The Road to Liberation: Trials and Triumphs of WWII

by Marion Kummerow

  “How much you have grown!” he said, just to say something. “I left you a young girl…” His voice trailed off under her steady gaze. It was a pitiful attempt at a casual conversation and even he sensed it with his very skin. Chills were traveling down his spine ever since she’d crossed the threshold of his room. Quite an odd reaction to one’s own daughter – only this woman in front of him suddenly seemed more like a stranger than his own flesh and blood.

  “The war makes one grow fast.” Her voice sounded strangely cool, detached from her body. In her eyes, unexpected ice shone, treacherous, like a cracking crust on top of the water, melting.

  Otto regarded her, strangely anxious and puzzled. “I didn’t expect you so early.”

  “I can take a walk if you like—” She made a move to leave.

  “No, no! What nonsense!” he cried and laughed nervously and caught the sleeve of her light jacket but released it almost at once as if the material had burned his fingers.

  Gerlinde observed him with mild curiosity. Her head was tilted to one side. Otto suddenly discovered that he was uncomfortable under that scrutinizing gaze.

  “A medical profession then, eh, Maus?” He tried to find his footing once again.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. That’s good. Very brave of you. General physician?”

  “A surgeon.”

  Once again Otto found himself thrown off track. “How so?”

  “They’re urgently needed nowadays.” She shrugged indifferently. “And I’m not afraid of blood. That, too.”

  “I’m very proud of you, Maus,” Otto said slowly. “I, for one, can’t stand the sight of blood.”

  Her eyes bored holes in him. He felt himself to be a frog on her dissecting table, still alive but already pinned by all four of his quivering extremities.

  “Can we talk honestly with each other?”

  No more familiar, affectionate Vati this time. Otto backed away slowly and lowered himself into the armchair. Gerlinde remained standing. He had to look up at her when she finally spoke.

  “What was in the papers that you burned before you left?”

  “Nothing.” He stumbled upon the lie and pulled himself even further into the safety of the high padded back of the armchair. “Nothing substantial. It was standard protocol. We had to destroy all documentation, so it didn’t fall into the enemy’s hands…”

  “Why?”

  “Because… Such was the order from above.”

  “Why would they give you an order to destroy the evidence?”

  He started explaining something about Himmler and Pohl and sensitive information and some other utter nonsense to that extent but then receded and moved his lips without saying anything, only staring at his only daughter with wild desperation in his eyes.

  “Why does it matter now, Maus?” His tone was just short of begging. “Let’s put it all behind us. We’ll start afresh, in a new country. Blank slate—”

  “Blank slate?” She chuckled softly and walked over to the window. He couldn’t see her face when she spoke again, “you know, as long as I remember myself, everyone was telling me how we were the future. How we did everything right. How we had the right to do what we did because of X, Y, and Z. And it was all very logically laid out before us. And it almost made sense.” She paused. “But I was a child who never heard anything different apart from the official Party line. You had a life before all that. You had something to compare it to. My question is, why destroy the evidence if you did nothing wrong?”

  “The orders—”

  “Yes,” she interrupted him sharply. “The orders. That’s what everyone was hiding behind in Nuremberg. Have you watched the newsreels? Rather entertaining. The whole song and dance.” Her tone was cutting, almost cruel, in its unconcealed disdain for the men she all knew personally.

  Otto stilled himself in his chair so that even his breath could barely be heard. Why such hostility all of a sudden to the condemned men? They never showed her anything but kindness. She was everyone’s favorite child – Gerlinde Neumann, the Golden Girl. He was suddenly afraid of this stranger in his room.

  “Gerlinde, you must understand, we had no choice…” He tried once again.

  From her, a snort and a rather derisive one at that. “People refused to carry out orders. Nothing happened to them, according to what I’ve learned. You could have said no. You chose not to.”

  His hands refused to cooperate, as Otto was trying to untangle the cigarette case from the lining of his pocket. He yanked it in a desperate gesture and heard the seams tear. “I only wanted what was best for you. For my family. I wanted to give you the good life—”

  “What about the people in the camps? What about their lives?”

