From the Ashes

by Marion Kummerow

  “But I wonder, whether you couldn’t fill your quota of bathroom equipment in other buildings, and especially in the boroughs assigned to the Western allies, while sparing the university?” Werner hoped that Orlovski would follow the breadcrumbs and agree that it was more urgent to strip down the Western sectors, before the Americans made it to Berlin. It they were persistent enough to actually arrive here, that is.

  “Comrade Böhm, why should I do this? The university has a total of 87 undestroyed lavatories and 64 toilets in good condition. That’s close to five percent of my quota. And you will certainly agree with me that dismantling that amount of equipment from a single building is much more efficient than ravaging one hundred different buildings for one lavatory each.”

  Werner nodded. He understood the numbers. And now he knew Orlovski’s concern. “I completely agree with you. The numbers would make sense to anyone reasonable. But, on the other hand, it might be beneficial for you to spare the university.” Orlovski scowled and Werner hurried to add, “You see, I also have orders from Sokolov. Stalin himself wants to have an elite university that will stand up to every scrutiny from the imperialist West. The new Berlin University is destined to be an educational institution resembling the great University of Moscow, and will soon become the place where every German student wants to enroll.”

  Cold sweat ran down Werner’s back. He wasn’t lying. Norbert had boasted that Stalin himself had said such things. But his next words would be a slight stretch, and he would need to formulate them carefully to not get himself into hot water. “My only concerns are your time restraints.”

  Orlovski’s eyebrows twitched up into an expectant smirk. “I’m sure they are.”

  “If you dismantle the bathrooms now, I will then have to make a request for new bathroom equipment a week from now. And then your men who have worked so hard to strip the building, will have to return and install the same equipment they took out. This will cause your unit to waste precious time…” Werner stopped talking and let the captain draw his own conclusions about what way of action would be more beneficial for him. If Orlovski lived up to his reputation as an efficient engineer, he would despise the senseless double work.

  A long pause ensued, during which Orlovski rubbed his chin. When he raised his voice again, he said, “I appreciate your concern for my unit. We are spread thin as it is, with the situation in Berlin and the urgency to present the Americans with a fait accompli. Therefore, I will grant your wish to spare the university, in the hopes this may benefit you and the cause of re-educating the German people in an anti-fascist way.”

  Werner understood what was expected of him. “Thank you for your consideration, Comrade. I, and the entire education department will be deeply in your debt.”

  “Anything else you needed to discuss?” Orlovski asked.

  “No, thank you. I am very grateful to you.” Werner knew that at some time Orlovski would collect the favor he owned him, but it had been worth it. After all, he had to officially inaugurate the new Berlin University in little more than half a year. How, he had no idea.

  Chapter 4

  Marlene’s mother boiled water on a portable kerosene stove, adding a few crumpled potatoes. Together with some hard bread, this would be their family’s dinner.

  As usual, father slumped on his cot, murmuring curses at the Russians and at the German traitors who had signed the capitulation. Marlene glanced at his face, contorted with hate and grief. Poor man, he’s lost so much .

  She feared for her father’s mind but had no idea how to help him. Even her mother’s determination seemed to deteriorate by the day. Marlene believed it was due to the fact that her parents never ventured outside. Who could stay in their right minds in this hellish, moldy, and dark basement? But as much as she begged them to go out into the streets, they always refused. Too dangerous .

  But up there it wasn’t much more dangerous than down here. If the Ivans wanted something, they simply knocked on the door. Her musings were interrupted by such a knock. The tension in the room flared like a sudden fire and three pairs of eyes were glued to the door. Marlene’s breathing stopped.

  This was her worst nightmare. It had happened before and everyone in the room refused to remember. With bated breath she waited, hoping the knocker would go away. After a while another, very faint knock.

  Marlene got up, but her mother whispered, “Don’t. The soldiers.”

  “Mother, please. The soldiers would knock more forcefully. Someone might need our help.”

  “You can’t know this,” her mother protested.

