The Work I Did

by Brunhilde Pomsel

  There weren’t very many stars in our office, and if they did show up, they had something to answer for. At that time I sat by the entrance to the ministerial office, with the big glass door and the carpet and the two armchairs. In my mind I can still see someone sitting there: another actor who had made some stupid remark or written something. He was waiting for a discussion with Goebbels. We all walked past him and at least took a look at him, and thought, oh, you poor bastard, you’re going to get one hell of a dressing-down today. I can’t remember who it was. It was enough for a letter to be intercepted and fall into the hands of the big cheeses, and the one who wrote the letter was executed for it. Those are things you kept finding out about in passing, and never forgot.

  We outside-office ladies always knew when the Minister was coming or going. Then he would stand in the room with us, usually with several people or adjutants; someone was always clinging on to him. We got to our feet and stood politely behind our desks. We stood there motionlessly, and then it was ‘Heil Hitler’, ‘Heil Hitler, Herr Minister’, and he was gone. He was often travelling or at the Führer’s headquarters. On some of his trips he took one of the secretaries with him, in case he needed someone to write things down. For example, I went with him on an express train to Posen. I had to stay on the train, though, while he delivered a speech.

  Sometimes there would suddenly be a ring on the door when there were visitors, and an adjutant just shouted, ‘Hurry up, we need someone to take notes!’ So I picked up my notepad and pencil. Goebbels was talking with some important people. He quickly dictated something, and I was already out again. He rarely asked the secretaries in to dictate to them. He had discussed most things directly with his assistants, and then they worked on them with the assistant heads or sometimes with lower-ranking people, and it was only then that we worked, chiefly for his assistants.

  Goebbels was a good-looking man. He wasn’t tall; he was quite short. He would have needed to be bigger if he had really wanted to cut a figure. But he was impeccably turned out; he had lovely suits, the very best fabric. Always slightly tanned. His hands were well looked after, as if someone gave him a manicure every day. So everything about him was above criticism, beyond any objection. He is supposed to have been very charming, and I can certainly believe that. But with us he didn’t need to be charming. We were part of the furniture; we were like the desks that stood there, that was all. But there were no smiles or, if there were flowers, no questions about whether someone might have had a birthday, like we know from bosses who sometimes try to ingratiate themselves with the staff. No, there was none of any of that.

  I always said, ‘Goebbels just sees us as his desks.’ I don’t mean that he was snooty, but we were sexless as far as he was concerned. He would never have tried – and we weren’t all that beautiful – to approach one of us. After all, he was surrounded by all kinds of screen beauties and models and whoever else there was, so he wouldn’t really have had to fall back on the office.

  Once I sat right next to him in the theatre. The theatre was under Göring’s control. Staatstheater, the Opera and so on, Göring was responsible for, and Goebbels had to keep his fingers out of those. But small theatres – the Renaissance-Theater, the Komödie, things like that – they were under Goebbels’s control. So on his birthday he invited friends to the theatre, and two of us secretaries were always chosen. One of us sat on his right, the other on his left. But we weren’t even driven there with him. He didn’t talk to us either; he just sat in the middle. And yet I know that it was an incredible honour to be invited to an occasion like that.

  In comparison with the other ladies I was a latecomer to the Promi. There was someone who had been there from the start: Fräulein Krüger, a slightly older, very nice woman. Goebbels already knew her by name, and if something came up, he turned to her. We treated her with great respect too, because she’d been working there the longest. It was extraordinarily pleasant working with everyone in the room, and I was also struck by the lovely furniture, and the beautiful carpets on the floor. In all the offices there were real carpets, things we didn’t have at home. I always appreciated that kind of thing.

  Where the big names were concerned, there were all kinds of rumours in the Promi, in spite of all the strictness. Goebbels was supposed to have been having an affair with a Czech film diva, Lída Baarová.8 He was supposed to have really loved her, and I believe that; I can easily imagine that. There were even rumours of divorce. But Hitler never let it happen. Rumours like that were around even then, and you could never tell what was true and what wasn’t. But I could easily imagine that it was the truth.

  Otherwise people told lots of stories about him. He was said to have affairs. I’m sure there was something in that, but it wasn’t all that significant either. If a man has the opportunity, when he’s married and has children, he goes with another woman… There was nothing new about that, and no one thought ill of him for it. On the contrary, people made little jokes about it. But when jokes were told about Goebbels it was all in relation to the female sex.

  My relationship with the secretaries was always very good, but in comparison with the Corporation it was never especially friendly. There was a certain distance, but they were all helpful and I enjoyed my time there. Otherwise you had nothing else. There was nothing in Berlin. Everything was shut: theatres, concerts, the cinema.

