The Lost Boys

by Catherine Bailey

  There are indications that the children were interned under false German names to prevent their parents from tracing them.

  It must be presumed that, after 29 Sept, the two children were initially held at an institute in Innsbruck. It is therefore from Innsbruck that investigations should begin. Although it is advisable, in order to save time, to search in every other place nearby.

  It must be remembered that a) the enclosed picture is a year out of date

  b) the children may now have short hair

  c) they may have forgotten both their name and mother-language (Italian)

  d) the small one will have no memory of home, while the eldest should react intelligently to the words reported in the enclosed notice, and to easy Italian phrases

  e) THE SEARCH FOR THESE CHILDREN IS URGENT. THE MORE TIME PASSES, ANY RESEMBLANCE THEY BEAR TO THE ENCLOSED PHOTOGRAPH WILL GO AND THE CHILDREN WILL BE LOST.

  By the end of June, Fey had sent out over 300 of these notices: ‘It was like throwing pebbles into the sea. All the international organizations were bombarded with so many requests that we knew it would be months or even years before anyone looked into the case of the Pirzio-Biroli children. All we were left with was the sinking feeling that, with every week that passed, the chances of finding the boys diminished. They were lost, perhaps in the east, perhaps without a name. We could not relax, nor could we do anything.’

  June 1945 was exceptionally hot in Rome and, with their efforts leading nowhere, Fey longed to return to Brazzà: ‘Anything was better than pointlessly beating our heads against the stone wall of officialdom, and I felt that if I was there, where it had all begun, somehow I would be nearer the children.’

  But Brazzà was in the hands of the Desert Air Force under its commanding officer, Robert Foster, and, as an official Allied headquarters, it was out of bounds. Moreover, the ban preventing Italians travelling any distance beyond 10 kilometres still applied; without a permit, Fey and Detalmo had no means of getting there.

  Then, in mid July, Detalmo learned that an English acquaintance of his, Charles Meadhurst, was in Rome on a brief visit. Meadhurst, formerly the air attaché at the British Embassy in Rome, was now Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief RAF Mediterranean and Middle East. Detalmo managed to get through to his suite at the Grand Hotel and invited him over for drinks. Clearly shocked by the story of Hassell’s execution and the loss of the children, Meadhurst offered to ring his friend Foster to see if he could organize the necessary permissions and arrange transport for them to return to Brazzà. Using a military phone, he managed to get through straight away, astounding Fey and Detalmo, who had been trying to contact Nonino for weeks.

  To Fey’s joy, they left the next morning from a military airfield outside Rome. ‘We boarded a funny-looking DAF plane that seemed primitive inside and rather cold when we climbed above the clouds. But we arrived on schedule to find a British staff car waiting at Treviso airfield. Driving through the familiar countryside toward Brazzà, my spirits rose. Finally, I was really going home.’

  As they turned into the courtyard in front of the house, Nonino, Bovolenta and the three maids ran up to greet them. With its sad echoes of the day Fey had left Brazzà with the children, the reunion was emotional. Yet the house, despite having been occupied by troops for so long, still looked strikingly beautiful and Fey was thrilled to hear that the contadini families had not been persecuted by the Germans and that the estate was in good shape.

  Robert Foster, Air Officer Commanding, Desert Air Force, was also there to greet them. After all that he had heard from Nonino, he was relieved to see that the couple had come through the war. ‘But the children, of course, were still missing,’ he later wrote, ‘and I could see that this beautiful young woman was in a most unhappy state.’16

  To Foster’s discomfort, he had to tell Fey and Detalmo that the house was full and that he was unable to release any rooms for their use. Nonino had a spare bedroom and they moved into his house overlooking the old barchesse – the Venetian barns at the entrance to the villa. ‘No sooner had we begun to unpack than an airman arrived with an invitation for drinks that evening with the officers,’ Fey remembered. ‘It was rather disconcerting to be guests in our own house! But the twenty or so officers we met were all very courteous and charming.’

