The Work I Did

by Brunhilde Pomsel

  You must realise that there were people like Heinrich George in the camp. We had a director from the Nollendorf Theater who was an inmate, and we had people from the Philharmonic, orchestra people, and the Russians supplied them with instruments. They just went out and took violins and flutes from private individuals and brought them to the camp to put together a wonderful band. It was primarily meant for the Russian soldiers, but more and more German things crept into it.

  The camp commandant allowed the theatre director to rehearse a German play. Eight days before it was to be performed, one member of the theatre group, a female prisoner, was caught with a Russian soldier. The soldier was sent away and the girl was immediately removed from the theatre troupe, so the play had no lead and they needed a substitute at very short notice. I was asked if I was able to learn it by heart. ‘Of course I can!’ I said.

  In the camp of course you had thoughts about things. Another year gone by, and you’re still here. What will I do when I go home? Will I be able to do a job again? I already had one. I had to help out in a tailor’s workshop organised by the Russians. I wasn’t inactive for long.

  Meanwhile I was often very lucky. I came back in January 1950 and threw my hand over my mouth when I heard about everything that had happened. Suddenly there was a new radio station, and they even took me on as a secretary. When I came back I thought at first I might be able to start at the station RIAS Berlin. No, they certainly wouldn’t be taking on any former Nazis. You worked in the Propaganda Ministry, you’re a Nazi. Fine, then I’m a Nazi. But they made no exceptions. But then I ended up at Südwestfunk, as some people there knew me from before. They were former workers who had reported in propaganda units and about the war, and were already back at work. I don’t remember exactly everyone who managed to get out of the Propaganda Ministry. Kurt Frowein managed, but I never saw him again, and Naumann too. He was with the Führer in the headquarters until the end, and he managed to get out of Berlin with Martin Bormann2 and Schwägermann.

  Dr Naumann contacted me when I was already in Baden-Baden. ‘Dear Fräulein Pomsel, I am glad that you were one of those who survived that terrible war, and that you are doing well again and have found a very nice job in the Südwestfunk. I would be very happy if you would contact me. I have met up with some very good friends again.’ Naumann had also met Werner Titze, who was the editor-in-chief at Südwestfunk and a schoolmate of Naumann’s; they were both born in Görlitz and probably met up again by chance in Bonn. Then they ran through the people from the Reich Broadcasting Corporation and the Propaganda Ministry, who they knew or didn’t know, and my name came up.

  Luckily I went to my former boss, Lothar Hartmann, the director of programmes, with whom I later went to Munich. I asked him what he thought about it and he advised me against contacting Naumann. So I didn’t, and just a few days later I read in Der Spiegel that he was involved in a conspiracy to infiltrate the liberal FDP [Free Democratic Party]. He was still a Nazi. I never heard of him again. They were all a few years older than I was, and they’re all dead now. It comes up again and again in the papers. Someone turns up Nazis who worked in German law courts even later on, after the war. Many people were very skilled at shaking off responsibility. I didn’t understand that, and I didn’t see any reason to do it either.

  I really found out about the most terrible things only after I came out of prison – about the extent of the persecution of the Jews and the camps. Until my release I didn’t speak to anybody, no relatives, no colleagues, nobody. I was in the hands of the Russians, and that was that. Everything that came after – the Nuremberg Trials, a new currency, the GDR [German Democratic Republic] – I only found out about that when I came home in 1950, put twenty-four marks on the table in front of my mother and said, ‘Mama, that’s what I’ve earned in five years.’ They had paid me that on the last day, in fact. My mother said, ‘Child, you can throw that in the waste-paper basket, that’s Eastern money.’

  There are funny details I remember. At my first dinner: ‘Mama, since when have we always eaten white bread?’ She said, ‘White bread, that isn’t white bread.’ It was normal bread, but for me it was white bread. Can you imagine what we got in the camp, it was black bread, but what black bread! For me this was a completely new, altered world.

  When I was being questioned I was also asked if I had a cyanide capsule on me somewhere. Nobody ever offered me one. I would have accepted it, but not for me. I didn’t plan to take my life. But perhaps I would have taken it in Sachsenhausen; I’d really reached my limit there. It was three months before I was released. I had a knife, which you weren’t supposed to have. A blunt knife. I clearly remember playing about with that knife and thinking, how do you open your veins? But a blunt knife isn’t going to be much use. So I only played with the idea, and then I put it away again and thought to myself, ‘No, no, I’m not going to do anything as stupid as that.’ Basically I don’t tend to throw in the towel that quickly. I remember a secretary of the Führer’s writing about how proud she was to have been given a capsule like that by Hitler, but no girl from the Propaganda Ministry made it over to the Führer’s bunker.

  I was often very lucky. Sooner or later there was always a way out. I was often in a state of despair, but somehow or other it always passed and let me become what I am now. Of course I’m no longer that naive little girl who finds the world great fun. I’ve encountered the world from all sides, from many sides.

