Her Hidden Life

by V. S. Alexander

  I ran into the road, waving my hands. The truck ground to a halt. Some of the men peered over the top of the cab and aimed their weapons at me.

  ‘Stop,’ I shouted. ‘I’m Magda Ritter, a taster for the Führer.’

  One officer, from the Wolf’s Lair, recognized me. He ordered the men to keep their weapons sighted on me.

  ‘I’m alone,’ I said. ‘The others are dead.’

  The officer looked into the woods and then opened the door. Several soldiers jumped out of the truck. The officer questioned me and I told him my story from the time the sedan had been attacked.

  ‘We were on patrol,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry we were too late.’ He looked down the road. ‘There was intense fighting through the night. The Reds have temporarily fallen back, but our efforts won’t last. The Führer has ordered the evacuation of the Wolf’s Lair. You must come with us or you’ll miss the train to Berlin.’

  I pointed toward the house. ‘What about the bodies?’

  ‘The dogs will make short work of them,’ the officer said.

  I started to object, but he raised his hand and said, ‘We have no time to bury them. The Reds will have to do it. They killed them.’

  A soldier extended his arm. I grabbed hold of it and he pulled me up into the bed. We turned in the road and headed toward the sedan. Its shattered windscreen glinted like a fractured mirror. I screamed for the driver to stop because I wanted to retrieve my luggage.

  ‘Quickly,’ the officer ordered one of his men.

  A soldier jumped down. I pointed to the bag, which lay in the open trunk. My luggage had been searched, but I could see my few belongings were still inside it.

  I didn’t want to look inside the car, but I couldn’t help but see the back of the young soldier fallen over the steering wheel. Else’s body lay slumped in the backseat. I could not see her face, but her hands were folded across her chest as if she were attempting to stop the bleeding from her heart.

  The soldier returned with my suitcase. The truck sped off, careening down the road. The men peered over the top of the rails, their weapons poised as if the Reds could attack at any moment. I sat on the slats and folded my collar around my neck. A cold wind cut through me. I shed a silent tear for Else and the others and wondered if I would make it out of the Wolf’s Lair.

  CHAPTER 18

  In less than twenty-four hours, the atmosphere at the East Prussian headquarters had descended into chaos. I sensed the desperate energy in the air as the truck pulled up to the garage near the railroad siding. Rows of suitcases and files lay on the ground awaiting their loading onto one of Hitler’s private trains. SS officers, scribbling in notebooks, bent over them. A soldier helped me down from the truck. I felt relieved to be back.

  Cook stood nearby. She looked intently at the officer who had questioned me earlier. He shook his head and Cook’s face flushed red. She cried out and ran toward me with outstretched arms.

  ‘Damn barbarians,’ she wailed. ‘I hope they rot in hell!’ She dabbed at the dried blood on my face and then collapsed against my shoulder, spending the remainder of her tears. I comforted her as best I could and then told her my story. I cried describing Else’s death in the car.

  ‘We have little time,’ Cook said after I finished. ‘The train leaves at noon and we must be on it. Meet me here at eleven forty-five.’ She turned and strode toward the mess hall.

  I grabbed my suitcase and walked to the dormitory. Along the way, I passed many men scurrying like ants whose anthill had been stepped on. Dora was in our room packing her things. She looked at me with a sour face and said, ‘You smell like shit.’

  I threw my bag on my cot in disgust and said, ‘I spent the night in an outhouse.’

  She stared at me blankly.

  ‘All the tasters are dead,’ I said.

  Dora returned to her packing. ‘Better for them than what we have to go through. Imagine the Reich falling.’ She slammed her suitcase lid and turned to me, her thin face quivering. ‘I can’t believe it.’ She repeated those words several times before collapsing on her bed. The overhead light cast stark shadows across her face. ‘We can’t give up. The Führer will not allow the Wehrmacht to fail.’

  ‘The war will be over soon,’ I said, ‘and Germany will be defeated.’

