Recently the Internet was abuzz with a tearjerker of colossal proportions, the sinking of the Titanic freshly filmed in Hollywood and soon to be marketed as the greatest maritime catastrophe of all times. The numbers Schön had soberly cited refuted this nonsense. And this time there was an echo, for since the Gustloff was launched into cyberspace, making virtual waves, the right-wing scene has been vocal online. Jew bashing is in season again. As if the murder in Davos had taken place just yesterday, radicals are demanding on their Web site “Revenge for Wilhelm Gustloff!” The worst ranting and raving comes from the U.S. and Canada by way of the site associated with a man named Zündel, whose very name suggests something incendiary. But German-language home pages are also springing up, giving free rein to their hate at sites with names such as “National-resistance” and “Thulenet.”
Among the first sites to join the debate, if less radical than the others, was www.blutzeuge.de. With the discovery of a ship that not only sank but also, because the whole story was repressed, became the stuff of legend, it was attracting thousands of hits, and more every day. It was to his worldwide web of readers that my lone combatant, who in the meantime had acquired an adversary and fellow sports fan using the screen handle “David,” announced with somewhat childish pride the Gustloff rescue of the shipwrecked English sailors. As if the newspaper accounts were hot off the press, he quoted as a breaking story the British press's praise for this German deed. Then he wanted to know from his antagonist whether the Jewish murderer Frankfurter, imprisoned in Chur, had heard the news. David retorted, “In Sennhof Prison the inmates spent their days at rattling looms and had little time for reading the papers.”
Actually David might have found it worthwhile to learn whether a submarine officer called Marinesko, cruising in Baltic coastal waters, had heard about the rescue of the Pegaway crew by the sailors on the Gust-loff, and had thus had spelled out for him the name of his predestined target for the first time. But this question did not arise. Instead Webmaster Wilhelm celebrated an event that occurred a short time later: the deployment of the Strength through Joy ship off the English coast as a “floating polling station.” Again Wilhelm showed such up-to-date enthusiasm that you would have thought this propaganda coup had been pulled off only recently, not almost sixty years earlier.
At issue was the plebiscite that followed the annexation of Austria to what was now the Greater German Reich. German and Austrian citizens living in England were to be given an opportunity to cast their votes. The voters embarked at the Tilbury docks, and the voting took place outside the three-mile limit. This event occasioned a debate between Wilhelm and David. Back and forth, Ping-Pong-style, went their playful argument about the election. Wilhelm insisted that a secret ballot was ensured by the presence of voting booths; David replied disdainfully that of the almost two thousand voters, a total of four had voted against the Anschluss: “We've seen this before, these 99.9 % yes-votes'“ Quoting the Daily Telegraph of 12 April 1938, Wilhelm countered, “No pressure was exerted' And that, my dear David, was affirmed by Englishmen, who never miss an chance to portray us Germans in a bad light…”
I found the absurd chat-room bickering amusing. But then one of Wilhelms rejoinders made me smell a rat. This sounded familiar' To blunt David's mockery, he had the temerity to say. “Those democratic elections you glorify are driven by the interests of the plutocrats, of world Jewry! The whole thing is a swindle”
Something very similar had been offered up recently by my own son. On a visit I had tried to start a conversation by mentioning, with paternal casualness, the story I was doing on the upcoming elections in Schleswig-Holstein; the response I got was, “The whole thing's a swindle. Whether on Wall Street or here: the plutocracy drives everything; money rules “
After the first cruise to Madeira, during which Captain Lubbe died, so that in Lisbon Captain Petersen had to take over for the rest of the voyage, the summer trips to Norway began, with Captain Heinrich Bertram now in command. There were eleven of these cruises in all, each lasting five days, and so popular that they quickly sold out. They were also on the Strength through Joy schedule the following year. And it was for one of these last cruises to the fjords — I assume the next-to-last one, in mid-August — that Mothers parents were on board.