  From outside the door sounded a shuffle and a desperate high-pitched groan. “It’s a woman, for sure,” Marlene said. “We have to open the door.” She glanced at her father, but since he didn’t even look in her direction, she forewent his approval and walked over to the door to open it.

  “Oh my God! Whatever happened to you?” Marlene exclaimed at the same moment, as the young woman standing outside staggered into her arms. Her formerly beautiful black waist-long hair looked like a matted bird’s nest and her brown eyes were filled with horror. The gray-green dress, that must have been fashionable in a former life, hung in rags from her body, dirt and dried blood smeared all over her.

  “Marlene…” the young woman hissed.

  Marlene recognized the voice, but it took her a while to match the face of this wretch to her childhood friend. “Zara…? Is this really you?”

  Zara nodded. Feeling that her friend’s legs were about to give out, Marlene grabbed her tight around the waist and dragged her into the basement room. Meanwhile Marlene’s mother eyed the visitor.

  “What are you thinking to bring her inside? Who is this filthy person?” Mother scolded her.

  “Mother, please, this is Zara Ulbert. Don’t you remember her?” Marlene responded, ignoring her mother’s shocked face and leading Zara across the room to settle her on her own cot.

  “You’re not serious about letting her stay here? Look at her. I’m sure she’s full of lice and God only knows what else.”

  Marlene looked at her mother with a stunned expression. “Can’t you see that she’s hurt and needs our help?”

  “I can see that alright. But we can’t help her, she needs to go to the hospital,” Mother insisted.

  “Oh…since you never venture outside, it must have passed by you, that there aren’t any working hospitals right now. At least not for mere mortals like us.” Marlene knew this was not an appropriate way to talk to her mother, but she couldn’t help herself.

  “One more reason to not let her inside. What if she’s contagious? Has typhus? She’s a threat to our safety.” Mother pursed her lips, sending a helpless glance in the direction of her husband, who seemed too consumed with an old newspaper to even notice. He’d long stopped being the patriarch of the family.

  “Mother, Zara used to be my best friend at school, how can you expect me to send her away when she is in need? Let me at least tend to her wounds,” Marlene begged.

  Zara who hadn’t uttered a word until now, made to get up. She stood on swaying feet and said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here.”

  “Yes, you should not.” Marlene’s father suddenly joined the conversation. “Your father is a war criminal. Your very existence in our house is compromising us. Best if you leave right now.”

  Marlene looked back and forth between her parents and Zara. When had they turned into stonehearted monsters? Here was a badly injured woman, needing their help and her mother was worried about lice, while her father feared being connected to a Nazi.

  Zara had been Marlene’s best friend, until Karl Ulbert had been transferred to occupied Poland four years ago. Back then her family hadn’t known that Ulbert was one of the masterminds of the so-called death camps erected all over Poland and later became the commandant of the extermination camp in Mauthausen.

  In after-war Germany he was one of the most-wanted war criminals. But her father’s profession wasn’t Zara’s fault.
Like Marlene herself, she was born in 1925, much too young to have played an active role in the Nazi hierarchy. Marlene shook her head in disbelief.

  Zara apparently misunderstood the gesture and her shoulders slumped as she shuffled to the door.

  A sudden iciness in her limbs impeded Marlene from moving and she watched her miserable friend reaching for the door. Then, a sudden burst of anger attacked her and she cried out, “No. Don’t leave.” She raised her chin and looked at her parents, “We can’t let her go. She’ll die without our help.”

  It wasn’t clear who was more shocked by Marlene’s open revolt against her father’s wishes: her parents, or she. Trembling with fear and rage, she wiped all thoughts of future consequences aside, and reached for Zara. “Please lie down on my cot. I will get a doctor.”

  “Thank you,” Zara whispered.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.” Marlene fetched a glass of water for her friend and gave her a bowl of soup, ignoring the glowering stares from her mother. Then she covered Zara with a blanket and ventured outside to find the family doctor, Doctor Ebert.