  Those first weeks at Brazzà were a healing time for Fey. Every day, she and Detalmo would join the officers for an early-morning ride: ‘The British had captured some fine thoroughbreds from an Austrian regiment and about ten were stabled in one of our barns, alongside Roberto’s beloved little carriage horse, Mirko. Those long rides in the morning, through the park and out over the hills, did more than anything else to ease my troubled mind. The officers often organised “paper chases” and “point-to-point” races and it was exhilarating to gallop along the tracks behind Brazzà and then stop somewhere for an impromptu picnic.’

  Fey had finished writing her memoir and she gave it to Detalmo to read. As she had hoped, they were able to talk about their relationship, and her time in the camps. He understood about Alex, and he also understood how abandoned she had felt when he had stayed in Rome after the city was liberated by the Allies. Detalmo recognized that his decision had been wrong and admitted that his failure to protect her and the children would haunt him for the rest of his life.

  As the weeks passed with no news of the boys, they had to begin the hard journey of reconciling themselves to the possibility that they might never be found. Fey’s mother was their one hope. Living in Germany, she could at least set out to look for the children. But did she know that the boys were missing? As soon as they arrived back in Rome, Fey and Detalmo had written to her, but almost a month had gone by and she had not replied. The few telephones in operation had been commandeered by the military authorities. As Fey acknowledged, she was not even sure her mother was alive.

  40.

  Entering her sixtieth year, Ilse had survived the war, though at great personal cost. She was living at Ebenhausen at the home she had shared with Ulrich. ‘He never disappointed me,’ she would later write to Fey; ‘his luminous character, his spirituality, his big heart, his courage, always there, were my daily delight. I pray that his death will show the world that there is a better Germany, that there were men who were willing to sacrifice their lives to free the world from evil.’

  Born in 1885, Ilse had grown up at the court of the last kaiser, the daughter of one of his most trusted advisers. In the years before the First World War, her father, Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, had transformed the German Imperial Navy into a world-class force, capable of challenging the British Royal Navy. Ilse’s teenage years had been spent in close proximity to the German royal family.1 A favourite of the kaiser, her pet name was ‘My Little Destroyer’ because of her strong character and her capacity to break men’s hearts.

  In May 1945, Ilse’s modest household was a far cry from the splendid surroundings of the kaiser’s court. Like so many others, it consisted entirely of women: her 85-year-old widowed mother, her unmarried sister, and Fey’s sister, Almuth.2 Neither of her sons had returned home. Hans Dieter had been imprisoned after the bomb plot before escaping ahead of the Russians to the French occupation zone. His elder brother, Wolf Ulli, had last been heard of somewhere behind the Russian lines. Yet it was Fey and her only grandchildren she worried about the most.

  Ilse had not received the letters Fey and Detalmo had sent from Rome. But, incredibly, she had received the note that Fey dropped from the train the day she left Innsbruck. Hurriedly scrawled on a scrap of paper, and addressed to Ilse at Ebenhausen, it was to tell her mother that she was being transported east and that the SS had seized the children. This was the only information Ilse had and, with the chaos in Germany, she had no means of knowing whether her grandchildren had been found or whether indeed Fey had survived the camps.

  A devoted grandmother, she had been with her daughter when both boys were born. The thought that they might still be missing made her frantic. Yet w
ith one in four Germans searching for missing relatives, it was impossible to find out. The American Military Government in Munich was besieged by requests from people seeking information about their families and Ilse knew it was pointless to make the journey into the city. Besides, she had no means of getting there. Public transport was not working; the Gestapo had seized her husband’s car, and it was a 30-mile walk there and back.

  Then, almost a month after the end of the war, Dr Johannes Neuhäusler, the former Canon of Munich and one of Himmler’s Prominenten, sent news of Fey. She was well and in Rome with Detalmo. But he confirmed that the children were still missing. It was thought that they had been taken to an SS-run orphanage somewhere in Germany, where they had been given new names.

