He pauses once to say, “No. I will not escape.”
He cannot sleep. The inside of the cell is coated with October frost. He huddles in a corner wrapped in his jacket and a foul-smelling blanket. The black sky outside the window is studded with white stars.
He prays, “Deliver me God.”
Realizes what he has said, recalls the conversation with Bauer, and takes it back.
Does not want to pray.
Not the way everyone always prays, he says. Not a religious prayer.
He does not pray for God’s help.
Instead he says over and over come bauer come bauer come bauer
Benedictus
qui venit in nomine Domini
Osanna in excelsis
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord
Hosanna in the highest
THE GESTAPO burrow like rats in the cellars of the Prinz-Albrecht-Straße. While others have fled the capital they remain behind to keep what is left of order. They now live entirely underground and their prisoners with them.
Suse and Maria have trouble finding the jail, though the address has been infamous in Berlin for thirteen years. They stand in a field of rubble, turning this way and that. Trying to decide which of the solitary hulks, jagged like rotted teeth, houses Gestapo headquarters. They believe Dietrich is being held there because of what Linke has told them, standing in the middle of the drawing room in the Marienburger Allee and twisting his cap in his hands. He felt terrible, he told the family, because he was not able to persuade Dietrich to escape. And now the Gestapo has come and taken him away to the Prinz-Albrecht-Straße. Dietrich was calm, he tells them, “and said goodbye to me, wished me well, as though nothing was happening. But his eyes were quite unnatural. I had to turn away.”
So Suse and Maria stand in the middle of a rubblefield carrying a large hamper between them—which holds a wool sweater and scarf, because it is very cold and it is Christmas, and as much food as the family has been able to spare from its dwindling store. They hope to be allowed to see Dietrich, hope as well for some news of Hans von Dohnanyi, who has not been heard from for over a month.
“There.”
Maria points to a solitary building whose upper floors are exposed at one end like a child’s dollhouse with walls cut away to allow for the movement of furniture. A shattered scrap of wall backs a twisted stairwell. Just beyond the wall the helmeted head of a soldier is visible. The women go slowly forward, making plenty of noise so that they do not take the man unawares. He turns his head to watch them come, and as they approach he steps from behind the wall with his right hand resting lightly on the strap of the rifle slung across his shoulder.
“Halt,” he says.
They stop, teetering on top of a loose pile of bricks.
“You must go back,” he calls across the stone field.
“We are looking for the Gestapo prison,” Suse calls back, brash as ever. “We believe my brother is being held there and we have brought some things for him.”
“If he is here,” the guard says, “it makes no difference. Prisoners here receive neither parcels nor visitors. Go back, please.”
They hesitate, and the hand tightens on the rifle strap. So they turn and make their way back, slipping now and then on patches of frozen snow. In the brief time they stood there, they noticed the square hole near the guard’s feet. The iron stairs disappearing into the earth.
Maria begins to weep, and Suse blinks back tears of her own.
“God help him now,” she says.
The cellar interrogation room has a concrete floor with round metal drains set at intervals. At the end of each day a hose is turned on to wash away blood, urine, and excrement. The whitewashed brick walls are hosed down as well, but some dark stains remain. In one corner are the metal tubes with spikes inside which are placed around legs and slowly tightened. Two square tile tubs stand in another corner. For forcing heads beneath icy water.
A double row of cells runs between the interrogation room and the steps which lead down to the steel-reinforced bomb shelter. When the sirens sound the warders go along the rows opening doors with heavy keys that dangle on rings from their belts. The prisoners exit the cells with their hands on top of the heads, a position they must hold as they are hustled along the corridor and down the steps. Only when they are herded into the holding cell in the shelter and the door is shut behind them are they allowed to relax. They sink into weary heaps, close together to keep off the winter cold, and try to sleep.
They go down to the air-raid shelter almost every night, because the planes come almost every night. And the thunder of guns is louder in the East.
