Underground in Berlin

by Marie Jalowicz Simon

When we had climbed the stairs and were at their door, we heard a voice inside calling, ‘Careful, we’re opening the door!’ Burgers knew the significance of this; one door opened outwards, and might easily have hit us on the head without that warning. Frau Klahn, who was even smaller than her husband, opened a second door to the inside of the apartment. She had a profile like a real witch, with a wry mouth and a malevolent expression on her face. Her life consisted entirely of cleaning and polishing the whole apartment to a high gloss.

  We were taken into a dining room very much of the lower middle class, and we sat down. There was ersatz coffee, and a slice of bread spread with the usual almost inedible four-fruits jam available on the ration. I was relieved to find the hospitality here so meagre; no one was making sacrifices that called for gratitude.

  When Klahn was talking, the Dutchman looked fixedly at me, with an expression on his face that said, ‘Don’t I have a fabulous friend?’ When I was talking, he looked at Klahn in exactly the same way. His wife was getting angrier and angrier. I realised that this relationship really must be broken off as a matter of urgency; it was dangerous in the long run.

  Later a neighbour joined us, a stout, common woman who wore a Nazi symbol on her summer coat. A terrible tug of war ensued. This neighbour wanted to fix a day to go picking berries in the Brandenburg Mark, and I was supposed to go with her. We would need a foraging permit to do that, and I knew why: deserters and Jews who were in hiding, people without ration cards, were correctly suspected of collecting wild berries and mushrooms to eat. Many foresters went hunting people who had no foraging permits, hoping to bring their beloved Führer the heads of those who had gone underground as trophies.

  I defended myself with all my might against going on this expedition, explaining that I had no foraging permit and no money to buy one. Burgers failed to understand the situation and encouraged me. ‘Oh, go on, it’s not expensive, and it would be a nice outing for you! My God, it’s so long since I ate blueberries! And as you know, people can pick huge cans of berries in a day.’ I had no choice but to tread on his foot hard and painfully under the table, until at last he got the message.

  Frau Blase spent all day listening to the radio, of course only the German stations that she received on a primitive People’s Radio set. One of her enthusiasms was for the Romanian prime minister Ion Antonescu, who led one of the most ardently fascist of Hitler’s satellites. I once gave her a picture of Marshal Antonescu from an illustrated magazine that had come my way as wrapping paper. She was delighted, and gazed admiringly at the portrait photo, without noticing that she was holding it the wrong way round. Then she put the picture on her bedside table, and gave me a lovely cake of French soap from her magic cupboard by way of thanks.

  One day, in the autumn of 1944, she told me in blissful excitement, ‘The final victory will soon come! The Führer is going to force a change in our fortunes; he’s called up the Volkssturm.’ Only instead of saying Volkssturm, she had understood the term to be Volks-Turm, and she also told me that each of the soldiers would be armed with a Panzerfrau, whereas she meant Panzerfaust, an anti-tank weapon that could fire a single shot.* Burgers and I amused ourselves hugely over this misunderstanding. Gerrit enjoyed broaching the subject again and again, and talking about the People’s Tower and the armed woman.

  But soon my laughter died away. One afternoon a strange sight met my eyes in the hall of the apartment. I had just come home, and had not switched the light on yet. Then I saw that Frau Blase had manoeuvred two legs of her folding table into the dimly lit hall; the other two legs of the table were still in the kitchen. The old woman was sitting at it, waiting for me. I realised that she wanted to tell me something. Still in my coat, I went up to her.

  ‘Good evening, Mother Blase, what is it?’ I asked, rather uneasily. She didn’t reply, but I saw that she was crying. She had never before shed tears in front of me. She groped about on the table top with her right hand, until she found mine, took it and pressed it. ‘Kurt has been called up to the Volks-Turm,’ she said at last. ‘Now I shall lose the last person, the last thing on earth that I’ve loved, and my own life is over. But it has to be done for the Führer.’

