The Road to Liberation: Trials and Triumphs of WWII

by Marion Kummerow

  “It’s the truck. That idiotic Sanka.”

  “Do you have some aversion to trucks?” Gerlinde sounded mildly amused, happy with the change of subject, with the nurse gone.

  “Only Red Cross ones.”

  “What’s wrong with Red Cross trucks? They save lives, you know.”

  He considered for a moment whether to tell her or not. “In Auschwitz, they were used for transporting the condemned to the gas chambers. They also delivered the gas to the crematoriums. And when everyone was already dead, we would collect their clothes and put them away into those trucks. Mountains and mountains of clothes, mountains of corpses… I thought I had forgotten it all by now. And now I saw this damned thing and it all came back to me again.” He took a shaky breath. “I’m all better now. Let’s go home.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I am.”

  “Let me ride you then.”

  “If you want.”

  “I do.”

  She helped him get up and collected the bicycle from the ground. “Why are you smiling, you pitiful bloody-face?”

  “I’m smiling because you didn’t doubt my words. It’s the first time when you didn’t say anything in protest. It must be an idiotic reason to smile but I’m smiling because you believe me.”

  “I believe you because one would have to be the most despicable of louts to invent something of that sort.”

  “You believe that there were crematoriums then?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the gas? And the SS with machineguns and horsewhips? And the fact that I saw it all, every day, with my own two eyes?”

  For a moment, she was silent. “Yes,” she finally replied and threw away the bloody rag she was carrying. “One day I shall ask you all about it but not today. I just gave away all of my father’s clothes. Let me digest that first. If you start telling me about the mountains of corpses, I’ll have a nosebleed too and then who’s going to get whom home?”

  “Gerlinde?”

  “What?”

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For making me smile when I want to cry.”

  She reached across the handlebars and squeezed his forearm, right where the faded bluish tattoo was, for a few precious moments.

  10

  October came. The OSS had been terminated by President Truman’s executive order and the War Department was now in charge of the new Strategic Services Unit and therefore, Morris’s group. Half of it had been ordered to move on to other operations with only Morris himself and two of his immediate subordinates left and the hope that Otto Neumann didn’t forget all about his daughter.

  The school took up most of their time now and Tadek was thankful for the distraction. The Wehrmacht Squad, as they’d been baptized by the class, invariably selected Tadek to be on their team during the PE classes and for the after-school soccer games. He was reluctant to tell them at first that it was his fellow Sonderkommando inmates who taught him how to play and how to lose to the SS. But then one day it suddenly poured out of him in torn, ragged sentences – all about the soccer field behind the crematorium, the SS men’s white undershirts, their laughter when they’d score a goal, the animalistic fear of accidentally tripping or bumping into one of them during the game, and the oddest sense of dog-like gratitude, mixed with revulsion, at the sight of the beer crates both teams shared after each game. SS vs SK. They even had a board with scores pinned to the wall of the cremation facility.

  The Wehrmacht Squad men listened and smoked, pensive and grim and nodded from time to time – sympathetic, not hostile as he had half-expected. Clapped Tadek on his back and told him about the Ivans gouging their comrades’ eyes out on the Eastern Front and the SS setting fires to barns full of partisans. It was all rot, they said, the entire war affair. And beasts were everywhere and ordinary people competed in outdoing each other in violence.

  “But at least we had guns,” Wirths wistfully noted.

  “We had guns too, even before the liberation.” For the first time, Tadek looked up at him with eyes that shone with pride. “We revolted and shot whoever we could and blew up that one crematorium to the devil.”

  He didn’t have to say how many of his fellow Sonderkommando men the SS machinegun had mowed down that fateful day in retaliation; the Squad fellows knew what such revolts resulted in. They shook his hand instead, firmly and with respect – one soldier to another and Tadek suddenly felt stronger; a fighter, not a victim any longer, even in his own eyes. Even his joining the Red Army they openly approved. We’d do the same, they admitted. Seeking revenge was the only logical thing to do in his situation. And the SS were bastards – they agreed upon that also. The Feldgendarmerie hanged their Wehrmacht lot on the slightest of provocations closer to the end of the war. There was no love lost between the two army branches.

  “We began shooting at them sometime in early spring, slyly and in the back,” Wirths admitted, pulling on his cigarette and smirked when he saw Tadek’s astounded face. “What are you looking at me like that for? To a dog – a dog’s death.” He shrugged indifferently and without any remorse.

  “No, it’s not that. It’s just I never suspected that you…”

  “Weren’t all pigheaded fascists?” Wirths supplied with the same wry grin.

  “Let’s put it that way.”

