The Road to Liberation: Trials and Triumphs of WWII

by Marion Kummerow

  For the final eradication of the Bolshevik banditry which murders innocent people and robs their property under article II . . . I order . . . the draft of all men born in 1908—1924 . . . Anyone who does not report is considered a traitor and will be punished by a tribunal court . . . I am sure every Belarusian will fulfill his duty . . .

  “Kriegshammer!” Hammerer’s voice.

  She made her way to his door. As she stepped over the threshold, he was standing, an official-looking paper in his hand. “Read it!” She had never seen him avoiding eye contact.

  Operative Report. Train Number S-123 was blown up by partisans. And something else, which tears obscured from her. A bitter wave rose, tightening her throat, making it impossible to speak.

  He motioned her to leave the room and followed her to her desk. “For a public poster. Translate into Russian and type. One hundred persons are subject to execution in retaliation for the blowing up of the train with wounded Wehrmacht soldiers.”

  And for an instant, it all—Ewald, their love for each other, their plans—seemed like an illusion, like a dream that had happened to someone else.

  56

  March-June 1944

  She was with child.

  Alone, in the darkness of the night, she would reopen the recent past and, returning to their first meeting and their rare comings together, thought she heard him calling her Schätzchen. Liebchen. My Herzchen. At any time of the day or night, all she needed to do to see his face, to hear his voice was to close her eyes. Ewald.

  By March, owing to the presence of additional forces, it became obvious the German Command expected the Soviets to launch a major offensive. Hitler’s order to turn Vitebsk and the surrounding villages into strongholds was a clear sign of it.

  The population—mostly old women and teenagers—were forced to dig ditches and sinkholes, preparing for the German soldiers and auxiliary forces to erect anti-tank barriers, reinforce firing positions for artillery and mortars on the approaches to the city. Five frontiers were erected; minefields laid. After the preparations were complete, the civilian population was forced from the city.

  On June 26, smoke from the bombs, artillery fire, and unrelenting explosions were undeniable proof that the fighting had reached the city.

  “Fräulein Kriegshammer, step in.” Hammerer offered her a chair, himself settling on the corner of his table, which was filled with boxes of documents. The metal safe now open gaped with its emptiness. Without any preliminaries, he stated, “You go with us. I promise you a brilliant future.” Perhaps seeing something in her face, he added, “And I even spare you contemplating your decision.” A lopsided smile appeared on Hammerer’s usually composed face then waned. “In any case, you have only one.”

  “Which is?”

  “You do go with us.”

  “So, I don’t have any choice?

  “Not really . . . To save your own skin there is no other way.”

  “May I ask why?”

  His eyebrow flickered a little. “It’s time to tell you.” He paused to extract a cigarette from his cigarette holder. Without offering her one, he lit his, took a deep drag, and, after exhaling, declared, pronouncing every word, “You were on my hook since even before I employed you.”

  A chill ran down her back. My instinct was not wrong. With much effort, she steeled herself for what was to follow. “But how—”

  He didn’t let her finish. “My first suspicion you were not who you presented yourself rose after we found out Herr Schmiedecker was a Soviet agent and you seemed on good terms with him. Just out of curiosity, I surveyed you two. I must compliment you on your composure, you stood cool at all times, and I would have abandoned my doubts but . . . once your face betrayed you.”

  She chose to remain silent, suddenly aware of the rumbling and thunder that indicated a heavy battle approaching.

  “Remember, on June fifteen two years ago, we drove by gallows on which your friend Rita hung peacefully?”

  At the recollection, she cowered inwardly.

  “I see you remember. I pulled some strings, and it turned out she was the one who married. And who played the part of the maid of honor?” She saw a small, ironic grimace forming at the edges of his lips. “What do you think I initiated?”

  Feeling nausea, which hovered inside her like a supplementary presence, she sat upright and took deep, steadying breaths, willing herself to remain quiet. Sometimes silence helped to draw more information.

  “I assigned a tail to you.”

