by Heinz Rein
‘You’re not answering me, you piece of filth?’ the section leader roars. ‘There!’ His fist strikes the young man hard in the face.
The young man totters and immediately gets a push in the back from the official standing behind him, sending him staggering forward, blood pouring from his mouth and nose and dripping heavily on the cobbles, his upper lip thickly swollen, but he still doesn’t say a word.
‘Where is my son?’ a woman’s voice shrieks. ‘Walter! Walter!’
A thick-set woman of middle height comes out of the gate of the Hackescher Hof and runs to the group. The spectators stand back and form an alley.
‘What are you doing with my …’ she begins talking hastily and breathlessly to the section leader and presses her hands to her panting chest. She doesn’t finish her sentence, because her eye falls on the young man whose face begins to move for the first time.
‘My God,’ she says very quietly and brings her hands to her face. ‘What have they done to you?’
The section leader looks at the woman through narrowed eyes. ‘Are you his mother?’ he asks.
‘Yes,’ the woman replies, and takes her hands from her face. ‘Believe me, he’s a good boy …’
‘… but a bad German,’ the section leader interrupts her. ‘He has broken the oath he swore to the Führer, he is a deserter. In this, our fatherland’s gravest hour, there can be no mercy.’
‘He wasn’t thinking,’ she says, raises her hands and goes right up to the Nazi officer, ‘I’m sure he didn’t, and I’m sure he will go right back to his unit. Isn’t that right, Walter?’
‘To switch to the Bolsheviks,’ the section leader says scornfully. ‘Now clear off, and stop talking.’
The young man remains motionless, blood is still running from his nose, it runs over his mouth and chin and drips onto his suit.
‘And you have aided and abetted a deserter,’ the office steward says. ‘We’ll come back to that.’
‘My mother doesn’t know a thing,’ the young man says, ‘I told her I’d come home on leave.’
The woman starts crying, tears running down her cheeks and inundating her face, but she makes no attempt to dry them.
‘Stop whining, you old witch,’ the junior section leader says threateningly. ‘Off with you!’
‘What’s going to happen to my son?’ the woman asks anxiously and raises her hands pleadingly. ‘Where are you taking him? Please tell me so that I can visit him.’
‘Your son will be very close by,’ the junior section leader replies, and there is a terrible menace in his narrow eyes.
‘You can rely on it, very close, you’ll find out all about it. Now go!’
The woman is still hesitating, her eyelids twitch helplessly up and down. ‘Is that really true, officer?’ she asks with a trembling voice. ‘Is that really …’
‘Go away now, damn it all!’ the section leader orders. ‘Or something will happen!’
‘Go, mother,’ the young man says, his voice surprisingly firm.
The woman takes a handkerchief out of her coat pocket and wipes the blood from her son’s face. ‘You did it for me, Walter,’ she says, ‘you will have to tell the gentlemen that when they question you, they’re bound to understand, you’ve been a good soldier for six years.’
The young man pulls his lower lip deep between his teeth and turns aside. ‘Go now, mother, please.’
The woman puts the handkerchief back in her pocket, then she walks through the ring of people with her eyes lowered.
The junior section leader watches after her until she has disappeared through the gate, then he gives a sign to the two SD men.
‘Come on, apply the handcuffs!’ he says in a harsh voice.
The young man’s hands are twisted roughly behind his back and bound in steel chains.
‘You know what’s coming,’ the section leader says, and looks searchingly around. ‘Damn it, isn’t there a single lamp post around here?’
The office steward shakes his head. ‘The British have smashed everything to bits,’ he replies, ‘but over there you’ve got the tram stop outside the Scherl building …’
The junior section leader looks along the street. ‘High enough,’ he decides, ‘that’s fine. Come on, let’s get going!’
The young man stands there and doesn’t move.
The junior section leader looks at him scornfully. ‘I could just shoot you down here, you scoundrel,’ he hisses through his teeth, ‘but I want you hanging visibly as a warning to everyone, and I’ve promised your mother that you’ll be staying nearby. You see, I’m keeping my promise. Right, let’s go!’
