The Road to Liberation: Trials and Triumphs of WWII

by Marion Kummerow

  In the back of the class, shuffling. Someone closed the window – carefully, in order not to damage the shaking frame. Several chairs scraped softly on the floor. The Wehrmacht was settling down.

  Only one person didn’t appear to be impressed by it.

  “Listen to the BDM leader.” Despite the soft tone, the young voice sounded deafeningly clear in the silence of the classroom. “If you don’t, she’ll report you to her father. He’ll ship you all off to the camp before you know it. For re-education.”

  Gerlinde turned sharply round. From the very back of the room, a familiar face was sneering at her suddenly paled face. She remembered him, a boy from a parallel class – Helmut Mann, a communist’s son, whose father was arrested in 1938 after someone denounced him to the Gestapo. Vati told her all about that. Helmut’s mother came to plead with him at his office and it was utterly embarrassing. He had no authority over signing any protective custody orders, as he tried to explain to her. It was the RSHA’s doing, not his. He was in charge of entirely different things but she blamed him and then cried and then raged some more (he still didn’t arrest her for he empathized with her grief very well) and then kneeled and tried kissing his boots… yes. Utterly embarrassing.

  All of the eyes were on her now – on her white blouse and her navy skirt and her plaited hair and her brown shoes. Gerlinde stared at the blackboard as if her life depended on it but she still felt them piercing the back of her head, stabbing at her squared shoulders. At least the Wehrmacht fellows were strangely quiet. Gerlinde closed her eyes, regretting coming here. She was grateful for Tadek clearing his throat and finally awakening the teacher from his stunned stupor. Slowly, the man walked over to the blackboard, lowered the rod onto the ledge where the chalk lay, three pitiful pieces. Herr Trost, he wrote with an uncertain hand and for some time stood, with his back to his pupils as though it physically pained him to face them now.

  “I think we all have had enough of this.” Whether he purposely omitted the word – war – wasn’t clear. “Let’s try and concentrate on history lessons.” At last, he turned around and motioned for Gerlinde toward the bookcase that stood in the back of the classroom. “Distribute the textbooks; what’s your name?”

  “Neumann. Gerlinde Neumann.”

  “Distribute the textbooks. The ancient world ones.”

  “We should be studying modern history this year. We have already studied ancient—”

  “I know!” Herr Trost looked annoyed and distraught at the same time. “The American Military Government ordered us to burn all the modern history textbooks. Until they replace them, we’ll have to study what is permitted.”

  With that, he turned his back to the class again and began writing a lesson plan. Gerlinde didn’t ask any more questions. Neither did the students; only the Wehrmacht fellows muttered their quiet thanks as she laid the textbooks in front of them.

  “I’m sorry for shouting before,” Gerlinde whispered.

  “It’s all right. It did us good.”

  She regarded them all, books still piled high under her chin. “Have you not anything else to wear?”

  “Not yet. We registered with the Red Cross but there’s a wait for civilian clothes. There are too many of us.”

  “What of your families? Homes?” she asked, already suspecting what the answers would be.

  “All four of us are homeless,” explained the shortest one with dark, curly hair.

  “My family fled to Munich. Our apartment is in ruins.” This one reminded Gerlinde of Götz, wheat-headed and soft-spoken, only her brother didn’t wear glasses.

  “I still haven’t had any news of mine.” Their friend, with a long, still-pink scar on his forehead, gave a shrug. Gerlinde wondered if it was a shrapnel wound or a mark from an Ivan’s knife.

  “My family is dead,” replied the blond one, whom they called Wirths and smiled at her, as though in apology. “And my entire street is one big pile of rubble.”

  Soldiers, who had fought for their land all this time just to return and find it in ruins.

