From the Ashes

by Marion Kummerow

  A lazy grin crossed his face, “If this is your wish, I’m sure one of my Mongol soldiers would be willing to bestow his attention upon you, Fräulein Kupfer.”

  An icy hand gripped her heart and Marlene wished to shrink and disappear into a bomb crater. He couldn’t be serious about his threat, could he? Thankfully she didn’t have to explore the seriousness of Böhm’s words, because Georg entered the room.

  “What’s going on here?” Georg asked, concern written all over his face.

  “The Soviets have come to evict us, because our hospital hasn’t been properly authorized,” Dr. Ebert explained.

  Marlene noticed the steep crease forming on Georg’s forehead, even though his voice was calm. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “I am very serious, as is this gentleman here.” Dr. Ebert pointed at Böhm. “Herr Böhm is a member of the Soviet military government and chairman of the culture and education taskforce of the Gentner group.”

  Georg’s head swiveled around with an expression of disbelief in his eyes. The two men were about the same age, but couldn’t look more different. The Muscovite was blond, tall, and had an air of authority about him, while the German was shorter, thinner, with brown hair and friendly brown eyes.

  During the past days Marlene had come to appreciate Georg’s warmth and kindness. He had a God-given talent at handling the patients and never once raised his voice even during the most frustrating moments. She knew he would become a great doctor once he could take up his studies again.

  Böhm seemed to feel the need to say something and raised his voice. “I am truly sorry for the inconvenience, I’m merely following my orders and I trust that you will have it vacated by tomorrow morning.”

  Marlene glared at him, but knew better than to engage him again. He was a monster. Like all the Russians.

  “Why would the Soviet Command do such a thing?” Georg asked as soon as Böhm had left the building, the soldiers trailing behind. “They must not be aware of the dire situation.”

  Georg was a bright young man, but he was also very trusting, always believing in the good in people. There was just one problem — the Soviet governors weren’t good people. As far as Marlene was concerned, the bastards were obsessed with power and had little concern for individual lives.

  “What are we going to do now?” Marlene asked.

  “I don’t know,” Dr. Ebert’s shoulders slumped and he suddenly looked aged beyond his years. He had worked miracles, after Bruni’s lover had organized the penicillin, and Zara was on the way to recovery. Marlene was forever indebted to him and she wished she could comfort him, tell him everything would be all right.

  “I may have an idea,” Georg said. “Let me check, I’ll be back in an hour.” Even before he finished speaking, he sprinted from the building, leaving Marlene and Dr. Ebert wondering what he was up to.

  As promised, he returned about an hour later with a bright smile on his boyish face. “I found a room!” He blurted out. “It’s in the American sector, and it’s perfect. It has running water. And electricity. This is so much better than what we have here, and I already talked to the American administration and they are okay with us using the entrance hall for our field hospital.”

  “That’s such fantastic news.” Marlene hugged Georg and even Dr. Ebert mustered a smile.

  “We should move right away. Better not run into those thugs again tomorrow,” Marlene suggested.

  “They aren’t all bad. Berlin is a mess and they need to adapt first.” Georg as always tried to see the positive in every person.

  “Well, they could have adapted without forcing themselves on every woman in town and stealing every last valuable piece,” Marlene growled. As nice as Georg was, why on earth did he have to defend the Russian monsters?

  “I agree, that wasn’t appropriate, but this behavior has stopped. The Soviet Command probably had no idea their troops were going on a rampage like that.”

  Marlene glared at him, “Why do you still believe the Russians have a single good bone in their bodies? Evidence suggests otherwise.”

  “We have to give them a chance. They came here to implement an anti-fascist and democratic government. This cannot be done in a few weeks; therefore we need to be patient and in two or three years from now we can judge them on their merits.”

  As far as Marlene was concerned, she didn’t want to wait three years. She had made her decision the moment the Americans arrived and miraculously had not behaved the same way as the Russian beasts. The Americans were another unwelcome occupying power and she wished them gone sooner rather than later, but in their presence, she at least didn’t have to fear for her physical safety.

