In the Fire of the Eastern Front

by Hendrick C. Verton

  I began to feel really sick in the pit of my stomach, as the queue slowly nudged its way to that door where my fate would be decided. When I landed in Group One then I would try my luck at escaping! Perhaps I could find a trusted comrade, one whom I could rely on, and we could use our chances of escape on German soil. One way or an other, they were not going to send me to Siberia and that was for sure! Suddenly, we were no longer needed. “Come back tomorrow”. The commission had not managed to examine the numbers on that day. A move from ‘Lady Luck’ or that ‘God of War’?

  That night was long and one that brought no sleep for me. It was one of tense agony and apprehension for the second act. The next day, far quicker than I thought possible, I was standing before this committee. It was a room filled with blue cigarette-smoke, with German and Russian doctors, a translator, and who was sitting in the middle at a table? This beautiful apparition! So, she was a doctor, which explained her rank, but from her appearance she could have been a medical student.

  To examine me, she carefully undid my sling and, just as carefully, felt the area around the bullet holes on my arm, which by now was almost paralysed. Although I was tense, I felt the soft touch of her long slim fingers on my skin, like a caress, but let out a loud yell, “Ouch!” as was rehearsed with our assistant doctor during his ‘simulation course’. My arm had not healed quickly without the use of a sling and so I saw to it that I had not used mine very often. In that way I stretched the healing process for as long as possible, and the result was now, at that moment, to be seen. I could hardly be called ‘whole’, although I was not in as bad a condition as others. A discussion began between all of the doctors. In the months of contact with the ‘Ivans’, however distant, through repetition one is forced to recognise words, until you ask what it means, or you are informed, and so I recognised the word good. Did that mean good enough to work? Was I not going to be released? This angelic female could not release me on medical grounds? I watched her whispering for some minutes with an older colleague in a white coat, and then she turned to me and smiled, saying “Du domoy”, i.e. I was dismissed!

  Only upon leaving the room did I understand her words. I was going home! Had it been the tuition from my doctor friend? Had it been the sympathy of this woman, of the same age as I, which had spared me from Siberia and saved my life? I will never know. Numbed but happy, I wanted to share my news with my chums and returned to my room. Most were Group One. Suddenly it was clear to me that to have shared my joy with them would have abused them emotionally. I could not console them, for I could not find any words. As I stood there, the melancholy sound of a harmonica filled the air, coming from the cloister garden. The melody hung in the air. It was one known to all of us who had worn a uniform. The musician interpreted what we were all suffering, what we all needed, interpreting the despair in most, and the hope in others. The music of this soldier’s philosophy was far better than any words of mine could ever be. Es geht alles vorüber, es geht alles vorbei. “Everything changes, changes to yesterday”.

  CHAPTER 19

  Illegally in Poland

  Now the war for me was definitely at an end. The last act of the Silesian drama was simply a matter of enforcing the resolutions of the Potsdam Treaty which took place on 2 August 1945. From then on, Breslau was no longer German territory, but Polish. Already in the middle of May, a Polish flag could be seen fluttering in the breeze over the City Hall. Breslau was no longer Breslau. Breslau was given the new Polish name of Wroclaw. A seven hundred year old culture sank in a flood of Poles and Polish government. The ‘blooming’ capital city of this part of Germany had been given away.

  The fate of the German eastern provinces had already been decided between the Western Allies, by February 1945, in Yalta. This ‘bounty’ of war was divided. Although Poland lost territory to the Soviet Union, Poland’s borders were enlarged by 250 kilometres, stretching into Germany like soldiers ‘falling-out’ to the side. It had been a subject of discussion however, as early as 1943, at the Teheran Conference, when Winston Churchill’s dry comment was that “No one can do anything about it, when this treads on German toes.”

  This ‘falling-out’ action brought compulsory seizure of property, following the forceful expulsion of15 million German inhabitants. As a result, three million people lost their lives. “A land of death, from the Oder to the Neisse, for the outlawed”, was the description from the journalist Robert Jungk, on 26 November 1945, in the Zürcher newspaper Die Weltwoche.

  Paper given to the author on his release from Soviet captivity. The later official German translation read: “It is certified that Verton Heinrich [Hendrik in the original Russian], 22 years old, from 20 September 1945 is limited to the physical work deemed suitable, according to the resolution of the medical commission of the hospital of Unit 25472. Diagnosis: Damage of the left elbow nerve.

  The chairman of the commission, Captain [signature unreadable].”

  I was a free man on 20 September 1945. I was given my discharge papers and a ‘pound-loaf of bread. As a stranger, I was all owed to stay in Breslau, just 24 hours. I was still there 12 months later. “Du domoy!” The Russian doctor had said to go home, but where was that? I could not and did not want to return to my ‘home’ in Holland. I knew that the ‘old’ régime was allied to the Communists during the war, and allied now to the ‘new’. I could only expect reprisals against the ‘volunteers’ from my homeland. That was confirmed at a later date. No! I must find myself a new home.