The junior section leader gives him a shove, his face twists into a repulsive grimace. The alley opens up again, the young man staggers forward and now they all shove him in turn, the three grey-clad men and the man in the brown uniform, as if they all wanted to play a part in the mistreatment of the deserter. With shoves, kicks and blows, the young man is driven down the middle of the road until he is standing by the tram stop.
A tram stop marks the point where trams stop to enable passengers to get in and out, it consists of an iron pole that is painted yellow and planted in the cobblestone pavement, it carries at the top a white flag made of iron with a coating of enamel, with the inscription ‘Tram Stop’, in the middle of the post an iron panel is applied; behind a pane of glass it lists the routes and timetables of the tramlines that can be used at this stop. Hitherto, tram stops have served no purpose other than to hold advertisements for cinemas, pawnshops and cafés. It was not until April 1945 that the National Socialist murderers managed to prove that tram stops could also be used as gallows. It is obvious that tram stops (like street lamps and shop grilles) are not comfortable gallows, with pulley blocks and trapdoors, but they can still be used to take human beings from life to death via strangulation.
Lassehn has stopped in the middle of the crowd which is standing on the traffic islands on Rosenthaler Strasse. All around is the half-ruined backcloth of the Hackescher Markt, it still bears the traces of the life that once roared across this small square from five channels, the Imperial cinema and the Hackescher Hof, the Caesar Lottery Company and the Commerzbank, the Bio-Cinema and Koester A.G., Oranienburger Strasse, Grosse Präsidenenstrasse, Mantow the stamp dealer’s and Roesner’s private school, Neue Promenade, Aschinger-Quelle, An der Spandauer Brücke, the billiard hall and 16th Police Precinct, Rosenthaler Strasse, Eckert Hats and the Scherl store, triangular traffic island with circular telephone box, tram and bus stops with narrow entry platforms, Börse S-Bahn station and Weinmeisterstrasse underground station, Wertheim department store and the Jewish community, Gestapo HQ and the old people’s home, they all once cast their waves across the asphalt of the square.
The whistling and bellowing of the Russian artillery fire rings through the air, but Lassehn doesn’t notice, he is frozen, he wants to turn round and run away, but he seems to be rooted to the spot, he is dazed, he sees everything as if through a veil. He suddenly remembers reading somewhere that criminals are hanged by opening a trapdoor under them or pulling away a support for their feet, so that the body suddenly drops with a jerk and death comes not through suffocation, but by breaking the spinal column. But here neither contraption is available, so there is only one possibility … No, no, something screams inside him, no, it can’t be, we are in Germany, in 1945, and these are German people too …
Lassehn still hopes that … Yes, what? That they aren’t actually going to go through with it? They are already putting the noose around the young man’s neck, now they are throwing the other end of the rope over the enamel sign saying ‘Tram Stop’ and pulling it tight. The young man is still standing upright, the rope is still loose around his neck, the noose hasn’t been pulled tight, a twenty-year-old or twenty-two-year-old or twenty-five-year-old heart is still pulsing with the fastest heartbeats of its life, the polluted but life-giving breath of the Berlin streets, a chemical compound of oxygen and nitrogen, called air, is
still flowing into his lungs, the section leader could still call it off and say, ‘Enough! But remember this, next time you’re actually going up there’, but none of that happens. Lassehn has not yet understood the terrible consistency of National Socialism, that oft-cited practice with which it first made its appearance, which began with murder and ends with murder.
A few seconds of unsettling silence pass against the roar of the guns. The boy stands there, his face stained with blood and his clothes drenched in sweat, his hands on his back chained with steel handcuffs and a noose around his neck. His face is rigid and waxy, as if he has already died and his eyes have been extinguished. There are two SD men behind him, the other end of the rope clutched firmly in their hands as if they are waiting for a signal to begin a tug-of-war, the section leader and the office steward stand there like referees who have to give a start sign, and there is a large crowd some distance away. The whole thing is a People’s Court like those ordered by the Führer and Reich Chancellor of the Great German Reich.
The unbearable tension is discharged in the scream of a woman that rises, sharp and sudden, cutting through the silence like lightning from a clear sky.