  Chapter 9

  Dean had learned to hate the meetings in the Allied Kommandatura with a passion. It was the governing body of Berlin, consisting of the commandants and their deputies of each of the four victorious powers.

  He didn’t doubt the good intentions of the statesmen who’d decided at the Yalta conference to govern Berlin as a quadripartite city with unanimous vote. But the Soviets had turned the institution into a veritable battlefield with them on one side and reason on the other side.

  It wasn’t different on this day, when General Sokolov complained, “This behavior is an affront to our sovereignty and cannot go unpunished!”

  Dean felt the pulse in his temple and whispered to his translator, “What’s he want this time?”

  “More reparations,” Bob hissed.

  “Oh no! Not the reparations again. Haven’t they already stolen everything that’s not nailed down?” Dean leaned back in his chair. Sokolov was on a roll and that meant more endless hours of abuse. Why, oh why, had Eisenhower refused to attack Berlin and given the Soviets first dibs?

  As Dean had expected, Sokolov launched into a lengthy tirade about the great Soviet Union and their courageous war heroes who had borne the brunt of the Nazi attack and single-handedly won the war. He elaborated on how the Red Army had broken the backbone of the Wehrmacht in Stalingrad and thus deserved all the praise, while the Western allies actually had done little to nothing except in the last throes of the war, which didn’t do much more than shorten it by a few weeks at most.

  Everybody in the room, including Sokolov himself, knew this wasn’t true. It was thanks to the American lend and lease act in 1941, under which thousands of locomotives, rail cars, aircraft, trucks, machine guns, ammunition, medicine and what not, were given to the Soviets, that had made the victory at Stalingrad possible.

  “It’s intolerable that our military personnel is held back at the sector border and our trucks are searched before being allowed to cross.” Sokolov stared directly at Dean, and waved with a document as he continued, “Here it clearly states that military personnel of the victorious powers are free to move around all of Berlin.”

  Dean sighed. He knew he’d get a mouthful from General Clay as soon as the Soviets took this up to the superordinate Allied Control Council that effectively had the same function for all of Germany as the Kommandatura had for Berlin.

  “General, please, let’s stick to the facts. You had two months to pilfer every single piece of value from Berlin.” Dean noticed with delight how Sokolov’s face reddened. “And you may continue to do so in your own sector, but I warned you several weeks back that your soldiers are not welcome to come to our boroughs and steal what belongs to us.”

  “In the Yalta conference we were awarded ten billion Reichsmark!” Sokolov shouted.

  I’m sure you have extracted more than that already. Lying thieves that you are . Dean was wise enough not to voice his thoughts, because he didn’t want to stir unnecessary trouble. His own government was filled with appeasers, bowing to every Soviet whim, somehow hoping they would change and become model world citizens if they acquiesced to enough of their demands.

  Hadn’t those appeasers learned their lesson with Hitler? The Russians were the world’s biggest liars, swindlers, and cutthroats, intent on skinning their trade partners
alive. They couldn’t be trusted, because they promised anything, signed anything, provided it was beneficial for them, and then would scrap the pledge the moment it didn’t suit them anymore.

  “Nobody said you’d get them all at once and certainly not by stealing from our sector what we need to rebuild the city. I will hold up your trucks at the sector border until you stop stealing from us,” Dean said and noticed with joy the helpless expression in Sokolov’s face.

  The French and British commandants both kept quiet, which Dean had come to expect. The Frenchman rarely said a word and if he did it was to diplomatically calm the waves, while the Englishman might rant and throw hissy fits, but never go into open confrontation with Sokolov.

  Apparently, the only person standing in the way of Russian dominion over Berlin was Dean. The burden weighed heavily on his shoulders and he lay awake at night, trying to conjure up ways to keep the Soviets from stealing the city from under his ass. He’d even resorted to sleeping with his pistol under the pillow, thanks to anonymous death threats and telephone terror that he attributed to the Russians.

