by Uwe Johnson
Gabriel kept his face blank, his head still, tried to look as if he was listening closely, even nodded once or twice like someone willing to endure even this for the higher political cause.
Since then, we’ve had reason to think of him when anyone mentions Les Lettres Françaises, or slander in matters whose truth has been established. This in turn brings before our eyes his appearance at the rally at the end of the 1951–52 school year, where, standing behind the presidium’s red table, he contemplatively sang along in chorus the words that had been handed down to us since July 1950 as both statement of fact and confession of faith:
The Party, the Party, is always in the right!
Comrades, Comrades, it is always with you . . .
The Party’s given us everything—
The sun, the wind, it gives for free.
Born from the Party is life itself.
What we are, we are through Thee!
We are definitely familiar with what a court in East Germany has determined about people like you: the term “informer,” the court found, is not an insult but a job description. Since after all a building monitor’s duties include supplying the political leadership with information about the population.
You’d better believe we remember you. It was you who turned our class 10-A-II into a place of intimidation. It is thanks to you that school, from eleventh grade on, was one long fearfest. Hope you’re happy.
For the Party has given you almost everything—the sun, the wind, and never a headwind either. It started by accepting you as a candidate in 1951. It continued by promising you a slot at Humboldt University in Berlin a year in advance. It showed its trust in Young Friend, later Comrade, Manfras by permitting him to complement his Marxist studies with visits to, stays at the British Centre in West Berlin. It imposed one restriction, which we find fair enough: Since his father was a smallholder, not a farmworker, he is deficient in proletariat aristocracy and thus still excluded from the meetings near the Werder Market, Berlin, every Tuesday, in which decisions are made about East German policies, foreign and domestic. And thus Comrade Manfras tries all the more zealously to expound these decisions to others; Anita sees him on TV sometimes, for a few seconds. For this he is rewarded in abundance—for free, like the song says. He can walk into the State Bank and help himself to whatever he needs from the foreign currency drawers, for unrestricted trips to the lands of his enemy. His English is apparently international now, with a British tinge. A villa on Müggelsee, a car, cadre protection, shopping privileges in West Berlin—it’s all there. His one dream, though, is to be accepted into the diplomatic service. But there’s a built-in barrier, practically insuperable if you notice it only in your thirty-sixth year. In his articles reporting on the high society of his country (consisting of the likes of him), the telephones always ring “madly,” even though each of these devices can be counted on only to do what its electrical current makes it do. He has issues with participles and will hardly earn an honorary doctorate for descriptions of people like: “The coffee-making, rose-breeding minister’s wife . . .” But maybe we’re wrong and he’ll end up an embassy counselor someday. Hopefully somewhere other than Prague.
– Two questions: Marie says.
– Motion granted, your honor.
– At one point you gave Pius the rank of general.
– It’s been three and a half years since he . . . But when I think about him as if he’d stayed alive, he’d be a general by now, major general at least.
– On the other paw, you think you have this Bettina Selbich under control.
– You’re saying she could slip out of our grasp at the drop of a hat?
– You’re in a catch-22. You guys took her picture doing some forbidden window-shopping in West Berlin—
– But?
– The guy with his eye to the viewfinder was there too—if it ever came to producing the evidence.
– Lucky you’ve only told me this now!
Back home on Riverside Drive the daily telegram from Helsinki is waiting. Today it says: Patient temporarily unable to drive. Signed: Eritzen.
August 11, 1968 Sunday
In Vietnam yesterday, near Tabat, over the Ashau valley, a US fighter bomber of type F-100 Super Sabre went into a dive and fired rockets and guns at American troops. Eight dead, fifty wounded.
Over West Virginia, a twin-engine Piedmont Airlines plane tried to make an instrument approach to Charleston’s airport, 982 feet above sea level. Crashed and burned just short of the runway. Out of the thirty-seven people aboard, all but five lost their lives. We’re flying soon too.
Before we do, Marie wants a children’s party, as long as it’s not called a goodbye party. It’s just cause they’re my best friends: Pamela, Edmondo, Michelle and Paul, Steven, Annie, Kathy, Ivan, . . . and Rebecca Ferwalter, which is why we’ve made plans to meet Rebecca’s mother on a bench in the park to negotiate kosher items on the menu.
