Nothing But Fear

by Knud Romer

  Mother laid the table with the Meissner. We were to have lobster and champagne and Danish marzipan ring cake. She had bought streamers and paper hats – and, best of all, fireworks! They were fun, she said, and evil spirits should be driven out of the house over New Year. Father sighed, and I looked forward to midnight all evening. The atmosphere was unpleasant. Father compared Danish and German prices for everything under the sun and went on about taxes and duties. Helmut shook his head in amazement that they could be so high in Denmark. It really was incredible. The most important thing was to avoid any mention of sensitive issues, especially inheritance.

  Papa Schneider had died without writing a will, and Eva was his direct descendant, related by blood – she was a ‘blutsverwand t’ – and therefore, in principle, the sole heir. When compensation for losses in East Germany came through at last – ‘Entschädigung’ – Eva took the lot. It was beyond belief. How could she do it? And to her own mother and sister? It was as though the boil had burst. The grievances and accusations poured out of her – Grandmother had never loved her father, had only married him for his money, she had never been a love-child as Mother had been – Hilde was ‘Tochter des hochgeliebten Heinrich Voll’, while she was ‘Tochter des nicht so hochgeliebten Papa Schneider’ – and Mother had stolen all her men from her and ruined her life! She shouted and screamed and became hysterical – and they got no more than the 8 per cent they were entitled to – not a penny more – and Mother gave her share to Grandmother and swore to take revenge.

  At midnight we heard the chimes from the tower of City Hall in Copenhagen on the polished mahogany radio – it had been plugged in for the occasion – and raised our fine cut glasses and toasted each other, Eva and Helmut, Axel, Rainer and Claus and Grandmother. And Father said ‘Steady!’ and ‘Careful now’ as I clinked glasses with Mother. She smoked her cheroots and said that now it was party time, took out the bag with the fireworks and went out into the street – and then she let off the rockets. She lit the fuses with her glowing cheroot, and they whistled up to explode far above, filling the sky with a sea of stars and golden rain – and the tears rolled down Grandmother’s cheeks.

  ‘Ach, wie schön!’

  People came outside to watch. There were Shooting Stars and Catherine Wheels and the Golden Rain cascaded up and threw out their sprays of flowers to crackle down upon us. It ended with a single massive detonation, and when all was still again, we could hear a whining sound that went on and on and came from inside the house. It was Eva – she had got a shock during a bombing raid and had never got over it. She was standing in the dining room, white as a sheet and petrified, her screams piercing the air like a crack fracturing the porcelain.

  They slaughtered him, Mother said, Horst Heilmann – her Horstchen. He was executed and hanged from a meathook. Her voice hurt. It belonged to another woman. She lived inside Mother and had died long since. I was afraid of her and hid in my room when she came out, when her eyes turned cold and distant and looked at me from the other side of the grave.

  Mother drank to keep her at bay and that only made it worse. Each time she emptied a vodka bottle, it would be an execution. ‘Vollstreckt,’ she would say – and her eyes looked out at a grey December day in Berlin in 1942. Behind the walls and the iron doorway stood the Plötzensee prison, the buildings and yards made impregnable by barbed wire, railings and iron bars. The floors of death row were polished till they shone, and down the middle ran a strip of green linoleum that no one was ever allowed to walk on. It was smooth as glass – ‘blitzblank’ – and it was awful.

  In front of the cell doors stood the stools with prisoners’ clothing ordered with rigorous military precision. Trousers, jacket, socks – bowl on top, shoes beneath. The lighting was subdued – they were economizing because of the war – and the place was silent and comfortless. Inside the cells sat Horst and Harro and Libertas and Arvid and Mildred and others from the Rote Kapelle, waiting to be fetched, each sending out silent pleas for help, knowing that it was hopeless.

  Some of them had tried to get away, hoping to escape their fate. Rudolf von Scheliha arranged a meeting at Café Krantzler on the pretext of denouncing a Soviet agent. He ordered a cup of coffee and waited. Then he suddenly got up, concealed himself behind a guest who was on his way to the toilet, and ran – out through the kitchen door and straight into the arms of the police, who stood there laughing at him. Ilse Stöbe hatched one plan of escape after the other, trying everything, including having sex with one of the prison guards who was supposed to help her get out. He, too, was hanged.

