From the Ashes

by Marion Kummerow

  “What’s the matter?” Marlene asked her.

  “Nothing,” Zara said, but taking a single look into her frightful eyes, Marlene knew there was a whole lot of nothing going on.

  “Come in, and I’ll make us tea,” Lotte offered.

  Once the three of them were sitting around the kitchen table with a cup of tea in their hands, Marlene finally coaxed Zara into telling them the reason for her distress. She’d been harassed by Russian soldiers when leaving the restaurant where she worked in the French sector.

  “Thankfully, a couple of French soldiers heard my screams and intervened,” Zara said miserably. “If I’m not safe in the Western sectors, where else will I be safe from these beasts?”

  “Not in Berlin,” Lotte said, and both her friends stared at her.

  “Are you saying Zara should move to the West Germany?” Marlene asked in disbelief.

  “There she would be safe from the Russians, as they can’t go walking around in the other zones.” Lotte took another sip from her cup.

  “But how? It’s not like people can just move around as they please,” Zara sighed. “I would need a permit, and a job. I don’t even know anyone outside Berlin.”

  “I can ask around,” Lotte offered. “My sister works for the American hospital and she has quite a few friends there.”

  Once again Marlene was grateful that she had moved out of the Soviet sector after that fateful night. The notion of what could have happened to her still sent shudders of angst deep into her soul. Even though she was still angry at Werner for breaking her heart, she secretly thanked him for rescuing her and wished she could one day see him again under different circumstances.

  But so far it didn’t look as if politics would ever leave her life. Maybe she should consider moving to the Western zone as well? But the next moment she shivered at the idea. Berlin was her home, she’d never lived anywhere else and she couldn’t fathom leaving the city she loved so much.

  Putting on blinders and keeping her head down was the best way to weather the current tension. She and the other Germans were only pawns in the game about their own future.

  Several days later she and Lotte listened to the Soviet-controlled Radio Berlin and she dropped the cup filled with tea when the radio speaker announced an important news program with the newly appointed radio chief editor Werner Böhm.

  The hot liquid spilled across the kitchen table and dripped to the floor, despite Lotte’s efforts to contain the damage. Marlene herself sat frozen in place, rapt by Werner’s sonorous voice as he announced, “In the matter of the illegal and radical protests by some students against the wellbeing of the working population, the two main perpetrators Georg Tauber and Julian Berger have confessed their crimes and retracted from the hateful imperialist propaganda they have spewed.”

  Marlene glued her ears to the radio, Werner’s image appearing in her mind and she listened full of horror as he read first Julian’s and then Georg’s confession.

  “That can’t be true!” she yelled. “Georg would never say such a thing.”

  Lotte put a hand on her arm, trying to calm her down. “Maybe he did it to save himself or his family. You know what the others have said…”

  “No, no, no…” Marlene slumped onto the table, her head resting on her forearm and she barely heard the conclusion of Werner’s speech. “…these two parasites to the people have no place in our democratic state and according to their heinous crimes they have been sentenced to twenty-five years of hard labor.”

  “No!” she yelled with all her strength and jumped up from the table, ready to storm out of the apartment and take on the world.

  Lotte stepped into her path and said, “You need to calm down. There’s nothing you can do. Or do you want to join them in Siberia?”

  Marlene slumped back on her chair, disillusioned by the world. “I’m not going back. I’m dropping out,” she muttered.

  “Don’t be irrational, you can’t give up now.” Lotte poured her some more tea.

  “Irrational? Me? The Russian thugs are irrational! I’ll never set foot into that wretched place again,” Marlene said bitterly.

  “If you give up, then the Russians win,” Lotte replied. “They don’t care if you stay or quit. You make no difference to them. The only person you will be hurting by stopping your studies is yourself.”

  “I know you’re right, but how can I carry on as if nothing has happened? Oh, God, there has to be something I can do to help Georg and Julian.” Marlene held her head in her hands as if it was going to burst.