She watches us approach, clearly not wanting to be there, her bare, toofat arms buttressing her on either side; she is trying to look pleased. Mrs. Ferwalter is back from the part of the Catskills she calls “Fleishman.” Rebecca found a boy there named Milton Deutsch, called Moishele (Moses). Moses Deutsch loves Rebecca very much and hits her; Rebecca cries it out with her mother then goes back over to Milton as soon as she catches sight of him from afar. Mrs. Ferwalter says, vows in fury: Never again will she pick a place Milton Deutsch might be!
Park-bench conversation.
Will the Nazi Party come to power in Germany?
Most people in Germany don’t want that.
What’s their platform?
Changing the borders, to start with.
Do the Americans have the right to get involved?
If the government in Washington wants to do it, it’ll do it.
My dear Mrs. Cresspahl, please leave it to me. I’ll bring Passover cookies, they’re colorful, thick frosting, children like them at parties, they taste like marzipan. The last time we baked them at home was in ’44. Our village was part of Hungary then. Transports had been coming through since 1941, and people were being rounded up in the country. In May 1944 they took everybody. I had a Catholic passport, religion Catholic. The Germans took one look at me and arrested me. The Hungarians and the Germans, they were made for each other. They were all soldiers. Sorry, what are Swabians?
People living in a southern German province called Swabia, we thought.
Were the Swabians more for Hitler than the rest?
The rest were too.
These were Danube Swabians.
(Transylvanian Saxons?
No. Those were anti, you know.)
We were taken to Auschwitz. I was there eight months. Most were sent straight to the crematorium. A lot of the wardens are still running around, you’d be amazed to see where. The same way you and me are sitting here talking right now I once talked to Mengele.
I was selected for the depot to do distribution. In the kitchen two girls carried baskets behind me. I divided up the margarine and dropped it in the pots. The girls immediately fished the margarine out and tossed it into buckets of water to harden it. There was a good woman there, my boss, her name was Frau Stiebitz. She looked the other way.
Can we put that aside?
– Do it but watch out.
Mrs. Ferwalter now explains what a block is, with parallel vertical hand movements marking straight lines: The buildings there were like this. There were girls in one block, thirteen years old. After hours she would bring buckets of soup there. One time she was stopped on the way by a Jewish Kapo: You’re stealing, you pig.
– And you pay for yours?
The Jewish Kapo threatened to report her and the next morning, after standing for hours, she was in fact called forward and accused of resisting a Kapo and theft. Frau Gräser, the head of the women’s camp, said: You’re going to be shot. Call a guard over.
Frau Gräser had fallen for a girl, and made this girl her right hand. Frances
was her name. Frances said: But everybody does it. If you really like me, do me a favor, let her live. She’s good in the kitchen you know.
The sentence was commuted to one hour’s kneeling on sharp gravel while holding two stones in raised hands. It took many weeks before her knees were back in their normal shape.
Frau Stiebitz didn’t say a word during all this. You have to understand. That’s how it was in 1944: the Germans were fed up (this in English).
When we got there, there was nothing. Then they planted some trees, like for a park. The ones who were still alive had turned into Tiere by then (animals, not beasts).
When we got to Auschwitz we were deloused (“you know, some kind of disinfection”) and had our heads shaved. The hair grew back, of course, and Frau Stiebitz liked to say: Oh how pretty. It was, too. Yes, the selection was like a beauty contest. Frau Gräser, too, she said once: You could be a beauty queen.
As part of my punishment they shaved a road through my hair that had grown back. I went and had the rest cut off too. Twenty-one years old I was.
We worked in two shifts. The day shift was all right. It was bad in the night shift. There were seven crematoriums going in our corner. At the end of the night shift the sky was as red as fire. I heard people screaming: “Help, help!” (this in English).
You’ll understand, Mrs. Cresspahl. You’re a woman.
From Auschwitz we were taken west to an ammo factory, maybe in Germany. I saw a sign: Geh-len-au. It was a small camp, to hold the French.
We saw the English parachutists jumping. We were herded to the station and locked into boxcars. The people who lived in that town were looting the stores. Just half an hour more and the English would’ve been there, but the train pulled out. We were taken to Mauthausen. I was liberated in Mauthausen.