‘Shut your mouth, you hysterical old cow!’ the section leader shouts. ‘Come on!’ he orders, and waves both arms wildly in the air.
The two SD men begin to pull, grip by grip, the iron pole sways but holds, the young man hovers in the air, his head at a strange angle, his legs dangling slackly, his face turning pink, then red, dark red and then blue, his lower jaw flaps down as if a hinge has been opened, a gurgling groan issues from his mouth, his tongue protrudes, swollen and bluish-red, bubbles of foam appear at the corners of his mouth, his eyes bulge from their sockets, no twitch, no rearing reveals the moment of death, the life rattles imperceptibly from his body.
The crowd disperses. No one is triumphant, the faces are serious, hard, angry, grim, thoughtful, but no one dares to say a word or raise a hand, they creep timidly away like thrashed dogs, but along with the boy who has just croaked his last, their own consciences hang on the gallows.
Lassehn stands on the traffic island for a few more minutes, sees the two SD men wrapping the rope around a few times and knotting it tightly, and suddenly there is also a sign there that they fasten to the buttonholes of the hanged man’s jacket. Lassehn crosses the road and reads:
‘I, the engineer Walter Deichmann, am hanging here because I was too cowardly to defend my home town.’
and walks quickly on. His throat is choking as if he too has a rope around his neck. He steps through the front door of a ruin to throw up.
VII
22 April
After it turns out that the air-raid wardens have blown their whistles, struck their gongs and drummed on the dustbins for the last time on the morning of 21 April, that no all-clear has followed this last air raid, and that the warning has by now become a permanent state, the city is definitively in its death throes. Admittedly the S-Bahn and the U-Bahn are still running on some lines, but they barely serve the population, those stretches have become military nerve fibres, and the stations are now places of refuge. The Russian artillery has moved into fire stations, from which they can fire on almost every part of the city, and the Russian Air Force is constantly flying over the city in superior numbers. The Zhukov divisions have victoriously taken the vast area between the Oder and Berlin, and the attack, which previously approached the city like a wide, co-ordinated wave, is now beginning to break up into many individual assault wedges of unequal length, pushing their way at very different speeds into the sea of houses to the east and the north-east. The German defence is no longer a solid line, behind which a central command post is observing the movements, ordering counter-measures and sending reserves to threatened positions. The battle is breaking up into a number of individual skirmishes that are only connected loosely or not at all, advanced posts are being stubbornly defended against the incoming Russian reservists, while important support points at the accesses to the city remain unoccupied. The defence of the city is breaking up more and more by the hour, each individual combat unit is acting independently, since contact with military command in Berlin is only possible at random if at all. In the city centre and in the zones that have not yet been occupied, Hitler Youth, Volkssturm men, engineers, Party members, factory guards and reserve policemen are being organized into new units, wretchedly under-equipped and sent forward even though the commanders don’t know where the first line of fire is, the front line, the name they give to the nodal points, constantly moving, of the battle among the buildings. Heavy weapons are hardly being used, since there is either no ammunition or no fuel.
Oscar Klose’s pub on Strasse Am Schlesischen Bahnhof is no longer a restaurant, since there is no longer any beer, and there are certainly no guests. The left half of the pub serves as a dormitory and guardroom for private soldiers, and in the right a field hospital has been set up. It smells of sweat, unaired clothes and chloroform, and all that remains of its former purpose is the sour haze of beer and the smell of stale tobacco. Klose has carefully removed all the objects that might be of value and interest to soldiers, and keeps himself to his two back rooms, in which he lives along with the Weigands and Lassehn. In the confusion of these days no one notices the increased number of residents, or it is explained by the flight of many city dwellers from the outlying districts to the inner city.