  For some time, Wirths pondered something, plunged into silence. “Perhaps, you won’t believe me if I tell you this but only half of Germany actively supported Hitler and his policies. The other half didn’t give a brass tack and simply existed. The economy was flourishing and they may not have approved of his severe measures against the Jews or the Catholic church or the homosexuals or his political opponents or his views on the role of women in society but they kept quiet because what could they really do? That was my mother’s favorite phrase, what could one really do? There were the outspoken types but only at the very beginning, who couldn’t tolerate the slightest injustice and tried to speak out but they were taken care of by the Gestapo at once. And after such outspoken ones disappeared, one thought twice and thrice before voicing unpopular opinions, let alone acting upon them. And then the war came and that other half of the population, which never actively supported Hitler and perhaps even sympathized with the victims of his regime, only realized what had hit them when it was much too late. They used to satisfy themselves with thinking that it wasn’t really their trouble and that it was only communists that are being jailed, or the Jews, or the homosexuals, or the political dissidents, and it had nothing to do with them whatsoever because they were not any of these things and therefore were safe from any catastrophe… And then the first Allied bombers dropped their load over German cities and they realized that they were being slowly boiled to death like that proverbial frog and that the catastrophe, which they so thoroughly tried to ignore, was their business now and that the bombs didn’t differentiate between communists and national-socialists and between homosexuals and ‘good family men’ with ten children.”

  Tadek listened and nodded to Wirths’s words. “I never thought about it from an ordinary German’s point of view.”

  “One felt helpless, that’s how one felt. When I got conscripted, it wasn’t much better than it was for you when they rounded you up and sent you to the ghetto. The only difference is that they gave me a gun and put a few Feldgendarmes behind my back to ensure that I don’t desert or surrender. I know what some people are saying about us. Why haven’t you resisted actively? Why didn’t you say anything? Because we wanted to live; how about that for one very inconvenient reason?” His voice turned harsh and bitter. “Yes, I chose to shoot at the Amis instead of being strung up on a rope by the Feldgendarmes for refusing to fight, because I wanted to live. And I surely should like to see what such types would say if they found themselves in my situation. It’s fine and well to be righteous about it from a comfortable chair in your living room when your country isn’t being dragged into a war that you wish to have no part
of, by a deluded dictator. Go on then, go speak out if such a thing happens to your country next. And it shall happen again. Go and fight against the regime by yourself, die a hero for the idea. Only, you won’t. You’ll remain in your chair and shall be just like me when all this is over because you also want to live. Everyone is a hero in their own mind but once you’re facing the actual choice, hardly you’ll choose noble death over your sorry life. That’s why I’m saying that the dictators will keep coming and we won’t do a thing to resist them. Because we’re all cowards for the most part – that’s just what we are.”

  Tadek didn’t argue. Wirths was right about everything.

  On one of the benches, Gerlinde always sat, as they played – she still wasn’t permitted to be out of Tadek’s sight. She hardly ever looked up from her biology book no matter how loudly the players shouted but somehow always knew the score and even commented on Tadek’s mistakes, which amused him immensely. No matter how hard he tried, Tadek never could catch her steal a single glance in the field’s direction.

  That day, the goalkeeper was missing in action (apparently, he was suffering from angina) and the Squad unanimously decided to appoint Tadek as a temporary one. The first half went swell in that new role; during the second one, Tadek turned his head in his attempt to catch Gerlinde watching him, saw a stranger shielding her from his sight with his body instead and got hit square in the forehead with the football. His teammates’ cries were drowned out by the blood that was suddenly thrumming in his ears. The game instantly forgotten, his gaze zeroing in on the tall, blond stranger in front of her, Tadek charged across the field with his nerves strained to the utmost.

  Gerlinde was standing now, backing away from the man, shaking her head in a resolute manner. His hand reached for her arm but she pulled it away and took another step back. Tadek could see his face clearly now. It wasn’t Otto Neumann; of course not. It was silly of him to even consider this. Some youngster who perhaps had nothing better to do than pester a pretty girl with his attention. But there was something in Gerlinde’s tense face that poked at Tadek’s instincts, which were honed far too well by the years of the constant battle for survival.

  “Everything all right?” He wedged himself between them, boring his gaze into the stranger.

  “It was before you showed up.” The young fellow regarded him a trifle mockingly, in that superior way that Tadek had seen countless times in the SS men’s eyes. He even looked like one – stereotypically tall, strong, with dark-blond hair, sharp cheekbones, and a square chin. Clean-shaven, groomed, hands in pockets; nonchalant and arrogant in that master-of-the-world’s way. The fellow shifted his gaze to Tadek’s arm, the faded tattoo, then back to Gerlinde. “Since when did you start liking kosher goods?”

  “Since the Aryan ones like you turned rotten.”

  “Still mad at me?”

  “Go hang yourself, Alf.”

  Gerlinde made a motion to leave but he seized her wrist. “You’re still my fiancée.”

  Something exploded in Tadek’s chest. Blood pulsing violently in his veins, he shoved the youngster roughly before he comprehended what he was doing. “Don’t touch her!”

  The fellow shoved him right back. The movement came out effortless, even somewhat languid, like that of a powerful, magnificent predator swiping his great paw at someone not worth his attention. “You, Jew, stay out of it.”

  His finger was pointing at Gerlinde once again. “You should be grateful I’m ready to take you back despite knowing that the entire Ivans’ army group went through you and your fellow nurses. Not every man would be so forgiving.”