  Then there was Eva Löwenthal, who was never out of my head. What had become of her? Only decades later, visiting a cemetery in Berlin, I found out what had happened to her. I looked around the cemetery and went to one of the attendants to ask whether she might be among the missing. I only had her name and her approximate age. ‘I’m missing someone called Eva Löwenthal,’ I said. He went to a machine with a list of names, and we found her, a year older or a year younger than me. According to the list she had died, and it also gave the year: it was right at the end of the war, early in 1945. We couldn’t find out anything more than that.

  Eva had always sat at the table with the rest of us. She was part of it. She was an intelligent girl: she had read a lot, and she often made me feel stupid. I thought: you with your basic education. And now she was actually dead. At the time I couldn’t grasp it. The persecution of the Jews hadn’t been as active in my district as in others. Most had left in time – they had money and connections abroad. But mostly they kept themselves to themselves. They were self-contained. For example, the circle of acquaintances of my boss Dr Goldberg, who invited me to his little parties, that was the whole clan of the Leiser shoe manufacturing company. They bred like rabbits, bringing lots of children into the world. They didn’t even allow their financial interests to merge with those of other people. And as for schooling, most of the Jewish children attended private schools.

  Eva was someone special as far as we were concerned. We knew she needed a bit of protection, and she had no money. She couldn’t even apply for a job. When you applied for a job you had to reveal what faith community you belonged to. That was how it was. But those differences also existed among the Jews. There were a lot of poor Jews too, like Rosa Lehmann Oppenheimer. She had that little shop selling soap. I liked going there as a child. Her shop always smelled of paraffin, and she herself did too. Still, when she reached into the big sweetie jar with her hand, which wasn’t always very clean, and then pressed a whole handful of unwrapped sweets in your hand, of course she was the loveliest person in the world. Rosa Lehmann Oppenheimer… She was taken away, I was told later. She was one of the poor Jews. They existed too.

  After Hitler came to power it was too late for everything…

  Brunhilde Pomsel

  ‘I WASN’T GUILTY’: THE CV OF A 103-YEAR-OLD WOMAN

  It’s like everything else. Even beautiful things have stains. And terrible things have bright spots. It’s not all black and white. There’s always a bit of grey in both.

  I never went along with the crowd. I was only in the
crowd when I did gymnastics, when I went on jaunts, when I played bridge – then we were a delightful crowd. I’m essentially a loner; I’ve never married or brought children into the world. Not because I have anything against marriage, and I would have liked to have a child, but in the old days you couldn’t have a child without being married. It would have been a scandal, and I never wanted to expose myself to that.

  But I like being alone – I always have done. I think I had that desire even as a child, when I didn’t have my own room. Always with the boys, and it was always so cramped. I wanted to be alone a lot, but I also liked spending a lot of time with nice people. It might be selfishness of some kind. But at least it wasn’t selfishness at other people’s expense, because of course you were part of a crowd in spite of everything. I’m not that kind of individualist. As long as I can do the things that fulfil or inspire me, and don’t have the feeling that I’m bothered by the crowd, I’m happy to get involved. If I hadn’t been at the Propaganda Ministry, the story would have been exactly the same. It’s not just about me on my own.

  Every individual belongs somewhere. Of course! There’s always an influence of some kind. Sometimes it’s upbringing, sometimes the circle you’re part of; I don’t know. In Germany before Hitler came to power life wasn’t particularly open. It was a completely different world back then. Many people nowadays can’t even imagine that restricted life. It starts with the upbringing of children: if they were badly behaved they got the slipper. Love and understanding didn’t get you very far. From a clip around the ear to trousers down, three smacks and that was it – and you didn’t resent it.

  Who in those days had friends in America or anywhere? A schoolfriend of mine trained as a hairdresser, and even as an apprentice she was lucky enough to be able to travel on the Bremen, an amazing ship that travelled between Germany and America. She was envied for having such a great job. None of us knew any foreigners. At first there was no broadcasting, not to mention all the other technical nonsense that they have today. Nothing. We were still living on an island – not just us, other countries were exactly the same. There wasn’t that network, except in trade, and that was a separate class. We were undeveloped. Today, no one could hope to escape the modern world.

  I expect young people or the next generation just think sensibly about these things. Of course we’re always subject to certain influences. At a certain age most people are enthusiastic, and they commit themselves to something – but it doesn’t last. Afterwards, when life becomes more serious for them and they have to assume responsibility, perhaps they even want to have a family, then it slowly stops. What happened back then only happens when you have discontented crowds. They have time to take to the streets.

  I never used to take an interest in politics. Now that I’m older I’m more interested in political developments. Before, there were more important things for me to think about – personal things. Germany was punished for its national ego and its deeds; for its negligence, and its apathy. I don’t think that could happen very much these days.

  It’s hard when you’ve passed through a period like that, a trough like that. In the end, however, it is still my only life, my fate and in the end everyone only thought about themselves. Sometimes I get a bit of a guilty conscience, sometimes it’s your own fault, and then I think: you actually came out of it well every time. I knew more about those terrible, ugly things than the average person. But I always survived that too. If I was a young person now I would do things differently from the way I did them before. Things start much earlier than they did. Not least young people getting involved in everything, like broadcasting and television.

