Finally, the once neat paths beneath the trees of the Kaisergarten at the bottom of our road were blocked with piles of crates like the droppings of some monstrous bird. Beyond the trees and towering above them, a Kraft durch Freude ship lay at anchor, looking as if scene-shifters had chosen the wrong back drop.
Until now, Germany had been the predator. Austria, Czechoslovakia, Memel and half Poland had been annexed. Now the Germans were withdrawing their kinsmen, but one felt no sense of triumph. The Balts, who had been independent for seven hundred years were now Germany’s victims. We watched their anxious faces as they went on board, each carrying the statutory two packages containing knife, spoon and fork, some warm clothing and bare necessities. One sensed the misgiving and the agony of choice between immediate sacrifice and the possibility of yet worse miseries under the Russians. Many tried to change their minds at the last minute, but it was too late to draw back.
Sensing that the mood of the Balts was turning to disillusionment, the Germans looked round for a scapegoat. The Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was informed that a bomb had been placed on the SIERRA DE CORDOVA, which had just left Riga crowded with evacuees. The German Minister set out in a fast launch in pursuit of the ship, which was turned round and brought back to port for a thorough search. A suspicious-looking suitcase was produced and taken to a spot outside the city. The Germans reported that it had contained an incendiary bomb which they had detonated. The Latvian police were invited to view the evidence but could find no trace of a fuse nor any metal parts, only some scorch marks on the ground. The diabolical device, the Germans said, had been planted by certain Englishmen in Riga.
The Rigascher Rundschau announced, a few days later, that the Balts from each of the Latvian provinces would be moved en bloc to separate areas of Poland so that they could remain together with their friends (but even so, they would still be surrounded by enemies). The houses to which they were going were ‘not too badly damaged’—possibly by those who had been forcibly evacuated from them.
The German theatre of Riga was to move to Gdynia (now Gothenhafen) and begin performing immediately. The German school, with all its pupils, would carry on with the term’s work in a former Polish school. Each Balt would continue to exercise his own profession unless, as seemed probable, he was conscripted into the German armed forces.
And the Poles? They were to move immediately into the desolate lands left to Soviet Poland. No plans were envisaged for their mass migration. No one cared whether they survived. One evening Tante Hella knocked on our door. They had sold everything and were waiting for a summons to embark. Fiasco, the riding horse who had succeeded poor Fuchs, being clearly more useful than two elderly people, had already made it to Germany. Sadly we said goodbye.
In the middle of this upheaval a rumour reached us that the staff of our Legation had left Helsinki, and three days later, that the Passport Control Office in Tallinn had closed. We tried to telephone for confirmation, but the line to Tallinn was dead. The last Swedish ship was to leave Riga for Stockholm next day, and with Sweden preparing to mobilize, their ‘plane service (which, apart from the Russian line, was now our only link with the outside world) seemed in some jeopardy.
And yet, as the last German ship sailed away down the Daugava, life in Riga was superficially placid. Quieter even than before, since owing to the petrol shortage there were hardly any cars on the street.
The Latvians, free of the Baltic element which had dominated them for so long, became almost expansive, and even showed some enthusiasm for Soviet Russia, who chose this moment to send to Riga Eisenstein’s film of the defeat of the Teutonic Knights by Alexander Nevsky. At each reverse suffered by the Knights the Latvian audience, usually so stolid, stamped their feet and clapped until the management had to silence them by turning on the lights. Since the action of the film was frequently interrupted to allow Alexander Nevsky to declaim Party propaganda what should have been a magnificent spectacle became extremely tedious.
German efforts at cinema propaganda had proved even less attractive. FEUER IM OSTEN, designed to soften up civilian populations, had aroused so much hostility that managers had been ordered to admit only those with German passports. This reduced audiences to such an extent that the film was withdrawn and an ancient documentary put on instead. One evening at the cinema the UF A German news at the beginning of the programme showed the view from the conning tower of a submarine as a torpedo ploughed its way towards a distant battleship. As the vessel vanished in a welter of smoke and flame the two German officers on their bridge nodded with grim satisfaction. ‘Just a fake for propaganda,’ we consoled one another. Later we heard that it was the ROYAL OAK, sunk in Scapa Flow on October 14th.
Though German expansionist aims appeared to have suffered a reverse in the Baltic States the German menace continued to grow. On November 9th, the day after the attempt on Hitler’s life in the Munich beer cellar, Richard Henry Stevens, the Passport Control Officer in The Hague, was kidnapped at Venlo on the German frontier with his contact Best, and accused of having taken part in the assassination plot. Clearly, Passport Control Officers were becoming unpopular with the Germans.
The same day, Miggs joined the staff of the Air Attaché in Stockholm. In these difficult times Lotte was determined to keep our spirits up. ‘England has a new ally,’ she announced one morning. Could it be the Americans we wondered hopefully.
