by Colin Gee
Chapter 181 - THE ABOMINATION
1439 hrs, Friday, 20th December 1946, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland.
The Major of Engineers saluted briskly, clearly showing his displeasure with the task allotted to his battalion.
The man was steeped in the all-pervasive odour of death.
“Comrade Leytenant General. Our mission is complete. Comrade Polkovnik Ursov has carried out a final inspection of the main site and directs me to inform you that all locations have been prepared and dressed as directed.”
NKVD General Oleg Yegorov, sent from Moscow to specifically manage the task, grunted his satisfaction, his eyes still taking in the horrors that had been created under his instructions.
He corrected the thought.
‘Comrade Beria’s instructions.’
Yegorov considered the moment and decided that all that could be done had been done.
“Very well, Comrade Mayor. Our work here is completed. Inform Polkovnik Ursov that I’ll meet him at the main entrance shortly, but that he may start withdrawing his units.”
The Major saluted and strode away, keen to be away from the man who had brought them to this place and handed them the very worst of tasks.
“Leytenant.”
The aide hovered nearby and responded immediately.
“I’m going to the main camp. Send a message to Moscow headquarters. Mission complete.”
“Yes, Comrade Leytenant General.”
0820 hrs, Tuesday, 24th December 1946, Orzesche, Poland.
Knocke had experienced what was, for him, a lie in.
He followed that with a large breakfast and had stuffed himself on a sausage, egg, and fried potato breakfast that could have, in his opinion, sustained a platoon in the field for a fortnight.
Two of the senior men from Camerone noisily stowed away the hot food with him, food that had been prepared by the headquarters cook from ingredients ‘liberated’ by Caporal-Chef Ett, a man who would, according to SS and now legion legend, find a crate of beer and a bottle opener on the moon.
Between him and Hässelbach, the senior officers of Camerone wanted for little.
Camerone had come to its present positions in Silesia six days previously, and the division was still shaking out the last few details of its deployment, although many metres of defensive positions had been dug and comfortable bunkers had sprung out of the ground in record time.
Uhlmann had arrived early, the morning ahead mapped out for him and Emmercy to deliver their ideas on the new structure of the tank and marching regiments respectively.
The European scavengers had been filtering back with various pieces of equipment, and the French factories had supplied a healthy number of new Panther Felix vehicles.
Fiedler had been correct, in that the two Centurions were not destined for Uhlmann’s armoured regiment, but instead bolstered the small number of heavy tanks in the Corps’ heavy tank battalion.
The recently promoted Commandant Jorgensen already had his force sorted, the supply of SPAT vehicles having dried up to nothing, although his unit boasted a good number of old Jagdpanthers and new Schwarzjagdpanther, plus the two remaining Einhorns.
St. Clair, commanding Alma, the other division in the Corps, had similar problems, especially as Camerone seemed to always manage to get in ahead of his units when it came to new kit or scrounged equipment.
Knocke had barely started sorting out the new order of battle before the meeting was interrupted.
Lutz entered clasping a radio message sheet, his face relaying the fact that the day would not go as planned and things were about to change.
“Message from Corps Headquarters, Oberführer. Marked most urgent.”
“Thank you, Lutz.”
The men around the table tensed as Knocke read and reread the message… order.
He held out his hand and gestured at the table.
“Map please.”
Emmercy took one from the other table and quickly laid it out.
“Hmm.”
“Sir?”
Knocke passed the order to Uhlmann, and he and Emmercy gathered together to read it as their commander drew a mental line on the map.
“Scheisse!”
“Merde!”
Camerone had spent some days preparing its present final positions opposite the Soviet final withdrawal line, only to find out that it wasn’t the final withdrawal line, and that they now had to move forward again.
At that time, they were not to know that it was a renegotiation of the position initiated by the Soviets, who considered their foothold on the west bank of the Vistula a problem, at least a problem in that area.
Of course, there was a trade-off elsewhere.
Both officers looked over the map to where Knocke was beating a discontented rhythm with his fingers.
“Przeciszów… we’re ordered up to Przeciszów. Apparently an oversight… up to the Vistula… and then the Skawa just east of Przeciszów. That’s where we’re supposed to have been all along.”
“That’s why we haven’t seen or heard a sound from the bastards since we’ve been here.”
Emmercy could only reiterate his previous observation on the matter.
“Merde!”
The three men understood just how much effort their men had put into creating excellent defensive positions, which were, to all intents and purposes, now useless.
“Twenty-six kilometres.”
Knocke said it to no one but the map, his mind working the problem quickly.
“Right. I’ll send Bach’s troopers ahead immediately. Haefali is closest so he can put two battalions on the road immediately. The rest of his unit can bring up the bits and pieces. Rolf, get your ready Kompagnie in line behind Bach’s column. I’ll get a platoon of pionieres in case you meet up with any presents from our Socialist colleagues.
“I’ve been there before, Général.”