  At that moment I felt respect for her, as she understood the consequences of a frame of mind for which otherwise I had not the slightest sympathy. I had never been able to see why this old woman, who knew nothing about history or politics, loved the Führer so much, and had closed her mind all her life to any decent way of thinking. But for that brief moment I did respect the attitude with which she was already mourning her son.

  There was nothing to be discussed. I tried to encourage her with phrases about the darkest time coming before the dawn, and I used the word Volks-Turm as she did, so as not to make her feel silly. I asked when Kurt was going to be called up. Then she sobbed. ‘He’s just been here with his armband on.’

  Kurt Blase fell fighting with the Volkssturm, as I learned only after the war.

  7

  After the beginning of February 1945, there was no more just staying in bed after an air-raid warning had sounded, turning over and comfortably going back to sleep. It had sometimes felt as if sitting in the icy cold for hours was worse for our health than being hit by a bomb. But all that had changed now.

  These days, there was no subject of conversation but the war in the long queues at the shops, and I too was exhausted by constant lack of sleep, with my nerves on edge. I shared the fate of all the people of Berlin, yet at the same time I didn’t share it. For unlike almost everyone else, I was not afraid of what was coming, I hoped for it. And that hope gave me strength.

  One night when we were down in the cellar again, we heard a frightful crash overhead. Soon it was obvious that our building had been hit by a high-explosive bomb. However, we hadn’t been buried. We had only to move a little rubble aside to get out into the open. The three buildings that comprised Am Oberbaum were still standing, but the façade that they all shared had been torn away and fallen to the ground. You could look into the separate floors like so many stage sets. The stairway was hanging askew, and one banister rail was missing.

  Soon after the all clear the firefighters arrived, as well as paramedics and air-raid wardens. Frau Blase was retrieved from her bedroom. She was confused, but only slightly injured. Furniture had fallen over and scratched her face while she lay in bed. Frau Grass padded a wicker chair with sofa cushions for her. She was placed in it, had a couple of plasters applied, and that was that.

  Alexander Grass came down the stairs weeping; his mother was dead. A wardrobe had fallen on her bed and a chair had flown through the air. In death, she was still clutching a chair leg in her hand. Grass’s wife was about to make some silly, inappropriate remark when I interrupted her. ‘Frau Grass, your mother-in-law is dead. Do please be kind to your husband. You can see how miserably sad he is.’*

  ‘You’re right,’ she said, and she quietened down.

  Burgers ventured to climb up to our bombed-out apartment once more to retrieve a few things. We had most of our stuff with us, in our air-raid emergency kits. I couldn’t and didn’t want to go up there myself. I was afraid of the climb. The desk – my desk – was partly hanging outside. I asked Burgers to bring my wax-cloth notebooks down for me, but he refused with obvious malice, laughing gleefully. That was his personal revenge on me, because he had always hated the desk and my reading and writing.

  I regret the loss of those notebooks to this day, for they were an important record of my memories and observations. At the time, however, I thought: the war is nearly over. The main thing is to come out of it alive. Nothing else matters.

  Even that morning, Burgers set off punctually for work, and he did so on the following days as well. We camped in the cellar, and I went out shopping from there, trying to provide for us somehow. It was still dark. The only light was from a naked electric bulb hanging from the cellar ceiling. Frau Blase spent day and night alike in her wicker chair, taking in very little, and hardly reacting
to what anyone said. Her complexion had turned an unnatural raspberry hue, and she just said, now and then, ‘Yes, yes, bombed out.’

  What was going to happen to me now? I discussed it with Frau Koch when I met her in Köpenick one Thursday afternoon. The obvious thing to do seemed to be to join one of the bands of refugees trekking in from Silesia, Pomerania or East Prussia that kept arriving in Berlin that spring of 1945. I could have had myself registered as a refugee, and would then have had a right to accommodation, ration cards and work. But that wasn’t what I wanted. I was afraid, for instance, that someone might ask me what street in Königsberg I had lived in. Or that some official might recognise me from the past. Frau Koch reduced it to a formula that I could accept at once, because it occurred to me at the same moment: don’t go to the authorities if you haven’t been summoned. That was just how I felt. I had gone underground, and I wanted to stay there until the end of the war.