  He had known her since she was a baby girl and she was sure he would help. Outside early summer heat engulfed her, but didn’t stop her shivering. In front of her mother, she’d put on a brave face, but truth be told, she was scared to death every time she surfaced from the basement. She never wanted to relive the experience she had with one of the Red Army soldiers, shortly after the Russians occupied Berlin.

  Dr. Ebert lived only a few blocks away, but it took her the better part of an hour to get there, because twice she needed to circumvent heaps of rubble she couldn’t cross. With a thumping heart she knocked at his door.

  His elderly mother opened, giving her a toothless smile, “If that isn’t Marlene Kupfer. How have you been, my dear? Isn’t it such a shame what is happening with our Berlin? But maybe we deserved it.”

  “Yes, Frau Ebert. Is Dr. Ebert here? A friend of mine is badly injured.”

  “Oh dear, he’s not home. He’s in the hospital. Would you like to wait?”

  Marlene was surprised. “He works in a hospital now?”

  “Oh no, not a real one like before the collapse. It’s just an empty place where he takes the seriously ill. If you want you can find him there, it’s two blocks down the street.”

  Marlene found the address easily. As Frau Ebert had mentioned, it was just a dilapidated building that miraculously featured running water. She found the doctor up to his elbows inside the gut of a patient.

  Her stomach recoiled at the repulsive sight, but the moment Dr. Ebert became aware of her presence, he barked an order without as much as a glance in her direction. “Hand me the needle over there, will you?”

  She swallowed the vomit rising in her throat and did as she was told. Torn between disgust and curiosity, she opted to look the other way while the doctor stitched up the person lying on the cot.

  “Knife wound,” he explained and finally looked at Marlene. “Now. The bandage please.” His hand pointed to a table filled with smudged bandages that definitely had been used before.

  She picked one up and handed it to the doctor, who wrapped it around the waist of the groaning woman.

  “Shush, shush. You’ll be fine,” he murmured in his deep soothing voice. Then he walked over to the sink to wash his hands and said to Marlene, “As cruel as it sounds, but these women would be better off not resisting the Russians forcing themselves on them.”

  Marlene swallowed. She didn’t want to be reminded. Then she remembered the reason for her visit. “Dr. Ebert, can you come to my place, please? A friend has been severely injured, and I am afraid she won’t make it without a doctor.”

  His shoulders slumped, and she noticed the utter exhaustion in his eyes. But it took only a few seconds for him to recover and nod his agreement. “Let me grab my bag.” He packed some things into his huge doctor’s bag and, before leaving the hospital, he pulled on a dirty white coat with a red cross on the back.

  “That has proven quite useful,” he explained, giving her a second one. “Even the Russians respect us medics, because they might need us one day.”

  Together they hurried to Marlene’s apartment building and by sheer miracle they weren’t stopped or harassed on the way. Fifteen minutes later they stood in front of the basement door and she knocked three times. “Mother, Father, it’s me Marlene. I am with Dr. Ebert.”

  She heard a shuffling from the other side of the door and moments later her mother opened to let them inside. When she saw the doctor, she smiled. “Dr. Ebert, how nice of you to visit with us.”

  The doctor glanced slightly confused between her mother and Marlene. “I thought this wasn’t a social call?”

  “It’s not. My friend Zara Ulbert needs your attention,” Marlene hurried to say. Then she motioned for the doctor to follow her across the room to where Zara was lying motionless on the cot, with a pained grimace on her face.

  “Zara Ulbert... Wasn’t her father the commandant of Mauthausen?” Dr. Ebert asked.

  “Yes, that’s him,” Marlene said, fear chilling her bones. Would the doctor refuse to treat Zara because of her father’s crimes?

  “I’ve heard half the Red Army is after him,” he said, while kneeling down beside Zara.

  “We didn’t invite her in, she literally fell through our door,” Mother said, following the doctor into the corner of the room. “And she cannot stay here. We were hoping you could take her with you.”

  Dr. Ebert ignored her and took a closer look at Zara. “Pretty badly roughed up,” he murmured and opened his bag to examine the young woman. He demanded water and cleaned and stitched her wounds, the expression on his face growing more sorrowful with every passing minute.

