watching Hannah help Samuel, Es
ther, and Jakob into the train before her own back disappeared into the stock car.

  Volokolamsk, Russia, November 18, 1941

  Karl sat in the cab watching the snow. It fell slowly and continuously, blanketing everything in yet another layer of whiteness. Just when he thought the sky couldn’t deliver any more, the night’s snowfall added another layer. But snow was preferable. He thought back on the terrible autumn. Operation Typhoon, the offensive against Moscow, had begun on October 2. By the end of the first week, they’d conquered an area the size of Hamburg and taken thousands prisoner. They felt invincible. Karl and Paul Piroska predicted that they would celebrate Christmas in Red Square. The Battle of Vyazma, a medium-sized city only 150 miles from Moscow, had successfully concluded a week later. The supply column alternated between the front—which was moving continually eastward—and the supply depots behind the front. But then came the rain.

  It rained for days, making the terrain impassable. The supply column was hopelessly stuck outside of Safonovo between Smolensk and Vyazma, and the entire offensive against Moscow was bogged down in a deep quagmire.

  Karl was frustrated. He knew that combat vehicles would stop working without gasoline, but the supply column was unable to cover more than three miles per day under these conditions. Loaded with heavy gas cans, the vehicles sank deep into the mud. Whenever they finally got some traction, the cars just splattered an impenetrable wall of mud on them. The men wound up spending more time outside their vehicles than inside, since the trucks were constantly sputtering to a halt. By evening, their pants were rigid with caked mud. Some cut the mud off with knives, but Karl and Paul quickly discovered that the best way to clean their pants was to soak them so the hard mud once again grew soft. After that, removing it with a razor blade was easy. Every evening they shaved their pants, and every morning they were back in mud up to their knees.

  They had to leave behind several vehicles that quite simply couldn’t be extracted from the mud. Karl jokingly told his men that they could just retrieve them in the spring. They continued to advance at a crawl. Whenever they reached a paved road, the jubilation could be heard through the entire column; every time they approached a larger city, the roads improved. As Karl recalled, it was the medical officer Remmel who had suggested laying hewn boards underneath the wheels on the muddier stretches of road. After that the cars could drive a little faster, albeit with long boards sticking out from under tarps in the backs, since they had to transport the “road” as well.

  Winter had arrived abruptly and forcefully. The cold was everywhere, and it penetrated everything. A few weeks ago, the prodigious rainfall had been replaced by snow. The frost set in, and the mud froze. Though this meant that their vehicles could once again advance with supplies, their joy was short-lived because everyone began to freeze.

  They’d spent the night in their vehicles, and Karl was still disoriented from sleep as he leaned back in his seat, feeling as though the cold were coming from inside him, freezing him from his bones outward. He crawled stiff-legged out of the truck and staggered over to the soup truck, where two chimneys billowing smoke promised a hot meal.

  The freezing men clustered around the soup wagon, or “goulash cauldron,” as they called it. Several were still wearing their summer uniforms, and they would soon succumb to the cold, Karl thought. He might, too, if he didn’t get hold of some warmer clothes. He exchanged a glance with Remmel and Piroska, who was stomping in place. Remmel seemed like he never felt the cold. Karl envied him.

  Two hours later, the supply column departed from Volokolamsk. As usual, the horizon—as flat and colorless as a heavy blanket—depressed him. Though he’d asked himself many times what they were doing in this impassable country, he had yet to find an answer that satisfied him. Forests, swamps, mud, and now the cold had all done their utmost to stop them. They would have a long winter ahead if they didn’t reach Moscow, but he still believed they would. They were only seventy-five miles from the Christmas tree in Red Square, and the German armies were positioned in a semicircle around the city.

  They drove through a forested area lined with indolent spruce trees leaning across the road. He was cold as hell. He never cursed, but this situation practically called for it. If only he could get warm. He would do anything for a respite from the cold.

  “Stop!”

  Bongartz braked. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  Karl opened the door, leaped out, and ran into the woods.

  “You need to take a dump, boss?” someone shouted behind him.

  He’d spotted something among the trees. Now he hoped to have his hunch confirmed. Where his sights had once been trained on enemies and threats, they now focused on clothes—anything that might warm him even the smallest bit: a pair of woolen socks, a pair of boots.

