The Lost Boys

by Catherine Bailey

  17.

  Kretschmann kept Fey and the children prisoner. Scrupulously adhering to the Gestapo’s orders, the young lieutenant locked them in at night and did not allow them out during the day. He had allocated a new set of rooms for their confinement. Situated on the ground floor in the east wing of the villa, they were more secure; the windows were barred, making escape impossible.

  It was the same suite of rooms the King of Italy had occupied during his brief stay at Brazzà in April 1941. On one side, they looked out over the ruins of the castle; on the other, to a beautiful chapel, which Detalmo’s ancestors had used for family weddings, christenings and funerals since taking ownership of the castle in the thirteenth century. The rooms, however, were smaller than those in the west wing, and Fey missed the view of the garden. With the prospect of ‘further orders from Berlin’ hanging over her, and the children fidgety as a result of being cooped in, the days dragged. But she was with them – this was the main thing.

  News of her return spread quickly, and Kretschmann allowed her to receive visitors, which relieved the tedium of the long hours spent inside. Friends and neighbours rallied around and she barely had a minute alone. She was relieved to hear that her imprisonment had removed any suspicion that she was collaborating with the Germans. While she was in prison, the contadini had prayed for her, and were continuing to pray for her – proof they considered her to be on their side.

  Her visitors updated her on developments in the neighbourhood during her absence. Large numbers of troops had moved into the area and it was feared the Germans were gearing up to launch an offensive. Along the ridge between Faedis and Nimis – mountain villages 7 miles to the east of Brazzà – the partisans were shoring up their defences.1 Trenches had been dug, and barbed wire and barriers placed along the road. In Udine, the German were requisitioning scores of villas and taking the city’s supply of pasta, meat and flour from the warehouses. Simultaneously, the Fascists appeared to have found a new confidence and were swaggering around in their black uniforms, their belts bristling with handguns, daggers and grenades.

  But it was news from Detalmo that Fey longed for. She had not heard from him since June, when he had written to say that he was staying in Rome. On the morning of her arrest, she had sent a message via the Red Cross to tell him that the SS were taking her to Udine and that her father was dead. Had he received it? Or had his reply been delayed or lost? His silence reinforced the sense of abandonment she had felt ever since she had learned that he wasn’t coming home.

  There was no word from her family in Germany either. Two weeks had passed since her father had been executed and they had not written. To be so far away from her mother, her brothers and her sister at such a time was deeply upsetting. Every part of her ached to be with them, to be able to console them and to share her own grief. Not knowing what had happened to them, she worried constantly.

  Alone and cut off from those she loved, Fey was comforted by the one letter that was waiting for her on her return. It was from Santa Hercolani, to whom she had confided her disappointment at Detalmo’s decision to remain in Rome. Ten years older than Fey, Santa was also close to Ilse, her mother. They had become friends in the early 1930s, when Hassell was posted to Rome. While Santa, evidently fearful of the German censors, had been careful in her choice of words, reading between the lines, Fey could tell that she too was desperate for news of Ilse:

  Dearest Fey2

  I only wanted to tell you that I stand by you. You will certainly understand my state of mind and know my feelings. Remember that you can always think of me as an old, very old, sister, and I consider you much more than a friend …

  If you can, write again, and if you know something, anything, tell me … Now we really are in the midst of the hurricane, and I think of your mother, of Wolf Ulli, and of the true value of many things that may be destroyed.

  Fey had been home for two days when her neighbour, Pia Tacoli, the sister of Ferdinando, an Osoppo brigade leader, came to visit. In recent weeks, the Germans had also occupied the Tacolis’ house; it was being used as a field hospital to treat soldiers wounded in the fighting with the partisans, an irony that amused Pia and her brother as the house was a stronghold of partisan activity.

  It was just half a mile across the fields to Brazzà. But, that morning, Pia was careful to take a circuitous route. Reaching the ruins of the castle, she waited behind a wall until the guards, patrolling the path that ran past Fey’s rooms, were out of sight.