  At home, she ran up the stairs to the third floor and headed in the direction opposite to her bedroom almost entirely forgetting Tadek who followed her, confused, like a silent shadow. The familiar door of her parents’ bedroom, which she hadn’t entered ever since the Amis got there and violated it with their search, creaked softly. She forced herself to push it open and marched inside, hands trembling, heart beating almost in her throat. Next to the family portrait, a gilded mahogany wardrobe stood. Gerlinde reached to open its double doors but found herself looking at the portrait instead, oil on canvas, a present from a truly gifted artist. Vati, in all his regalia, white braided cords across his chest, sitting with his hand resting on the handle of his sword. Next to him, Gerlinde’s mother, her face beautiful and cold. Behind them, Götz and Georg looking almost like twins, all white hair and brown uniforms. And next to her mother, young Gerlinde stands, just seven years old, a bit puzzled and unsure of what to do with her hands.

  They never posed for this portrait. Someone drew it from a photo that was published in a magazine and sent it to Gruppenführer Neumann in 1938 along with a long letter which Vati burned right after reading. For a long time, the portrait stood in one of the closets wrapped in cloth and Gerlinde would hide behind it when Vati had time to play hide and seek with her. And then one day he hung it and stood before it for a very long time, sighed heavily, muttered something about the man having talent but that orders were orders and there was nothing to be done…

  And now, Gerlinde stood before it and felt her eyes welling with tears as she began to piece it all together. Angrily, she yanked the doors of the wardrobe open and began pulling her father’s clothes out of it. Countless silk shirts with initials embroidered on his cuffs and breast pockets; cashmere pullovers, hardly worn; trousers, with creases, sharp as razors on them; made-to-measure suits, with silk linings – she hurled them all on top of the tremendous bed and then herself on top of that pile and cried and cried until her throat was raw with tears.

  For some time, Tadek shifted from one foot to another, two possibilities at war within him. Leave the room and pretend it didn’t concern him? Or take a step forward and make it his business, no matter how much the prospect terrified him? He looked at the door behind him, at Otto Neumann’s daughter digging herself into a pile of her father’s clothes and made that one step in the direction that felt right for some reason.

  “Gerlinde?”

  “I miss him so much!” She only sobbed harder.

  “Of course, you do. He’s your father.”

  At once, she straightened herself and wiped her face with the back of her hand. “You think it’s so simple, don’t you? You think a little girl cries because she misses Vati. No, Tadeusz. I cry because I miss the old him. I miss the father that I knew so well, not this new one whom I’m getting to know now. I cry because whatever happens in the future, I shall never look at him with the same eyes ever again and that breaks my heart and I hate you and the Amis and Mann’s son and whoever painted this damned thing for—”

  Another attack. Tadek let her cry until it passed and didn’t point out the fact that it was Otto Neumann himself to blame for it and not them. He didn’t have to, for he sensed it deep inside that Gerlinde knew it as well but some sort of a protection mechanism made her hurl all these accusations at someone much like she’d hurled all these clothes before because it still wasn’t possible for her to say openly what she’d begun to feel inside. He stood before that pile of suits and silk ties and suddenly found himself feeling infinitely sorry for her. His own father was dead but at least Tadek would carry his untainted memory around for as long as his own heart was beating. His father was a good man and he’d always remain such. Gerlinde’s father was a murderer and she would have to live with that knowledge. It couldn’t have possibly been an easy thing for her to realize.

  “What are you going to do with all these clothes?” he asked when she got possession of he
rself once again.

  “I’ll give them all away. To those Wehrmacht fellows who haven’t anything else besides their army-issued rags to wear. And the rest – to the Red Cross. He has no use for them anymore, after all.”

  9

  The asphalt, scarred by the tank caterpillar tracks and the rubble-ridden city views soon replaced the pastoral suburban scenery. Tadek pedaled along the somewhat-cleared streets, with Gerlinde perched on the handlebars in front of him. The bicycle used to belong to her brother Götz – the only means of transportation that Frau Hanke took care to hide in time from her own compatriots after the frantic Gauleiter of Berlin, Goebbels’s order was issued to commandeer all bicycles to equip the so-called “tank-hunting division.” It should be noted that such a “division” that was supposed to instill fear in the Ivans consisted of sorry-looking fourteen-year-old Hitlerjugend boys with panzerfausts but the irony was lost on the Reich Defense Commissar for Berlin.