  So, she was hunted. Not the hunter. More like a pawn in the game.

  “Shadowing you was the greatest success of my anti-Underground mission. My second Iron Cross is on the way. But now, we don’t have much time to talk about me. Let’s talk about you.”

  “I’m all ears, Herr Hauptsturmführer.”

  He opened his mouth when a series of explosions somewhere in the near distance made him blink. “Well.” He swallowed. “You have plenty of sins before the Soviet power. Your Motherland won’t forgive you for killing two Underground members, one of them a turncoat Polizei. Thanks to you, we managed to track the whole Underground group and its leader, Sergey Vladimirovich Posokhov. Besides, how could you explain to your Soviet authority shooting him personally albeit with my pistol?”

  “How would they learn such details?”

  “Even if we temporarily leave, many of our loyal people will stay.” He seemed to be basking in the knowledge of his power over her. “Agnesya is on your conscience as well. We caught her in the act when you spilled coffee and slipped the military information into the soiled tablecloth. Bravo, Fräulein Kriegshammer.” With his leg balanced on his left knee, he seemed perfectly composed. “And your soft spot.” He smirked.

  She knew what would follow, which made her heart catch in her throat.

  “We could just get rid of the little girl who happened to be a child of two Underground members and the aunt of the girl’s mother, but here you deceived us. We still counted on the accomplices to exercise their care and mercy to the family of their valued members who were killed . . . by you . . . But it happened to be you, keeping the girl and the old woman alive. You have a compassionate heart, being a cold-blooded killer at the same time. You are an enigma to me, Fräulein Kriegshammer,” he pronounced with what sounded like admiration. “Have you heard enough to have no doubt you are trapped with your real compatriots?”

  In between two evils, the thought surfaced. And she’d be paying for it forever. No exit, she realized. “Your arguments are overwhelming,” she said, her eyes catching his.

  “I—” he made a significant pause “—could be in fact a guardian angel to you. I’m ready to save your neck. But at a price, of course.”

  “To become a double agent?” A hireling, a puppet of two masters.

  “I’m afraid it is the only way for you to get out of this predicament, Fräulein Kriegshammer.”

  “I am with you, Hauptsturmführer Hammerer.” She rose up. “Heil Hitler!”

  “I had no doubt, you are a reasonable person. We need people like you, and in the service to the German Reich you’ll achieve great results. I already know what you will do.” He uncrossed his legs, stood, and smoothed his jacket. “But now, we are leaving. Do you need anything from your apartment?”

  She wouldn’t go without her father’s scarf. “Yes,” she said, maybe too harshly, since his eyes squinted at her.

  “Well then, help me to the car with this box, please.” He took two bigger ones. She caught herself on the realization that in the course of the conversation she’d ceased to notice the building kept trembling from explosions.

  With the motor running, Hammerer’s Horch was packed with suitcases and boxes. He pushed three more in the back and opened the door for Ulya to climb in the back passenger seat.

  They drove in silence past the disabled carcasses of Wehrmacht vehicles, navigating between the luminous, incandescent ruins now a forest of thin, tall chimneys erect in the place of the hou
ses that had vanished in flames, the smoke swirling through the air, a choking fetid smell.

  At the corner of Zamkovaya Street, the car turned right. At the sight of her house, the driver hit the brakes just about two meters in front of a shell-hole still smoldering. Hammerer climbed from the car either to open the door for Ulya or to accompany her.

  Without looking back, Ulya ran to the building. Suddenly, the ground shook, a wave undulated under her feet, a blast force of air, a dull thump into her chest, then . . .

  IV

  The Hammer and Sickle Returns

  Ulya

  Vitebsk

  57

  June 1944

  When she came to, Ulya found herself lying on her back, looking at a tarpaulin ceiling that trembled most likely from a breeze.

