Manfred risked his life to get me to this Luftwaffe unit. The commanding officer saw my dishevelled state. He made no comment, but I knew that he and everyone else knew what had happened to me. He gave me a gun (but no bullets), this logbook and the uniform of a girl who had been killed. Fortunately, it fitted, but I find it hard to ignore the bloodstains on the blouse and jacket.
I do so hope that Erich reached Mama von Letteberg safely; if he didn’t, I will never forgive myself. But I also know that if I had kept him with me he would have been murdered along with all the other German women and children in the forest.
SUNDAY, 28 JANUARY 1945
We are sheltering in a bombed-out church. The roof has gone and the aisles and pews are full of rubble. We have run out of gasoline for our generator and bullets for our guns, and one of our two remaining trucks has broken down. The mechanics are trying to fix the engine. If they don’t succeed some of us will have to continue our flight west on foot.
A few of the girls have lit a fire and are making acorn coffee. But I am neither hungry nor thirsty. All I can think about now is Erich.
Close by is a signpost pointing to the centre of Berlin. When our CO saw me looking at it, he ordered a roll-call and warned that anyone who tried to desert would be shot. He said no exceptions would be made, even if we had a home, friend or relative there.
I had heard about the destruction wrought by the Allied bombs, but seeing the reality brought tears to my eyes. There are still slogans painted on the walls, but of a very different kind to the Party’s. Just before we stopped I saw One People, One State, One Rubble chalked up on the remaining wall of a hotel, making a mockery of Goebbels’ One People, One State, One Leader. How Wilhelm would have laughed.
The officers have just told us that the truck cannot be repaired. Twenty of us have been ordered to gather our belongings and begin marching westwards to join any unit making a stand.
I know that none of us, officers as well as conscripts, want to fight. With death and devastation everywhere it seems such a useless exercise.
Should I risk trying to run? No. If I was seen and shot, what would happen to Erich?
THURSDAY, 29 MARCH 1945
For weeks we have continued to move westwards, but we found very few officers or soldiers who were willing to make a last stand. All the girls think the end is very close but few of us dare say it. At least it is quiet in this corner of Bavaria – for the moment.
Today I was on guard duty from four until eight in the morning. The sky in the east turned blood-red when the sun rose, reminding me of East Prussia burning in the aftermath of the Russian bombs. After duty I went to church because I was ordered to, but I couldn’t pretend to pray. Not even when the officers were looking at me. If they’d asked, I think I would have told them that the Communists are right about there being no God. But perhaps I would have thought of Erich and held my tongue.
Now I know what it feels like to be a prisoner. You tried to tell me, Sascha, but I didn’t really understand. It’s not being locked in a cell; it’s losing the freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want.
The other girls are no longer so suspicious of me. Two of them asked me what it was like to be raped by the Russians. We have met so many other women on the road who suffered as I did, and they all had stories of friends who hadn’t survived the ordeal.
The officers constantly remind us that deserters will be executed. Despite their bravado, we know that they are as terrified of defeat as we are, because the end of this war will mean the annihilation of Germany.
I was so sheltered and protected in Grunwaldsee. But now I have seen for myself the true extent of the ruin wrought by the war that we Germans allowed Hitler to start. There are terrible rumours about the British and Americans. That they eat babies, and rape and shoot women. After what happened in East Prussia I believe them, but I have told the other girls that I will kill myself rather than allow another soldier to touch me – and I mean it.
What is the point of wearing a uniform or trying to fight when every German knows the war is lost? All I want to do is look for Erich. I have written letters to Berlin, but received no answers. The only news is of terrible battles everywhere.
I have to stop writing because the corporal came to tell us that they have caught Gabrielle and Anna, who ran away yesterday. They lived in a village not twenty kilometres from here and they tried to get home. Was that so criminal? I think most of us would go home, if we had homes left to go to.