  Pia had come to propose a rescue plan, which she had drawn up with the help of a group of Osoppo partisans. Outside Fey’s rooms, a path led through the woods to a small wooden gate which opened on to the main road. If Fey could manage to slip out with the boys, Pia would be waiting with a trap to spirit them away to the partisans’ hideout in the mountains. To guard against the risk of German reprisals, the men and women working in the woods at Brazzà had sworn a vow of silence. Fey recognized that the plan was fraught with danger. ‘The German guards who paced around the castle day and night had to be eluded. I was also afraid for Pia, since the Germans would connect her absence with my disappearance. However, my main reason for refusing her courageous offer was that I feared the terrible and indiscriminate reprisals on my family if I escaped. I could not take the risk that my mother and sister would be imprisoned, even taken to a concentration camp on my account.’

  The day before, Fey had finally received a letter from her mother. She and Almuth were under house arrest at the family home near Munich. The letter was undated, but Fey was buoyed by its contents: ‘She wrote of a small ray of hope regarding my father’s fate. Relief flooded through me. Had the radio account of my father’s death been wrong? I had already closed a chapter of my life as I had lain in prison in Udine, haunted by images of his brutal death. Although it seemed nonsensical that the radio should broadcast such a lie, I could believe anything of the Nazis. This idea, the remote possibility that my father had not been executed along with the others, gave me renewed hope.’

  The news from her mother and the deceptive comfort of the routine at Brazzà with its familiar rhythms, and the stalwart support of Nonino and Ernesta, meant that Fey allowed herself to disregard the danger inherent in her situation. ‘I knew the SS was thorough, but I had little idea then just how thorough.’

  On the evening of 25 September – six days after Fey returned to Brazzà – Colonel Dannenberg received a call from the Gestapo in Udine. Berlin had responded to their query. Fey and the children were to be deported to Austria: she had thirty-six hours to prepare for their departure.

  The call came through shortly before Dannenberg was due to host a drinks party for Lieutenant Kretschmann, who was leaving the next day for another posting. The colonel invited Fey to join them; yet, after they had raised their glasses to the lieutenant’s future, neither he nor Kretschmann had the courage to tell her that she and the children were about to be deported. Instead, Dannenberg wrote her a letter early the next morning before leaving for an appointment, and asked his adjutant to deliver it.

  Fey, who was asleep in her bedroom, was woken by the sound of the adjutant slipping the letter under the door.

  Dear Frau Pirzio-Biroli [the colonel began]

  It is most embarrassing for me to have to write this letter, but I can only use this formal and crude method – that is, a letter – because I was suddenly called away to Verona. But I will hurry with my business there so as to be able to return in time for your departure tomorrow morning.

  In a few words, I have been informed that you are to prepare for a journey that, for the moment, will take you to Innsbruck. The children will go with you. You are only permitted to take luggage that you strictly need.

  I will drive you personally to Udine station, where you will be entrusted to a man in civilian clothes who will accompany you. I have tried to obtain more precise information but unfortunately without success. I can only tell you as consolation that I got the impression that it will not be long until
we meet here again; of course, as long as the regiment is not posted elsewhere.

  So, Frau Pirzio-Biroli, hold your head up, even if everything is very difficult for you. One must never lose courage. After all, you have nothing to do with the known facts. Have faith and don’t show your distress. I don’t yet know the hour that the train leaves. All I know is that you leave tomorrow morning. The exact time will be told you in my absence. Now, dear lady, courage.

  With my respectful regards,

  Col. H. Dannenberg

  Quickly, Fey reread the letter to be sure she had understood it correctly. Reeling from its contents, courage was the last thing she felt: ‘A feeling of total despair swept over me. I had been aware of the frightening possibility of deportation, but I had also hoped that the Gestapo in Berlin would dismiss a marginal case like mine – a single woman with two small children, alone in a foreign country. Now I was confronted with a fait accompli; I was being helplessly sucked into the Nazi terror machine.’