  She glared at me. ‘How dare you say such a thing? You ought to be hanged for treason. People like you and your traitorous husband are the reason we are losing the war.’

  Enraged, I wanted to slap her, shake her, until I dislodged her blind obedience to the Party, but I’d said enough. Confrontation would only fuel the fire.

  I turned from Dora and opened my locker. Nothing important was inside, a few hairpins and a pair of ruined stockings. I only had a few dresses in my suitcase. The one I was wearing would have to be thrown away. I took a dress out of my bag, left for the showers and immersed myself in soapy hot water until my body was scrubbed and clean. When I returned to the room, Dora had gone. I changed into fresh clothes and left my bloodstained dress lying on my cot, a souvenir for the Russians or the encroaching forest, whichever arrived first.

  Cook was waiting for me on the train platform. ‘I had to leave so much behind,’ she explained, and wrung her hands. ‘It will be a new life in Berlin – if not our last.’ Her eyes grew hazy with thought. ‘I’m afraid of what the Allies will do to us, Magda. The Reds, if they get to us first, will slaughter us in the streets like pigs.’

  ‘You will be safe with the Führer,’ I said. Even now Cook failed to see who had brought such destruction upon our heads. She would never blame her Führer for the unfolding catastrophe.

  ‘You’re coming to the Chancellery with us, aren’t you?’

  I looked down the siding at the men and women evacuating the Wolf’s Lair. Few words were spoken. Most stood with lowered heads or stared at the train with vacant eyes. Dora, her suitcase by her side, stood at the end of the platform.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I have to find my father. I haven’t heard from him in months. I don’t even know if he is alive.’

  Cook turned to me and put her hands on my shoulders. ‘Remember this: Come to the bunker if you must and I will let you and your father in.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Don’t be foolish,’ Cook said. ‘You may have no choice if you want to survive.’

  I thanked her for her kindness, but in my heart I wanted nothing more to do with Hitler or his staff. I wanted to find my father and start a new life with him if that was possible. So much was up in the air. The enemy might kill us all. I thought about Karl. He leaned over me, his face filled with joy. We were making love on our last night together. His body lingered over mine and he touched my face as only someone who loves you can do. My heart ached for Karl, but he was dead. He wanted me to survive, but without him, life seemed impossible. Yet every time I felt overwhelmed, I remembered my pledge to him.

  An SS officer walked in front of those waiting on the platform. He explained that only a small number of us would be allowed to board – there would be several trips between the Wolf’s Lair and Rastenburg Station using all of Hitler’s private trains. He selected Cook and me to depart on the first. Others, including Dora, would have to wait until later.

  Cook and I boarded and settled into seats by the window. Looking out from the ornate car, the world seemed rather commonplace and colorless. My life would never be the same. I would be an ordinary German and my service to Hitler would be a memory. An autumnal melancholy hung over the Wolf’s Lair as the November clouds settled in gray sheets over us. Time had stopped for an instant. The bare trees, the bunkers in the distance, the railroad siding, would remain in my memory as they were at this moment. Nothing could change that. As I watched, a stooped old man approached the train. He was surrounded by SS officers and military generals, who seemed to be pushing his frail body forward. The brash, vibrant Adolf Hitler had crumbled before our eyes, a shell of his former self. The assassination attempt had wounded him, physically and psychologi
cally, more than anyone knew. Perhaps self-loathing had led to his weakened condition, or perhaps he’d been consumed with hate because of Germany’s failure to win the war. I was uncertain which was true.

  After several minutes, the train pulled away from the siding and we rolled through the forest toward Rastenburg. Cook patted my hands. We were bound for Berlin.

  I left them at the station the next morning. Several SS cars were waiting to whisk Hitler and his staff to the Reich Chancellery. I hugged Cook and kissed her on the cheek.

  ‘Remember, you can always come to the bunker,’ she reminded me.

  I thanked her and watched the sleek cars drive away. Hitler was in a large touring Mercedes far from where I stood.