TUESDAY, 10 APRIL 1945
Yesterday we were ordered to go round the local farms to look for work. There is no more talk of stands or fighting, yet still they won’t discharge us. Before we went, we had to dig Gabrielle and Anna’s grave. When we finished, the officers lined us up to watch their execution. They forced both girls to kneel next to the grave before shooting them in the head and kicking their bodies into the hole. Then we were told to cover their bodies with earth. They didn’t even give us a blanket to wrap the girls in. I closed their eyes: it didn’t seem right to bury them while they were staring up at us.
Gabrielle was only seventeen, Anna eighteen. Shot for deserting an army that can no longer fight, only send its women soldiers to look for work on farms. To think that Hitler once said he would never allow women to fight because our place was in the home.
I felt like a beggar going from place to place pleading for work, all the while wanting to head north, but even without the risk of being killed for desertion, it would be useless to try. The refugees from there say the entire countryside is one large battlefield. A farmer’s wife has given me work for the next two days. In all this mess there are potatoes to be planted and hay to be raked.
Frau Strasser doesn’t know if her husband or two sons are alive. Her daughter was killed in a bombing raid on Cologne two years ago; she was eighteen. I hope that her sons and husband return, although I think even she holds out little hope of seeing her husband again. The last she heard was in December when he was defending Königsberg, and everyone knows that Königsberg was flattened by the Russians, who killed every German in the city. I think of Brunon. Was he there?
THURSDAY, 12 APRIL 1945
New refugees arrived last night. They told us there is heavy fighting in the south. Hanover has fallen and the Hartz mountains have been overrun by the Americans. It is bitterly cold.
Still they refuse to discharge us. Every day begins with a parade and a warning that deserters will be shot, not that anyone will try again after what happened to poor Gabrielle and Anna. We aren’t sure who will reach us first, the Russians or the Americans. I am afraid of both. I have been hoping rather than waiting for a letter, but nothing has come.
I am so desperately worried about Erich. Some refugees say that the Russians haven’t left a single building standing in the whole of Berlin, and that they burned all the survivors – soldiers, civilians, women and children – while they were still alive. I hope Erich and Mama von Letteberg escaped before the worst happened and that they are safe. I know that while Papa and Mama von Letteberg still live they will take care of my son.
MONDAY, 30 APRIL 1945
All of us were sent to the Kreigs Helfer Dienst. They told us that we were urgently needed in Augsberg. We stayed in barracks last night but when we reported to the aircraft factory this morning the foreman said bitterly. ‘Now, as the Tommy stands before Augsberg, you come to help?’
That was that; we had to travel back. The trains had stopped but a lorry came to pick us up. We divided what food we had left amongst ourselves; we can’t even be sure of staying together.
The lorry drove most of the night then stopped next to a camp. We were warned not to go near it but we could see people there. Or what were once people. They were grey, walking skeletons. I thought of Irena, Marianna and Karoline, and threw what little food I had over the wire. The skeletons fell on it like vultures. A guard shouted at me. I shouted back that he should be ashamed to treat human beings that way. Afraid that we’d al
l get into trouble if the guards came after us, the girls hustled me away.
And now … now I am truly a beggar without even a barrack roof over my head. If it wasn’t for my amber necklace and the keys, papers and diary I am careful to keep hidden in my rucksack, I would begin to wonder if I had imagined Grunwaldsee and my life in East Prussia.
TUESDAY, 1 MAY 1945
All the women in my unit were finally discharged. We walked to the nearest village and I was offered a room and food in exchange for work by a farmer’s wife, Frau Weser. She gave me a bedspread to make myself a civilian dress. It is not wise to wear uniform when we could be overrun at any moment, and I have no other clothes.
Everyone in the village hung white flags in their windows after our soldiers left yesterday, and there is an uncanny quiet in the street. The retreating units blew up all the bridges in the area, but at last the bombing has stopped. The first American tanks have passed through and they are not man- or baby-eaters. I am wearing my bedcover-civilian dress and they didn’t give me a second glance, or, at least, no more than any other woman. The village was not touched, but no doubt the infantry soldiers will arrive soon. If they are like the Russians I will climb on to the roof of the church and throw myself off.