  The last thing she remembered was Hammerer climbing from the car and a wave that threw her high in the air. What happened to him? Through a terrible headache and ringing in her ears, the thought made its way into her mind: She wished him dead—he was the bearer of all her secrets. Feeling a crushing heaviness in her body, she still made herself to look around. On the ground, some distance from her, soldiers lay, silent. Soviet soldiers, she realized. Dead.

  “Came to your senses?” A female voice was audible then a face came into focus. A cap of a medical sister. Dark eyes, red from lack of sleep. She touched Ulya’s forehead with light fingertips. “You suffered a mild concussion. How do you feel now?”

  Ulya tried her limbs then got up and swayed. “I’m well.”

  “Do you have somewhere to stay?”

  “I do.”

  The nurse lifted a piece of tarpaulin for Ulya to step out into the street. To her surprise, it was Zamkovaya, and soon she found her house, or what was left of it. The front facade was blown off, exposing her neighbor’s flat burnt out inside. The roof had caved burying what was her abode. Vati’s scarf! She clutched her throat with both her hands, choking back a cry about to escape her. So she stood there for who knew how long till a thought made its way through her clouded mind. She could go to Nikolskaya and hope the house survived, but first, she should report her existence to the authorities. NKVD that is.

  Vitebsk was a desolate wasteland. Patches of smoldering rubble were everywhere, but the fire itself had extinguished. Streets were unrecognizable. From the houses that outlasted the bombings and destruction in 1941 broken spines of walls or shells remained. On her way, Ulya passed by a few make-shift barracks but mostly military tents.

  There was not a civilian to be seen, only groups of Soviet soldiers sorting through the rubble. It looked like the population of the violated city hadn’t hurried to return after their forced expulsion in May.

  Ulya stopped a soldier in an infantry uniform. “Where can I find a military intelligence office?” she asked, her voice husky from the parched sensation. He looked her up and down and motioned to a building at the end of what was once a beautiful street. “Ask for SMERSH.”

  “What is it?”

  “You’ll find out soon.” There was something in his expression she couldn’t read. Was it a ghost of a smile or a grimace of pain?

  She thanked him and, brushing away a premonition, headed in the direction the soldier indicated.

  The entrance of the partially destroyed two-story brick building was guarded by two submachine gun armed soldiers. One of them waved her in without a word. The blue-uniformed sentry inside asked to see her papers while holding his right hand ready on his holster.

  “I’m an intelligence officer here to report to your superiors.”

  “Your name?”

  “Kriegshammer.”

  “First name?” His face remained emotionless.

  “Ursula.”

  “Hm. Wait here.” He took a step to a wall and by telephone reported her name and her claim. She thought she recognized a smirk in his voice.

  A minute passed before she distinguished heels clicking then saw the shining chrome leather high boots. An officer descended the stairs from the upper floor. Clean-shaven. Composed. Impersonal. Slim and smart in his well-tailored uniform—dark blue britches and a khaki shirt with red flashes on the collar and a red hatband around his peaked cap, The Order of the Red Star decorating his chest. He looked her over. “Come this way.”

  She followed him up the staircase then along the corridor, the hardwood floors squealing under their feet. Some rustling of papers, the clicking of the typewriters, but no voices were distinguishable from behind the closed doors.

  In front of one of them, her escort stopped and opened it for her, shifting out of the way to let her step in. She took the narrow-windowed room in: a middle-sized nondescript table with a small lamp and a phone, a pitcher of water, and a glass inkwell; two armchairs, one of them almost in the middle of what looked like a twelve by ten meter floor space, a metal safe pressed into the left corner, a simple dangling bulb. The portrait of the stern-faced Stalin dominated one of the otherwise bare walls.

  He offered her the armchair facing his desk. “Kriegshammer, is it?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Senior Lieutenant Zaitsev.” He took a bunch of papers from a drawer and, without looking up at her, started. “Name? Age? Date of birth? Parents’ names? Their occupation? Your occupation?” He asked her all the usual questions about herself and her family, studying her with detachment, motioning her to halt when he could not keep up with her answers.