Dietrich sits on a cot in the tiny cell. Here he has no books, no writing paper or pen. He meditates with eyes shut. He holds imaginary conversations in his head with George Bell, Elisabeth Hildebrandt, Fred Bishop. He dreams of Maria. He imagines his life as it might have been. If he had stayed in New York. If he had never gone to New York in the first place. If he had stayed in England. If he had gone to Gandhi in India.
He prays. Not for deliverance, but for strength.
A key rattles the lock and two men—one in the uniform of the Gestapo, another in trench coat—enter the cell. They sit on the bench opposite him and study him, hands resting on their knees, like children at a zoo.
He stares back warily.
The Gestapo officer he knows by name—Sonderegger, in charge of interrogations. The other is a stranger. Dietrich does not think he wants to know his name.
But he asks anyway.
The man looks startled, then says, “I am SS Hauptsturmführer Huppenkothen. I have been assisting Judge Advocate Bauer in his investigation.”
“And is the judge advocate well?”
“He is,” Huppenkothen says. He turns to Sonderegger. “This is the one the judge advocate says not to touch.”
Sonderegger nods. “It is. Though I think it a mistake myself.” He moves to sit on the cot, lights a cigarette, and holds the glowing tip close to Dietrich’s neck. Dietrich stares straight ahead, the muscles of his face taut. The heat of the cigarette is like scalding water. His eyes grow wet.
“See,” Sonderegger says. “He’d break quickly.”
“Bauer says he’s a waste of time,” Huppenkothen says in a bored voice.
“Then he’s taking up space and eating valuable food,” says Sonderegger.
“Is that so?” Huppenkothen leans close, and his coat falls open to reveal a pistol in a shoulder holster. “Then why not just shoot him now and have done with it?”
“Why not?” says Sonderegger, watching Dietrich carefully to gauge his reaction. “Except for the judge advocate’s orders.”
“Which, I suppose, must be followed.” Huppenkothen never takes his eyes from Dietrich’s face. “Though we could say he was trying to escape.”
“We could,” agrees Sonderegger.
Dietrich has difficulty breathing. Neither man moves. They seem to enjoy his discomfort. After a time Huppenkothen says, “Your brother-in-law, Pastor Bonhoeffer. Tell us anything you know of his involvement in this conspiracy. It will help your own case, believe me. The Führer will be grateful. He will remember you when sentences are passed down.”
“I know nothing of a conspiracy,” Dietrich says. “My own actions have been a personal Christian witness. No one else was involved.”
“Not even your brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi?”
“Not even Hans.”
“I don’t believe you,” Huppenkothen says.
Dietrich shrugs.
Huppenkothen leans forward and slaps Dietrich, whose eyeglasses fall into his lap, one earpiece bent at an angle.
The men leave.
Huppenkothen returns the next day but does not enter the cell. He stands outside and looks through the barred door. As though simply to remind Dietrich he is still there.
Dietrich says, “Where is your family?”
Huppenkothen looks surprised, seems to calculate whether there is any h
arm in answering. “They’re in Dresden.”
“Your home is there?”
“No. We’re from Danzig. But with the Russians—” He stopped himself, then said, “My wife has a cousin in Dresden.”
“You have children?”
“A boy and two girls. The boy is with the Wehrmacht in Breslau.”
He does not have to say how things are in Breslau. The Russians are closing in fast.
“How old is the boy?”
“Eighteen,” Huppenkothen says. “But he’s an old hand. He’s been in the army a year now.”
“I shall pray for his safety,” Dietrich says. He thinks how Bauer would laugh if he heard this. Expects Huppenkothen to scoff as well, but instead the SS officer seems lost in a reverie. He nods his head and doesn’t reply. Then he reaches into his pocket and takes out a cigarette and lights it, then removes it from his mouth and thrusts it through the bars. Dietrich accepts the cigarette and puts it, still moist from Huppenkothen’s mouth, to his lips.
“Thank you, Pastor Bonhoeffer,” Huppenkothen says.