  I looked out upon the city. Berlin lay shattered. We had been lucky to even complete the journey. Whole neighborhoods were reduced to rubble. Cook and I had observed the destruction from the train. One soldier who accompanied us said Berlin reminded him of Hamburg after the bombing in 1943 and the horrendous casualties suffered there. My eyes were unprepared for the destruction in front of me.

  The overcast had lifted, but the intermittent sunshine did little to lift my spirits. I picked up my bag and was glad I had so few possessions, for my only means of transportation to my old neighborhood, Horst-Wessel-Stadt, was by foot.

  I walked through blocks pulverized to shattered brick and ashes. Charred storefronts lined the streets like burnt matchsticks. Vendors conducted what little commerce they could from donkey carts. I was hungry, so I purchased a half-rotted apple from a man wearing a ragged coat. He apologized for the bad fruit, but said I would not find a better meal anywhere else. I suspected he was right.

  The trip took more than two hours, taking me over chunks of masonry spilled into the street, burned-out vehicles, homes reduced to cinders. My father had written that he had moved in with a man and his family. They were both workers at the plant. When I came to the man’s street, which was not far from where I grew up, nothing was left. The homes were gone, the trees blasted into splinters, the sidewalks littered with bricks and trash. I sat on my bag in the early afternoon sun overwhelmed by the destruction. A few people passed by, but no one spoke. Life had been drained from them; they were more desperate than I. I wondered if I’d been too quick to reject Cook’s offer. At least I would have food and shelter at the bunker.

  After a half hour’s rest, I got up and continued on to my old neighborhood. I recalled the nights the bombs fell, the blazing heat, my attempted rescue of Frau Horst, finding my mother’s shoe in the street. I wouldn’t have recognized our block at all except for a wooden marker nailed to the corpse of a bomb-blasted tree.

  I inched my way down the block, stunned by an overpowering sense of loss. It was as if my past had been obliterated by bombs. Even though the Allies had dropped them, I knew the true perpetrator of this destruction. He was now safe and warm in the Chancellery while the rest of Germany suffered.

  I’d found what I thought to be the crumbling steps of my old home when I heard a small voice call my name. I turned to see a woman in a gray coat and black shoes. Her hair was stringy and long and fell out from under the white kerchief wrapped around the top of her head. She looked like an old peasant woman.

  ‘Magda?’ she asked with caution.

  I did not recognize her at first. Then she smiled, rushed toward me and hugged me.

  ‘Oh, Magda, you’re looking well,’ she said. ‘Much better than the rest of us.’

  I asked her name as cautiously as she did mine. ‘Irmigard?’

  ‘Yes, don’t you recognize me?’ Her smile turned to a frown and she looked down at her tattered coat and stockings. ‘No, of course you wouldn’t. You remember me as we were in school.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ I said, trying to soothe her feelings. ‘It’s just that I haven’t seen you in so long.’ I put my bag on the ground and looked at her creased and ash-streaked face. I wanted to ask, ‘How are you doing?’ I wanted to make polite conversation, but I sensed that neither of us was in the mood for such pleasantries.

  ‘I’m gathering bricks,’ Irmigard offered without my asking and then chuckled. ‘You have to laugh sometimes about how difficult life is. Who would have imagined that the daughter of a respected jeweler would be collecting bricks for sale? They’re in such short supply they’re like diamonds – more precious than the real gem. People need them to rebuild their homes.’ She pointed to a creaky wheelbarrow on the other side of the street that held her prized possessions.

  ‘Where are you living?’ I asked.

  Irmigard extended her thin arm in the direction of a row of buildings a few blocks away. ‘They’re damaged, but enough of the floors and ceilings remain that several families are living there. Our home was bombed to pieces. We are lucky to have a place at all. My father pays a little rent to the owner, who lives on the first floor with his wife. Sometimes they stay up all night guarding the building. My father has a gun.’ She put a finger to her lips. ‘Please don’t tell. You know it’s illegal, but we have no other way of protecting ourselves. But if we get bombed again, we don’t have much to lose.’