  Schulze-Boysen tried a ruse to play for time. He told them that he had posted documents to Stockholm that presented a serious threat to the German military. He would reveal what this was and tell the truth, if they guaranteed – in his father’s presence – to delay his execution. It was a desperate throw of the dice that depended on the imminent collapse of the German Front. The Russian counter-offensive was under way, and the USA had declared war. Superintendent Panzinger agreed to the proposal, and his father was summoned – he was an officer in the navy and was related to Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz. Harro played his card – explained that the truth about the documents in Stockholm was that there were none – and the deal was off.

  A radio message from Moscow to the agent in Brussels – ‘Kent’ – had put German intelligence on their track. They picked it up in October 1941 but were not able to break the code until six months later when the Gestapo managed to arrest the operator, Johann Wenzel. He broke under torture and gave them the key to the secret messages. There were addresses and telephone numbers of three contacts in Berlin, among them Schulze-Boysen.

  Horst Heilmann worked in the intelligence services and, when he found out that they had been discovered and were under surveillance, he tried to warn Harro and John Graudenz and the others, but it was too late. On Monday 31st August Schulze-Boysen was arrested at the Ministry of Aviation and five days later they arrested Horst on Matthäikirchplatz. Over the weeks that followed Himmler cracked down hard – they rounded up suspects in Berlin and right across Germany – and over 120 were sent to the cellars of the Gestapo jails on Prince Albrecht Straβe and Moabit.

  The prosecutor-general presented the case before the Reich’s court martial in Berlin-Charlottenburg on 15th December 1942: ‘In the name of the People: The evidence supports the conclusion that this organization did not respect certain crucial secrets concerning Germany’s military strategy. No one can fail to be struck with horror at the thought that Germany’s secrets have been exposed to the eyes of the enemy.’

  The courtroom was sparsely furnished, and Horst and Harro and Libertas sat between policemen with ten of the other main defendants. Their faces were hollow. There were only a few observers, most of them in uniform – the Nazis preferred to avoid a show trial because the number and the prominence of members of the resistance movement were both an embarrassment and a danger to them. It was declared a secret state matter – there was not even any notification in the press – and the charge was high treason.

  As many of the accused were military personnel – Schulze-Boysen was an officer in the Luftwaffe – the case came before a court martial, and the judges were two generals and an admiral; a president of the senate was chairman and there was a civilian legal assessor. The prosecutor was Senior Judge Advocate Manfred Roeder, notorious for his contempt for mankind, his coldness, his brutality. He was the Nazis’ henchman, ruthlessly punishing the least resistance to the regime as high treason, and they knew straight away that they were going to die.

  Arvid Harnack made no secret of his convictions and for twenty minutes spoke in his own defence. He admitted that he regarded the Soviet Union as the world’s only bulwark against Nazism and concluded by saying that his aim had been the annihilation of the Hitler state by any means available: ‘Die Vernichtung des Hitlerstaates mit allen Mitteln war mein Ziel.’ His voice was quiet and tired, and he spoke almost as though it were a formality, as though he had a
lready resigned himself, but some of the other accused fought to the last. Schulze-Boysen confessed to what could not be denied and denied whatever Roeder could not prove, reckoning that the Gestapo had not arrested the entire organization. Rushing the arrests had meant that a large number of individuals had slipped through the net, and time and again they were without crucial middlemen from the extended European network – ‘Kent’, Fritz Bock, Paul Robinson, Gilbert, the radio operators, the couriers, the Russian agents. If they were mentioned at all, it was not with their real names, and no torture could force the prisoners at Prinz-Albrecht-Straβe to reveal them because they didn’t know them.

  The trial lasted for four days, and Erika von Brockdorff – blonde and elegant – laughed when Roeder demanded a sentence of death. That laugh, he snapped, will soon fade from your lips.

  ‘Ihnen wird das Lachen schon vergehen.’

