Lehrter Station

by David Downing

  ‘Why are they doing this?’ Effi asked. ‘To us in particular, I mean.’

  ‘It’s hard to know. There are Jews in the American administration who’d happily string up all the ex-Nazis, let alone bar them from making movies. And there are other, more powerful Americans who are worried about movies like ours, movies that ask real questions and support progressive ideas.’

  Effi wasn’t Russell’s partner for nothing. ‘So we’ve become one of the battlefields between the Americans and the Russians?’

  Dufring gave her an appreciative look. ‘Something like that, yes.’

  * * *

  After leaving Shchepkin Russell took a look at the new Soviet Memorial. It was in the form of a stoa, with six columns bearing the names of the fallen, and a statue of a Red Army soldier atop the centre of the colonnade’s roof. A tank and howitzer had been placed on each side. The context made it moving, but like most Soviet architecture, it seemed firmly rooted in the past.

  He walked on past the Brandenburg Gate and into an almost unrecognisable Pariser Platz. Stretching out ahead, the once stately Unter den Linden was a corridor of ruins. The Adlon Hotel, which had still been there in April, had obviously succumbed in the final days, and was now little more than a shell. The American Embassy wasn’t even that.

  Wilhelmstrasse had been virtually levelled. The buildings that had housed the Nazi government and its predecessors – the Foreign Ministry, the Justice Ministry, Promi – had all but vanished. Hitler’s new Chancellery, whose ceremonial opening Russell had attended in 1939, was a field of broken stone. The street itself was still lined with rubble, with barely room for two cars to pass each other.

  Further up Unter den Linden, his favourite coffee house had disappeared. He knew it was ridiculous, but he’d spent so many mornings at Kranzler’s drinking their wonderful coffee and reading the newspapers, and he’d hoped against hope that it might have survived. On the opposite corner, the Café Bauer had suffered the same fate.

  He eventually found a functioning canteen in the bowels of Friedrichstrasse Station, and a quiet corner in which to examine Shchepkin’s missive. Rather to his surprise, it was only a pair of lists. There was one for him with five names, each with a personal and work-place address. Effi’s had just two names, Ernst Dufring and Harald Koll.

  There were no suggestions at to how these Party members should be approached, and no reiteration of what Shchepkin’s superiors wanted to know. The latter, he supposed, was clear enough. If push came to shove, as it probably would, did these German communists feel that they owed their primary loyalty to their own party or to Moscow, to Germany or to the Soviet Union?

  What weren’t so clear were the consequences of a bad report. A word of comradely admonishment? Summary expulsion from the Party? Incarceration? Or even a bullet in the back of the head? He should have asked Shchepkin, Russell realised. He might have received a straight answer.

  After everything that had happened in the last twelve years the current members of the KPD should have a pretty shrewd idea of what was what. Those who’d returned from Soviet exile would certainly be well aware of Stalin’s methods, and of the need to use them. But comrades like Ströhm and Leissner – who’d spent the Nazi years in Germany, out of touch with their Soviet mentors – they might still have their illusions intact. And these were the men he might have to condemn.

  He couldn’t betray Gerhart Ströhm, a man he liked, respected and owed. They had first met in the autumn of 1941, when Ströhm had contacted him, and asked if he was interested, as a journalist, in the first expulsions of Jews from Berlin. Between then and Russell’s precipitate flight in December, the two of them had borne witness to several departures from different railway yards. It had been a bitter, frustrating experience, but at least they had got to know each other.

  Ströhm had been born in California to German emigrants, then sent back to his German grandparents when both parents were killed in a car crash. At university he had immersed himself in left-wing politics, and soon after the Nazis took power had been arrested on a minor charge. After serving his sentence he had found work as a railway dispatcher and, Russell assumed, been part of the splintered communist underground. But it was not as a communist that he’d come to Russell – his Jewish girlfriend had been killed by the Nazis, and the fate of her community was almost an obsession. As a railwayman and a comrade he had access to all the relevant information – where the trains left from, when they were scheduled, where they ended up.