In 1945 Frau Stiebitz went into hiding in Austria. The prisoners got clothes for her and an American pass (she drew a very long rectangle in the air with two fingers) so she could get back to Germany.
The first couple days after the liberation (May 9) we lived on a farm. Good food, real milk, red apples from last year (this in a housewifely tone). But we were scared, there were SS hiding on the farm next door. They could come right out and start all over again. One warden in Mauthausen had fifteen-year-old girls brought in to him every night.
The Jewish Kapo who’d caught her with the potatoes, she saw her after the war in an office building in Tel Aviv, Israel. I’m going to turn her in. Then a friend advises her: Why do you want to tackle all that? running around to the court, testimony, signatures. I let it go.
In Israel then, everything was rationed and people were leaving the city to go foraging in the country. This very Kapo comes into a kitchen through the back door and shouts something. The farmer sitting in the front room, she’d been a prisoner in Auschwitz, recognizes the voice and screams. Everyone runs out onto the street, catches the Kapo as she’s running away. She got a year in jail.
Another girl was brought to court in Israel from my home village, she was terrible to everyone except me. She’d been made Kapo in Auschwitz. Back then you’d be let go if as many witnesses testified for you as against you. I went up and spoke for her. She’s an old friend, she’s a bad person.
But God punished her. She married a man who didn’t treat her right; she’s divorced.
The really bad thing was: that the Germans forced the Jews to kill each other. Shove relatives into the fire still alive.
(Rebecca has tripped and fallen while running:) “My child, I have waited for you so long, eighteen years!”
(Rebecca gets a sandwich roll to make her feel better; there’s fish an inch thick between the bread halves:) You see! (Since Rebecca is constantly being stuffed with food she’s a little fat, despite her petite frame.) If only my child would eat like yours!
We left the ČSR legally, with passports. We could take all our belongings with us. 1948. It took eight or ten days to get to Tel Aviv.
My brother got black-market sugar on the black market; it was rationed. Six months in jail: The sentence was due to start the next Monday. He had no desire to wait till then and went to Bratislava, over the border to Vienna. The police showed up on Monday. And so with the help of the Almighty we’re now in New York.
So it’s agreed, yes, the cookies for the children’s party I will bring, Mrs. Cresspahl?
August 12, 1968 Monday
The New York Times wants to prepare its readers in advance for an anniversary: seven years ago tomorrow, the custodian of East Germany cut off his part of Berlin from the Western Allies’ sectors with a wall, to prevent his citizens from leaving and those of West Berlin from visiting. Exceptions were permitted: if there is a death in the family; if the legal retirement age has been reached. “When I had my birthday I felt happy”: a woman from the democratic Berlin writes to her daughter in the other one: “getting older. Now it is only five years until I can embrace you.” The wall is manned with two East German brigades and three training regiments, totaling about 14,000 soldiers.
On October 7, 1951, the East German national holiday, some select households in Gneez, Mecklenburg, as well as two in Jerichow, received identical anonymous letters for the first time. The envelopes and sheets of DIN A5 paper were blotchy, pulpy, bulgy, easily torn, like the paper the government agencies used for their communications; the text was always written on the same typewriter, with the e’s and n’s unfailingly misaligned. Someone who, like Cresspahl’s daughter, copied these missives out by hand before turning them over to the German People’s Police as testimony to her Stalinist watchfulness received piece by piece a preliminary list of the workings of justice in Mecklenburg since 1945.
(The sender presupposed that his readers were familiar with the fact that Z might stand for Zuchthaus, “jail.” He counted on their hunch that the series of letters SMT stood for “Soviet Military Tribunal,” LDT for the “Long-Distance Tribunal” passing judgment from Moscow. He also relied on the supposition that a literate individual in Mecklenburg could easily picture from ZAL a ZwangsArbeitsLager, a “forced-labor camp,” and understand by “verh.” not verheiratet, “married,” but verhaftet, “arrested.” Clearly he was in a hurry, or else rarely had access to the ramshackle typewriter in question:)
1945
Prof. Tartarin-Tarnheyden, JD, from Rostock, b. 1882, verh. Nov. 20 1945; sentenced by SMT to 10 yrs. ZAL.
Prof. Dr. Ernst Lübcke, b. 1890, scientist, detained by Soviet officers on Sept. 8 1946; taken to the Soviet Union, disappeared.