  Gradually, the questioning escalated to an interrogation, his voice and demeanor changing from disbelieving to aggressive. Then came other kinds of questions. “How did you get here? Why? What assignment? What were your tasks in the Civil Council? What were your responsibilities in SD?”

  The interrogation lasted about two hours until Ulya couldn’t hold her urge to go to relieve herself anymore. “I need a break for—”

  He nodded an ascent. His chair scraped against the wooden floor as he got up. “I’ll show you the way.”

  The door didn’t bear any signs of whether it was for men or women, but the fact that a soldier just stepped out while buttoning his fly suggested it was the only one on the floor. She let herself in and locked the door. Her reflection in the mirror on the wall appalled her more than ever—a blank face, tangled, white-blonde hair covered in a chalky dust, pale skin and pale blue eyes—as though most of the color had been drained from her. Only a deep scratch on her forehead added a bit of shade to her haggard appearance.

  There were no cubicles. She tugged at a dangling rope to flush the waste of the previous visitors, but there was not enough water for it. She squatted to relieve herself. The place was a windowless confinement. Her fleeting thought to escape proved ridiculous. And why? She’d risked her life to fight the Germans. She’d convince her colleagues of that. They’d check the facts and—all would be well.

  When she left the foul-smelling place, the interrogator yelled to the sentry downstairs to send a guard up.

  This time, he didn’t offer her a seat but placed what looked like the last page of her interrogation report on the side of the table closest to her. “This is the questionnaire with your answers.” He dipped a pen into ink. “Sign here.”

  “May I read the whole document?”

  His face contorted as though from a toothache and he grabbed the page. With jerky movements, he snatched a stack of papers from a drawer and gave it to her with a pencil. “This is your chance to tell the truth. Write your story in detail. All your actions during the occupation. All the names of the collaborationists you worked with, addresses of all meeting places, how you were recruited by SD.”

  “SD?”

  “Yes, all the truth.”

  Then, turning to the soldier at the door, he yelled, “To the cell.”

  Inside, a wall of human stink assaulted her, and she had to fight the urge to gag. But it was not the only stench. Her own when she lifted her arms appalled her. How she needed a wash! Taking only shallow breaths through her mouth, she surveyed her confinement: the chipped and flak
y surface of the concrete floor, patterns of cracks on the walls. She spotted deep runners embedded in brickwork, most likely from bullets. At the height of human heads. Finding something that looked like a mattress, she lowered herself on its filthy surface.

  Outside the walls of the cell, June was at its end, nights already warm. Inside, it felt like a sepulcher.

  So, Zaitsev did not trust her.

  It took her hours to complete her report. She knocked at the door, but no one came. Her teeth chattering, she curled into a ball like a hibernating animal, feeling herself shiver against the cold, her thoughts on the interrogation.

  As the dawn manifested a new day behind the small gridded window, she heard a clink of the keys and the door opened.

  “Your meal. When you finish, I’ll bring you to Senior Lieutenant Zaitsev.” The soldier placed an aluminum military mug with a good chunk of bread topping it on the floor.

  Her throat contracted as she tried to swallow. Still, she broke off little pieces of bread and forced them down. She had to. Who knew when she’d get something to eat again? Whether she even would have the chance? It struck her that if things went wrong, she might be executed. She battled a decision whether to offer Zaitsev the information she first thought smart to withhold—the lists with the names and addresses of the collaborators she’d buried in the dugout.

  Zaitsev cleared a space on the table, laid her pages in front of him, and read them, pausing only to light a new bitter-smelling cigarette, his hand trembling slightly. He read them twice, first, his eyes gliding over her hand-written text, then with intense concentration, going back to the previous pages as if puzzling something out. The barest hint of a grimace flicked across his features now and again.

  At last, he finished reading. The look on his face. Eyes steely, his thin taut mouth clamped.

  “Kriegshammer, you are a daughter of an enemy of the people. With the Germans here, a perfect chance to atone for him against the Soviet power.”