  Her despair was compounded by anger; she blamed herself. If only she had listened to Detalmo and taken the boys to Rome after the armistice or, at the very least, accepted his cousins’ offer to stay at Frassanelle, their estate outside Padua. With a stab of guilt, she recognized that, however much she had persuaded herself that she had stayed at Brazzà to protect the house and the families working on the estate, the truth was she had been afraid to leave. Brazzà was her protector. It was her cocoon from the world; it made her feel safe. Through her own weakness, she had endangered the children. If anything were to happen to them, it would be her fault.

  Some minutes later, the colonel’s adjutant returned to tell her that she and the boys would be leaving at dawn the next day.

  With less than twenty-four hours to go before their departure, Fey had a great deal to do: ‘The children had neither shoes nor clothes for a northern winter. Nonino was sent with an urgent appeal to the shoemaker. The woman who knitted for us started to knit two jerseys. She worked far into the night producing two warm pullovers. At four o’clock the following morning, Nonino picked up the shoes. The cobbler had also worked through the night. I asked Alvise di Brazzà to look after the estate and to help Bovolenta wherever possible. The kind army doctor attached to the Engineer Corps gave me 300 marks, which he advised me to sew into the lining of my coat together with the 3,000 lire I already had. My baggage consisted mainly of things to eat. Overcoming my opposition, Nonino packed an entire ham and several large salamis. Alvise’s wife, Anna, brought 600 cigarettes, which turned out to be a most precious gift. Our great friends and neighbours, the Stringhers, brought biscuits, tins of meat, tea, and condensed milk.’

  Late that night, Pia Tacoli returned for the second time in a week. Earlier, after hearing Fey’s news, she had ridden up to the Osoppo hideouts in the mountains – a dangerous journey that had involved skirting numerous German checkpoints. Making contact with the partisans high on the slopes of Mount Joanaz, she had begged them to come up with one last rescue plan. The plan, which they were now primed to execute, was risky; at dawn the following morning, as Fey and the boys were being driven to Udine, the Osoppo would ambush the car and kill their German escorts. As much as she wanted to, Fey could not bring herself to go along with it; the danger of the children being caught in the gunfire was too great, and while Colonel Dannenberg had proved himself to be a weak and cowardly man, he would be driving them to the station at Udine and she did not want to be responsible for his death. Pia left in the early hours of the morning, facing another long and dangerous journey into the mountains, to tell the partisans to stand down.

  After she left, Fey wrote a letter to Lotti, her old governess. Her overriding fear was that she and the children would simply ‘disappear’. Her father had warned her about Hitler’s Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog) directive. Purposefully targeted at the families of political opponents in the occupied countries, the decree was designed to quell resistance by promoting an atmosphere of mystery and fear. The directive stated that those arrested were to be secretly transported to concentration camps in Germany and no information was to be given out to their relatives. The Nazis had even coined a term for those who ‘vanished’; they were vernebelt – transformed into mist.3

  Fey was writing to Lotti in case of this eventuality. Colonel Dannenberg had told her that ‘for the moment’ she and the children were being taken to Innsbruck; he was confident that they would not be detained for long. But it was quite possible that he was wrong. The Gestapo were hardly likely to communicate their true intentions to a regular soldier. As she composed the letter, Fey forced herself to imagine the worst. If she was going to Germany, she could not be sure the children would go with her. She knew that if she ‘disappeared’, there was a danger they would be lost forever. Detalmo had not seen the boys since the summer of 1943 and the only photographs he had of them were ten months out of date. They were growing so fast, and changing so much, if she died in the camps and Detalmo had to go in search of them, would he ever recognize them? The same was true of her mother; she had last seen the children in the winter of 1942, when Roberto was just fourteen months old. It was imperative that someone should have the most up-to-date photographs, and Lotti was the obvious choice. While she had been part of the family since the 1920s, she had escaped the Gestapo’s net and was now living quietly in Hamburg with her sister, Anni.

