CIMMERIAN
A Novel of the Holocaust
by
Ronald J. Watkins
WatkinsLiterary.com
( c ) Ronald J. Watkins
www.RonaldJWatkins.com
Cover by David E. Payne
Other books by the author
Fiction
Cimmerian
Alter Ego
A Suspicion of Guilt
Shadows and Lies
A Deadly Glitter
The Dutchman
The Flower Girl
Non-Fiction
Unknown Seas
Evil Intentions
Against Her Will
Birthright
High Crimes and Misdemeanors
The Summit Murder Series with Charles G. Irion
Murder on Everest
Murder on Elbrus
Murder on Mt. McKinley
Murder on Puncak Jaya
Murder on Aconcagua
Murder on Vinson Masiff
Murder on Kilamanjaro
Abandoned on Everest [prequel]
Dedicated to the Victims
Cimmerian n. One of a mythical people described by Homer as inhabiting a place of perpetual mist and darkness, guarding the way to the land of the dead.
CHAPTER ONE
Peter leaned out of the boxcar and peered apprehensively ahead at the train snaking along the hills, the fog clinging to the trees and valley like ugly cotton lint. Poland, what little he had seen of it, was cold and wet, with sky the color of grey metal, and heavy, low clouds. The trees along the railroad tracks were overgrown and pressed down from both sides. It was a dark, gloomy place, this valley. There had been no dwellings, no cultivated fields, no sign of any life since before the train left the main line.
Frost hung thick in the air. Peter’s relief at not spending the impending winter on the Eastern Front had been replaced with apprehension at what lay ahead.
His fellow travelers, recent graduates from the Residential SS troop training school, were scattered on the straw in the boxcar. Their possessions, still new and shiny, were scattered about but the men and gear were still not enough to fill the space.
The situation with the Jews bound for the concentration camp -- the KZ as it was called -- was very different. They were crammed standing into filthy cattle cars. Though they had stopped several times to add additional cars, the prisoners had never been let out. Many of them had died during the three-day journey.
At one stop Peter had heard the pitiful calls for water. The Jews were dressed in civilian clothes, whole families bound for the KZ clutching battered suitcases and tattered bundles, all that remained to them in the world. This lot was from Budapest. Peter had forced himself not to look at the children with their pathetic dolls and had willed himself not think about it. Why they were here was none of his concern.
They would arrive shortly. Already Peter could dimly make out drab buildings through the mist. He drew a lungfull of frigid Polish air and shivered. The night his fate had been determined came to him as if it had happened to someone else. As if he were standing aside watching.
###
The coffee had been hoarded since the first days of the war and the ingredients for the apple strudel were borrowed from nearby friends. They sat in the living room for dessert and the conversation became serious as Peter’s uncle asked how his wounds were healing.
It was in late 1944 and he had been recalled for service in the Wehrmacht. Distressed at the prospect of his return to the Eastern Front, his mother asked her brother Hans to intervene. A few days later he came over for dinner with, what Peter desperately hoped, was good news. “Better. I am nearly well,” he told his uncle.
“What do those army doctors know?” his mother said. “Last week Peter was examined and they said he was fit to return to duty. He is to report this Monday! Look at him! He can scarcely lift his arm and you should see the scars on his chest! When he came to the door last July I thought he was a ghost. He is much better now but he is not well! Hasn't he done enough? How can they send him back to the Front? He is hardly more than a child!”
“Helga, I saw soldiers barely 16 years old just the other day,” Hans said calmly. “They were on a troop transport headed East. In Berlin they’re passing out uniforms and weapons to 14-year-old boys.”
“The doctor said he was under orders to certify anyone who can walk and has his arms and legs, mother. It is not his fault. There are others less fit than me on the Front.”
Hans, an SS-Obersturmbannführer, had arrived in his splendid black and silver uniform. Peter’s father, Jaochim, wore his Sunday suit as befit the occasion, as did Peter. It was still oversized for him even though it was a good fit when he was sixteen and had been embarrassingly small for him when he had been inducted two years later. His mother wore her best dress and a bright apron he did not recall ever seeing before.
“This really is excellent,” Hans exclaimed as he bit the last fork of strudel and sipped his hot coffee to wash it down. “How did you ever manage?”
“You are eating like a soldier again, Hans,” Helga said. She had corrected her brother at the table several times during dinner. He took it in good cheer.
Hans was Peter’s only uncle and his mother's only sibling. She was six when he was born and had always mothered him. The three closely resembled each other: flaxen hair, delicate features, slender frames. Usually Hans was a gregarious man with an eye for women and, with family at least, a quick joke for any topic. Tonight he had been somber.
They sat in what his mother called the conversation circle. Most evenings, as long as Peter could remember, a portion was spent with the family and with guests engaged in uplifting conversation. Mother viewed frivolity as a sign of society's decay and would have no contribution made from her home.