  One fine spring day, I suggested a walk to Lotte. I was still wearing my old winter coat, although I hated the sight of it by now. ‘Listen,’ Lotte told me, ‘I’m getting a certificate saying I was bombed out. No one knows I saved my entire wardrobe.’ The bathroom wall in her apartment had fallen in, but the contents of her wardrobe were indeed lying safely in the tub. None the less, she had a right to a whole new set of clothes.

  She bravely climbed up inside the building, brought down her winter coat and gave it to me. It was brown fake fur, very good quality. While I was still trying on this fine coat, she picked up my old black one and threw it into the ruins, where it fell deep into a bomb crater. I laughed, although for a moment I’d felt cross: its fabric was so indestructible that I could still have made a skirt out of it.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Lotte. ‘I know someone, a colleague of mine, we sit in Altermann’s every evening’ – another prostitute, she meant – ‘a really nice person, she lives quite close.’ This was when we were moving away from the cellar. An air-raid warden could come along at any time to check our papers.

  Lotte’s colleague and her two small daughters by unknown fathers were living in a street off Stralauer Allee. Her apartment had a large front room that she used solely for professional purposes. Lotte said that her friend could just as well work in her bedroom and rent Burgers and me the front room. Just in case her colleague objected to that idea, Lotte had another plan: she would send a man in the uniform of a postman, a soldier or a railwayman along to commandeer the room for us. Lotte knew plenty of men.

  Late in the afternoon, when Burgers came back from work, the three of us went there. Our new landlady received us in the kitchen. On the stove, where a blazing fire was burning, stood a pan full of children’s underwear or nappies. The lid of the pan rose again and again in a certain rhythm, and a brief glug-glug was heard. Then the soapsuds boiled over and the lid sank again. Lotte’s friend never thought of moving the pan aside a little way to moderate the heat.

  The woman agreed to take us in at once. I was still so young, silly and fond of adventure that I was a little sorry; it deprived me of the pleasure of seeing the room commandeered by a postman. I had imagined holding a whole company spellbound with that story some time after the war.

  Lotte’s colleague, a very nice and spotlessly clean young woman, had called both her little girls Veronika. She was so dim that no other name had occurred to her. And it was not forbidden to give several children the same name. When someone went to register a birth, no registrar was going to ask, ‘Do you already have any other children of that name?’

  I was almost asleep on my feet, but as soon as we were in our room, I said to Burgers, out of sheer curiosity, ‘Those two children are sitting on their potties outside – do go and see whether she addresses them differently.’ Burgers went out as if to do something in the hall, came back after a while and said, ‘No, there’s no difference at all. She calls them both Veronika.’

  There were constant air-raid warnings by day now; you couldn’t plan anything ahead. I was always relieved when Burgers came home safe and sound in the evening.

  People described it as an inferno. I didn’t call it that myself, of course, but it was not paradise either. The situation was chaotic, and I was afraid myself. The idea that I might yet perish in the war was terrible. When others complained of the present state of affairs to me, I civilly agreed with them. It was part of my masquerade. But little as I wanted to march in time with the columns of soldiers, I could not share the opinions of the population still hoping for the final victory. In my mind, I kept my distance.

  Every night we found ourselves, sooner or later, in a large cellar that served as an air-raid shelter for several buildings. An especially strict air-raid warden often came round to check our papers. He was mainly interested in the men, since there was a truly hysterical search on for deserters. I inconspicuously slipped past him and managed to avoid showing my identity card.

  After a few days our new lodging was also hit by a high-explosive bomb. Everything above us collapsed with an enormous noise. The cellar shook, but its ceiling stood up to the blast. Many of us were screaming. I ducked in fear and horror, and covered my eyes and ears.

  Then calm returned again, and a kind of snowstorm began: the mighty shock of the explosion had loosened the whitewash from the walls. My eyes were inflamed for quite a long time from being in that vast cloud of dust.