  “Maybe there’s nothing but keep studying, so one day we become lawyers and may help others unjustly arrested.” Lotte looked as desperate as Marlene felt. They sat for a few moments in silence, before Lotte said, “You know what? Let’s go shopping!”

  “Shopping?” Marlene looked at her friend in stunned amazement, certain the other woman had completely lost her mind. Almost two years after the war there was rarely anything to be found on the shelves, except for food and the most basic necessities of life.

  “Yes. Let’s go to the black market.” Lotte broke out into a huge grin, already anticipating the joys of window-shopping at the area around Tiergarten in the British sector.

  Marlene of course knew that the black market existed and desperate Germans disposed of everything not in immediate need, like fine clothing, jewelry, silverware, paintings and children’s toys. Buyers were mostly the Allied soldiers, or those who worked for them, but also army-issue goods like watches, clothes and rations could be found, discreetly sold by those in the business of bartering between occupiers and occupied.

  Out of fear of being caught, Marlene had never been there herself. It was well known that the British frequently raided the market but could never really shut it down. Rumors had it that they once picked up a Russian general engaged in illicit trading, but the Allied personnel were never sent to prison for such a crime, unlike the Germans doing the same.

  Maybe the thrill of visiting the forbidden market would take her mind off Georg’s awful fate.

  “Okay, let’s go,” Marlene said, and she grabbed her hat and coat.

  Chapter 32

  Werner left the radio station after the program where he condemned the two young men and read the fake confessions he’d been forced to write himself.

  Disgusted was too benign a word for what he felt. While he hadn’t tortured the men himself, he’d been the willing tool of those who couldn’t defend socialism without resorting to violence. He hunched his shoulders forward, the gnawing pain in his stomach becoming more forceful every day.

  Politische Bauchschmerzen , political stomachache it was called among those people who still believed one should put country over party and not the other way round. He scoffed. The situation was long beyond the question of party or country and had come down to human decency.

  Julian and Georg were good men, not the heinous traitors they were painted to be. Both of them had resisted the Nazis, the same way they now resisted the Soviet oppression. And the so-called communists treated them the same way the Nazis had done: sending the men to a concentration camp.

  Georg could have thrown Werner under the bus by revealing his part in the American shooting of the Russian soldiers who tried to rape the German girl, but even under extreme torture he never did. Werner admired and envied the upstanding character of the young man who chose torture and death rather than undermine his integrity.

  He did not recognize the theories of Marx and Lenin anymore. These great thinkers had always striven for a better, more just world for the oppressed workers and farmers. But Stalin had perverted the communist ideal and transformed it into a tool of terror, inequality and unlawfulness. Every single critical thought could result in arrest, incarceration or even death.

  With sudden clarity of mind, he realized that Stalinism was exactly what George Orwell had written about in his book Animal Farm , published two years earlier. The critical book, although it never mentioned the Soviet Uni
on or Stalin, had been put on the index of forbidden books in the Soviet zone the moment it was first published, but here in Berlin, Werner had been able to find a copy in a British library.

  Dominion of the swine, how fitting. And I must be one of the cruel and merciless dogs, keeping the other animals at bay. A painful ache drilled through his heart. Marlene had called him a beast who sold his soul to the devil.

  He couldn’t continue to live with blood on his hands, couldn’t continue to be a Russian stooge.

  He just couldn’t.

  But what should he do?

  For the next weeks he went through his daily tasks like an automaton. He didn’t find joy in anything anymore, always afraid of the consequences of his actions. A thousand times he pondered telling someone about his political stomachaches, but never uttered more than a few carefully disguised insinuations.

  He knew there must be likeminded independent thinkers, but all of them carefully withheld their true feelings, just like he did.

  One day he visited Norbert on a social occasion and used the opportunity to address his concerns.

  “Don’t you think the German people should be able to experience the merits of the communist ideology without force? I mean, wouldn’t that endear us more to them?” he asked.