Peter’s father that evening was forty-six but looked closer to sixty. He was thin, only an inch taller than his wife and even more finely boned. He was a quiet, soft-spoken man and it would have been easy to suppose that in his relationship with Peter’s mother he was dominated. This was not the case.
Jaochim was a man of pronounced and firm opinions. He was intelligent and well-read, a man referred to by his peers as self-educated. He had entered the trenches of the Great War an ardent Imperialist and emerged three horrible years later a passionate pacifist. If he choose not to take issue with his wife it was because he desired harmony at home.
Peter respected, admired and feared his mother to lesser degrees. He worshiped his uncle. But he loved his kindly father with his calm assurance, his intimate talks, beyond all description.
Peter had been drafted in the summer of 1943, shortly before his eighteenth birthday. Following basic training he was assigned to the motorized infantry near Kiev. He arrived in August long after the Wehrmacht's last summer offensive and during the height of the Russian counteroffensive. The army was in retreat through the fall and he saw action almost daily. Most of those who reported with him were either killed or wounded by the time winter set in.
The soldiers were in dread of another Russian winter. The first, during 1941 and 1942, had decimated the Wehrmacht. The men had been compelled to bear it in summer uniforms. That awful winter, coming on the heels of the glorious summer victories that had only just fallen short of Moscow, had broken the army's will. The survivors told Peter that winter had been the real end of the Russian campaign. They lost so many men and so much equipment, the Wehrmacht was never the same.
Nevertheless, the army had scarcely been better prepared for the second winter. When he joined the Front they were a beaten army; now the third summer offensive had failed, with no thought of victory, only a com
mon dread of the coming winter, for which they were still unprepared, and the certainty of their own death.
The veterans knew the Russians would launch a winter offensive in December or January once the ground was solidly f rozen, as they had the two previous years. Peter girded himself for the onslaught, then during his first major engagement took shrapnel in his chest in February, 1944, near Zhitomin. Thereafter he had a run of luck few others shared.
His wound was very serious and he had seen men left for dead with less injury. The men got him to a doctor, a real doctor who had profited from stitching so many others before. Peter was placed on a train and sent to the rear.
The army's rule was to send convalescing men no further from the Front than necessary and return them to duty as soon as they could stand. Each time the train stopped medics roughly examined them and removed those less seriously injured. By then Peter had lapsed into a coma and was running a high fever. He remained on the train.
Most of those in his condition died, but he hung on until Poland and awoke in an army hospital that had formerly been a Catholic girls' school. Once he could be moved he was sent to Prussia for additional surgery. While convalescing in a nursing home in July a British night bomber leveled the home, killing almost everyone. He could walk by then, just barely, but his papers said he was no longer fit for further service and he was sent home. For the last two months his mother had nursed him until the letter last week ordering him to report for a physical. He was being called up.
“Perhaps I have some good news,” Hans said. Peter’s mother looked into her brother’s face anxiously.
“What good news could there by in this war?” Jaochim said quietly. The month before he had been ordered into the Volksstrum, the vast citizen army Hitler was creating for his last stand. He had a new helmet, a very old uniform and a rifle from the Great War in his closet. Twice a week he was required to report for training. He had examined the equipment with his son when he brought it home and commented cynically: “Except for the helmet it is just like what I had during Germany's last victorious war.”
“ Hans has come to help,” Helga said stiffly.
“My situation with the Reichsführer is not good these days,” Hans said. Peter knew he had joined the Party in 1931 and the Schutztaffell in 1932. His uncle knew Himmler well from those early days when the SS had been part of the Sturmabteilung, the SA, and consisted of only a few hundred. He was now a Lieutenant Colonel. “The Reichsführer asked for my thoughts a few months ago when they were in private and, unfortunately, I gave them. He now considers me a defeatist and it is only because of my long service and absolute loyalty to him in the past that I was not shot.” Hans related this as if he were recounting an amusing anecdote.
Helga raised her hands to her face. “Oh, Hans. If I had known I would not have asked for your help.”
“I am glad you did. The last time I saw the boy he was near death, and, I thought, safe from further combat. I am only telling you this because I do not have the influence I would wish at this time. Only this last week, however, have I had cause to regret it.”
“What is this about?” Jaochim asked, holding his tobaccoless pipe out of long habit.
Peter’s mother lifted her head in that look of challenge that always tightened his stomach. “I have asked my brother to do what he can to save Peter.”
Jaochim said nothing to that.
“As I was saying, I have not been able to do as much as I would like, but I have managed something to keep our Peter from the Russian guns.” Hans looked at him and with an amused twinkle in his eye said: “How would you like to join the SS?”
When Peter had been called up the first time his father would not consider his enlisting in the SS. No one asked Hans to pull the strings. “Better the army,” his father said. Peter’s parents had fought bitterly over it. Before the war his father scarcely tolerated the Nazis and only in deference to his mother and Hans had he held his tongue. Since the war he despised them. This was something Peter knew and Hans and Peter’s mother believed.