  I cannot describe the utter joy that overwhelmed me with the first steps I took into freedom. I was free at last. Free! There were no more Russian guards and no locked doors. The military discipline, and the ever-present fear of death over the last years, was no longer there. I was totally alone. There were neither accompanying guards of escort, nor any of my reliable comrades to give me their company. I felt the isolation. The realisation came that I must fight my way through a strange survival strategy that I knew existed, but that I had to discover for myself what it was.

  My uniform was tattered, making me feel like a vagabond. But because of it I blended into the tattered city. It was a city of debris and ruins. I made my way to the home of a young nurse from Breslau. She had been discharged some time before me, and now lived with her mother on the outskirts of Carlowitz. Upon her discharge, it was possible for her to retrieve my personal effects, under difficult circumstances, and smuggle them out of the hospital. She buried them, like a dog burying a bone. They were waiting for me. My diary and old photos were all the possessions that I had.

  After dressing in a borrowed suit of her brother, who at that time was missing, I could go out into the streets. It was dangerous, because the terror of the Poles raged. Everyone in my age-group immediately aroused suspicion as having been a soldier. If you gave them the opportunity, they would tear your discharge papers to pieces.

  At the end of the war, the Polish state police, or to give them their official title ‘Organ for Public Safety’, were installed as supervisory officials by the Communists. But they possessed a high percentage of criminal elements. They made a business from plundering. They dressed in leather jackets, or had the gall to dress in German uniforms and carry German weapons. They elbowed their way through the population, stealing from them by day and by night. Under the protection of the Communists, they had never even had a whiff of gunpowder. But they were the ‘victors’ and now behaved just like the ‘Ivans’, although they had never been friends. It may be somewhat strange to understand, but the Communist leadership which now reigned, was very often the saving grace for many of the German nationals to be found in Breslau, simply because of their relationship with the Poles.

  The Breslauers knew how to help themselves in this situation. A ‘jungle-drum’ system, using saucepan-lids, became the communication system in calling for help when the Poles forced their way in to where the Breslauers lived. The signal warned the neighbours, every one of whom joined in with a clash of cymbals, the din of which reached a
crescendo, stretching from house to house. The commander then sent jeeps and soldiers. He simply enjoyed getting to grips with the Poles, between whom there was no love lost. The ‘Ivans’ showed no mercy, and very often shots were to be heard.

  The Russian/Polish relationship had never been good, but at that time, when the Russians had ‘freed’ Poland from the yoke of Fascism it was, of course, worse than ever. Both sides were contemptuous of the other. Murder and manslaughter between the two occurred daily. This ‘peace’ after the war produced even more of a psychological crisis in many people. Suicides were at an even higher rate than during the siege of the city. The total result, including the high death-rate among both young and old, in appalling conditions including epidemics, was catastrophic.

  Normal hygienic conditions were non-existent causing the high death-rate. It was not to be wondered at. The civilian population died off like flies, from typhus, typhus fever, dysentery and diphtheria. Babies were the first ‘sacrifices’. The deaths of very many infants caused by malnutrition was also not surprising.

  It did not take long for the Poles to fill the central prison in Kletschkauerstrasse with people who were arrested under false charges and delivered there. For most that meant a gruesome death. A German railway-worker was taken there, on trumped-up charges that he was the Chief of the Breslau Gestapo. It appeared that his railway identification card, picturing him in his railway official’s uniform, proved this! His protest produced a forceful kick in the abdomen or genitals, and blows from truncheons. That lasted until the un fortunate candidate signed a (false) statement confessing to the charges.

  The patrols from prison guards during the nights disturbed not only the sleep of the prisoners, but they had to report, standing to attention, that ‘our cell is occupied with German swine’. The nights were not only used for control, they were used for the most brutal of interrogations, accompanied by very loud music from the radio, to try to cover the screams of the tortured.

  After the Poles took over the control of Silesia, they organised concentration camps where Germans were starved, beaten to death, or died from other methods. One of those camps was in Lamsdorf. The ‘Attrition’ called for by Stalin, was now replaced with that from the Poles. In this camp alone, 6,488 Germans were shot, hanged, burned, or died from the consequences of being forced into barrels and rolled ‘for as long as it took for them to die’.

  In Breslau, as in the whole of Silesia, to be German was to be worthless. As such you could be driven from your home and used as forced labour. More and more soldiers, who were discharged by the Russians for any reason, were immediately re-arrested by the Poles and transported away. For me, that was a very big worry.

  One could not fail to notice that international flags flew from various houses. Those ensured the safety of their occupants, being respected by both the Russians and the Poles. There were French, Italian, and flags from other nations, which gave me an idea. Even as a foreign worker, this would not give me 100% safety. There was a danger that I was classified as a DP, i.e. a displaced person, admittedly coming under the auspices of UNRA to be repatriated. That was not what I wanted, but it was worth the risk. I simply had to have false papers. Until I had them, I made myself an armband in the colours of the Dutch national flag and attached it to my lapel. My false papers, with a stamp, stated that during the war, I had been forced to work for public transport, the BVB. This vital piece of paper was procured for me by one of its former employees. For that life-saving gesture I was able, some years later, to return the favour. I testified at the ‘denazification’ of the said man, in the western zone. I confirmed that during the war he had always treated his foreign workers as human beings, and without any harassment.