The local Party headquarters in Langfuhr had actually picked the master carpenter Liebenau and his wife for a trip to Norway because the master owned a German shepherd named Harras, and in the kennels of the Free States constabulary this Harras had succeeded in covering a bitch whose litter included the Fuhrers favorite dog, Prinz, a gift to Hitler from the Gauleiter. For this reason the canine sire Harras was mentioned several times in theDanztgei Vorposten. Mother had sung me this tale since my childhood: her novel-length dog story, complete with pedigree. Any reference to the dog brought the child Tulla into the picture. For instance, when Mother was seven and her brother Konrad drowned while swimming m the Baltic, she supposedly spent a week in the dog kennel in the courtyard of the carpentry shop, during which time she spoke not a word. “I even ate out of his tin bowl Entrails' You know, the stuff dogs are fed. That was my week in the doghouse, where I didn't say one blessed word, that's how awful I was feeling about our Konrad. He was deaf and dumb from birth, you know…”
But when the dog owner Liebenau, whose son Harry Mothers cousin, received the offer of a trip to
Norway on the universally beloved Strength through Joy ship, he regretfully turned it down, because his carpentry business was booming: expansion of the barracks out near the airport. He suggested to the Party Kreisleiter that his hardworking helper August Pokriefke, an assiduous Party member, be sent in his stead, along with his wife Erna Pokriefke. Liebenau would cover the cost of their cabin and the already discounted round-trip tickets to Hamburg, using company funds.
“If we still had the photos they snapped on the Yustloff, I could show you all the stuff they saw in those few days…” Tulla's mother declared herself particularly taken with the Folk Costume Lounge, the Winter Garden, the morning sing-alongs, and the onboard band that played every evening. Unfortunately the passengers were not allowed to go ashore from the fjords, possibly because of regulations designed to prevent any hard foreign currency from leaving the Reich. But one of the photos, lost along with the album and all the other snapshots, “when the end came for the ship,” showed a laughing August Pokriefke dancing with a group of costumed Norwegian folk dancers who had been allowed on board. “My papa, who was basically always full of fun, raved about that ship night and day after he got back from Norway. He supported the Party two hundred percent. That's why he wanted me to join the German Girls League. But I didn't want to. Not then and not later, either, when we was brought back home into the Reich, and all the girls had to be in the BDM…”
Mother's version was probably accurate. She wasn't one to let others organize her life. Whatever she did had to be voluntary. But even as a member of the Socialist Unity Party and the fairly successful leader of a carpentry brigade that produced bedroom furniture by the ton for the Russians and later usually exceeded its quota during the interior work on the concrete-slab apartment complex in the suburb of Grosser Dreesch, she got herself into hot water by charging that she was surrounded by revisionists and other enemies of the working class. Yet she was also not happy that I had chosen to join the Free German Youth: “Ain't it enough that I'm out here breaking my back for them no-goods?”
My son seems to have a lot in common with Mother. It must be in the genes, as my ex-wife claims. At any rate, Konny never wanted to join anything, not even the Ratzeburg Rowing Club or — Gabis suggestion — the Boy Scouts. To me she complained, “He's your typical loner, averse to socialization. Some of my colleagues at school say Ronnys fixated on the past, no matter how much interest he appears to take in technological progress — computers and modern forms of communication, for instance…”
Yes, of course! It was Mother who gave my son a Mac with all the bells and whistles, not long af
ter the survivors' reunion in Damp, the Baltic coastal resort. He was barely fifteen when she got him hooked. Its her fault and hers alone that things went so wrong with the boy. At least Gabi and I agree on this much: the whole business began when Konny was given that computer.
I've never felt comfortable with people who stare at one spot until it smolders, smokes, bursts into flame. Gust-loff, for example, whose Führers will was his command, or Marinesko, who in peacetime practiced only one thing — sinking ships — or David Frankfurter, who in actuality wanted to shoot himself, but then riddled someone else's flesh with four shots to give his people a sign.