  But if Sokolov believed he could wear him down, he’d come up against the wrong opponent. Dean wasn’t called blockheaded for no reason, and the more clubs Sokolov threw between his legs, the more he set his ambitions on resisting him.

  Dean asked his driver to take him to the Café de Paris. The nightclub was in the French sector and had the reputation to have the best food, the most talented singers, most beautiful waitresses and plenty of pretty women willing to keep an Allied officer company. Just what he needed to wind down after ten grueling hours of not reaching a single common point at the Kommandatura.

  The Café de Paris did not disappoint, and he settled at the table with a group of French officers he knew, when a new singer stepped on the stage. She was announced as Fräulein von Sinnen and looked absolutely stunning with her shiny platinum-blonde hair carefully combed into soft waves. Her beautiful face with blue eyes was styled to perfection with whatever tricks women used to make their eyes appear big and bright. She wore a full-length glittery silver dress with thousands of sequins sewn onto it that hugged her female figure like a glove – both the dress and the soft curves were a rare remnant of Berlin’s grandeur before the capitulation.

  He wondered what Fräulein von Sinnen’s backstory was and how she’d managed to elevate herself above millions of miserable, starving women in the capital. There simply wasn’t enough food in the city to properly feed the population, not even on the black market.

  Officially, Dean frowned upon the black market, but he rarely ever took an action against it, especially not since his arch enemy Sokolov had chosen to aggravate the food situation further by using the produce from the neighboring states Brandenburg and Mecklenburg to feed his army, and not the Berliners. But that was another point where he didn’t see eye to eye with the Russian…

  Fräulein von Sinnen started to sing a Zarah Leander song and the unpleasantness of Dean’s day dissipated. Mesmerized by her extraordinary voice he hung on every note and wished he could spend his days with her, instead of battling General Sokolov at the Kommandatura.

  After her performance he asked the waitress to send her a bottle of champagne with his compliments and the question whether she would be willing to join him at this table.

  The waitress returned with a polite refusal and later he saw Fräulein von Sinnen leave the nightclub in the company of Captain Orlovski. Another Russian he wished to send packing.

  Chapter 10

  Werner leaned back in his chair in his – now fully furnished – office at the university building. They had been swamped with applications, but they’d had to reject almost two thirds of the applicants.

  Officially to weed out Nazis, but Norbert had soon told him to give preference to members of the communist and social-democratic parties, because students vetted in line with Soviet interests would prevent possible trouble later on.

  The growing dissatisfaction of the Berliners with their Soviet occupiers had been a frequent discussion among the Gentner group and Werner was one of the few who promoted a more lenient and amiable treatment of the Germans to build a resilient relationship based on trust rather than fear. But most everyone else, including Norbert, favored the solution to dole out favors to politically reliable people while basically excluding the rest from public life – just like the Nazis had done.

  Even though Werner feared that the Soviet policies would lead down a slippery slope to something resembling the fascist regime they all hated, he never mentioned this to anyone.

  After the warning issued by General Sokolov he meticulously guarded his tongue and never uttered a single word of criticism at whatever directive came his way. Even Norbert had praised him for his behavior and called him a model communist.

  So why was Werner so annoyed with himself? He suspected he knew the reason, but was too cowardly to admit it, even to himself. Once upon a time he had been a hopeful and enthusiastic student, believing in the cause and the merits of communism. A people’s revolution that brought wealth, freedom and appreciation for everyone.

  Right now, he wasn’t so sure anymore. The fruitful discourse about theories and policies he so enjoyed was all but nonexistent these days. Actually, in hindsight, a true discourse had never happened. The professors in Moscow had indulged the students to play devil’s advocate as long as the devil’s arguments were inherently flawed, and in the end, everyone came to the conclusion that Stalin was always right.