  The loyal Frau Hanke was ready to protect the only bicycle from the Soviets as well, as soon as they entered the city but the Neumann villa was miraculously spared the Red Army’s plunder; it was located much too far from the city’s center for their liking and the Russians didn’t get a chance to get to it before the Amis moved into their rightfully allocated sector.

  “Make a right here. No, wait. Stop for a second.”

  Tadek diligently stopped. Agile like a cat, Gerlinde slipped off the bicycle and for a few moments stood, with her thumbs hooked through the straps of her backpack, trying to make sense of her surroundings.

  “Shall we ask someone the way perhaps?” he suggested, adjusting his own canvas backpack, stuffed with clothes, on his shoulders.

  “I know the way perfectly! I was a Red Cross nurse, so I know perfectly well where their headquarters are! I took my classes there. It’s just, it’s hard to get my bearings when everything is…” She gestured vaguely around.

  In front of them, the entire street lay in a heap of concrete and twisted metal. Tadek had lifted his hand to point at the street sign but then saw that it was in Russian and lowered it again. It was most likely Stalinstraße now or some such. Fat chance it would help his guide, with its Cyrillic wisdom.

  “It was across from the hotel. And the hotel was just around the corner from the cinema. And before the cinema was this two-storied department store which they’d remodeled into a hospital in March but…” She looked helplessly around. “Before the department store was this beautiful gothic cathedral and a library. And a restaurant before that. With big arched windows and red curtains in them.”

  “I think we had just passed the cathedral. I think I saw a spire over there.” Tadek motioned in the opposite direction.

  They retraced their steps, walking the bicycle between them. The spire and a part of the wall still attached to it rose, amid the heap of brick and mortar.

  “Does it look like that cathedral?” Tadek probed gently.

  Gerlinde only stared at it long and hard. “It must be. I recognized the street leading here so that has to be it.”

  “So, that must be the library.” Tadek turned to another obliterated building across the somewhat-cleared street.

  “Wait here.” She deposited the backpack at his feet and trotted toward the new heap of rubble.

  The sun, uncharacteristically hot for September, warmed the handlebars and Tadek’s dark hair. He lay the bicycle down and lowered next to it, watching Gerlinde pick her way, amid the debris, with great uncertainty. She slipped and Tadek made a move to get up but she waved him off without even looking at him. He smiled to himself. In the course of these past few weeks, they’d grown as familiar with each other as a blood brother and sister would. They didn’t tiptoe around each other any longer, mistrustful and suspicious, as they used to. Tadek rubbed his chest. He was warm there too, but it wasn’t the sun.

  “Agnes Miegel, Der Vater!” She cried victoriously from the top of the rubble mountain waving a book in the air. “We were right. It is a library then.”

  She clambered down and dusted off her navy skirt, as she trotted back to Tadek. Her knees were scraped but she didn’t seem to notice. In her hand, she still held the book that seemed miraculously undamaged.

  “Do you know the author?”

  “Everyone knows her. Official state literature.”

  “You read it then?”

  “It was mandatory, for school. Bored me to tears.”

  “What is it about?” Tadek regarded it with interest.

  “This?” Gerlinde held the title in front of herself. “About nothing. A dead world.”

  After a moment of consideration, she hurled it into the air. The pages fluttered as the book made a great arc, before landing somewhere amid the ruins. Tadek looked at her in amazement. Gerlinde grinned – the act of rebellion must have felt good – and picked up the handles of the bicycle.

  They resumed their walk, slowly, careful not to lose their way again.

  “Do you know what the most ironic part is?” Gerlinde said. “The Party had the worst taste in literature. In fact, they had no taste at all. They banned and burned all the interesting books and left only garbage like that for people to read. And you know what’s even more ironic? Most Party members had banned books in their libraries. They banned all foreign ones and the ones that the Promi frowned upon. Vati has an entire section of French and British spy novels in his library.”