  When I was working on a Sunday, sometimes Goebbels would be collected by his children at the end of the day, and then they would walk home. They had an apartment in the city, beside the Brandenburg Gate. Very nice, well-brought-up children. Not children like the ones you see jumping about the place these days; these were very well brought up. They had a nice way of greeting you, of doing these little curtsies. Very well brought up. So we were always delighted when they came. And if you asked them – they were between five and seven or so – any questions: ‘Well, aren’t you wearing a lovely dress?!’ they were delighted. Or if you said, ‘Would you like to type on my typewriter?’ ‘Oh yes!’ That was wonderful for them. When you sat them down at the typewriter and put in a sheet of paper and said, ‘All right then, now write a letter to Dad. I’m sure you’ll do a wonderful job!’ I didn’t actually have the feeling that Goebbels saw his children as very important, and Frau Goebbels lived outside Berlin with them a lot. She herself didn’t try to play a very important part. With her you actually had the feeling that she was doing everything in her capacity as the wife of one of the most senior men. She didn’t impose herself. But that was my impression; I thought she was very nice.

  But however nice she was, working in the Promi wasn’t necessarily felt to be an honour. But, God, I thought, at least you have a job. I mean, we had good incomes at the Corporation. But now suddenly it went up again – they didn’t even take anything off for employee insurance. Nothing was taken off. Then when I got my first wage slip I couldn’t believe it. It was 170 marks. A good income. None of my friends were making more than 150 or something like that. They all envied me my high wages. As well as a ministry bonus, tax free, of sixty marks; then the ministry office bonus, tax free, another fifty marks. So I had more wages than I’d previously made before tax, in my hand, except it was no use to me because there was nothing to buy. But it was a nice feeling, and sometimes you could actually buy something.

  I had a tailor who had some contacts in France. She called me once and said, ‘Frau Pomsel, I’ve got some lovely fabric that would make a sweet dress for you; I’ll be at your house this evening.’ ‘And how much is it?’ I asked. And when she told me, I replied, ‘Oh, that’s far too dear. Oh go on, make it anyway.’ I enjoyed that very much. But that had nothing to do with the Promi. And I didn’t even ask for it. It was thrown my way. But you could also buy a pound of butter on the black market for 300 marks if you had connections, or a bottle of cognac for fifty. You could do that. There was a branch of the Corporation in Paris, and I was still in regular contact with them. They always brought me something when they came. Either a
small present or this or that perfume. So I did very well. It was a bit of an elite. That was why it was very nice working there. Everything was pleasant; I liked it. Nicely dressed people, friendly people. Yes, I was very superficial in those days, very stupid.

  But the people who surrounded Goebbels weren’t all Nazis by any means. Even Herr Frowein, his personal assistant who I worked for at first, he would make certain remarks. That was a great demonstration of trust. His main reason for working in the Promi was so that he could stay in Berlin, with the family he’d just started. So it was a kind of egoism. He wasn’t one of those people who were always walking around with their arm in the air. And he liked me, not least as a colleague, because he’d worked out I wasn’t a Nazi whore. But we never talked about it, you just sensed things like that. We got on well. Some other people didn’t really take to him: they all rejected him a bit, because in his work he was very brusque and demanding, and everything had to be done very quickly. You had to guess the meaning of half of the things he said. But I managed, and I got on well with him. Sometimes his facial expression spoke volumes about some of the things he had to organise. He was anything but a Nazi.

  Then the director of the film department fell out of favour with Goebbels quite badly, and was dethroned, and Herr Frowein took his place. So all of a sudden from being a little Secretary of State he was suddenly the director of the film department and was able to leave his office job in Wilhelmsplatz. Out to Babelsberg, where UFA had their studios. He said to me, ‘What do you say – do you want to come with me?’ ‘Yes,’ I said without hesitating. He said: ‘I’ll see to it.’ So he went to his superior – that was Secretary of State Dr Naumann, Goebbels’s deputy – and asked for me to be moved with him. ‘No,’ he said, ‘that’s absolutely out of the question. Pomsel is staying here. We’re not giving her away!’ He refused. Frowein took the job, and I stayed, and now I had to report to Dr Naumann, who had turned me down before. I just worked very efficiently. Oh, God, I can’t remember why. We were all very efficient. And I was always there.

  Dr Naumann was married too and had children, but he wasn’t faithful either. We had a secretary in our ministerial outer office that none of us liked, and Naumann always invited her to his house on Sunday. She told us he had another house in Wannsee, and they went out sailing together. I’m sure she went to bed with him. She was good-looking; a tall, slender woman. But we didn’t like her, and she was only there for a few weeks.