  When he was finished, he turned around and said, “Zara has a high fever and I’m afraid some of the wounds have been infected. This girl has been through a lot and needs constant care.” He looked pointedly at Marlene’s mother. “Frau Kupfer, while I agree with you that she would be better off in a hospital, there’s no way to transport her, even if we found a hospital willing to take her in. As far as I know the only one currently operating is the Charité and the Russian soldiers going in and out would have a feast with this young lady.”

  “But we can’t keep her here,” her mother protested. “We barely have enough space for ourselves, let alone food.”

  Chapter 5

  Colonel Dean Harris was getting annoyed. His orders were to take an American reconnaissance unit into Berlin to take hold of their assigned boroughs. The convoy with over one hundred vehicles had reached the demarcation line at the Elbe bridge in Dessau hours earlier.

  His superiors had warned him, the Russians might be difficult and had urged him to stay composed, no matter what. But so far, the exact opposite had happened. The Russian Colonel Gorelik had behaved as if long lost friends had finally reunited and put up a welcome party that would put a royal wedding to shame.

  Just a few minutes earlier, a Soviet sergeant had settled in front of a piano to play horrible tune after horrible tune. Dean was anxious to continue his journey, because from the demarcation line it was still over one hundred miles drive to Berlin.

  For whatever strange reasons the Russians were playing for time, not wanting him to continue on his journey. But he didn’t have the slightest inclination to stay in Dessau for one minute longer. His orders were to lead a reconnaissance unit to Berlin and he would do so, come hell or high water.

  Dean got up and walked over to his Russian counterpart Colonel Gorelik. “Colonel, I must insist, that we leave now.”

  Gorelik smiled at him. “Music nice, yes?”

  Dean suspected that Gorelik spoke English well enough, and only pretended not to understand. He groaned inwardly and wished for his translator to be here, but the Russians wisely had invited only a few officers to the welcome party, leaving the rest of his roughly five hundred men to wait in the vehicles. His anger was bottling up inside and would soon explod
e, if nothing moved forward.

  “Translator!” he demanded harsher than he’d meant to.

  Gorelik motioned for a sergeant to get the Russian translator, who’d conveniently disappeared half an hour ago. It took three more awful songs from the piano player, until the man finally showed up.

  Dean explained to him with the little patience he had left that he wanted to leave for Berlin this very instant.

  “Certainly, Colonel Harris. We understand your eagerness to arrive at the capital and you’re free to leave any time you wish.”

  “Great, thanks,” Dean said, sighing with relief.

  “But, one last question I must ask: How many officers, men and vehicles do you have with you?”

  It was a strange question to ask, but by now Dean had seen too many Russian follies to think anything of it. They probably had counted the members of his convoy several times by now, so he saw no reason to be evasive. “Roughly five hundred men and one hundred twenty vehicles.”

  As soon as Dean’s words had been translated, Colonel Gorelik shook his head with a sad face and said something in Russian. The translator repeated his words in English, “The colonel is disconsolate, but the agreement allows only 37 officers, 50 vehicles and 175 ordinary men.”

  What the hell? Dean wanted to shake some sense into the blockheaded bureaucrats in front of him and asked with barely concealed aggression, “What agreement?”

  The Russians seemed to enjoy the altercation and the translator coldly answered, “The Berlin agreement.”

  Dean didn’t blink an eye, even though he had never heard of such an agreement before and was pretty sure it didn’t exist. Although one could never be too confident that some off-handed diplomatic remarks hadn’t been taken literally, and this was an honest misunderstanding. The urge to strangle both his superiors and the Russians for getting him into such a delicate position made the vein in his temple pulsate.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know of any such agreement,” he hedged.

  “Well, I do,” Gorelik answered.

  Dean thought for a moment about how best to tackle this issue. He couldn’t well send home two-thirds of his convoy on the grounds of a mysterious treaty he’d never heard about. Seeing the lazy smile on Gorelik’s face, he addressed the translator, “May I please see a copy of this Berlin agreement?”