Now Jaochim did not speak out in opposition.
“If you are talking about a Waffen SS Regiment I'd prefer the motorized infantry with my former companions.” Waffen SS were the elite troops of the Front. They received the best of everything, had an independent chain of command and always led the attack. Their casualties were astronomical.
“Since our most recent reorganization all SS are officially Waffen, but I would not hear of your going to the Front again. That is not what this is about. You would be with the SS Totenkopfverbände, Death's Head Units, as a konsentrationslager guard.”
“A concentration camp?” Jaochim said.
“I'm sorry. At this time that is the best I can manage.”
“That would not be so bad, would it, dear?” She meant her husband, who said nothing.
At his uncle's words Peter experienced a great relief like a chronic pain suddenly and unexpectedly dissipated. Though he had not admitted it to either of his parents, he was in mortal dread of returning to the Front. Winter was coming, their armies were now in full retreat no matter how Herr Doktor Goebbels described it. He knew he would die if he was sent back, if not from the guns then surely from the approaching winter, but he had no alternative. Not until tonight.
“I think I would prefer it to the Front.” Peter was afraid to meet father's eye.
“What sort of concentration camp?” Jaochim asked.
“A work camp, if I can manage it. Peter, are you well enough for eight weeks' training?”
“The Wehrmacht says I am fit enough to fight.”
“I am certain you will manage. It is not like the old days. When I took the training it lasted six months. Officers' school was another year. Because of the war they have shortened all the time periods. Just obey orders and you will be all right.”
“I have heard about these camps. We all have. What will Peter do?” Jaochim asked.
“Trustee prisoners, arbeitsdiensts, stubendiensts or kapos do most of the guarding and see to all of the work. Yids are quick to turn on their own for a few privileges. Even the largest camps are manned by no more than two hundred Residential SS Troops, many have far less. Peter will live in a barracks outside the camp. The enlisted men, non-coms and officers each have their own mess. You will find the food better than here and much better than you had in Russia.”
“What kind of people are in these camps?” Jaochim asked.
“The usual. Staatsfeindlichs. Jews, communists, saboteurs, traitors of all kinds. Now they work for the Reich and learn discipline. I am not saying these are nice places. There is a war on. Peter will see things that he will find upsetting, as any of us would, but it will be no worse than watching his friends die and much better than dying himself.”
“I have heard these guards are not the best sort,” Helga said.
“Some of the guards who do the worst jobs were given the choice of this or prison. They’re not fit for the Wehrmacht and in this way serve Germany. Others are volunteers from Russia who have no love of their former masters, Ukrainians who hate the communists, Jews, all from the Occupied Territories. They hate each other. We always need good men. There are never enough. What do you think?”
Peter’s relief at being spared the Front was overwhelming. “Thank you, uncle. I won't let you down.”
“When I spoke with you I had something else in mind,” his mother said quietly.
“It is all I can do.” Hans was visibly embarrassed. “I'm sorry. It will work out. Peter will come home none the less for the experience; compare it to another Russian winter. Jaochim, there is this to consider as well. It will take two weeks to prepare his orders after I have his call-up canceled. What do you think?”
His father said nothing for a long moment. Then, “If this is what it takes to keep Peter safe from the guns, I thank you.”
Hans's relief was apparent and Helga looked surprised. Peter guessed this had been easier than his mother had anticipated.
As the war turned against Germany, Hans had taken to holding his father, and many of his views, in high esteem. What had appeared to be weakness before the war and during the short years of victory now seemed like wisdom.
There was more talk of the camps, KZs as they were called. By then it was late for Peter, nearly nine. He still had no energy. When his eyes grew heavy his mother sent him to bed. His childhood room was off the living room and from his bed he could hear the muffled voices. The light slid through the crack in the door and he felt very much like a little boy. His parents and Hans did not consider that he could hear them.
“What sort of camp really, Hans? I have heard of vernichtungslager, death camps, that do nothing but kill people. I think I would rather the boy died in Russia than be exposed to that existence,” he heard his father ask.
“Jaochim! Don't say that! How can you? These people are staatsfeindlilchs, enemies of the state, or they would not be in these camps. It is the Jews who started this war! Don't forget that! Why should we be the only ones to pay?”
Though their village was untouched, nearby Hamburg had been virtually destroyed one awful night when over a thousand British bombers rained death on it. Most of the other large German cities were largely rubble by now. Helga's opinion had hardened as the war came home to her. She had not always been like this.
His father spoke. “You talk as if you believe everything you read in the Volkischer Beobachter. I remember some of these traitors I worked with, caught listening to a foreign broadcast. They and their traitor families were taken away. How about our ‘traitor’ priest? Surely you remember him? He denounced war from the pulpit in 1939 and disappeared in the dead of night. How many others? Are these the ‘traitors’ you mean?”
“We agreed not to speak of these things, Jaochim.”
Cimmerian: A Novel of the Holocaust Page 1