  “I’ve already discovered quite a few.”

  She grinned slyly. “You saw where he hid them? Behind the official, most tedious books that he knew no one would ever pull out of the shelf to peruse. Right behind the twelve tomes of Roman history, behind the racial theory books, behind all that Heimat rot. I’ll show you more when we get home.”

  We.

  Home.

  Tadek never thought he’d ever hear those words again. Growing even warmer now, he stopped to take off his jacket. Gerlinde waited for him patiently, still holding onto the handlebars. Her gaze fell on his simple white undershirt – Morris’s present.

  “Are you quite certain you don’t want any of Vati’s things? He has so many beautiful shirts there and trousers…”

  “I know. I’m sure.” He hoped she wouldn’t take offense.

  She didn’t, just nodded her understanding.

  The noise of a vehicle approaching the intersection before them cut into their agreeable silence.

  “A Sanka!” Gerlinde announced excitedly but by the time Tadek finally stuffed his jacket into the backpack that was already bursting at the seams and turned around, the Red Cross truck had already disappeared. “We must be heading in the right direction then! Come, make it snappy before they close for the day!”

  Tadek hurried alongside her, smiling in spite of himself at the return of her commanding tone. It used to annoy and frighten him to no end but now he found it almost endearing.

  The local headquarters of the Red Cross indeed still stood, spared by the bombers by some lucky chance. The same Sanka was still parked outside and nurses were unloading the clothes from its back to distribute them later among Berliners in need. But all of a sudden, Tadek couldn’t get his breath. He stopped in his tracks with his blood pulsing wildly in his ears and stared at the innocent vehicle with such horror that Gerlinde began shaking his shoulder to snap him out of it, her face creased with genuine concern.

  “What’s the matter with you? You’re white as a sheet! Are you thirsty? Faint? What? Tadeusz, talk to me, don’t just stand like that…”

  But, with the best will in the world, he couldn’t get a single word out of himself and he just kept backing away from the truck until he bumped into a telegraph pole, with its wires missing and slid along it, to the dusty ground. Gerlinde was already running toward the nurses, shouting to them for water.

  Everything turned into a black-spotted haze. The air was thick like tar; it refused to enter his lungs and got stuck somewhere in his throat, drowning him. Sweat poured down his face, collecting in the creases of his li
ps. Tadek tasted its salt on his tongue along with blood. Moving, as though in a dream, he brought his hand to his face and regarded it in stupefaction. His nose was bleeding.

  Suddenly, a pair of cool hands tipped his head back in one precise move and a rag soaked with water wiped the film of horror off of his skin. “Breathe through your mouth.”

  Tadek closed his eyes and tried not to think of the blood in the back of his throat.

  Gerlinde’s voice, still shaky from worry. “It’s all right. Just a regular nosebleed.”

  “Are you sure?” Another voice, female. A stranger.

  “Yes. I’m a nurse too. He’s been warm for some time. It must be the heat’s doing. It’s all my fault. I made him rush here when he wasn’t feeling well.”

  “You can bring him in for the doctor to check—”

  “No!” Tadek heard his own voice come as though from under the water. “I’m not going inside. I’m all right. Let me just sit here for a while…” He dug his heels into the ground and made himself turn in the opposite direction, away from the offending vehicle.

  “I shall go then—”

  “Wait! Schwester!” Gerlinde again. “Take these clothes, please. Everything that is in these two backpacks.” Tadek felt himself being relieved of the weight on his shoulders. “We were bringing them all to you anyway. They’re all clean, so don’t worry about disinfecting them. Some aren’t even worn yet.”

  “Where did you get such things? You haven’t stolen them, have you?”

  “No.” A pause, a long one. Then, a barely audible, “my father’s.”

  Another moment of silence. “I see.”

  “He doesn’t need them anymore.”

  Another I see. Such things were understood, without further clarification, these days. Tadek was almost relieved when the steps dissolved somewhere in the distance. Through the cloth on his face, he apologized softly.