  In 1941, Ströhm had helped Russell recover some crucial papers from the left luggage office at Stettin Station, and a week or so later had helped arrange the first leg of his escape from Germany. Few men had done as much for Russell, and without any thought of personal advantage.

  He would talk to Ströhm first – find out what the man really thought. If he was head over heels in love with Stalin, then well and good. If he hated the dictator’s guts, then no one need know. And if Ströhm seemed oblivious to the perils of an anti-Soviet stance, then a quiet word might not go amiss. The railwayman could do what he wanted with the news that Stalin was watching him.

  Russell left the canteen and headed north towards the river. Another temporary walkway allowed him across, and he picked his way east and north through the devastated University Hospital complex. Ströhm’s workplace address was on Oranienburger Strasse, only a stone’s throw from the old synagogue, and not much further from the flat where Ali and her parents had lived before the latter’s deportation.

  The address in question housed new education and welfare departments, and Ströhm’s office was part of the former. He was surprised and pleased to see Russell, and begged him to wait while he dealt with a delegation of angry teachers. Russell watched Ströhm listen to their complaints – of which a lack of electricity and fresh water were only the most serious – and was impressed by his response. He neither played down the problems nor apologised for those that were clearly beyond his control, and he didn’t fob them off with promises he might not be able to keep. Just the sort of politician the country needed, Russell thought.

  He had noticed a busy canteen on the ground floor, but once the teachers were gone, Ströhm suggested they go out for lunch – he knew a good café nearby. It was on August Strasse, and reminded Russell of the workers’ café Ströhm had frequented when he worked at Stettin Station. The long room was full of steam and conversation, the food basic but surprisingly plentiful.

  ‘So, what have you been doing these last six months?’ Ströhm asked him. ‘I heard that you found your girlfriend.’

  Russell skimmed through his recent life, something he seemed to be doing several times a day. ‘I never asked you in April,’ he said, ‘but what happened to the comrades who helped us escape in 1941? The Ottings and Ernst and Andreas. And the comrades at Stettin Station whose names I never knew.’

  Ströhm grimaced. ‘The Ottings were murdered by the Gestapo, and so were the two men who sent you to Stettin. I have no knowledge of the other two. Do you know their surnames?’

  ‘No.’

  Ströhm shrugged. ‘I’ll try and find out, but I can’t promise anything. The Poles are in Stettin now…’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But someone you knew came back from the dead.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Miroslav Zembski.’

  ‘The Fat Silesian!’ Russell said delightedly. He remembered telling Ströhm about Zembski in 1941, and his reasons for believing the photographer dead.

  ‘The camps had a way of thinning people out – you probably wouldn’t recognise him now.’

  ‘Is he working as a photographer?’ Zembski had been a well-respected freelance in the 1930s until a brawl at Goering’s country lodge cost him his official accreditation. After that he had run a camera shop and studio in Neukölln, while working undercover for the Comintern.

  ‘He works for the Party newspaper. At the office on Klosterstrasse. I was talking to him a couple of months ago, and he seemed to remem
ber you fondly.’

  ‘I’ll go and see him when I get the chance.’ He felt buoyed by Zembski’s survival, though overall it was much as he’d feared. At least four people had died to get him out of Germany. There was only one thing he could do for them – refuse to betray the comrades they had left behind. Comrades like Ströhm. He asked him how things were going.

  Ströhm sighed, which was not a good sign. ‘Some things are going well,’ he said after a pause. He looked at Russell. ‘This is off the record?’

  ‘This is between friends.’

  ‘Okay. Well, first the good news. Most of the Soviet administrators in Berlin know what they’re doing. Someone said that the Western Allies sent their worst people here and the Soviets sent their best, and that seems about right. It may not look like it, but they made a big difference before the others arrived, and they’re still making one in this sector. And they’re absolutely determined that we should enjoy their theatre and cinema and poetry and God knows what else. I was hoping for bread but not expecting circuses – they brought both.’

  ‘And the future?’ Russell prompted.