  Perhaps these days we have more control of our own fate. Everything in me revolts against the improbability that there’s someone who decides our fate; it’s a gruesome idea. That there is a personality – God – who decides that such terrible things should happen. I’m not thinking about what happened to me. I was only unlucky, but nothing was terrible. On the contrary, I sometimes made things difficult for myself by being sensitive. Some people criticised me for my big nose. Sometimes they either didn’t see me at all – I was so small and inconspicuous – but people liked me all the more the better they got to know me. At least that’s what I imagine. I also had an inferiority complex in various ways. But I do have a certain confidence, I admit I’ve got that. I think I’m a good comrade.

  I’ve also done a lot of good in my life. Assuming I’d married and had children… I don’t know, you can’t say what kind of partner you would have had. I wouldn’t have been able to think as much about myself as I have done. I’ve fulfilled many of the desires that many people have to forgo because of illness, children, unhappy marriages and so on. That’s also made me a little cowardly; I haven’t been inclined to take risks. I’ve got a certain caution and a certain cunning. I’m not proud of anything, but in retrospect I’m always glad when I’ve done something. I’m not the kind of person who absolutely has to make something happen, but when I’ve succeeded with something: well, if I’m content, that’s a nice state to be in.

  But I answered that constant question of guilt early on. No, I don’t feel guilty. Absolutely not. Why would I? Now, I wouldn’t describe myself as guilty. Unless you’re going to accuse the whole German people of helping that government come to power in the end. That was all of us, including me.

  It was never my personal wish to go to the Propaganda Ministry. It was an order, a compulsory instruction, and no one can imagine what that meant at the time. I was ordered to go there. I didn’t apply for it. It was a transfer, and I had to go along with it. If I’d said, I don’t want to, they’d have said, ‘What do you mean you don’t want to? That’s not an option.’

  Clearly in the department that I belonged to, the current affairs department in the Corporation, there was no work left in 1942. There were spin-offs, when staff members who were also housewives brought the vegetables that they’d planted and harvested in their gardens into the office, and since they had no bosses and weren’t getting any dictation, they chopped the beans and filled their preserving jars and then carried them home again on their bicycles. So it wasn’t hard for me to leave the department. My men from the Corporation were all gone. All gone. They were all in the war. The lucky ones were in Paris, and none of them forgot me. We all dreamed of getting back together when the war was over.

  I had to earn money somehow, and it had all been very respectable and decent. Ending up in the Propaganda Ministry was all a bit naive on my part. I sometimes was a bit naive. But I don’t feel guilty – and if I did, I would have repaid my debt a million times.

  I don’t think people will be so stupid as to fall for that again. I can’t imagine it. I mean, I’m still aware of the crowd as a crowd. But I also see people being very sluggish and a bit lazy about thinking and being critical. As long as they’ve got enough to eat, everything’s fine. If someone takes care of some of their concerns – that happens sometimes in politics. And if not? Who knows!

  I sometimes wonder how young people – these are observations that I’ve made from watching television – how they deal with such problems. We didn’t do that. Not at all. They all seem much more mature to me, and I’m very much aware of that. I wish our own upbringing had been like that, but we had to be more obedient in those days, and things are more relaxed about punishment and sometimes strictness. Everything works better, there is more order. Whether that’s worth striving for is a whole different question. Very often when I see young people on television, school students, debating, I think: my God, what confidence they have, an ability to engage with the life that lies ahead of them.

  We were stupid in those days. There wasn’t time to think about everything – ordinary people would be thinking about when they had to go to work. In my circle we were largely untouched by problems. They didn’t burden or preoccupy us, the way they preoccupy me now that my life is behind me. I’m much more interested in them now. I’m just trying to explain to you how as a yo
ung person who is simply released into life there seems to be some kind of direction. But it doesn’t always need to be an influence. That’s easier to observe in the present day.

  Today on television I saw school students who were trying to persuade strangers about the coming elections. I admired the boys and girls; they were about sixteen years old. The older people were often very dismissive: I’m not interested, stop bothering me or things like that. They just ignored them. Those young people were so eager as they approached old and elderly people and tried to point out problems to them. They didn’t have things like that in the old days. We were left to our own devices. Unless you joined the scouts or the German Girls’ League. Personally I didn’t want anything to do with any of that. I didn’t want anything with a uniform, marching with the crowd.

  I’m someone who is able to think the way young people think. I have a lot in common with them. I’m not one of those adults who see children as know-alls, or not mature enough to make a judgement about things. I think children are aware of a great many things; sometimes they don’t even need to be ten years old if they fall into the right hands, so you can tell what’s going on in their minds. If I just think about my own upbringing, I can’t imagine my father ever discussing such matters with us. We were never allowed to know what party he voted for. There were elections often enough. We always wanted to know, ‘How did you vote?’ And he would always say, ‘That’s none of your business!’

  You can’t do that. If things had been different, I might have developed differently as well and I might have wanted to become something more responsible and paid more attention to who or what I was working for, what I was getting into. I was always very frisky and a bit shallow. Well, it helped me too. My nature!