  Not as long as she could see him, came the reply. She was removed from the courtroom. But she was right and was sentenced to six years, and Mildred also got off with a prison sentence. However, Hitler refused to ratify their sentences, and after a fresh trial both were condemned to death. As were they all. Forty-five people ended on the scaffold, the women beheaded by guillotine, the men hanged – and the only comment Horst Heilmann made to his sentence was a wish to die beside his friend: ‘Ich möchte mit Schulze-Boysen gemeinsam sterben dürfen.’

  Two days before Christmas Eve – on 22nd December 1942 – the first eleven resistance people were executed in Plötzensee prison between 8.18 and 8.33 in the evening. Those sentenced to death were taken to the wing leading off from Ward III, which gave onto a small courtyard. At the end of this there was a low-ceilinged building with a whitewashed and windowless room, across the middle of which hung a black curtain. Behind the curtain stood the guillotine and against the back wall there were smaller cells with black curtains where the hangings took place.

  During his last hours Arvid Harnack sat with his hands bound behind his back, listening to the prologue in heaven from Goethe’s Faust, which the priest read aloud for him, and his American wife, Mildred, translated poems by Rilke into English in her death cell. Hilde Coppi breast-fed her son. Harro Schulze-Boysen wrote a farewell letter to his parents:

  Have faith as I do in the time that will come, when justice will be done. For the fact is that in Europe, spiritually, seeds of blood are being sown. Yes, and now I reach out my hand to you all and place here one tear (and only one) as a seal and pledge of my love.

  Your Harro

  One by one they were taken from the death wing and led across the courtyard and into the cold hall of execution.

  Against the long wall of the hall stood an old table, and behind this stood the public prosecutor. There were ten, maybe fifteen witnesses – some of them embarrassed, appalled, others curious, arrogant or vindictive – and none of them said a word. Opposite them were the hangmen, the chief executioner in a silk top hat, the others in black suits. In 1942 executions were no longer accompanied by a ceremony – there had been too many of them. The most important thing was to get it over as quickly as possible.

  ‘Are you Harro Schulze-Boysen?’ asked the public prosecutor as the first prisoner entered, his arms tied behind his back. ‘Jawohl,’ he said – dry, defiant, hard.

  ‘I deliver you over for the execution of the death sentence.’

  They took off the jacket that hung over his naked shoulders, and he made a sign to the guards holding him that he would rather walk alone. They released him, and, walking upright in his worn-out slippers, he crossed to the ramp, where a leather strop hung from a meat-hook.

  To ensure a painful and humiliating death, Hitler had ordered that they should be hung from a meat-hook, and the gallows with eight hooks was built specially for them. Harro Schulze-Boysen stepped up onto the ramp and looked down at the witnesses, his eyes full of contempt – and then the black curtain was drawn. The man with the silk hat stepped out of the cell – for a moment they could see the jerking of the body – and the curtain fell again behind the hangman. He stepped forward before the public prosecutor and declared: ‘Das Urteil ist vollstreckt.’ The sentence has been executed. And raised his arm in a Hitler salute.

  As though on cue, the door of the hall opened, and the next condemned entered between two guards. ‘Sie sind Arvid Harnack?’ – ‘Jawohl’ – ‘Das Urteil ist vollstreckt’ – ‘Sie sind John Graudenz?’ – ‘Jawohl’ – ‘Das Urteil ist vollstreckt’ – ‘Sie sind Kurt Schumacher?’ – ‘Jawohl’ – ‘Das Urteil ist vollstreckt’ – ‘Sie sind Hans Coppi?’ – ‘Jawohl’ – ‘Das Urteil ist vollstreckt’ – ‘Sie sind Kurt Schultze?’ – ‘Jawohl’ – ‘Das Urteil ist vollstreckt’ – ‘Sie sind Herbert Gollnow?’ – ‘Jawohl’ – ‘Das Urteil ist vollstreckt’ – ‘Sie sind Elisabeth Schumacher?’ – ‘Jawohl’ – ‘Das Urteil ist vollstreckt’ – ‘Sie sind Libertas Schulze-Boysen?’ – ‘Jawohl’ ‘Das Urteil ist vollstreckt’ – and so they were murdered and no one said a word.

  They were hung like pigs in a slaughterhouse, Mother said, and she emptied the vodka bottle and thought about Horstchen. ‘Das Urteil ist vollstreckt.’ The pain in her voice was shrill and sharp and it cut its way out of her face and pierced me to the heart as she stared at me, and I was ready to die with terror. Not knowing who she was.