  ‘Well, there’s some good news in that regard. I don’t know how much you know about changes in Party policy, but one of the key debates has been about what sort of socialism we want to build in Germany, whether we want to replicate the Soviet system or develop a distinctive German model. And that debate is still going on. It hasn’t been shut down, not yet anyway.’

  ‘You think the Soviets will shut it down.’

  ‘I don’t know. To be honest, I’m more worried about the KPD leadership that returned from Moscow – Walter Ulbricht, Wilhelm Pieck, and all the rest of them. They have their own ideas how things should go, and they’re not good listeners. They may be following Soviet orders, or just being who they are – it’s hard to tell – but if it comes to a choice between their own comrades and Moscow, I can’t see them backing the comrades.’ He took a quick look around, as if to make sure that no one was listening. ‘Look, the Russian soldiers behaved atrociously when they first arrived – the number of rapes was appalling. The situation has improved, but there are still new cases almost every day. And then there’s the reparations policy. I understand the reasons – why shouldn’t they take our machines and factories to replace what our armies destroyed? – but they’re cutting the ground from under our feet. They have to behave like comrades, apologise for their troops’ behaviour, and let us stand on our own. The German people will never vote for us if they think we’re creatures of the Russians.’

  ‘But Ulbricht, Pieck and the others don’t agree?’

  ‘When Party members tried to raise the question of rapes, Ulbricht told them that the matter was not for discussion. When others insisted that the law on abortion should be changed for rape victims, he told them that was out the question, and that he regarded the matter as closed.’

  ‘And the comrades accepted that?’

  ‘They were angry, but yes, discipline prevailed.’

  ‘Perhaps the Austrian election results will give the Russians – and Ulbricht – second thoughts.’

  ‘Perhaps, but I doubt it. It pains me to say it, but these comrades – the ones who came back from Moscow – are not the men I remember. I had to visit the new Party building on Wallstrasse yesterday, and when I went for lunch I discovered that there were four categories of ticket for meals in the dining hall.’

  ‘All for Party members?’

  ‘Oh yes. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Ulbricht and his friends are living in luxury villas out in Niederschönhausen. The whole complex is fenced off and guarded by the NKVD. And anyone who questions the arrangement – as I foolishly did at one meeting last month – is accused of “starry-eyed idealism”.’

  There was no humour in Russell’s laugh. This presumably was what Nemedin wanted to hear.

  ‘But we’ve only just begun,’ Ströhm added. ‘If the merger with the SPD goes through, then Ulbricht’s group may find themselves in a minority, and the Soviet may realise that an independent communist Germany is their best bet.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Russell said, without really believing it. Stalin didn’t seem like a fan of other people’s independence.

  * * *

  After taking Rosa in during the final days of the war, Effi had gone along with the seven-year-old’s insistence – inherited, no doubt, from her fugitive mother – that their true histories should remain a secret until after the war was over. In the days and weeks that followed their escape from Berlin and Germany she had tried to make up for lost time, and find out all she could about her ward’s past, but Rosa had spent the second half of her life hidden with her mother in Frau Borchers’ garden shed, and all she could remember of the neighbourhood was a nearby railway line. She could summon up a few memories of the years before their voluntary incarceration, but none that offered any indication of where the family had lived before Otto’s disappearance. And the girl had no idea what, if anything, her father had done for a living. It was probably something manual, Effi thought; by the time of Rosa’s birth anything clerical or professional had been forbidden. But before that… well, for all she knew, Otto Pappenheim had been a doctor like Russell’s old friend Felix Wiesner.

  In 1933 rich and middle-class Jews had lived all over Berlin, but as the Nazi persecution gathered pace most had either left the country or moved into those working-class areas of eastern Berlin where their poorer brethren resided. Friedrichshain had always had a sizable Jewish population, and Effi was not surprised to find that two of the women on Ali’s list were now living there. Nor, walking up Neue Königstrasse from Alexanderplatz, was she surprised to see walls and other impromptu notice boards covered with messages from Jews seeking Jews. Some, frayed and faded, had clearly been up for months, and most, Effi knew, would go unanswered – the men and women sought had long since fed the Nazi ovens. Every hundred metres or so she pinned up one of theirs – ‘Information sought concerning Otto Pappenheim, (wife of Ursel and father of Rosa) and Miriam Rosenfeld (daughter of Leon and Esther). Contact Thomas Schade at Vogelsangstrasse 27, or telephone Dahlem 367.’

