As a week went by, and then another, waiting to hear what the future had in store, Fey did, however, confide in Alex. While they were never alone, their attraction to each other was an open secret and the others kept their distance, so they could talk privately.
Sitting quietly together in the communal room, they spoke for hours. Still grieving for her father and bitterly disappointed not to have found her children at Buchenwald, Fey was comforted by Alex’s presence; with him she could admit to feelings that she could not confide to anyone else – namely her envy of others in the group who had been reunited with their children. Sometimes the two of them played bridge with Markwart and Otto Philipp or worked together on a German translation of Dante’s La Vita Nuova. Alex chose the text; whether because Dante’s love for Beatrice mirrored his feelings for Fey, she did not say. But the choice was apposite; the piece explored the medieval concept of courtly love – a highly formal, often unrequited love.
In the rare moments when Fey was not with Alex, she gave lessons to a ten-year-old boy. A new arrival, he had been arrested with his mother – Frau Schroeder, the wife of an evangelical pastor – and his brother and sister, aged four and seven. Their imprisonment was in retaliation for the weekly service the pastor held on Moscow Radio. A German POW, he belonged to the National Committee for a Free Germany, an anti-Nazi, pro-Communist organization operating from the Soviet Union.
In the absence of news of Corrado and Roberto, Fey was drawn to the boy: ‘I began the lessons as much for my own sake as for his. As I taught him elementary mathematics and languages, I often wondered about my own children. Was it better for them to stay with their mother and thus witness horrific scenes in camps like this little boy, or were they better off in a children’s home? Though it was, of course, pure speculation, it kept me from dwelling on much worse things that could have happened to Corradino and Robertino.’
The tension in the barrack increased with every day that went by. The Americans were getting closer and, as the Russian women reported, the prisoners in the main camp feared that Himmler would order the liquidation of all inmates before they arrived.
‘The days without news were agonising,’ Ännerle remembered.31 ‘We had absolutely no idea of how things were going to turn out.’
Then, out of the blue, on the morning of 14 March, an SS official arrived from Berlin.
32.
The official’s name was Sergeant Lenz and he worked at the Reich Main Security Office – Himmler’s headquarters. Tall, with a slim frame and a long, pale face, his obsequiousness immediately made Fey suspicious: ‘He was one of the classic oily types, all good manners and kindness. Smiling graciously, he said that he was at our disposal and asked if we had any complaints or questions. Of course, we women all started clamouring for news of our children.’
Unabashed, Lenz replied that the children were being brought up and ‘trained’ by the Gestapo. They were in good spirits and were being well looked after, he assured them. To support this claim, he produced three letters, which he handed to Lotte von Hofacker with a flourish.1 They were from her youngest children – Christa, Alfred and Goldi, aged twelve, nine and six. Reading the letters, Lotte was amazed to see that they did indeed seem to be ‘very happy’.2 Lenz went on to confirm that, along with Irma Goerdeler’s two boys – the younger a sixteen-month-old baby – and Mika von Stauffenberg’s six-year-old son and five-year-old daughter, Lotte’s children were at Bad Sachsa, an SS orphanage about 80 miles from Buchenwald.
He had little news, however, of Corrado and Roberto. They were not with the other children, but in a smaller home, he told Fey, and he said he would return the next day with more precise information: ‘He promised me a thousand things, even information on the children’s health and exact whereabouts. Though I knew in my heart that he would tell only lies and more lies, I desperately wanted to believe him.’
Emboldened by Lenz’s cooperative manner, the group flooded him with further questions. Why were they being held at Buchenwald? What was the point of their captivity when their relatives had now been executed and the cases closed?
Lenz replied that it was entirely possible that they would be released in ten days.3 ‘But nothing is certain,’ he added.
Before he left, he distributed a large number of letters, which the SS had kept from the group for many weeks. There was just one for Fey – a graphic letter from a friend in Dresden describing the terror of the recent British bombing raids. Coming on top of the absence of news of the boys, it was a double blow. She had not heard from her mother since leaving Brazzà and had assumed this was because the SS had withheld her letters. Yet it seemed she had not written at all.