Frau Weser told me that I can stay with her until the trains start running and the roads open again. I am sick with worry about Erich, Papa and Mama von Letteberg, Irena and the girls – and Claus, too – but it is useless to try to get to Berlin until the fighting has stopped.
WEDNESDAY, 2 MAY 1945
It is hard to believe it is May. This time last year we were planting the fields in Grunwaldsee, but now it is cold and snowing. Everything seems to be upside-down, even the weather. The Americans came into the village yesterday afternoon and requisitioned thirty houses, but the soldiers are not so bad. They searched every building for weapons and guns, but they did not plunder, loot, rob or rape like the other foreigners who are streaming through. No one seems to know who they are or where they have come from.
I went to church on Sunday, a useless exercise, but Frau Weser expected me to go. One of her sons returned in the afternoon. I could not watch their reunion, not when I remembered Paul, Wilhelm and even Claus.
Afterwards we all went to the funeral of a communications girl who had been killed by a low-flying plane in Wegele. At least she has a grave and a place for her family to mourn her, which is more than Paul and Wilhelm. Like everyone else who does not belong in the village I live from moment to moment, trying not to think about the past or the future. It is only times like now, when everyone is sleeping, that I dare to remember.
I hated writing in the logbook; the paper was so thin and rough. Now I am in Frau Weser’s house, I have dared to pull out my diary and I have fastened the pages from the logbook into it. I have changed so much since I wrote the first page. I look at it and wonder where that silly, giddy girl has gone.
Frau Weser’s son insists it is true that Hitler is dead. When I think about how he executed Wilhelm and the others, and all the people who have died because of his war, like Paul, I hope that the Führer is dead, and there is such a thing as hell so he can burn in it for ever.
Although I no longer believe in God and have quite given up praying, I sometimes sneak into the Catholic church when it is quiet and light a candle, just in case there is a ghostly afterlife and Papa, Mama, Wilhelm and Paul can see me.
Sometimes I light an extra one in the hope that I may find Erich, Irena and the girls. But it is a hope, not a prayer.
FRIDAY, 4 MAY 1945
The war is over. At nine o’clock tomorrow morning the fighting will stop in Holland, North Germany and Denmark. All weapons will be laid down. The Americans have left and de Gaulle’s French troops have taken over. Frau Weser has three billeted in the farmhouse. Two are all right, the third is vile. I go everywhere with Frau Weser to make sure he doesn’t get me alone.
SATURDAY, 5 MAY 1945
One of the decent French officers billeted in the farmhouse told us about a camp in Dachau for Jews and political prisoners who opposed the Reich. I had heard of Dachau even before the war. Frau Weser didn’t believe his description of what went on there but I recalled the camp I had seen with the grey walking skeletons and I knew he was telling the truth.
I thought of Irena and the girls, and also Ruth and Emilia. Are they in Dachau? I cannot forget sitting uselessly in the car in Allenstein, watching while Georg herded Ruth, Emilia and all those other Jewish children on to trucks.
The officer who told us about the camp is a Jew. He offered to take Frau Weser and myself to Dachau to see the conditions there for ourselves. Frau Weser wanted to prove him wrong, so we both went. The journey did not take long, and I found myself outside the gates of the same camp I had seen when I was with my Luftwaffe unit.
How can I begin to write about the horror? Not even the little I had already seen, Wilhelm’s words or Sascha’s description of the prisoner of war camp had prepared me for what I saw.
The French officer showed us bloodstained torture chambers. I thought of Wilhelm and almost collapsed. I cannot imagine any man inflicting or enduring the pain of those instruments. Shocked and still shaking, I began to cry, not loud, noisy sobbing, but the quiet weeping that chokes and prevents you from talking.