  The unconditional willingness to help each other, apart from those termed as ‘flexible shoe-cleaners’ was among the Germans second to none. People could trust their past, and also their origin to anyone German, without re percussions. The terrible experiences springing from the siege soldered them together into a brotherhood of conspirators. They formed a piece of German homeland, a colony in the middle of a very hostile world.

  At all costs, those Germans wanting to return to their homes that they had left were not welcome and had to be outlawed. The Poles had set up control points and guards very early on. Even by the spring of 1945, a post was set up on the river-crossing at Görlitz, on the river Neisse. Some escaped at that crossing, increasing the housing problem in the city, which by now was acute. The Poles were organising ‘ghettos’ for the Germans, in anethnic-cleansing programme. The Germans could be controlled better in that way. Perhaps it would be better to say that it would be easier to steal what possessions they had left, to say nothing of an uncomfortable level of harassment.

  They started this ethnic-cleansing programme in the autumn of 1945, in Carlowitz, where I lived. I had been there since my discharge. The inhabitants had been given 90 minutes to pack 20 kilos together, and had to leave their keys in the locks upon leaving. They had just one and a half hours to decide what would make up the 20 kilos, what they wanted to take from among their possessions, and what had to be left behind.

  Before this happened, I made my way into the city, to my friend Markwart. He was the assistant doctor who had been discharged at the same time as I. The relationship was a good one, for we were of the same age. We had the same ambitions of surviving and always having a full stomach. He lived with a nursing-sister, in a bomb-damaged house, under the eaves in attic rooms. It was a house of flats into which the Russians and the Poles did not like to enter. Most of the remaining bomb-damaged houses were close to falling down, but that did not worry us old warriors. That was the least of our worries. We were left alone to try to live, or simply to vegetate would be a better description. Our daily bread was bought on the ‘black market’, paid for in Polish z3oty. Meanwhile the German mark had disappeared. My doctor friend made some money from the treatment of ill Russians or Poles, and from army medical reserves.

  There were many Germans who made themselves voluntary prisoners in their homes, not daring to go out on the streets. I became a middle-man between them and the occupiers of Silesia, making good business and exchanges, using articles for sale or exchange. My ‘foreign status’ made this possible. There were usually a few z3oty left over for me, and therefore food could be bought. It was swings and roundabouts, for sometimes business was not so good. Then, of course, we went to bed hungry and could not sleep. There were other times when we lived like ‘kings in France’, and were full of Polish sausage and cream torte.

  There was a very strange incident during this time, but one that is representative of the political relationship between the Western Allies and the Communists. Markwart was approached and asked to act as a spy. He came home one day and told me that two strangers had approached him. They were two Americans who offered him a large sum of money to inform them of the political situation in Breslau, under the Poles. To spy? To spy, and for the Americans who were our enemy? To spy against the Communists who were also our enemy? The Americans were already spying on their Communist brothers-in-arms? That was a double-edged sword, even a double-edged political sword, and Markwart said ‘no’. There was no question of him getting involved, al though the thought of the money was very attractive.

  Markwart left Breslau, his place of birth. I left in the November of 1945. He saw no prospects for his future medical career, in staying in a city reigned over by Slavs. Shortly before he departed, he wrote down his thoughts about his birthplace, in a poem.

  My Home Town

  Dear, old and beautiful city, I loved you as a child.

  Within your walls each day, Spring’s wind warmed my face, so mild.

  Walking your cobbled paths, my way I found.

  In mews and courtyards, the hidden nooks and crannies I found.

  Each new day the sun shone on your cobbled ways.

  Patrician house, house of hearth and hall,

  From each stone, I heard your heartfelt call.

/>   Dear, old and beautiful city, in ruins and rubble, what have they done?

  From your torn and painful, tear-stained face, I want to run.

  Your dress of fine old filigree lies torn in shreds around you,

  But, I promise, my love will always be strong, always be true.

  In my prayers I will pray, that on another sunny day,

  That old heaven you once knew,

  Will rise again to protect and comfort you.

  Markwart was never ever to see his old home-city again. We met some years later in West Germany and I met not only a family man with children, but also a Professor of Medicine.

  I did not have to be alone for long, for there were many Breslauers who would have taken me in, a young man on his own, and useful as a protector. So I lived for a long time in Klosterstrasse, in the house of an old lady. In order to prevent the plundering raids of the Poles at night, I barricaded the doors with stout wooden planks. They tried many times, but they were unlucky. When this lady, married to a Belgian, finally received permission to join her husband, she made me heir to her house, which didn’t please the Poles very much. I had it in writing that I now owned her house. They found the loop-hole they needed and told me that this ‘Will and Testament’ was not legally signed and sealed by a solicitor, so it was not legal. It was therefore not mine. I could however let it, or rent it to students, which I did.

  One could not be too fussy at that time. Half of the house at the back had been shot away by artillery fire, and that included the toilet on the second floor. Those using it had a lovely view of the mountains of debris and rubble. Such conditions were ideal for insects, not one or two, but a whole plague of them, which robbed us of our sleep.