  Norbert raised an eyebrow, as if deeply worried. “Those are the words of a very naïve person. You really should know better by now.”

  Werner knew he should shut up, but he tried again. “I’m just concerned. For some strange reasons the Berliners preferred to vote for the imperialists last December. And since then the anti-Soviet mood has only augmented. What will happen in another election? Aren’t you afraid they will wipe us out completely?”

  “We’re taking precautions already,” Norbert said. “There will never be a lost election for the SED again. You’d better forget your qualms and arrive in the real world.” And then he added with a warning undertone, “You wouldn’t want to risk your career by saying something foolish.”

  “Not at all.” Werner instinctively stood taller, demonstrating to the First Secretary of the SED that he didn’t have any dissenting ideas. He had maneuvered himself into a corner with no way out except into a Gulag.

  Several days later he attended an official event to celebrate the second anniversary of the German capitulation in the SMAD headquarters in Karlshorst. The huge ballroom with the five-yard-high ceiling was decorated with the flags of the four occupying powers and long rows of tables with dark green tablecloths were set with the finest china and crystal glassware for a formidable state banquet.

  The host, General Sokolov, had spared neither trouble nor expense to dish up the most exquisite delicacies for the guests from the other Allied powers. Crimean champagne, caviar, borscht, solyanka, pirozhki, pelmeni, and beef stroganoff were just a few of the prepared dishes.

  Throughout the six-course dinner, glorious speech after glorious speech was given by Soviet dignitaries, praising how the Red Army had single-handedly won World War Two and liberated Europe from the Nazi yoke.

  Werner thought it was disrespectful to the Western Allies who’d also done their share to win against the Nazis, but didn’t even get an honorable mention in the speeches. His gaze fell on the American Kommandant Dean Harris, recently promoted to Brigadier General, and he observed how much Harris had to control himself to grin and bear it.

  At long last, General Sokolov got up to speak, extolling the virtues of Mother Russia and her brave men. His fabrications went on and on, punctuated by fervent applause from his men and polite hand-clapping from the other Allies. But Werner wasn’t fooled. He saw the disdain on the faces of every French, British, and American man in the room when Sokolov droned on about the good that the Soviet Union had done in Berlin.

  For obvious reasons he failed to mention how the city was robbed to pay for war reparations, while he stressed the egregious ingratitude of the Germans who couldn’t seem to understand the virtues of communism.

  After the dinner, Werner mingled with the other attendees, always careful not to seem too friendly with the foreigners and never praising anything they did or said. He listened in on a discussion between Harris and Sokolov and found the American Kommandant incredibly kind and patient, even in the face of the vile accusations the Russian made.

  Werner remembered when those parties emanated the spirit of unity instead of the current suspicion and disdain against the other side. Only two years earlier, everyone had looked brightly into the future, while now the two systems faced each other as implacable enemies.

  But what struck him during this banquet was that most of the spite, intransigence and stubborn persistence on their opinion came from the Soviet side, while the Americans weren’t the monsters the propaganda painted them to be.

  He returned home way past midnight, but he couldn’t sleep all night, because of the whirling thoughts in his head. In the wee hours of the morning he took a momentous decision. Giddy with excited determination he got up long before his Russian superiors woke up and took the public transport to visit Dean Harris in his office.

  Chapter 33

  Bruni’s smile was even more dazzling than usual. The Café de Paris had arranged – with the help of a few admirers – a surprise party for its star. The place teemed with French, British and American soldiers and their German Fräuleins.

  Marlene felt small and insignificant as she congratulated her friend, who looked stunning in yet another iridescent gown with matching high heels.

  “Happy birthday Bruni,” Marlene hugged her.

  “Thanks so much for coming,” Bruni grinned from ear to ear. “Isn’t this such a wonderful surprise?”

  “It truly is,” Zara said, and then took her turn in hugging the birthday girl.