“Where exactly?”
Knocke’s tone was unusually strained.
Emmercy indicated his former haunts.
“I used to come here carp fishing in happier times. Lovely carp around there, General. I went with friends from Munich, which is how I learnt your atrocious language.”
“Instead of catching fish.”
Emmercy grinned at Uhlmann’s retort, but Knocke was already factoring in the new information.
“Right, Pierre. I want you up there as soon as possible. Move your headquarters up with the first column. Advise Rolf, who will be group commander. I’ll worry about the left flank. Alma has the right… I’ll speak with General St.Clair to coordinate our moves.”
“I want the first men on the road in twenty minutes, Klar?”
They responded positively, knowing they had no choice.
“Leave orders not to dismantle our present positions. We’ll build new, and these will do for breaks from the line and training exercises. Klar?”
Knocke seemed to gather himself before delivering his final instruction.
“Unless militarily necessary, there will be no investigations of any facilities on the route of march. There’ll be time for that later.”
He considered everything and decided the rest could wait.
“Right then, Kameraden. Let’s get the division on the move.”
The senior men quit the room at speed and Lutz appeared in their stead, anticipating orders.
Instead he received none as Knocke seemed preoccupied by something on the map.
“Sir?”
“Lutz? Something else?”
“No, Oberführer. I was awaiting your orders.”
“Yes, indeed.”
He rattled off his instructions to the various units under his command, halfway through which Haefali arrived, clearly armed with the new knowledge.
Knocke continued as he passed the new orders to the commander of 5e RDM, who immediately tried to marry the words to the map.
“Right, Lutz. Please get them off immediately and make sure the headquarters duty officer k
nows we’ll be moving tomorrow… by 0800 at the latest.”
“Zu befehl, Oberführer.”
“Albrecht.”
“Mon Général.”
“As you see, we’ve wasted our efforts here.”
“Soldier’s lot, mon Général. Dig holes… move on… dig more holes.”
“Yes, slightly more than digging a few holes of course, but you’re right, Albrecht.”
Knocke fell silent as he examined the map, and Haefali felt an undercurrent of something he didn’t recognise from the German legionnaire.
“Anything I should know, mon Général?”
“There is certainly something you’ll discover, Albrecht.”
He tapped the map, some distance away from their final destination.
Haefali took in the map and the name and failed to appreciate its significance.
He questioned Knocke with his eyes, silently seeking further knowledge.
“When your forces swept through Germany in the previous war, you came across some places… awful places… places where murder was done in the name of the German people.”
“Dachau… Belsen… Mauthausen…”
“Yes… to name but a few, Albrecht. A stain on my country and something that haunts me and, I suspect always will. I fought for that regime… the regime that brought such abominable places into being.”
“And you… pardon… the SS are forever associated with them, of course.”
“Yes. I did not know of Dachau other than its beginnings before the war. I’d heard of Belsen and Mauthausen and understood them to be other than what we now know they are… but this is different.”
Knocke sat down heavily.
Haefali drew a glass of water and placed in front of his divisional commander.
“Sir?”
“We’re going to somewhere that I believe to have been hell on earth. I found out about it… heard gossip… that sort of thing… refused to believe it… but I now know it’s there… and that everything I was told was true.”
“Where, mon Général?”
He drew a pencil circle round the name.
The map was an ex-Wehrmacht map, so the names reflected their German history.
“I did nothing, Albrecht. Ignored it all.”
Haefali looked at the map closely and saw a name associated with rumours since before the world had stopped fighting in May 1945.
They were just rumours, although those troops that had liberated Dachau, Belsen, Mauthausen, Ohrdruf, and a hundred other places would vouch that rumours of that kind had a habit of becoming reality.
This rumour had turned out to have an appalling individual reality all of its own.
Auschwitz.
With an awful irony, the ex-SS units of the Foreign Legion would now drive through the very worst of the Nazi concentration camps on their way to their new positions.
1454 hrs, Tuesday, 24th December 1946, Villa Speer, Schloss-Wolfsbrunnenweg, Heidelberg, Germany.
“Deutschland!”
Four voices shared the toast.
The glasses were drained and smashed, as tradition dictated, the fireplace suddenly glistening with sparkling fragments.
“Now, I am conscious that you all have some distance to go, but I felt it very necessary to confirm our decision on a certain matter before we enjoy our celebrations with our families. My apologies that we were interrupted previously.”
One of the family’s children had burst in excitedly, halting their discussion at the moment of decision.
Which had thrown out their timings, meaning that two of the three visitors were now overstaying their allotted time.
Rudolf Diels wasn’t married or greatly endowed with family that accepted his presence without rancour, so Christmas was decidedly not a family affair. However, he had decided which of his current string of women he would spend Christmas with, and he was keen to get back to her bed in Aschaffenburg with as little delay as possible.