  The town’s school stood beside the Guldborg casting foundry, and the ash from the chimney drifted across the playground, covering the buildings in smuts and spreading like confetti. It got into everything – in your hair, your clothes, your books, and made your hands filthy – and when it rained, the soot dribbled down your face and the puddles were black.

  It was not a school I went to. It was a penitentiary, and every day I had to learn my lesson. The teachers would come in and take their place behind the lectern. We sat at our desks – I had one for myself – and then we had dictation and the red lines criss-crossed our exercise books. It didn’t matter which subject we had – History, Danish, Geography, Maths – they were all about the same thing, and that was keeping up and doing as you were told, and if you wouldn’t learn the easy way you could learn the hard way and get a clip across the ear and be sent down to the remedial class where the children had lice.

  By and large school was about sitting still and parroting every word – the Volga, the Danube, and Gudenå, and two-plus-two-is-four – and most important of all were patriotism and hating the Germans. In History we had sermons about 1864 and the Battle of Dybbøl Mølle – all seen in the light of the war – and we heard about the Danish resistance, the Churchill Club, about Montgomery and the concentration camps. The teacher shook his head. Inhuman it was. When the map was rolled down in front of the blackboard in Geography, each country had a colour – Germany was black, the Soviet Union was red and it was Denmark all the way down to the Eider. In Danish lessons we read Danish resistance songs like Stjernerne vil lyse, and the Germans were always the baddies in the Jan detective club as they were in all the books in the school library. In Music Frøken Møller sat at the piano, warming us up with patriotic hymns – Venner, ser på Danmarks Kort and Danmark mellem tvende Have – before warbling Det haver så nyligen regnet.5 Every-one joined in, for she had been in the resistance and had smuggled a hand grenade in her handbag across Christian IX’s Bridge during the occupation!

  When the bell went, it marked the start of break for the others and the end of break for me, and I would try to survive until class started again. They had learned their lessons and they knew what I was. I was the German pig, and Mother was a Hitler bitch and Mrs Manager and stuck-up and lah-di-dah, until the wet seeped down my thighs. I spent most of my time standing at the centre of a circle – boys and girls – as they shoved and spat and shouted in time. The worst of it was when they made fun of Mother and brayed ‘Hilde-gaaaard, Hilde-gaaaard’ just like goats and fell about laughing hysterically. It grated in my ears and I was ashamed and refused to answer when anyone asked me what her name was. Then it was under the water-pump
before the bell went again – the teacher stood with his back to the wall and did nothing and had seen nothing – and I was late for class and soaked and was told off. Had I peed my pants, perhaps? The class collapsed in laughter, and I was sent home to change.

  There was someone else in Class B who also copped it – Nina Westphal. She had long, dark hair and her father was an invalid, he had multiple sclerosis, and sat in a wheelchair. They teased her about it and, even though she was a girl, they went for her, did her over – her father was a spazzer! I watched her sitting on her own in the window sill, falling more and more to pieces with every year that passed. She had nervous tics, her eyes glazed over, she started behaving strangely and would overreact at the slightest provocation – and then she was gone. I don’t know whether they moved away from Nykøbing or whether she was sent somewhere else, but Nina had got away – and there was nothing I wanted more than to do the same.

  I read the Jennings novels and dreamt that it was me that had been sent to boarding school, but every time I came home and refused to go back, I was met with a ‘No’. Just wait and see, things would soon improve, and I was to stick it out for now and I would get whatever I wanted. What I wanted was pancakes, Coca-Cola, Donald Duck comics. When I got them, back I went again – fifth, sixth, seventh year – until one day I pushed my bike out of the playground and Mother was standing in the gateway in her ocelot. I was taken aback and asked what she was doing there. She said I should just go on home, and then she caught sight of Michael – he was one of the worst – and chased him down the road in her fur coat and high-heeled shoes. I couldn’t bear to watch and biked off, knowing full well what was in store for me the next day at school – and they would be waiting with electrician’s rods and hooks, Jørgen and Poul and Jesper with Michael at the head – and I might just as well stand up against the wall and wait to be shot.