  “But, Gerlinde, I didn’t put them there! It was an entirely different organization that was in charge of it—”

  “Yes, and the chief of that very organization, during his trial, also claimed that he was as innocent as a baby and blamed everything on Himmler. Which is easy, since Himmler is dead. Reichsführer can’t die twice, so it’s convenient to hang it on him.”

  Otto hadn’t anything to say to that. His gaze slowly turned toward the door.

  In front of the window, Gerlinde was still contemplating the hustle and bustle of the train station. She looked pensive now, not as wrathful as before. Her fingers traced the contours of the flowers on the curtain. “I met someone after the war.”

  “Erich something? From the Wehrmacht?” The change of the subject came as a great relief. With a shaking hand, Otto lit up his cigarette at last, even though only after a fourth attempt.

  “No. I mean, yes but that was later.” She turned to face him. “His name is Tadek. He was in Auschwitz.”

  Otto nodded not too convincingly, unsure of the reaction she’d expected from him.

  “His entire family was murdered there.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “Is it?”

  “Of course, it is. Gerlinde, don’t you think I have a heart? I had to go there with the inspection team once and still have nightmares about the place.”

  “What of the people who had to live there year after year, if they were lucky enough not to get gassed upon arrival? Oh yes. I forgot. You didn’t put them there, so it’s not your fault, legally speaking.”

  “What do you want me to do, Gerlinde?” Otto cried, his entire body shaking.

  She regarded him for one very long minute. “I want you to do the right thing, Vati.”

  His hands turned to ice once again. “The right thing.”

  “Yes. The right thing.”

  “And what would that be?”

  From Gerlinde, a shrug and a sigh. She seemed annoyed with his mock ignorance.

  Once again, his eyes fastened with a cagey expression on the door. “They’re here, aren’t they? You brought them…”

  Slowly, ever so slowly, Gerlinde shook her head. “I’m alone, Vati. It’s just me and you. I wanted to talk.”

  A wave of relief washed over him. “The train shall arrive soon. We’ll talk for as long as you want in our compartment.”

  In Gerlinde’s eyes, the pain of infinite disappointment flashed. “You still insist on running then.”

  “But what else do you suggest I do?”

  “Give yourself up to the authorities.”

  He looked at her in stunned silence. “Are you mad? They’ll hang me like they’re about to hang all of those poor devils in Nuremberg!”

  “Not if you’re as innocent as you claim.”

  “They will hang me no matter what.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Do you want me dead then? Your own father?”

  “No. Of course I don’t. It will break my heart if it comes to that.”

  “Why are you tormenting me then with all this nonsense?”

  “Because, it will break my heart even more if you run once again, like a coward. You’re right about one thing, there’s nothing that you can do to bring those p
eople back, to bring Tadek’s family back, to give him back his ruined adolescence. But you can do the right thing, acknowledge what you did and face the consequences, no matter how harsh they might be.”

  “You can’t possibly mean that.”

  “I can and I do.”

  She wasn’t crying yet, but her eyes were swimming with unshed tears.

  “And you can live with losing your only parent?” Otto barely heard himself saying.

  “I know that I can’t live with losing my respect for him. And I’m this close to it.”

  The tiny gap between her fingers made Otto break down at last. He walked over to her, pulled her toward himself and squeezed his eyes shut against the sharp line of her shoulder.

  “I love you, Maus.”

  “I love you too, Vati.”

  “I thought I was doing what was best for you.”

  “I know.”

  “It was all wrong but too late to stop…”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m so sorry for everything.”

  She held his face in her palms. Warmth radiated from them into his cheeks, seeping into his very heart that was bleeding to death in his chest.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated again and looked at the door, calmly this time, without angst or hostility. “They are there, aren’t they?”

  Gerlinde turned to the door as well. This time, she decided to tell the truth. “I don’t know. Most likely. I promised Morris you’d give yourself up willingly. I imagine he still sent his people, in case you didn’t.”