  ‘Bombed out!’ several people who had lived in these buildings cried in horror. So far as they were concerned, their whole world had collapsed. I had only lost the part of the city where I had been living. ‘We’re buried alive!’ was the next cry to go up. The entrance through which we had got into the cellar was blocked by rubble. Men in uniform picked up the tools ready for use if that happened, and began hacking another way out. Burgers helped them.

  I sat calmly on my improvised bench and waited. Several old women were in tears. After about an hour there were shouts of, ‘The way out is clear!’ We left the cellar to find ourselves facing great mounds of rubble from which nothing could be salvaged, not a piece of furniture and no personal possessions.

  Burgers looked at the time. It was early morning, when he usually went to work. As ever, he was aware of his duty. We stood in the road, discussing our situation. Even now we were talking nonsense.

  ‘Right, listen,’ said Burgers. ‘This is what we’ll do.’ And that was the end of it; he had no idea what to say next. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I have another suggestion.’ But in fact I had no suggestion at all, and we went on talking like that for some time. We were baffled, and had no idea what to do next.

  He looked at the time again, and seemed nervous and fidgety. ‘I’ll have to go now,’ he said. ‘I don’t know whether there’s any transport to use or if I’ll have to go on foot. I must tell them at work that I’ve been bombed out, and then they’ll find me a place in shared accommodation for foreign workers. We won’t get another furnished room.’

  And so we went our separate ways. ‘Goodbye, the war will soon be over!’ we told each other, adding, ‘See you again after liberation.’ It couldn’t have been a less dramatic parting. If one of us had gone off to buy a loaf of bread, expecting to be back a few minutes later, it would have been just the same.

  * In the 1920s, many political murders were committed by nationalist German underground groups. The victims were usually so-called traitors from their own ranks.

  * According to the religious dietary rules already laid down in the Torah, only meat from animals that are ruminants and have cloven hooves is kosher.

  * In Jewish tradition, a minyan is the quorum of at least ten Jewish men required to hold divine service.

  † One of the largest Jewish cemeteries in Europe is in Berlin-Weissensee.

  * Blase is the German word for ‘bladder’.

  * According to the charges brought by the Supreme Reich Prosecutor at the People’s Court on 16 January 1945, Gertrud Neuke was arrested on 15 September 1944. It is possible that there may have been an earlier arrest, not mentio
ned in the records, or an arrest by the Gestapo before that date.

  * Translator’s note: The Volkssturm (People’s Storm) was a territorial force set up by the Nazi Party. Volks-Turm means ‘people’s tower’ while Panzerfrau/faust means ‘armed woman/fist’.

  * Marie Simon cannot date the bombing of the building precisely from memory. However, the death of Friederike Grass is on record. Her funeral certificate runs: ‘Salvaged from her destroyed apartment at 21.15 hours, on 9 March 1945.’ The apartment building Number 2 Am Oberbaum was bombed that night. The destruction of the Stralauer Tor / Osthafen overhead railway station, which stood immediately opposite the building, is recorded on 10 March 1945.

  SIX

  I didn’t have to surrender

  The War Is Over

  1

  I was amazed. I had expected the last, chaotic days of the war to be full of loud noise, but instead a curious, positively eerie silence reigned in Berlin.

  I was also amazed to find how easy it was to get to Kaulsdorf.* Contrary to all expectation and my experience to date, there was a regular, fast suburban train line running to Wuhlheide.

  After I had said goodbye to Burgers and walked through Berlin for a few hours, I had set off in search of the Kochs. I felt it would be apposite to see in the first days of liberation where I had spent my first night after going into hiding. This was the end of March 1945, and I wasn’t to know that it would still be several weeks before the war finally came to an end.

  As I walked along the footpath through the wood, I composed a few sentences in my head for Hannchen and Emil: I wanted to thank them for everything. I was going to say that it was they who had really helped and saved me, it was they, more than anyone, who had given me the courage to go underground, because they had shown me that there were people who would come to my aid. But I kept thinking that the tribute I was composing in my head was too long and too stilted, and I tried to devise ways of expressing myself more briefly and precisely, less pompously.