  It was too good to be true. He lay in a clearing, dead. His stripes indicated that he’d been a major in a panzer regiment. There was no sign of a wound, no sign that he’d died in battle. He was mostly covered in snow, but beneath that thin layer was the lambskin coat Karl had spotted from the truck—a lined lambskin coat with a fur collar and a hood. He glanced nervously over his shoulder and was relieved to see that no one else had seen the dead soldier. He wouldn’t have to fight for the coat. Stripping it off him wasn’t easy. The officer’s arms were stiff from frost, and he had great difficulty undoing the buttons with his own cold fingers. His hands were, as usual, stiff and aching, but the prospect of a real overcoat helped him fight through the pain. How deep he’d sunk. Not so long ago, he could have purchased the finest sheepskin. In fact he could have sent people out to buy it for him. Now he was scrabbling around a corpse in a snow-covered forest. It was undignified—not only for himself but for the dead officer. Then he had an idea. He would restore the major’s dignity by giving him a proper burial. It was the least he could do—now that he’d acted like some pitiful grave robber. He pawed around inside the man’s pockets and found a soldier’s book. He opened it.

  “Fritz Heidenreigger,” it said.

  He felt a bit embarrassed as he returned to the vehicles. By halting the column he’d put it in danger, but what did it matter? He would no longer freeze to death now. He ordered a couple of men to retrieve the dead man. Three freezing soldiers jumped from the bed of one of the trucks and cast envious glances at his newly appropriated coat. They hadn’t been among those lucky enough to secure winter clothes from the warehouse in Smolensk. Clothing supplies were but a drop in the ocean; everyone plundered everything from everyone—whatever could provide even the slightest warmth. With their sallow, unshaven faces, women’s shawls tucked underneath their helmets to warm their heads and ears, and jackets, pants, and boots in every shape and size, the proud Wehrmacht soldiers now had a rather ragged look about them. One soldier from a reconnaissance unit had even gone so far as to layer a couple of flowery dresses under his thin uniform jacket. The soldiers continued to plow ahead despite their bizarre appearance, and little by little they advanced toward the Russian capital.

  The three men dragged the body from the woods, then arranged it on top of the gasoline tanks in one of the truck beds. Once the column was on its way again, the driver turned to Karl, who for the first time in a long while felt an ounce of good fortune thanks to the coat.

  “Someone you knew?”

  “Fritz. Fritz Heidenreigger,” Karl responded tersely.

  Five days and one burial later, they reached Solnechnogorsk, forty miles northwest of Moscow. The division’s combat troops had been lodged in a glass factory at the edge of the city, while supply troops bivouacked in an empty metal workshop. Karl figured all the machines and workers had been transferred to the east—along with the rest of Russia’s industry.

  In the evening they saw rockets illuminating the sky over Moscow, the searchlight’s beams sweeping the sky, and glimpses of the city’s air defense guns combatting the Luftwaffe’s bombardiers. This was where Karl heard the song for the first time. Piroska and
a subordinate from the signal troops had found Radio Beograd’s powerful transmitter frequency. Every evening at 2155 hours, Lieutenant Karl-Heinz Reintgen ended his broadcast with a sad song about adoring lovers; each night, more and more soldiers clustered around the radio as Lale Andersen sensually crooned “Lili Marleen.” She could never measure up to Zarah Leander, in Karl’s eyes, but the sad song made an impression on the soldiers. It gave them courage and a reason to fight even more savagely, because the notes reminded them of their loved ones at home.

  Solnechnogorsk was also the first place he came across bomb dogs. The dogs were trained to crawl underneath German tanks with explosives strapped to their backs, triggering a detonation when an antenna touched the undercarriage of the tank. The German shepherd—ironically a breed of German origin—had gone under an Opel Blitz in Karl’s convoy, and the vehicle exploded with a deafening roar, costing him not only two men but a truck and three tons of gasoline as well. Because of the burning gasoline, they couldn’t approach the vehicle for some time, so they never did bury Neubarth and Thiessen. They’d shot every dog they saw ever since that day.

  On December 6 the Russians began a large counteroffensive, and Karl was told to pull his column out of Solnechnogorsk. They’d been so close to their target, but the order to pull back made Moscow seem farther away than ever. Each day they distanced themselves more from the Russian capital, the men’s morale dipped lower. The temperature, too, continued to fall, with daylight temperatures reaching only ten degrees Fahrenheit. Piroska had heard there were trains in Smolensk loaded with winter clothes, but the locomotives’ boilers didn’t function in the brutal cold. Frostbite became an everyday occurrence, and Karl ordered everyone in the company to rub their faces and ears with snow as soon as they began to lose feeling in them. Many of his men still succumbed to the cold, but at least it was a painless death. Others had to have limbs amputated, and whenever a frostbitten soldier lost a leg or a foot, Karl felt guilty because of his lambskin coat.