  ‘I realised that Fey and Detalmo would never get a permit to search for Corrado and Roberto,’ Ilse later explained; ‘I was their only hope. But where to start? Two small boys, whose names I didn’t know, among the millions of missing people scattered throughout the ex-Reich? SS and Gestapo officials who might have known about missing children had disappeared. The Allied authorities were refusing to help search for lost “enemy” children. Besides, I could not move except on foot. It upset me terribly but it seemed pointless to walk the length of Germany when the boys could be anywhere – Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia or even further east.’

  Early in June, her situation changed. While clearing the wreckage of Munich – removing tons of rubble and searching through abandoned buildings – the authorities found a dark blue BMW. They were able to identify it as the one confiscated from Ulrich von Hassell after his arrest in July 1944. Now, at least, Ilse had a car.

  First, however, she needed to secure the necessary petrol coupons and travel permits.

  Her quest led her to the American military headquarters in Munich, one of the few buildings left standing in the city. Formerly the national procurement office for the Sturmabteilung, a paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, the six-storey block was pitted with bullet holes. Ilse did not hold out much hope. There were queues of people inside, clamouring for permits and petrol coupons so that they too could go in search of missing relatives, and she did not think the Americans would give her an interview. ‘Yet I had no choice. I adjusted my black veil and walked in with as much dignity as possible.’

  To her surprise, after she had told her story to the soldier at the front desk, he immediately arranged for her to see Colonel Charles Keegan, the headquarters commander and military governor of Bavaria: ‘Keegan was a gentle middle-aged man, obviously shocked and distressed by what he had found in Germany. But his interest and sympathy were genuine. He wrote out a note requesting that the American authorities assist me. I could have hugged him! Nothing, I felt, nothing could stop me now!’

  Ilse spent most of that night sitting up with Almuth planning where to begin their search. With so many Germans looking for missing relatives, and with no help from the authorities, a rumour mill was in operation and there were reports that many children taken by the Gestapo had been put in children’s homes in the mountains in the south of Bavaria.

  The mountains were only a two-hour drive from Ebenhausen and, for want of a better lead, they decided to start there.

  The roads were clear, except for the occasional military convoy, and they reached the orphanage in Rottach, a small village on the shore of Lake Tegernsee, by mid morning. ‘I was so naïve,’ Ilse recalled; ‘I thought there would be records and people willing to help us. Instead, when we arrived at the children’s home there was just one directress, looking ragged and depressed.’

  As soon as she began to tell her about the boys, the woman interrupted her impatiently. ‘To her we were just another two people who had come to the door looking for lost children. Her indifference upset me: “No, the children you are looking for are not here. Nor in any of the homes nearby. I have visited them all by bicycle and identified all the children.” That was it. She made no effort to soften the blow.’

  Overwhelmed by the enormity of their task, Almuth and Ilse returned to Ebenhausen. A few days later, they received another message from Canon Neuhäusler, urging them to go to Bad Sachsa. The Stauffenberg and Goerdeler children had been found at an SS-run orphanage in the town and there was a chance that Corrado and Roberto were also there. But he said they must hurry: Bad Sachsa lay in the new Russian occupation zone and would soon be out of bounds.

  Situated on the old border with Czechoslovakia, the town was 350 miles from Ebenhausen and, before they could set off, they needed a new travel permit from the Americans. After a long wait to see Colonel Keegan, they were told that he was unable to issue a permit; the Americans had no jurisdiction over the Russian zone. But he thought the pass that he had given Ilse previously would get her as far as the frontier, and he advised her to try her luck anyway. Like Canon Neuhäusler, he insisted on the need to move quickly. In the confusion of the changeover, he thought she still had a chance.

  To Ilse’s frustration, the car broke down on the way back from Munich: ‘It was maddening. I just wanted to get going straight away. Instead I had to wait two days while it was repaired.’

  Had Fey been in touch with her mother, she could have told her that the dangerous journey she was about to embark on was futile. She knew the boys were not at Bad Sachsa. Sergeant Lenz had told her at Buchenwald.