  Lotte had been invited too and observed the plush setting with wide eyes. She whispered in Marlene’s ear, “I had no idea these things still existed in Berlin.”

  Marlene nodded. She’d grown used to the two-tiered society, with Allied soldiers bathing in luxuries while the German population barely scraped by. It was the price they had to pay for Hitler’s delusions of grandeur. But the party today was different to the previous times she’d attended the Café de Paris.

  It took her a while before she found the reason. No Russians were present. Given Bruni’s history of being on best terms with all the occupiers, this was a clear sign that the publicly shown unity between the four powers was fragile at best.

  Marlene wondered what the future held in store for her city, if the Allied Kommandatura was too disunited to take the required unanimous decisions. Would they hand over the decision making to the Germans? Or would they rather agree to give the entire city to the Soviet Union in exchange for regions near the inner-German border? She shuddered at the thought of Berlin becoming part of the Soviet occupied zone.

  Despite having sworn to forget Werner, she automatically thought about him and what he might be doing right now. Then she shrugged. She had once believed him a fine, considerate man, and she had cared for him deeply. But after his latest radio broadcast, reading the confessions, which she knew in her heart couldn’t be true, she’d lost every vestige of respect for him. A spineless weasel only interested in himself and his career. Should he do whatever he wanted, it wasn’t her concern anymore.

  People began chanting for Bruni to sing. She graciously – and proudly – obliged and took her place on the stage. Dean Harris held a short speech after her song, and then drinks flowed and waitresses entered carrying trays of hors d’oeuvres, offering the guests the bite-sized delicacies. It was a boisterous atmosphere, just like it had been before the war. Marlene herself had been too young back then, but she knew from stories of older people and from motion pictures about the roaring twenties what it had been like in cosmopolitan Berlin.

  Loud music filled the air and interrupted her musings. A handsome American GI suddenly stood in front of her and asked her to dance with him. She couldn’t well deny him. After all, she’d come to have fun
and forget about the misery for a while.

  The GI proved to be a good dancer and despite her secret yearning for Werner, she enjoyed herself very much. Shortly before midnight, she saw Bruni and Dean Harris sneak out and leave the inebriated guests to themselves. Marlene took it as her cue to search for Lotte, who’d been whisked away by a British soldier.

  “Hey, Lotte, I’m about to go home. You want to come with me?”

  “Sure.” Lotte seemed thankful for Marlene’s interruption and whispered in her ear, “It’s high time for me to leave. My admirer is getting a bit handsy.”

  Marlene nodded knowingly. Lotte was still waiting for her fiancé to return from Russian captivity and while she was outgoing and fun, she never enjoyed more than a harmless flirt. Together they scanned the room for Zara, who was in a deep embrace with a handsome man.

  “You want to leave with us?” Marlene asked, but the soft flush on Zara’s cheeks told her the answer, even before the other woman shook her head.

  Chapter 34

  Dean was in a bad mood. Due to the Soviet’s veto the new Lord Mayor Ernst Reuter still couldn’t take office. The elections had been several months ago already and nothing had changed, because the Soviets filibustered, obstructed and asked for additional investigations.

  And there was nothing he could do. General Clay, his superior in the Allied Control Council, had explicitly told him not to antagonize the Russians. As if those thugs needed antagonizing. They came up with the vilest shit all by themselves.

  For the time being Dean was stuck with a Berlin Magistrat filled with unelected communist members, while the elected delegates were kept out of office with the flimsiest of excuses. How on earth was he supposed to govern Berlin under these circumstances?

  A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts. He looked up in surprise. It was early in the morning and his men knew not to disturb him during the quiet hour before the official office hours began.

  “Come in,” he called.

  The door opened slowly, almost reluctantly and the man who peered inside wasn’t in uniform. For a moment Dean considered sending him away, but then he recognized Werner Böhm. Now, that’s a surprise!