There was, of course, no word from Detalmo. Though Fey recognized the impossibility of contact with him, a part of her held on to the hope that, somehow, he would find an ingenious way of getting a message through. Fourteen months had passed since she had last seen him. His most recent message – delivered by a partisan courier – had been to tell her that he was not coming home and that he had decided to stay in Rome. That was in August and it was now mid March. More than ever, with the children perhaps irretrievably lost, she needed to hear from him. Was he still in Rome? Did he know that she and the boys had been arrested? It was possible that the note she sent via the Red Cross had failed to get through. But then neighbours at Brazzà had also sent him messages, using the partisan network. His silence was bitterly disappointing and reinforced the feelings of abandonment she had felt for a long time.
Fey spent the next twenty-four hours anxiously waiting for Lenz to return with the information he promised about the boys. As she feared, he had none. He did not even bother to lie; flatly, he told her that he had been unable to establish their whereabouts. Either his superiors at SS headquarters had their reasons for not wanting to divulge this information or the boys were lost. Summoning her courage, she asked him what her chances were of being reunited with them: ‘He simply shrugged his shoulders and said that if they were alive, they would have new names. He doubted I would ever find them. Until that moment, I had refused to consider the worst – that they were dead, or permanently lost. But the fact that the other children were all in one place and mine had disappeared removed any hope I had of seeing them again. The thought of permanent separation from my children brought me to the edge of madness.’
Just when Fey thought she had reached her lowest ebb, something occurred that caused her to shut down entirely. Matter-of-factly, she recorded the extraordinary event that took place on the morning of 16 March, the day after the second visit from Lenz: ‘A Storch, a two-seater airplane used by the Luftwaffe for reconnaissance and training, circled low over our barrack. It was Litta von Stauffenberg, Alex’s wife.’
Litta, one of the most highly decorated female pilots in the Luftwaffe, had been looking for Alex for almost two months. Officially, she was still in charge of the Experimental Centre for Special Flight Equipment, where she instructed pilots in the use of optical night-landing equipment that she had pioneered.4 She was also continuing her work as a test pilot, developing target-hitting devices for Stukas, which necessitated diving vertically from a great height. Yet her energy was entirely directed towards finding Alex. ‘She was adamant that she could only take on and bear the burden of her war duties if she was able to see and speak to her husband once a month,’ Nina von Stauffenberg, Claus’s widow, recalled.5
After Stutthof, Litta had lost all trace of Alex. Until then, as the recipient of the Iron Cross and the Gold Front Flying Clasp for Bombers, she was able to keep track of his movements using her high-level contacts within the Nazi regime. But, as rumours of her own opposition to the regime circulated, her access to this classified information was withdrawn.
Undeterred – and at great risk from Allied aircraft – she flew all over northern Germany, trying to pick up Alex’s trail. Starting at Stutthof, where she landed at the end of January, she followed every lead, however tenuous. Rather than the fighter jets she normally flew,
she chose the unarmed Storch.6 The small single-engine plane was perfect for short-distance landing and take-off and, with a cruising speed at low altitudes of 80 miles an hour, she was able to fly just above tree level – out of the line of vision of enemy pilots. Her search, necessitating many flying hours, had been fruitless. But then, in mid March, she received a tip-off from a Gestapo official at Lauenburg. He told her that Alex and the others had spent several weeks in the town, imprisoned in a converted lunatic asylum, and that they had recently been moved south of Berlin. He doubted, however, that they had managed to get through the Russian lines. They had probably been captured and were ‘unlikely to have survived’.
On the off-chance, Litta decided to try Buchenwald – the nearest concentration camp south of the capital. Before leaving, she packed the Storch with supplies – rabbit meat, fruit, vegetables and clothes for Alex, with little notes hidden inside.7
It was a three-hour flight from Würzburg, where she was temporarily based. If Alex was at Buchenwald, the biggest challenge she faced was to find the barrack where he was imprisoned. She knew he would recognize her plane. Early in January, she had visited him at Stutthof. Fey had not known of the visit, as it had taken place around the time she had been dangerously ill.