  He scoffed. Phony discussions! Young and malleable people led by experienced men, until the students completely stopped thinking for themselves. Shamefully he had to admit he’d fallen prey to the same pretentious omniscience. Until he came to Berlin and experienced real life. Things were not the way Moscow wanted everyone to believe.

  Werner winced at the memory of the beautiful brunette nurse glaring at him with her expressive eyes and yelling at him that he was a Soviet monster, forcing his filthy propaganda on her people.

  And she wasn’t wrong. From the moment General Sokolov had inaugurated Rundfunk Berlin , the new radio station, with the words, “ Hier spricht Berlin ”, this is Berlin speaking, all the radio did was twist the truth, propagate blatant lies, report biased or outright false news, and vilify the Americans. All of this in an attempt to assuage the Berliners’ hate for their Soviet oppressors with sweet words.

  A knock on the door ended his musings. A familiar looking man in his late twenties entered the office, but Werner couldn’t place a name or location to the face.

  “ Guten Tag , Herr Böhm, I’m Georg Tauber,” the man said, handing him his student application. Werner was sure he’d never heard the name before, but the face was strangely familiar.

  “Please sit down.” He motioned at the chair in front of his desk and leafed through the application form. “You want to study medicine?”

  “Yes, Herr Böhm.”

  “Do you have any previous experience?” He glanced at the young man with the curly brown hair who was about his own age.

  “Actually, yes. I studied four semesters of medicine here in Berlin before the war.” Georg Tauber seemed unsure whether he should offer more information, so Werner prodded him, “Please continue and give me a short summary of what happened since.”

  “In 1941 the Nazis drafted me and sent me to the Eastern Front. After my return I wasn’t allowed to continue my studies, because I refused to join the Nazi party. You must know, I was a member of the Christian Democratic Party.”

  Werner’s ears perked up. “What happened then?”

  “Well,” Georg smirked. “The Nazis assigned me to work in an armaments factory, but they weren’t at all pleased to find out that I told people about the atrocities committed at the Eastern Front. Before I knew, I was on my way to the Mauthausen concentration camp, where American troops liberated me earlier this year. Just recently I returned to Berlin and am now helping a doctor with his patients.”

  Werner glanced at the
two Russian guards in the corners of the office. It was a policy to never let anyone speak alone with people who weren’t proven politically reliable. Although he doubted the guards understood a lot of German.

  “That is quite the impressive anti-fascist biography you have here. I would like to suggest you for the student board. We need valiant anti-fascists like you for the denazification process. And I can’t think of a better suited man for this position than you, a courageous man who opposed the Nazis from the very beginning regardless of the personal consequences.”

  “Thank you, Herr Böhm. It would be an honor for me to serve on the student board.”

  Werner was pleased. “I’ll let my superior know. Would you please wait outside?”

  As soon as Georg Tauber had left, Werner glanced at his wristwatch. It was already early afternoon. While Werner preferred to work during German office hours, Norbert had adopted the Russian habit of not showing up before noon.

  He picked up the phone and called Norbert’s office. “ Guten Tag , Comrade Norbert. I have just interviewed an applicant who turns out to be a camp survivor and I should like you to have a word with him. He would be a perfect candidate for the student board.”

  “Is he a communist?”

  “No, he’s a Christian Democrat.” Even through the phone Werner saw Norbert’s face scrunching up and he hurried to add, “He is a convinced anti-fascist and as you said yourself, we have to make our institutions look democratic for the sake of the other Allies. Therefore, I believed it to be a good idea to have a few non-communists on the student board for good measure.”

  “Hmm…that is actually quite clever, Werner. You have learned your lesson well. I am glad your little chat with General Sokolov has put your head straight.”

  Werner gave a sour smile. “Will you want to talk to him?”

  “Yes, please have him come to my office in an hour.”

  “Thank you.” Werner disconnected the call and asked the Russian guard to order Herr Tauber inside. Then he said, “Herr Tauber, my boss Norbert Gentner would like to meet you and discuss the further process directly with you.