In a 1944 air raid, Horst Pflug-Hartnung’s family had been placed well beyond the reach of man, so Christmas meant much less to him than many others. His inclusion in the Speer family celebrations was gratifying, and he had dared not refuse, although he wished to be somewhere quiet… and alone.
Von Vietinghoff had family in Mainz, and wished to get on the road, although not at the expense of having input on the main subject of the day’s discussions.
Speer moved closer to the standing men and lowered his voice.
“Can I confirm that we’re agreed on direct action to remove our concerns?”
Each man spoke, each one in the affirmative.
“For both cases?”
Again, they agreed.
“Staggered. They must not be too close together, for fear of arousing suspicion.”
Pflug-Hartnung spoke in his normal flowing fashion.
“That will not be a problem, Kanzler, and there’ll be no link to us in any way as it will be done simply and effectively. I already have method in mind. Do you wish to know?”
All three listening shook their heads, sharing mutters about leaving the details to the intelligence officer.
Speer clapped his hands with joy, wringing together as the burdens of state were suddenly lifted and he could now enjoy Christmas in all its glory.
“Excellent, Kameraden. Then I need detain you no further. A very merry Christmas to you and your families. Let me see you out.”
“May I use your phone, Kanzler?”
“Of course, Horst. Be my guest.”
Speer enjoyed his intended humour and left Pflug-Hartnung to make two telephone calls, calls that were seeming innocuous but that activated men intent on murder.
We know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the morning.
George Steiner
1535 hrs, Wednesday, 25th December 1946, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland.
As Camerone had advanced, many units passed by Auschwitz-I, the camp inside the village.
Shocking reports started to filter back.
As word spread, more and more of Camerone’s leadership found time to come and see for themselves, Knocke’s order to avoid all installations somehow forgotten in the growing consternation that affected every unit within the division.
Based around the pre-war billet of a Polish cavalry battalion, Auschwitz-I was ‘tidier’ than previously imagined, in as much as it was not in ruins and had not been trashed by the local populace, although the twin additions of gallows and a small gas chamber were stark reminders as to its recent grisly purpose.
It was an organised place, properly laid out, and could, without the knowledge of what it had been, have easily returned to its military configuration or something similarly ordinary, with very little effort.
The sign above the main entrance now almost seemed to taunt those who walked under it, and many wondered if it had provided any comfort or hope of normalcy for those who had been herded underneath it during the camp's operational years.
‘Arbeit macht frei.’
‘Work sets you free.’
Inside the compound, evidence was easily found as to its recent purpose, from the execution yard, its bullet holes almost shouting out about the lives taken on a sadistic whim after mock trials, to the small but efficient gas chamber, complete with ovens for immediate destruction of their victims.
The minute standing cells for up to four prisoners, where simple incarceration so often ended in death.
The piles of belongings, of suitcases, personal effects, shoes… so many shoes… the utter tragedy of a huge number of artificial limbs, removed from Jews, Gypsies, and others, many of whom had almost certainly sustained their loss in German uniform during the Great War.
The human hair… bag after bag of it removed from the living and the dead, to be used by the German war industry.
The Soviet engineers, under NKVD orders, had dressed the entire site in much the way that the Red Army h
ad found it in 1945, but with the addition of signs, some placed on the bodies of the dead, others simply nailed on doors and walls.
‘THIS IS WHAT YOUR GERMAN FRIENDS ARE CAPABLE OF’
‘GERMANS DID THIS. THE SAME GERMANS YOU NOW FIGHT WITH’
‘THE SS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS’
‘LEGION = SS = MURDERERS’
‘SS BASTARDS’
The messages were everywhere, different texts expressing the same basic sentiment, intended to undermine the bonds between the legionnaires and their ex-SS comrades.
The piles of bodies, exhumed for the purpose, added weight to the accusations.
Lynched decomposing men and women hung from every high point, most with a placard that marked the reason for their death at the hands of the SS camp guards.
‘Jude’
‘Roma’
‘Homosexuelle’
And yet, Auschwitz I had been, and was now, the lesser evil in so many ways.
For some reason, only one or two units were routed past Auschwitz-II Birkenau, the real killing machine in the Nazi’s extermination programme, and they did not stop to investigate the silent lines of barbed wire and huts, as orders drove them further on towards the Vistula.
Perhaps their eyes did not see or perhaps their brains failed to acknowledge that such barbarity was possible in a civilised world.
Christmas Day arrived and saw most of Camerone in place and celebrating as best a soldier can in the cold of a Polish winter.
Some officers went back, keen to discover the secrets of the huge second camp; others merely got caught up in the boredom of the day and were swept along in the steady stream of legionnaires that went to see what all the fuss was about.
That attitude did not survive first contact with the sights on offer, and very soon tension and anger ruled.
The Soviets had excelled themselves.
Piles of exhumed bodies, again announced with placards, sat around the site.
Ashes, unmistakably awful in origin, were piled high next to the destroyed gas chambers or lined the entranceways into the huge camp.