  “Von Rombach said they dropped the surveillance.”

  “Von Rombach was mistaken. The Americans are watching the entire rat line, I suspect.”

  “Why the suitcase then?”

  “So you would let me in and listen to me and didn’t do anything stupid.”

  A soft smile passed over Otto’s face.

  “You hate me, don’t you?” Gerlinde asked, only half in jest.

  He shook his head and cupped her cheek with infinite tenderness. “Not at all. In fact, I’m proud of you.”

  “You raised me well,” she grinned. “Despite all.”

  “You shall remember good things about me then? After they…”

  “Yes.” She took his hand and pressed it. “Only good things. I swear.”

  Epilogue

  Berlin. Invalidenfriedhof, 1952

  Afternoon. The air thick with blossom and serenity. Around the Invalids’ Cemetery, the silence lay, only a lonely bird disturbed the peace. Tadek stood before the cross with a hat in his hands. In front of it, Gerlinde was fixing the fresh flowers. The old ones had already made their way into Erich’s paper bag, brought especially for that purpose.

  Otto Neumann.

  Mathilde Neumann.

  Tadek thought it to be nice for them to decide to exhume Frau Neumann’s body and rebury it along with her husband. However, according to Gerlinde, there was a practical and not very sentimental decision behind it. Two years ago, not long after their marriage, Gerlinde and Erich decided to sell the house, buy a small apartment and donate the rest of the money to the World Jewish Congress, of which Tadek was now a proud member. His law degree, along with his new passport, came from across the pond but old Europe still refused to let him go. Despite being founded before the war, the German branch of the Congress now consisted, in a large part, of survivors like him. Tadek had finally found his family and a reason to live once again.

  “Well, Doctor Wirths.” Gerlinde turned to her husband with a smile.

  “Yes, Doctor Wirths?” he replied, his eyes wrinkling with the same mischief.

  “Thank you for coming with me.” She got up, brushed the invisible dust off her trousers’ knees and reached for Tadek’s hand. “You too, Doctor Baumann.”

  The title was still new and still made him blush copiously. “It was my pleasure. I like cemeteries.”

  “Me too. They’re very peaceful. Quiet.”

  For a few moments, all three fell silent again as they observed the cross. There were no records of Neumann’s rank or service on it, just the name on a small plaque – Gerlinde’s decision.

  “Afraid someone may break it?” Tadek had asked her when she’d just ordered the cross.

  “No. Afraid someone will make it into a shrine instead. They shouldn’t have given us the body. They should have cremated it like they did with the others and dumped the ashes somewhere. They only did it out of a sense of decency, because he’d had the decency to give himself up. At least, that’s what Morris has said. I could have had him cremated myself, of course, but I knew I wouldn’t have had the heart to throw away the ashes.”

  He felt chills down his spine when she said it back then and still felt them now as he looked at it. The most blood-shedding war’s shadow still loomed over Europe and the new wars were already raging – in Palestine, in Korea. People had cried, “never again,” and began slaughtering each other anew the very next day, just to cry, “never again,” the following evening. Hate went nowhere. It was still here, omnipotent and waiting to spread its poisonous roots into everything fertile.

  The wind ruffled Gerlinde’s hair. She moved it away from her eyes that were fixed on the grave.

  “Do you know what still bothers me the most? The fact that he could have still been alive.”

  Erich turned to her but she waved him off quickly. “No, not that I reported him to Morris and then went and talked him into surrendering. That was something that ought to have been done and I don’t regret it in the slightest. I’m talking about him choosing his own fate when he decided to don that uniform. He was a Berliner, not by birth but by heart. He loved life. He played some nifty jazz – when no one could hear. He wasn’t a sadist and he wasn’t a killer. The thing is, he claimed that he did it all for us, for the family. I believe that it was indeed his reason. But you know, I’d rather we all lived in poverty; I’d rather we all struggled instead of conforming to all that hate, to all that vile, disgusting new order all around us. I’d rather we upped and left for some other country. Or stay and be outcasts but still untainted on the inside, you understand? I’d rather he’d not made that choice. I’d rather him remain my father instead of becoming Gruppenführer Neumann. I would have given everything to still have him near. But he made that choice for himself and here we are,” she ended bitterly.