From the air, the rows and rows of barracks at Buchenwald all looked the same. Flying low over the rooftops, Litta circled the camp several times, searching for a signal from her husband. It was not long before she spotted a knot of people, waving furiously from the courtyard of a barrack; in the building behind, others were signalling from the windows with handkerchiefs and bed sheets. Touching down in a field, as close as she could get to the isolated barrack, she handed her papers to the guards. With her Iron Cross pinned firmly to the lapel of her flying jacket, her credentials were impeccable and the guards escorted her to Sonderbau 15. A few minutes later, the gate in the wall opened, and Alex was brought out. ‘It was very secret and rather miraculous,’ Mika von Stauffenberg, Alex’s sister-in-law, recalled.8
The guards retreated, leaving the couple alone in the narrow, rubble-strewn road. They spoke for forty-five minutes. There is no record of their conversation but, as Gagi and Ännerle noted in their diaries, Litta brought news of the children at Bad Sachsa, and of Elisabeth and Clemens von Stauffenberg, who were still at Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Determined to help Alex’s family where she could, Litta had flown to both places, taking food parcels and warm clothes. She had also visited Nina von Stauffenberg, who was imprisoned near Frankfurt. In January, six months after Claus had been executed, Nina had given birth to their fifth child: ‘Litta looked after us all.9 She thought of everything and used her rank and charm to obtain whatever she could. While I was pregnant, she found a Gestapo official who got hold of a pregnancy support belt, and she brought me fruit and vegetables, and cod liver oil … She was in a difficult position, playing a dangerous double game: on the one hand, a “friend” of the Gestapo, on the other, the provider for the prisoners of kin.’
After the meeting with Alex, Litta walked back to her plane. She cut a dashing figure as she strode across the field; tall, slim, blonde, with high cheekbones and a striking profile, she wore a Luftwaffe uniform beneath her brown leather flying jacket and long leather boots. Taking off from the field, she flew low over the barrack, circling three times. It was her way of saying goodbye.
Litta knew she was in constant danger of being shot down by the Americans, who now dominated the air space over western Germany.10 Nonetheless, between 17 March and 1 April, she made eight further trips to Buchenwald. While her war work meant that some of the visits could only be flypasts, on three occasions she was able to land and speak to Alex.
To the Sippenhäftlinge – and particularly Gagi – she was the ‘Flying Angel’.11 On 30 March, after hearing that the Russians were about to liberate Sachsenhausen, Litta, oblivious to the risk from Soviet aircraft, flew to the camp to rescue Elisabeth and Clemens von Stauffenberg. After persuading the guards to release the couple, she took Clemens to a military hospital before returning Elisabeth to Gagi at Buchenwald. As Gagi later acknowledged, if Litta had not undertaken the daring rescue, her parents would probably have died.
In thinking of everything and everyone, Litta was also secretly preparing for the liberation of Buchenwald. In the hope that the group would be released once the Americans arrived, she bribed some locals to lend her a house within walking distance of the camp. Filling it with food, blankets and other essential supplies, she turned it into a refuge, which they could use when the moment came.
‘Flight was her element and she was a pilot of rare skill and courage,’ Fey wrote of Litta. But this was all she wrote. She did not recount how she felt when Alex left the barrack to meet his wife, out of view on the other side of the gate. At the very least, given her estrangement from Detalmo, she must have felt terribly alone. She also had to face the looks and whispered speculation from others in the group to whom her affair with Alex, however platonic, was an open secret.
Yet while Fey chose to keep her feelings to herself – or possibly, coming so soon after the terrible news from Lenz, she felt so low that she was unable to express them – around the time of Litta’s third visit, she did something quite extraordinary. Desperate to find some excuse to escape her situation in the barrack, she claimed to have ‘very bad toothache’ and asked the SS to take her to the dentist. ‘As I was escorted on foot through the camp, I revisited this immense city of barracks with renewed disbelief and disgust,’ she wrote. ‘At one point a large lorry drove past, filled to the brim with naked corpses. Nobody seemed to notice. The guards told me 200–300 prisoners were dying every day from typhoid and starvation.