  During that time – this was in 1943 – there was a terrible large-scale attack on Berlin,9 and our Südende was the centre of it and was completely destroyed. I was alone in the flat when that happened. I’d just come home. I’d been invited out, and I was dressed in French silk accordingly. But no sooner had I come home than the sirens started wailing. My God, time to go down to the cellar, so I packed my things together. There was a basket with everything in it, I don’t know what, but on top there were mountains of stockings – not tights, I don’t think they had those yet in those days, but silk stockings, and they always got ladders. I was good at sorting out those ladders. Someone had invented something: it was this little piece of wood, and there was a kind of snapper on the end of it, and you could use that to save stockings. First mine, then my mother’s, then for friends, and then friends of friends. Could you, can you – and so on. They always brought me a bar of chocolate if they had one; those were delicacies. So I always had those mountains of stockings lying on top of the basket, and whenever the siren went off I grabbed my handbag and went down to our cellar with it. All the housewives were down there cleaning vegetables or knitting a jumper or just chatting.

  So I picked up that basket and went downstairs in my party frock because the sirens were going off, and it was time, because you could already hear some noises. Then a terrible attack began: the first one we’d experienced. Yes, things had come down in some parts of Berlin before. On Bayrischer Platz, and houses had been destroyed there. But never had an attack been so long and so near and so loud, so it was really terrible. No one did anything; we just sat there trembling with fear. Our final hour had come. Suddenly someone came and said, ‘Our house is on fire.’ We had an air-raid warden; every house did. Someone to make sure that the buckets of water were full on every landing, with rags beside them. Preparations for a rapid response. Ours was a very nice woman of about thirty, whose husband was away at the war. She went upstairs while the rest of us sat in the cellar. Then she came back and said, ‘Yes, everything’s on fire, and so is our house. But it isn’t so bad yet. We may still be able to put it out.’ So everyone who could ran to put it out, and so did I. She looked at us all; I can’t remember who was in the cellar. Mostly women, of course, but sometimes there were men there as well. She said to me, ‘You should stay down here.’ She didn’t trust me to do it, because you had to leap up four flights of stairs. The air-raid warden took off her watch – a gold watch – and said, ‘You should look after my watch.’ She gave it to me; she put it in my handbag. So I stayed down below. They all tried to put out the fire up there with buckets and sponges, but it had gone too far. It burned quite slowly, but it was really burning, so they all came back down.

  ‘We can’t do it! We have to get out of here!’ But how? By now everything was full of smoke, but you could still breathe. ‘We have to get out of this cellar!’ But all around us was a sea of fire. And then real policemen or firemen or air-raid men came, I can’t remember, several men, and they grabbed us all. Anyone who couldn’t walk was pulled or dragged into the street.

  I was still carting my basket around with me, and eventually I noticed that the handbag was gone. It had been on top, and the food cards were in it. They were the most valuable possession you had. Those cards were really like losing your passport and never getting another one. Without the cards you got nothing to eat; it was terrible. I remember that we ended up in some strange cellar, where I even went to sleep. And when dawn broke, loudspeakers rang out in the streets. All the residents of those streets were to gather in the city park in Steglitz. It seemed to be all right, so we wandered over there. First of all the Red Cross distributed soup to everyone. But my most important things, my money and everything else, were simply gone. Oh, I was the poorest person in the world. And where was I to go now? My friends had been bombed out as well. No one thought of anyone else, everyone just thought of themselves.

  I have to go to the office, I thought. At least there are people there that I know. I’ve got to go to the office. Of course no transport was running. Traffic was totally paralysed. So I walked.

  And then all of a sudden I was standing in our office. They had no idea. Everyone knew that Steglitz had been hit. Steglitz, Südende, Lankwitz. Because I was late, they’d already said to each other, ‘I hope nothing has happened – she lives in Steglitz.’ But suddenly I was standing there, in that lift. At first they couldn’t help laughing when they saw me in my party frock and carrying that basket, until they all worked out what had happened.

  Then it was quite touching. Everyone wanted to do something for me; they were kind and pleasant. Then something else happened that I like to remember: when I was standing there bombed out like a poor little thing, suddenly Frau Goebbels’s secretary came in. She also had a desk in the ministerial office. But we never saw her and barely knew her. And afterwards she had probably gone to see Frau Goebbels and said she’d seen a victim of that bombing raid and told her about that poor girl there: her colleague standing in the office in her party dress. ‘So, hasn’t she got anything else to wear?’ And then she says, ‘Where would she have got anything? It happened last night.’ Frau Goebbels would have gone to her wardrobe and said, ‘So, can I help her with anything?’ She took out a blue suit and said, ‘Do you think she could wear that?’ The secretary said, ‘She’s such a tiny little thing; she won’t fit into anything. You can’t just put a dress on like that.’ Frau Goebbels said, ‘This suit, maybe something like this will fit her. Or perhaps it can be altered a little.’

  Anyw
ay the secretary brought me that suit, and I went to a tailor and two days later I was perfectly dressed. I had never had a suit like that in my whole life. It was a wonderful blue woollen fabric. Lined with white silk. Wonderful. I wore it a lot later on. As the jacket fitted very well, only the skirt had to be shortened. My mother even dragged that suit through the war, and I was photographed in the suit again when I came out of prison. The jacket still fitted. It survived a few things – and even outlived its former owner.