  It was a full day’s drive to Bad Sachsa. In the last weeks of the war the Americans had advanced well into the Soviet occupation zone, negotiated with Stalin the previous October. Now that the agreement had been ratified, they were withdrawing and the roads were jammed with US Army trucks, filled with soldiers and equipment. With them came thousands of refugees, anxious not to be caught in the Russian sector. During the frequent stops, Ilse spoke to a number of them and they told her that Soviet troops were already preventing people from leaving the zone and many were trapped.

  The drive took longer than Ilse and Almuth expected and they stopped for the night at Göttingen. All the hotels were full and they had to sleep in the car. Göttingen was on the edge of the British zone, and the next morning, still hoping for a permit to go on to Bad Sachsa, they queued outside the British military headquarters. Ilse was told that the Russians had entered the town three days earlier and that access was now impossible. ‘I was totally exasperated but I knew we could not stop at that point. I was convinced the children were in the orphanage at Bad Sachsa. So I insisted. I begged and pleaded, and in the end the officer in charge gave in. He didn’t think the pass would be of any use but, as he said, “No harm in trying, Madame.”

  ‘As we approached the zone,’ Ilse continued, ‘we drove slowly forward more or less feeling our way from one village to the next. When we reached the last village before Bad Sachsa, refugees told us that a checkpoint had been set up to mark the beginning of the Russian zone. We crawled nervously up to the wooden barrier. Bad Sachsa was three kilometres behind it.’

  A British sergeant manned the barrier. Terrified of being trapped and not allowed back, Ilse did her best to persuade him to release one of his men to accompany her into the zone. But the sergeant was immovable. ‘He could not leave his post or release his men. He tried to persuade me to give up and turn back. When I refused, he advised me to leave all my papers, money and jewellery behind and go forward on foot, carrying only the photographs of the children. Then he said, “The Russians have no respect for British or American documents nor do they have any respect for women, particularly young women. Therefore, for heaven’s sake, leave your daughter behind and go alone.”’

  Ilse set out along the empty road, making a careful note of particular landmarks in case the Russians came and she had to flee across the fields back to the British zone. Arriving in Bad Sachsa in the early afternoon, she found the town completely dead. Not sure of the location of the orphanage, she went in search of the town hall. This was deserted too – or so she thought – but just as she was leaving she caught sight of a man sitting alone in an office on the ground floor. It turned out t
hat he was the mayor and, amazed at her courage in venturing into the town, he immediately offered to drive her to the orphanage. Looking at his watch, he said they would have to be quick. They could only get there, he explained, when the Russians were changing guard.

  The orphanage was in a commanding position at the top of a small hill. When they arrived, they found just two people there: the director, a large blonde woman of about fifty; and a small boy, aged around five, sitting on the porch, eating a plate of strawberries. Ilse showed her the pictures of Corrado and Robert. Studying them carefully, the woman assured her they had never been there: ‘After all the difficulty in getting to Bad Sachsa and such high hopes, it was a terrible let-down and I was very upset. I asked who the solitary child was, and she said he was one of Carl Goerdeler’s grandchildren. I offered to take him back with me, but she refused. She was under strict orders to release children to relatives only. I felt so sorry for that poor little soul.’

  The mayor drove Ilse back to the frontier: ‘Both of us were weeping; I, myself, from fatigue and disappointment, the mayor from general misery. Almuth was waiting at the barrier in a frantic state. She had seen two Russian guards walking toward the village. We drove back to Ebenhausen, totally disheartened. What next? What on earth were we going to do?’

  In the absence of any other leads, Ilse and Almuth decided to go to Innsbruck, where the children had been seized.

  It was a long shot, but Almuth remembered the names of the two SS officials she and her brother had dealt with when they had tried to visit Fey at the Gestapo prison in Adamgasse. If only the officials could be traced, this might yield something.

  First, Ilse had to get another travel permit from Colonel Keegan. ‘I had started to think of him as an old friend. He was charming and gracious as always but he threw cold water on the plan. “I’m afraid I just can’t help you this time, Mrs von Hassell. As of yesterday, Innsbruck is in French hands. If you still think it worth it, you will have to deal with the new French administration to obtain a permit.”’