  Tadek wondered how many other young people thought the same way. There would always be people like Neumann, who would always make the wrong choices and aid the dictators and commit crimes “out of love.” Love for their country, love for their family, completely and entirely ignoring the other people who may love their country and their family just as much and who would have to suffer just because one family is more important than the other – because of religion, skin color, geographical position, political affiliations – one can only guess. But while there were people like Gerlinde, who would reject even her own blood in the name of something much more profound – universal justice and love of everyone living, indiscriminately – there was still hope for this world.

  Tadek smiled and pressed her fingers tighter. His sister, not by blood but by conviction. Her palm was warm in his hand and everything was as it ought to have been. It took him seven eternally long years, but he was finally at peace. Liberated.

  Note to the Reader:

  Thank you so much for reading “The Aftermath” – I hope you enjoyed the story! Even though it is fictional, all historical events mentioned in it are based on true facts. Researching and writing the prologue was a particularly emotional experience for me since the Front under the Seelow Heights was exactly where my grandfather was fighting under Zhukov’s command in April of 1945, as part of the 2nd Guards Tank Army of the 1st Belorussian front. I heard many stories from him about taking Berlin but mostly when the fighting was already happening inside the city. I could never have imagined, in my wildest dreams (or nightmares, should I say), how ferocious the fighting on the Seelow Heights was, before I began researching it on
my own, already after his death. Perhaps, that was one of the few things he preferred not to remember and after writing about it, I don’t blame him one bit. To honor his memory, I tried my best to preserve the historical accuracy of the battle itself basing it on historical sources and eyewitness accounts.

  Fictional Tadek is a collective image of liberated prisoners of war/former concentration camp inmates who were allowed (and quite often forced but mostly that happened to the Soviet citizens and not foreign-born ones) to join the Red Army, just like Gulag political prisoners that were sent to the front-line according to a decree of the State Defense Committee that was issued at the end of March 1945, just two weeks before the offensive of Berlin took place. The volunteers (like Tadek) were given preferential treatment, while the rest of the forcibly conscripted men were usually sent to the penal battalions and mostly used as cannon fodder by the commanders at the beginning of each battle.

  The first day of the battle itself, including the sappers working at night, the hellish artillery attack, and the use of the 143 searchlights directed at the enemy positions are true to historical fact. The use of the German POWs for propaganda purposes and sending them back into the city is also based on the historical accounts. You can read more about the battle itself and all of the details concerning it in A. Beevor’s, “The Fall of Berlin 1945.”

  Even though Gerlinde Neumann’s character is fictional, she was inspired by an example of Rainer Höss, the infamous Kommandant Höss’s grandson, who not only publicly denounced his grandfather and cut all ties with his family, after learning of his grandfather’s crimes committed in Auschwitz but declared that if Rudolf Höss had a grave, he’d spit on it.

  “He was a cold-blooded soldier who got 20,000 people killed by dinnertime – with the excuse that he just did his job. Yet, later in the day, he would turn into a loving father, who would tuck his kids into bed.” (Rainer Höss).

  Fictional Gerlinde finds herself asking the same questions – how her loving father could also be a ruthless killer, at the same time? – and slowly begins to undergo the same transformation, from a seemingly ignorant, young girl to a rational and independent-thinking adult who can’t possibly accept her father’s arguments and excuses despite the tight bond between the two. It’s easy to imagine that it’s the most difficult choice in any person’s life, to choose between a blood relative and some abstract, universal justice, and the ones who choose the abstract, universal justice over their own family member (in a case when that family member clearly chose the wrong side of history to fight for) shall always have my utmost respect.