Despite the close quarters and the strict, often brutal attentions of the guards, the prisoners manage now and then to communicate with one another. And in the underground bunker they sometimes whisper, though it is verboten and punishment if caught is a severe beating. One of Dietrich’s fellow prisoners is Josef Müller of the Munich Abwehr office, who with Dohnanyi served as the plotters’ liaison to the Vatican. From Müller Dietrich learns that Dohnanyi is also being held in the Gestapo cellar.
“Hans? Here?” Dietrich whispers, his mouth next to Müller’s ear as they huddle close together in the holding cell. “But I haven’t laid eyes on him!”
“That’s because he’s very ill. He can’t walk, so when the bombs come they leave him in his cell to take his chances. Though I notice they do open his cell door. It’s the third from the end on the same side as yours.”
When the guards return them to their cells, Dietrich slips out of line and into the third cell. In the gray morning light a small figure huddles on the cot, wrapped in a blanket. Were it not for the profile, the familiar sharp nose, Dietrich would not recognize his brother-in-law. Hans is thin, his skin gray with raw peeling blotches, his scalp bald in odd places. He senses Dietrich’s presence and tries to raise his head.
Dietrich kneels beside the cot, puts his hand on Dohnanyi’s arm. “Hans,” he whispers. “My God, Hans. It’s Dietrich.”
“Dietrich?” Dohnanyi says in a raspy voice. “You’ve told them nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Nor I. I know they found the documents. But they’ll learn nothing more. Though they put me in the leg vise. But I’ve fooled them.” A rattling laugh. “I’ve no sensation at all in my legs. So I screamed for their benefit but I didn’t feel a thing.”
Dietrich lifts the blanket, cannot look for long at the bloodied mess that is Dohnanyi’s right leg. He lowers the blanket quickly.
“I never quite got over the injury I had last year in the air raid,” Dohnanyi is saying, “and on top of it, diphtheria.”
“I can’t stay,” Dietrich whispers hurriedly. “They’ll miss me.” He leans over Dohnanyi, slips his arm around the other man’s bony shoulders. “God bless, Hans.”
“I’ll see you by and by,” Dohnanyi says.
And Dietrich is out of the cell in time to join the end of the line of prisoners. In the gloom of the cellar as the guards busily work their keys in the locks like women at their knitting, he is not noticed.
Time means little in the cellars of Prinz-Albrecht-Straße. There is a time of grayness and a time of darkness. A time of screams from the interrogation room and a time of silence. Time in the cells and time in the bomb shelter.
It is always cold, except in the guardroom, where there is a small coal stove.
A bomb would be almost welcome.
When it comes they are down below as they are supposed to be. Even Dohnanyi, since Dietrich has asked Huppenkothen to allow it. They have long speculated—in their prisoners’ whispers, mouth to ear—how the Gestapo building could have survived so long when everything around it has been brought down. Like Hitler himself, who has seemed shielded from attack by some divine providence.
But on this night—which night it is no one knows—the explosions are close and the concrete floor vibrates. Then a deafening roar that lasts for ages and the entire shelter pitches and rocks, as Müller says later, like a ship in a storm. But holds.
Like the others Dietrich is on his feet, eyes upturned. Waiting for the ceiling to come down. When it does not, he rolls his head from side to side to loosen the muscles of his neck. Squares his shoulders. Looks around and says in a normal speaking voice, “Well then. That’s the end of it.”
AND SO EVEN THE GESTAPO must abandon Berlin. Their headquarters have been destroyed. Dresden has been firebombed. The Russians have overrun Poland and are closing in to the east, the Americans and British have crossed the Rhine in the west. And the prisoners in the Gestapo cellars, their fate still to be decided by a Führer harried on all sides, are called from their cells and placed in handcuffs.
“Is this necessary?” Dietrich protests.
“They are taking us to our deaths,” Josef Müller says. “Let us go to God peacefully.”
Stung by this reproach, Dietrich falls silent. Outside the cellar he is placed in line to board a truck, and watches anxiously as Dohnanyi is brought out on a stretcher and loaded onto another. In the weak March sun, Dohnanyi already seems white and bloodless as a corpse.