  Writing the letter, Fey was circumspect about her reason for sending the photographs, but she knew Lotti would understand:

  Dear Lotti

  A few lines in a great hurry. Today I was informed that I would be ‘accompanied’ to Innsbruck tomorrow morning together with the children. You can imagine my feelings. But even in the darkest moments one must continue to hope for a better future and not lose courage.

  I am afraid that I might be out of contact for a long time. So I am sending the latest photographs of the children, which have come out particularly well. I still have a lot to do before my departure as I want to leave the estate in good hands. I have much to think about, so I’ll finish here. Think of us, dear Lotti and Anni.

  Lots and lots of love,

  your desperate and worried Lifn1

  The next morning, Fey was up before dawn. The weather had changed and it was a chilly 10 degrees and raining. Waking the children at 4 a.m., she dressed them in their new shoes and sweaters, telling them they were ‘going on an adventure’. Two hours later, Colonel Dannenberg, accompanied by an SS officer, appeared to take them to the station. As they were escorted out of the house, Fey was overwhelmed to see the servants – most of whom had been up all night – waiting on the drive: ‘Everyone had stayed awake to watch me go. Nonino, Pina, Ernesta, Mila and Bovolenta, along with his enormous family.fn2 All were crying desperately. I did all I could to control myself for fear of upsetting the children still further … Taking a last look at assembled friends and neighbours and hugging the children close to me, I got into Dannenberg’s car, unable to believe that I was really being taken away.’

  18.

  At Udine station, Colonel Dannenberg handed Fey and the children over to a Gestapo agent. The forecourt was packed with troops. Dressed in battle fatigue, they stood, formed up in long lines, waiting to board the military trains that were pulling into and out of the station in quick succession. Some of the carriages were armoured, the swastika clearly visible beneath the huge gun turrets. Cossacks, mounted on horses, guns slung over their shoulders and ammunition belts spilling from their saddlebags, were also queuing to board the troop carriers. The noise was deafening; the shouting of orders by company sergeants, and the cursing of soldiers, directed at the Cossacks when their horses reared and kicked out.

  It was 6.20 a.m. and this was the launch of the long-anticipated rastrellamento against the partisans. ‘The blow which we felt was always coming, but which we vaguely hoped to escape, fell on Sept 27th when the enemy opened a full-scale offensive,’ the SOE commander in the area reported back to London on 4 October 1944.1 ‘Sooner or lat
er it was felt that if the partisans made sufficient nuisance of themselves, the enemy would retaliate. It was also felt that his retaliation could be countered until the time came when he was able to muster sufficient forces and equipment to launch a large-scale offensive.’

  For almost three months now, the SOE-trained partisans had controlled the mountains above Brazzà, an area of crucial strategic importance to the Germans. The road leading up to the Plöcken Pass was one of the main supply routes from Germany; it was also one of the few lines of retreat available to the Wehrmacht if the war in Italy were to be lost. Only by deploying a huge force could the Germans hope to break up the partisans’ positions and drive them out of the mountains.2 To the west of Udine, some 10,000 troops had been mustered, including formations of SS and squads of commandos. The soldiers boarding the trains at the station were to spearhead the offensive.

  Shepherding Fey and the children through the melee, the Gestapo agent led them to a platform on the other side of the station, where they were to wait for a train to Villach. He said it would be a long wait. Villach, in Austria, was 17 miles from the Plöcken Pass and the Germans were using the railway to attack the partisans’ positions. While the rastrellamento was in progress, no civilian traffic was permitted along the line. After the early start and the excitement of seeing the departing troops, the boys immediately fell asleep on a bench. It gave Fey time to think, and a break from the charade of the ‘adventure’.

  The Gestapo officer left her alone with her thoughts. Hour after hour, she paced up and down the platform; past the propaganda posters, pasted on the walls by the Germans, up to the blank departure board, and back to the bench where the children were sleeping. There was nothing else to look at; the troop trains had left and the station was now deserted. In both directions, the empty rail tracks stretched into the distance.