  A cold wind raced past us and Irmigard wiped her nose on her coat sleeve. ‘Where are you staying?’ She looked at the ruins of my home in front of us. ‘I was sorry to hear about your mother.’

  The thought of my mother’s death crippled me with pain. ‘I never found her body. My father was sick in the hospital and there was no time to search. I was working for the Führer.’

  Irmigard squinted as the sun broke out from the clouds and shone on her face. ‘I heard you were working for him.’ She spoke flatly as if she wanted to hear no more about Hitler. She looked at me inquisitively because I hadn’t answered her question.

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t have a place to stay. I thought I could find my father. I wanted to be away from my job and everything associated—’

  ‘—You must come home with me.’ Irmigard cupped her hands. ‘It will be like old times when we used to talk after school.’

  ‘I shouldn’t. I must look for my father.’

  ‘You can look for him, but you must stay with us if you have no place to live.’ The look in her eyes told me she would be overjoyed to have my company. ‘You have no reason not to. The house isn’t pretty, but we’ve made it comfortable inside and we get a few vegetables now and then. If we’re lucky we even get a soup bone with a bit of meat on it.’

  I looked at her unkempt face and saw something I had not seen in a long time. Pride. This school chum who had been part of my life so long ago was filled with pride and determination. She made me feel proud to be German. That was something I had not experienced since Karl had shown me the atrocities. My feeling was so different from the resplendent puffery of Eva and her friends and the obsequious pandering of the military men who surrounded Hitler. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘but I’ll pay for my room and board and help you gather bricks if you help me look for my father. I’ve saved a few Reichsmark.’

  Irmigard grasped my hands. ‘We will be the best of friends. Come, let me take you to my family. I’m sure they will be happy to see you.’

  We crossed the street to get her wheelbarrow and the two of us, talking and laughing, pushed the heavy bricks down the cratered streets to her home.

  Irmigard’s family welcomed me as if they were my parents. Her mother, Inga, met us on the steps of the derelict building. Irmigard led me up to the third floor where she lived with her mother; her father, Frederick; and her younger sister, Helga. Her father, a man over fifty with graying hair, was repairing a watch as he sat in the sun in front of a broken window. He had cut the tips off a pair of cloth gloves so he could keep his hands warm, yet retain the agility of his fingers. Helga – fourteen years old and pretty, with long blond hair – was reading a book in a chair that had no legs. I’d met her a few times before when she was much younger.

  All the windows on the front of the building were broken; a strong northwest wind poured into the room. I
rmigard showed me the French doors they pulled shut at night to close off the space. The room, about seven meters wide, served as a dining room and bedroom. Scraps of wood and small branches littered the floor around a stove attached to the wall. A door at the back led to a small bathroom, which wasn’t working because there was no running water. Still, the apartment was better than living on the street, or in a hut, as was the condition of so many Berliners.

  That evening, as the family gathered around a small oak table, Irmigard’s father said a prayer – not for Germany or Hitler, but for peace. We sat in dim candlelight because the electricity was out. Inga cooked over the woodstove using the meager kindling for heat. We dined from chipped bowls and cracked plates that had been washed with rainwater. The meal consisted of two scrawny carrots, divided among the five of us, and a weak soup made with a ham bone. I felt guilty taking this small amount of food from their mouths, and I vowed that I wouldn’t stay long under their roof. As scant as the meal was, I felt fortunate I didn’t have to worry about being poisoned.

  ‘The Nazis will come for me soon,’ Frederick said during dinner. ‘They will put a rifle in my hand and expect me to shoot the enemy. Soon there will be nothing but old men like me and the Hitler Youth defending the streets. The Führer is only prolonging our agony.’

  Inga put her hands to her face and shook her head. ‘My God, surely they wouldn’t ask you to fight. You – who can barely walk up a flight of stairs! They will kill you!’

  ‘Momma, don’t say such things,’ Irmigard said.

  Her father lifted his spoon and tapped it against his temple. ‘I’ve been thinking. I doubt the war will carry on for much longer. But if it does, I’m not going to kill another man. I’ll surrender and that will be that.’