‘On my way back from the dentist, I witnessed a second grotesque scene. Columns of inmates were returning from work and we had to stop and wait while they passed by. The prisoners were dressed in the usual camp overalls – shapeless uniforms with wide black and white stripes. They had sunken cheeks – or worse, no cheeks at all – and their heads were shaved. Marching in rows of four, some were so weak they could hardly stand. The SS struck the ones that couldn’t keep up with the butts of their rifles. Leading this column was an SS band, playing one cheerful march after another. At the end of the stretch, the “musicians” moved to one side and these poor wretches had to march up and down in front of them, keeping time to the music, as if on parade. It was one of the most sadistic sights I have ever seen.’
The prospect of release, to which Lenz had so tantalizingly alluded, had come to nothing. Almost three weeks had gone by since he had told the group there was a possibility they would be freed ‘within ten days’. ‘We waited and waited,’ Ännerle recalled, ‘but of course nothing happened.’12
Fey had at least been buoyed by a letter from her mother. ‘You seem to have had no news of us, although I have been writing once a fortnight,’ Ilse wrote. Aside from communicating news of Hans Dieter, Fey’s brother, who had been arrested after the 20 July plot and imprisoned in a castle in the eastern part of Germany, she had said very little; evidently, she knew the SS would read the letter. But at least Fey knew her mother was safe.
The air-raid alarm sounded every day and, on the evening of 31 March, a US bomb missed Sonderbau 15 by a whisker. ‘It made the barrack shake, and doors and windows were blown out,’ Gagi reported.13 ‘There were shards of glass all over our room. But the shock of the near miss was worse than the damage.’
At 8 a.m. the next morning – Easter Sunday – everyone gathered in the passage to sing the Te Deum and Bach’s ‘Lobet den Herrn’ (‘The Lord be Praised’). Midway through the morning, they began to hear the rumble of artillery. The US Army was at Eisenach, just 50 miles from the camp. In a state of high excitement, they gathered around the radio. It seemed it would only be a matter of days before they were liberated. With the Russians to the east, German forces were virtually encircled. This time, it looked impossible for the SS to snatch them away.
At lunchtime, when the female Russia
n prisoners brought over their food, they said the guards were packing up and preparing to flee. The women also reported that Communist prisoners were stockpiling weapons, stolen from the camp armoury, in preparation for a showdown with the SS.
It was clear the guards were tense; as the sound of the shelling grew louder, the group noticed a change in the behaviour of the two female supervisors in Sonderbau 15. They had identical blonde perms and their names were Fräulein Knocke and Fräulein Rafforth. Grotesque in their SS uniforms, their modus operandi was to march up and down the passage in their jackboots, shouting loudly.14 Now, both women were showing signs of hysteria. ‘Fräulein Knocke had already divested herself of her uniform in spirit,’ Isa Vermehren observed. ‘She did everything in her power to gain our sympathy. She tried to give herself an intellectual air, using many, often incorrect, foreign expressions. She underwent a visible transformation: her patronising superiority, the mask adopted by all SS, gave way to an ever-increasing nervousness, which degenerated into intense anxiety.’ Fräulein Rafforth – ‘the fattest, most lascivious, most vulgar person I’ve ever seen running around in a skirt’, as Isa described her – reacted very differently. A woman whose life revolved around her many SS lovers, she became obsessed with the impact the Americans’ arrival would have on her sex life. ‘With absolutely no regard for the tension growing in the barrack, she sat with her lardy arse on a stool, which groaned under her weight. “It’s not nice being without a man at night,” she growled over and over again.’
Two SS lieutenants by the names of Ditmann and Sippach guarded the Prominenten in the cells under the SS barracks. Sippach, a disarmingly ‘pleasant-looking young fellow’, as one prisoner remarked, was notorious for having participated in executions at the camp.15 He boasted that he ‘enjoyed shooting and hanging’ and claimed to have killed scores of Russian POWs, for which he had been rewarded with ‘schnapps and cigarettes’.16 More frightened of reprisals from the Russian prisoners than he was of the Americans, as Captain Payne Best, the British spy captured at Venlo, recorded, Sippach was preparing to flee the camp at the first opportunity: ‘He told me himself that they would tear him limb from limb if they ever got hold of him.17 He had been attacked before and had a nasty scar on his throat which he said had been caused when a Russian prisoner went for him with a knife.’
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