The air-raid cellar of the house, previously visited only sporadically when the sirens called for it, has now become a permanent quarters and a communal dwelling, a recreation room, dining room and bedroom all in one, a kindergarten, hospital and sickroom. Field beds, deckchairs, couches, mattresses, armchairs, stools, kitchen chairs, benches and boxes, as well as the floor, are places for both sitting and sleeping. Since the electricity is mostly out of action, the lighting is a candle, a paraffin lamp or a carbide lamp that a railwayman brought over from Silesian Station. Since the water pipes dried up, water has to be fetched from the hydrants, which are surrounded by crowds in the breaks between the attacks. In the little space outside the cellar, a makeshift stove has been made out of a few bricks. Particularly brave women cook in the ground-floor flats when the artillery fire or the air attacks temporarily ease off, and in the very first days of their cellar-based existence in the front-line city of Berlin the women still even manage to go shopping. People who are constantly thrown back upon one another in an extremely restricted space, enduring the inescapable presence of other people, are soon seized by an irritability that can quickly intensify into hatred. Other people’s little foibles, normally only the subject of an indulgent smile, produce a kind of idiosyncrasy; minor differences of opinion, smoothed out in normal circumstances with a few clarifying words, grow into the obsessive insistence on being right at all costs; all disagreements which would previously have been ignored or would only have been expressed in occasional friction on the stairs, burst like ulcers that have been seeping away, invisible and barely apparent, under the skin.
Nerves, irritability, worry, concern, tears, rage and hatred swirl together among the people like the waters of a fast-flowing stream, but everything emerges out of fear, fear of the Nazi terror, fear of the artillery fire and the bombs from the planes, fear for the rest of their possessions, fear of the Russians, fear of a completely uncertain future, and only now and again are those fears overshadowed by the small concerns of everyday life, worries about food, about water, and about performing the most primitive functions.
Out in the countryside, in spite of the war, a lush spring is on the way, the days rise bright and beaming, the buds are springing open on the trees and bushes, the seeds are stirring in the soil, the birds fly through the clear air, but not the slightest hint of that makes its way into the cellars. Here the air is not only stale and polluted by the stench of unwashed bodies and unaired clothing, of flatulence and urine and babies’ nappies, of burnt carbide and the smells of food, of the damp mildew of the cellar and gun smoke that forces its way from
the street through all the cracks, the atmosphere too in which the people live together is saturated with ill will, nausea, envy, hatred and contempt.
Even more gruelling is the complete uncertainty, not only in relation to the future, but also about the immediate future, because there is no way of knowing whether the battle will last for eight days or eight weeks, they remember with horror that the defenders of Königsberg held out for weeks and the defence of Breslau is still going on. It is by no means out of the question that the battle will sweep back and forth and under the hail of shells they will be alternately exposed to fire from the Russian artillery and from their own. No less wearing is the complete inaction, the employed cannot (and do not want to) return to their workplaces, nor do the housewives want to do their normal work; apart from small tasks, the preparation and consumption of the meagre meals and visits to the primitive toilet, nothing ever happens.
Conversations falter after a few exchanges. Reading is impossible, since the lighting is too faint. The darkness of the cellar and the forced inaction leave room only for one thing, for waiting, waiting, waiting, for anything, for liberation or death, and it is still completely uncertain by whom and from what one will be freed, how and at whose hands one will be killed. They became used to staying in the cellar a long time ago, but then it was only ever for two, sometimes three hours before the sirens indicated the end of their imprisonment, they had become accustomed to that a long time ago, as one gets used to chronic pains, but this time they are not summoned back to the surface by an all-clear, to their flats or their beds, this time they are banished to the underworld, from which they cannot emerge without finding themselves in the hell of the world above. So about three dozen people sit in the cellar fifteen metres long and barely two and a half metres wide, they sit, crouch, squat, lie, everyone has his own particular spot in the midst of his possessions, and above them all there hovers the uncertainly flickering light of a candle, or else a burdensome darkness lurks, unbroken by a single shimmer of light, since the cellar is below the level of the street and the narrow skylights are blocked by boxes of sand. The words that were initially exchanged, short questions and dismissive answers, soon dry up, and apart from the noises that enter from outside, in the end the only sounds to be heard are those of air in motion, the fitful breathing of the short-winded, the coughing and moans of the ill, the snoring and groaning of the sleepers, the slurping and munching of the eaters, the wailing and weeping of the children, throats being cleared and sneezing and the internal sounds of bodies entering an abnormal state, all sounds of an intimate nature being played out now before everyone’s ears and noses, intensifying discomfort to revulsion.