  “The Ivans never touched any of us, you pig!” Gerlinde’s chest was heaving. Tadek realized that he’d never before seen her in such terrible upset. She stepped forward and gave the fellow another shove, in addition to Tadek’s. The fellow barely moved and chuckled instead, clearly amused by the attack. “You pig!” The tears rolled down her cheeks and collected under her chin. She wiped them angrily with the back of her hand. “Stay away from me! If I see you once again on the school’s property, I’ll report you to the school administration! To the War Department!”

  Behind Tadek’s back, approaching steps and voices out of breath. The Squad stood behind him, their eyes trained on the stranger with menace in them.

  The latter calculated the odds, raised both hands in mock surrender and made a show of backing away.

  “Who’s the sod?” No ceremonies from Wirths. He was all business as usual, ready for a fight.

  “Kameradschaftsführer von Rombach.” The fellow’s arm flew up in a mocking salute as he slammed his heels together in a military fashion. “Heil Hitler!”

  Wirths had just made a move to go after the insolent youth but his comrades caught his wrist in time. “Don’t waste your breath. The Ivans will see him pull this stunt soon enough and sort him out before he knows what hit him. I heard their Gulags are famous for adjusting such attitudes.”

  “Who even let him out with such a sharp tongue?”

  “You heard his rank – Kameradschaftsführer. He’s former Hitlerjugend; wasn’t even old enough to graduate to any sort of a military rank, if he saw any fighting at all. They don’t detain those. A kick in the backside and the case is dismissed. Us, they made stew in those camps for a few months…”

  Tadek didn’t catch the end of the discussion. He was already running after Gerlinde, the book that she’d forgotten on the bench pressed firmly under his arm. She seemed set on putting as much distance between herself and the entire scene and Tadek barely caught up with her before she made it around the corner.

  “Is that really your fiancé?”

  “No!”

  He started at the unexpected, incensed shout.

  “I’m sorry for asking. It’s not my business, of course—”

  “It has nothing to do with you!” She wasn’t crying anymore, just trembling with her entire body. “Why didn’t he just die? I so hoped – no, I prayed – that some Ivan would shoot his brains out or run him over with his tank or impale him on his bayonet! But no, bastards like him never die. Good people do but pigs like him survive just about anything! Like rats! And then they crawl out of their crevices and bring back their diseases and poison people’s lives again! Why didn’t he die?!”

  She kept marching on and Tadek had nothing else to do but walk by her side and not ask any more questions. He was itching to ask whether the fellow, whom she clearly knew from before, brought her any news of her father but Tadek knew, deep inside, that had he asked her that now, she’d never talk to him again.

  11

  At night, he lay with his eyes open, still not used to having his own bed, still surrounded by too much of the silence without his comrades next to him, snoring and moaning in their sleep whenever the events of the day would catch up with them and seep deep into the consciousness and poison even the dreams with their horror. For the Auschwitz Sonderkommando, there was no escape from their daily labors, even in sleep. Their clothes, their hair, and skin stank sweetly of burnt flesh and even the alcohol, generously provided by the SS, didn’t erase the sight of the entangled bodies in the gas chamber. They dreamed of tearing dead mothers and children apart with their hooks and of cremating humanity itself day after day.

  Tadek hated the nights. Even more so, he loathed the nightmares they brought with them – never about the frontline fighting, only about the camp, for some reason.

  Soft steps behind his door. He stilled his breath and listened. A knock came a full minute later, uncertain and quiet. Tadek slid off his bed and opened the door. Gerlinde stood before him, her hair loose and tangled, eyes gleaming softly in the darkness. She smelled of cognac, the bottle of which she was still squeezing by the neck. In her other hand, two glasses.

  “Were you sleeping?”

  “No.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “I don’t want to impose.”

  “You’re never imposing.”

 
She padded past him, barefoot and swaying slightly. “Leave the door open. I don’t want to turn on the light and it’s too dark without it. The nightlight in the hallway should be just fine…” She was babbling, to avoid something she wanted and didn’t want to talk about, at the same time.

  Tadek watched her pour two fingers of amber liquid into the first glass but put his hand above the second when she moved to fill it. “You drink yours. I don’t drink.”

  “Why’s that? Some religious guff or some such?” Her voice was harsh and the tone mocking but Tadek recognized the hidden pain behind it far too well.

  “No. I used to drink a lot at the camp. I don’t want to look at liquor anymore. It reminds me of things.”

  “Sorry. I should have thought.”

  “It’s all right.” He sat on top of the covers and waited for her to talk.

  For some time, she wandered around aimlessly, her teeth biting the edge of the glass. She sipped from it from time to time and touched the things in his room but the words still didn’t come.

  “We don’t have to talk,” Tadek suggested quietly. “We can just sit and be quiet.”

  She sat next to him, her hands with the glass in them – almost empty now – folded on her lap. Her legs were white marble against the black floor. The moonlight soaked her hair in silver.

  “Do you feel better when you tell people things? About the camp?”

  “Sometimes. Depends on which people. If I know that they’ll think that I’m lying then what’s the point? Then, I don’t tell them anything.”

  “When you tell me things.” Gerlinde rephrased her question.

  “Yes. Because now you believe me.”

  “If I tell you something, you think you’ll believe me?”

  “I will. I know you by now. I know you’re not a liar.”