He showed us shower heads that sprayed gas; baths that had been filled with boiling water; mixing machines where people had been crushed alive, and the bunker. Prisoners were locked in a two-metre wooden box for fourteen days or until they died of exhaustion. I saw the crematoriums that people were pushed into, some when they were still alive.
The people were the grey walking skeletons I had thrown food to. I found it impossible to believe that anyone who had been starved to that extent could still be alive. One of them spoke to me and asked if I was the girl who tossed bread over the fence and shouted at the guard. I could not tell whether it was a man or woman, but he said his name was Samuel and that the Americans were looking after them now. There was enough food and medical supplies, but people were still dying.
I told him that I had only done what any decent person would have. He said that my shouting that the guards should be ashamed of themselves had saved his life because he realized that there were still people – and pretty young girls at that – who were prepared to treat Jews as human beings. It was strange because, after everything that has happened, I don’t feel like a young girl, let alone a pretty one.
For some the help came too late. The stench was horrendous. It hung around the skeleton figures. The American troops assured us that they will continue to look after the survivors until a better alternative can be arranged.
Neither Frau Weser nor I could speak on the journey back. The lump in my throat grew bigger and tears continued to well into my eyes. How could anyone do those dreadful things to a fellow being, even an enemy? The guards had to be animals – no, not even animals. No animal would treat one of their own kind the way those camp inmates were treated.
One American told me that the Russians have found even worse camps in Poland. Places where tens of thousands of Jews were gassed every day. Was that what Wilhelm saw in Poland and Russia? Was that the horror that lay behind his ‘curtain of lies’?
Did Sascha know about them? He told me men were dying in his camp, but he talked only of starvation and dirt. Was the neglect deliberate? Was that why we were never given food for him and his men? Are the camps the truth behind the Jewish resettlement?
So many people must have known about them: the guards; the transport drivers who transferred the prisoners; bystanders like me in Allenstein who sat and watched Jews being rounded up and taken away; other soldiers who fought in the East alongside Wilhelm and Paul.
At least my brother and his colonel tried to do something to stop it. The rest of us stood by and did nothing. I had my suspicions; why didn’t I ask questions? We all should have, but we remained silent, and for that I believe the entire German race will be damned by all thinking peopl
e. Wilhelm was right. What a dreadful legacy we have bequeathed to our children.
THURSDAY, 10 MAY 1945
Today we heard that Field Marshal Keitel surrendered to the Allies. It is finally over. Germany is no more, and I, along with millions of others, have lost almost everyone I love and everything I had, including my country.
So many people dead and so much gone. Tomorrow I will walk to the nearest town to find out if I can register somewhere in the hope of finding Erich, Irena, Mariana and Karoline. Surely now that it is over they can’t stop me from looking for them. Someone else must have survived – they must! I am terrified of not finding my son, of discovering that every single person I knew and loved is dead.
Chapter Seventeen
FRIDAY, 25 MAY 1945
I have just returned from the American prisoner of war camp – again. I have visited there every morning for the last two weeks, yet they still won’t give me the travel warrant I need to leave Bavaria and look for Erich. I have begged and pleaded with the clerks, and told them that I sent my four-year-old son to Berlin in January.
Their reply is always the same. If I cared about my son I should have never have sent him away from me, much less to Berlin. I am too upset and angry to explain that I had no choice. That if I’d kept Erich with me, he would have been murdered by the Russians along with all the other refugee women and children.
This morning I asked if they had a list of camp survivors in the hope that I might find Irena’s name on it. After what the SS said about changing the girls’ names, I know it is useless to look for them. If such a list exists the Americans say they haven’t a copy. Then, thinking of Papa and Mama von Letteberg and Greta, I asked if they had the names of survivors of the bombing of Berlin. Again the answer was no.
Frau Weser could see how devastated I was when I returned to the farm. She gave me a bowl of chicken broth and consoled me with the thought that tomorrow is another day.
One Last Summer (2007) Page 27