In the late sixties the director Rolf Lyssy made a film that had as its subject this man of the sorrowful countenance. I've played the video at home; the black-and-white original has been gone from the theaters for years. Lyssy presents the facts quite accurately. We see the medical student, initially wearing a beret, later a hat, smoking despairingly and downing pills. When he buys the revolver in Berne's Old Town, two dozen bullets cost him three francs seventy. Unlike my version, even before Gustloff enters his study in street clothes, Frankfurter puts on his hat, moves from the armchair to a straight chair, then fires with his hat on. After turning himself in at the Davos police station and reeling off his confession emotionlessly, like a memorized poem recited in school, he places the revolver on the counter as proof.
The film does not tell us anything new. But it has an interesting feature: clips from newsreels that show the coffin, draped in a swastika flag, moving slowly through falling snow. All of Schwerin is snowed in when the funeral procession gets under way. Contrary to the actual reports, only a few civilians salute the coffin with raised right arms. At the trial, the actor playing Frankfurter looks fairly small, standing between two cantonal policemen. He says, “Gustloff was the only one I could get at…” He says, “My intention was to strike the bacillus, not the person…”
The film also shows, the prisoner Frankfurter working day after day at a loom, surrounded by other prisoners. Time passes. It becomes clear that during his first years in Churs Sennhof Prison he gradually recovers from his bone disease; we see him well nourished, plump-cheeked and no longer smoking. Meanwhile, and as if in another film, in the waters along the Baltic coast the submarine commander Aleksandr Marinesko practices rapid diving after an above-water attack, and the Strength through Joy ship Wilhelm Gustloff'sets out on cruise after cruise to Norway's fjords and the midnight sun.
Of course Lyssy's film shows neither the Gustloff nor the Soviet U-boat; only several shots of the looms allow us to surmise from their pounding that as the simple fabric grows, time is passing. And repeatedly the prison doctor certifies to the prisoner Frankfurter that his continuing residence in jail is making him well. It may look as though the perpetrator has already paid for his deed and become a different person, but I still feel uncomfortable with anyone who has one thing, and one only, on his mind — my son, for instance…
She's the one who infected him. For that, Mother, and also for giving birth to me as the ship was sinking, I hate you. I keep having these episodes of hating the simple fact that I survived, for if you, Mother, had gone overboard like thousands of others when the watchword was “Every man for himself,” and in spite of the life jacket over your bulging belly, if you had frozen in the frigid water or been dragged under, together with your unborn, as the ship sank, bow first…
But no. I cannot, must not come to the tipping point of my own accidental existence yet, for the ship still has peaceful Strength through Joy cruises ahead of it. Ten times it rounded the toe of the Italian boot, including Sicily, with shore excursions in Naples and Palermo, because Italy, organized in exemplary fascist fashion, was a friendly nation; here as there the raised right arm was the compulsory salute.
After an overnight train trip, the passengers, always carefully selected, would embark in Genoa. And at the end of the cruise, they would head home by train from Venice. With increasing frequency, high-muckety-mucks from the Party and industry came along, which caused the Strength through Joy ship's classless society to list somewhat. For example, during one cruise the famous inventor of the Volkswagen, originally called KDF-Wagen, was among the guests; Professor Porsche took a particular interest in the ships state-of-the-art engines.
After wintering in Genoa, the Gustloff reached Hamburg again in mid-March of '39. When the Robert Ley came into service a few days later, the KDF fleet comprised thirteen ships, but for now the pleasure trips for workers and white-collar employees were over. Seven ships from the fleet, among them the Ley and the Gustloff, set off down the Elbe for an unannounced destination, and without passengers. Not until they reached Brunsbüttelkoog were the previously sealed orders opened and the destination revealed: the Spanish port of Vigo.
For the first time the ships were to serve as troop transports. Now that the Civil War was over and General Franco and the Falangę had won, the German volunteers of the Condor Legion, righting at Franco s side since '36, could come home.
Not surprisingly, the military unit that went by this name provided ample fodder for the ever-voracious Internet. Getting a jump on all the others, www.blutzeuge.de reported the return of the Luftwaffes 88th Flak Regiment. The account of the legionnaires heading for home on the Gustloff read as vividly as if they had beaten the Reds only yesterday. My Webmaster delivered his report as a solo; the chat room remained closed, permitting no duet — Wilhelm vs. David — on the subject of the bombardment of Guernica, in the Basque region, by our Junker and Heinkel planes, although these types, whether diving or dropping bombs from a higher altitude, richly illustrated the Web site devoted to the victory celebration.