Fred Leddin, b. 1925, chemistry student, verh. Sept. 27 1947; sentenced by SMT to 25 years ZAL.
Hans-Joachim Simon, science student, verh. on September 27, 1947; disappeared.
Herbert Schönborn, b. 1927, stud. jur., verh. Mar. 2 1948; sentenced by MVD (Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del', the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs) special court to 25 years ZAL.
Erich-Otto Paepke, b. 1927, med. stud., verh. Mar. 8 1948; sentenced by SMT Schwerin to 25 yrs. ZAL.
Gerd-Manfred Ahrenholz, b. 1926, chemistry student, verh. Jun. 23 1948; sentenced by SMT to 25 yrs. ZAL.
Hans Lücht, b. 1926, med. stud., verh. Aug. 15 1947; sentenced by SMT Schwerin on Apr. 30 1948 to 25 yrs. ZAL.
Joachim Reincke, b. 1927, med. stud., verh. 1948; sentenced by SMT Schwerin to 25 yrs. ZAL.
Hermann Jansen, b. 1910, Catholic student minister for Rostock, verh. 1948; sentenced by SMT Schwerin to 25 yrs. ZAL.
Wolfgang Hildebrandt, b. 1924, stud. jur., verh. Apr. 3 1949; sentenced by SMT Schwerin to 25 yrs. ZAL.
Rudolf Haaker, b. 1921, stud. jur., verh. in Apr. 1949; sentenced by LDT to 25 yrs. ZAL.
Gerhard Schultz, b. 1921, stud. jur., verh. May 6 1949; sentenced by MVD special court to ten years ZAL.
Hildegard Näther, b. 1923, ed. stud., verh. Oct. 8 1948; sentenced by SMT Schwerin on June 9 1949 to 25 yrs. ZAL.
Jürgen Rubach, b. 1920, ed. stud., verh. Feb. 8 1949; sentenced by SMT Schwerin on June 9 1949 to 25 yrs. ZAL.
Ulrich Haase, b. 1928, lib. arts stud., verh. Sept. 22 1949; sentenced by SMT Schwerin to 25 yrs. ZAL.
Alexandra Wiese, b. 1923, applicant to University of Rostock, verh. Oct. 18 1949; sentenced by SMT Schwerin in April 1950 to 25 years ZAL.
Ingrid Broecker, b. 1925, Art History stud., verh. Oct. 31 1949; sentenced by SMT Schwerin to 15 yrs. ZAL.
On Dec. 17, 1949, an SMT in Schwerin sentenced eight defendants, including two women, to up to twenty-five years ZAL.
Jürgen Broecker, b. 1927, applicant to University of Rostock, verh. Oct. 21 1949; sentenced by SMT Schwerin on Jan. 27 1950 to 25 yrs. ZAL.
On Feb. 17 1950, a Schwerin SMT sentenced one Helmut Hiller and eight others for alleged communications with the SPD’s East Office to a total of three hundred and seventy five years ZAL.
On Apr. 16, 1950, a Schwerin SMT sentenced high-school students
Wolfgang Strauß
Eduard Lindhammer
Dieter Schopen
Winfried Wagner
Senf
Klein
Olaf Strauß
Sahlow
Haase
Ohland
Erika Blutschun
Karl-August Schantien
to a total of 300 yrs. ZAL.
The president of the Mecklenburg state youth council of the Liberal Democratic Party, Hans-Jürgen Jennerjahn, was sentenced in the same trial.
Horst-Karl Pinnow, b. 1919, med. stud., verh. Apr. 2 1949; sentenced by Soviet LDT in May 1950 to 25 years ZAL.
Susanne Dethloff, b. 1929, applicant to U of Rostock, verh. May 4 1949; sentenced by Soviet LDT in May 1950 to 10 years ZAL.
Günter Mittag, b. 1930, med. stud., verh. early June 1950; sentenced by SMT, term unknown.
On Jun. 18, 1950, Hermann Priester, teacher, from Rostock, was sentenced to ten years Z; in the Torgau penal institution, Volkspolizei Constable Gustav Werner, known as “Iron Gustav,” beat him so badly that he suffered a broken thigh bone. When he was unable to stand up, the VP constable screamed he was a faker and stomped on him, breaking his pelvic bone. Hermann Priester died of aftereffects in late June.