  The first woman on her list had narrowly escaped a Gestapo trap in the summer of 1944, and spent several nights with Effi and Ali while the Swede Erik Aslund arranged a more permanent refuge. She now lived in a smart first-floor apartment over what had once been a restaurant. She greeted Effi with a heartfelt hug, and answered her apologetic request for an affidavit with an immediate yes. ‘You wouldn’t believe how many people have asked me to sign theirs,’ she said. ‘People who wouldn’t have lifted a finger for me if they’d known I was a Jew. Now they all say they knew. So signing a statement for someone who really did help me will be a pleasure.’

  She had known one Otto Pappenheim before the war, but he had been in his seventies. And she had known several Rosenfelds, but not a Miriam. She would ask around.

  The other woman on Ali’s list who lived in Friedrichshain had only stayed one night in the Bismarckstrasse apartment, but Effi remembered her better. Lucie’s whole world had collapsed on that one particular evening in 1942. As a Jewish – and therefore unofficial – nurse, she’d been returning from an emergency call when the Gestapo arrived in front of her house. Cowering in a doorway, she’d heard shots inside the building and seen her elderly parents frog-marched into a waiting Black Maria. This had soon sped away, leaving uniformed police standing guard outside the front door. There was no sign of her husband and teenage son, and Lucie of course had feared the worst. Only a friend’s determination had got her as far as Bismarckstrasse, and Effi had spent most of the night trying to comfort her. Lucie’s face on the following morning, when news arrived of her husband and son’s escape, had been a sight to treasure.

  And all three had survived, as Effi found when she reached their home. The husband greeted her with obvious suspicion, but Lucie recognised her immediately. ‘Frau von Freiwald!’ she exclaimed, jumping up from her chair, and rushing to embrace
her.

  ‘My real name’s Effi Koenen,’ Effi said once they were done.

  ‘Not the actress?’ Lucie’s husband said in surprise.

  ‘The same,’ Effi admitted with reluctance.

  Many questions followed, and it was almost an hour before Effi could leave with the promise of another signature. Neither Lucie nor her husband had come across an Otto Pappenheim or a Miriam Rosenfeld, but Lucie was doing voluntary shifts as a nurse at Lehrter Station, and said that she would check through what records there were. All their arrivals came from the East, but some at least were returnees, from either hiding or imprisonment. Otto and Miriam might be among them.

  Effi enjoyed the time with Lucie and her family, but as she walked back down Neue Königstrasse towards the old city centre a dark cloud of depression seemed to roll across her mind. She missed Rosa, and the search for the girl’s father seemed set to be endless. Looking for someone in Berlin reminded her of pyramid schemes, each helping hand seemed to spawn ten more. And the movie… She was loving the involvement, but that too seemed a string without end. When would she ever get back to London? And then there was Russell’s problem. Once she had finished her movie, and they’d done all they could to find Otto, she at least could return. But he would still be stuck here.

  She wondered again about bringing Rosa back to Berlin, and the ruins around her seemed answer enough. In time, perhaps, but not in winter, not until… what? Until the rubble had been taken away, until all the windows had glass, until the Tiergarten had trees? Her train of thought was interrupted by a cruising jeep full of Red Army soldiers, all of whom seemed to be staring at her. She probably looked too old for sober predators, but she aged her walk just in case.

  The jeep sped away.

  Until the Russians had gone, she added to her list. But how long would all that take? The war had been over for six months, and Berlin was still in pieces. How many years would it be before a normal life was possible?

  It was all so uncertain. She’d always thought of Thomas as a rock, but even he seemed unsure what to do. The way he’d been talking the other night she half-expected him to announce his retirement, and retreat to his in-laws’ country farm. But could he afford it? If his money was all tied up in the works, then the Soviets held the whip hand.