Initially the spokesman for the Comrades of Schwerin presented himself as a detached expert in military history, indicating that the Spanish Civil War had provided an opportunity for trying out new weaponry, just as the Gulf War had given the Americans a chance a few years back to test their new missile systems. But before long the tone in which he spoke of the Condor Legion became positively lyrical. Apparently he had drawn on Heinz Schöns painstakingly researched book, for he echoed Schöns enthusiastic description of the ships return to port and the reception its passengers received. And like the chronicler of the Gustloff, whom he repeatedly quoted online, he assumed the role of eyewitness — “Those on board were rejoicing in their smashing success…” — and he reported “deafening applause” when the legionnaires were greeted later by Field Marshal Goring. On the Web site he even posted the musical notation, with all the requisite oom-pah-pah, of the Prussian Grenadiers' March, which the band struck up as the Gustlojf and the Ley tied up at the pier in Hamburg.
While the Gustloff was being used as a troop transport for the first time, and David Frankfurter, enjoying much improved health, was serving the third year of his sentence in Sennhof Prison, Aleksandr Marinesko continued undeterred with his practice runs in coastal waters. In the naval archives of the Baltic Red Banner Fleet, a file on the submarine M-96 has turned up, revealing how successfully the commander drilled his crew for above-water attacks: eventually they were able to submerge a vessel in the record time of 19.5 seconds, as compared to a fleet average ot 28 seconds. M-96 was tested for the real thing. And on the Comrades of Schwerin Web site, too, it looked as if the oft-repeated line from the song “Revenge will come our way one day…” had helped them get ready, if not yet tested, for something undefined — the day of reckoning.
Somehow I could not dismiss the thought that this person incessantly stirring the Nazi pot and hailing the triumph of the Thousand-Year Reich like a cracked record was not some has-been like Mother but a young man — perhaps a skinhead of the more intelligent sort, or an obsessed schoolboy, engaging in sophistry over the Net. But I did not follow up on my hunch, did not want to admit that certain phrases in these digital postings, such as the seemingly innocuous judgment that “the Gustlojf was a beautiful ship,” had an alarmingly familiar ring. That was not Mother's actual voice, but still…
For a long time I cloaked my hunch in questions: It couldn't possibly be your own flesh and blood, could it? How could a child who was raised in a more or less liberal setting veer so far to the right? Gabi would have noticed — wouldn't she?
But then the Webmaster, who I still hoped was a complete stranger, launched into a tale that was all too familiar: “Once upon a time there was a boy. And he was deaf and dumb, and he drowned while swimming. But his sister, who loved him with all her heart, and who later, much later, would seek safety from the terrors of war by boarding a great ship, did not drown, even when the ship full of refugees was hit by three enemy torpedoes and sank in the frigid waters…”
I felt hot all over: It's him! That's my son telling the world fairy tales on his Web site, illustrated with comical stick figures. He's revealing family secrets, too, head-on: “But {Conrads sister, who screamed for three days straight after the death of her curly-headed brother, then said not a word for a week, is my beloved grandmother, to whom I have sworn, by the white hair on her head and in the name of the Comrades of Schwerin, that I will testify to the truth, and nothing but the truth: It is the world Jewish conspiracy that aims to pillory us Germans for all eternity…”
And so on and so forth. When I phoned Mother, she showered me with reproaches: “You're a fine one to talk. For years you don't give a shit about our Konradchen, and now all of a sudden you get a bee in your bonnet and start playing the concerned father…”
I also phoned Gabi, and then on the weekend drove to sleepy little Mölln, even bringing flowers. Konny, I heard, was in Schwerin, visiting his grandmother. When I began to unload my worries on my ex, she cut me off: “How dare you come to my house and accuse my son of consorting with right-wing extremists…”
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