“Where is that truck going?” Dietrich asks the guard who is trying to pull him up into the canvas-covered bed.
“That one’s for Sachsenhausen,” the man said.
“And this one?”
“You’re going south. Buchenwald.”
Dietrich pulls his arms away. “I want to be put on the other truck.”
“Not possible,” the guard says, and hauls Dietrich up like a potato sack.
The place where an abandoned God has come to suffer with abandoned people. That is what he sees at Buchenwald. Only briefly, for they are taken straight from the trucks to the camp prison with its windowless cells. But the canvas flaps that cover the truck bed can easily be lifted so that the prisoners can see something of the camp as they pass by. The fences topped with barbed wire, the guard towers. Not a tree in sight in this place with a sylvan name. Rows of flimsy wooden barracks. Smoke from scattered bonfires and the crematorium stains a blue sky. Piles of naked skeletal bodies, and other skeletons in tattered striped uniforms leaning on shovels or dragging themselves across the blasted earth. Everywhere mud and shit and cinders and rotting flesh. The prisoners cover their faces against the stench as they climb down from the truck.
In the camp prison they find more than Germans present. Prisoners from all across the Reich have been brought to the interior, as far from the front as possible. As though the Nazis think there is something to salvage, Müller scoffs. Dietrich says nothing. He and Müller are sharing a cell. The doors of the cells are arranged at alternating intervals so that prisoners across the way can be heard but not seen. In Buchenwald the guards seem to have given up imposing some of the harsher rules. There is no longer any punishment for talking. So the two men across the way make themselves known by their voices. An Englishman named Payne Best who has been a prisoner since the beginning of the war when he was charged with espionage. And Vassiliev Kokorin, a captured Russian air force officer who might ordinarily have died in a forced labor camp but has been treated more tenderly because he is the nephew of Molotov, the Soviet foreign minister. Kokorin speaks little German but has some English, so Dietrich translates their conversations for Müller.
They are six weeks in Buchenwald. So Payne Best tells them, for he has retained what Dietrich sees as a very English quality of being practical in the midst of disaster and has kept track of the days by marking the wall. They hear bits and pieces of news. The Russians have overrun Pomerania and are closing o
n Berlin. (Pätzig, Dietrich thinks. Poor Maria. And wonders if Frau von Wedemeyer got out before the arrival of the advancing Soviet troops.) The Americans and British are racing for Berlin as well, their erstwhile Russian allies suddenly become rivals for pieces of German earth. South-central Germany is for the moment a backwater. Then the guards cease to receive any news themselves and nothing more is known about any place save their own.
“Surely we’ll get of this,” Müller says when they lie on their cots at night. “Surely Hitler has forgotten us. Can even such a man as he think of vengeance when he is himself facing the end?”
Dietrich says nothing.
Dietrich has quickly learned that Payne Best does not know Bishop Bell of Chichester, has never even heard of him, since he has no interest in the church and has not been in his own country since 1939. In fact he finds Best a bit tedious, a stupid sort of man given to petty complaints and little inclined to analyze their situation. Except to make his marks upon the wall. Kokorin, on the other hand, is genial, a young man of about twenty-five, and quite bright. He can talk of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and Gogol. Can talk theology as well, for though he is a good Communist and therefore an atheist, he has the atheist’s fascination with the wrongheadedness of believers.
“Look around,” the voice of the still invisible Kokorin is saying in heavily accented English. “How can God allow this to happen?”
And once again, as with Bauer, Dietrich is defending God. Against the same charges, he realizes. Of failure to act. “And what more can God do,” he asks, “than to take on flesh and suffer every humiliation and every fear and every pain that humanity suffers? What more without destroying human freedom?”
“Is freedom so important?” Kokorin says. “Ask any man who is hungry or who watches his children starve. Ask any woman who sees her children die or who lives in constant fear. Do they want freedom? No, no, no. Humanity does not care for freedom. Humanity wants to be delivered from suffering.”
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