‘Who is it, Lotte?’
‘Ghandi,’ she replied firmly and retired with the air of one who had brought a nice bowl of chicken soup to an invalid. The diplomatic corps, never very large, had been reduced by the departure of most of the families. As the work-load on the Legations increased parties became less frequent, but there was a feeling of greater intimacy amongst those under German or Russian threat.
Coffee had now been replaced by the roasted barley we used to drink at Rindseln, and imported goods were no longer on sale in the shops. The shelves of the diplomatic stores remained bare, but with local produce abundantly available as well as vodka and liqueurs from the Wolfschmidt factory, the standard of diplomatic entertaining was maintained. The Washingtons—he was now Chargé d’Affaires at the American Legation—had a pair of Chinese servants whom they generously lent round for special occasions, while the French Minister had a cache of sardines which, for their very rarity, were appreciated more than caviar, which now cost an alarming £2 a kilo.
Work at the office was increasing steadily. Between ten and twelve a.m. the visa clients besieged us, some resorting to forgery, or emotional blackmail, or offers of expensive gifts to achieve their ends. Flowers were the only things we, as civil servants, were allowed to accept, and many of our richer clients went away frankly puzzled at my refusal of a Faberge brooch or a sable coat. But offers like this, though tantalizing, were preferable to cases of Riga kümmel or locally-made whisky delivered to our flat, which had to be carried back to the giver by FIX and FAX at our personal expense.
News came that Austrian, Czech and Polish Jews were being rounded up and sent to the death camp at Lublin. Any story like this, and even the rumours which circulated, brought us a fresh wave of applicants. In order to prevent queue-jumping I asked Paul, if I were called out of the room, to make a list of customers as they arrived.
‘You must put a little description beside the name,’ I told Paul. ‘Just enough for me to recognize each one—red hair, thick glasses, small beard, and so on would be quite enough.’ Next morning, when I returned from a quick brush-up on the latest visa regulations in the loose-leaf book on the passage window sill, Paul had thirteen clients listed. All thirteen sprang to their feet and advanced on the counter.
‘Just one moment,’ I said and gave a rapid glance at Paul’s list, nicely set on a sheet of lined foolscap and dated:
Rebeka Dukarevics: insipid
Möltler, Mr and Mrs: both awful
Zubersky: nuisance
Pinns: been and gone
Ulfans: ugly as nig
ht
Kopelovich: changed into a nuisance
Merlan, Mr and Mrs: quite pleasant
Novik: awful horror
Leznieks: also ugly and short
Schönberg: we know
Smuljans: horrible too
Herr F. Diesendorf: pleasant Viennese Jew, welcome on Monday
The only rapidly identifiable name was Maria Fleischner, described as ‘smart’. The system had not proved helpful.
Any application with a hope of success, even though this often required considerable correspondence with London, was a relief. Even the people who, hearing that one was kindly received at the Passport Control Office, freely admitted that they came ‘to pour out their hearts’ and ask for advice on family problems or matrimonial difficulties which were no part of our job, were less exhausting than those one was unable to help.
Frequently I became discouraged, so it was consoling when one day a pot of white chrysanthemums was delivered to me at the office with a little note:
‘Sehr geehrte gnädige Frau,
‘You will probably be surprised to receive a letter from a stranger, but I do not wish to leave Riga without sending you, through these few flowers, a small expression of my gratitude.
‘I am at home here and my material position and my connections make everything easier for me, but I have had the opportunity of watching how you receive everyone with patience, and so I thank you in the name of the nameless ones, those who have been deprived of all rights, turned out of their homes, whose spirits are so low, for whom it is infinitely difficult to make any request. In the name of these unknown, who have been forced by circumstances to go through the world with bowed heads, timidly, and to whom you, gnädige Frau, with your warm heart, have made things so much easier, I thank you deeply and sincerely.
‘May God grant that you never learn what it is to be without a home.
‘Excuse me that I do not write to you in English. I do it too badly. With my respects to your husband and all good wishes.
Ihr ganz ergebener,
A. Kaplan.’
Herr Kaplan left for Israel and we never heard from him again. The little chrysanthemum survived the long winter and was planted by Lotte in the garden of our dacha.
Since the outbreak of war and the gradual encirclement of Latvia the timing of the diplomatic Bag which carried our mail had become much more erratic and this meant an increase in our telegraphic communication with London. Now I was called on to help with the ciphering, a monotonous process which entailed looking up every word in the Code Book, converting it into figures, and then adding groups of figures from a second book.
When similar groups were subtracted at the other end, the meaning was revealed. Someone had to be on call for cipher duty twenty-four hours a day. Nick, Dorothy, Kenneth and I divided the hours between us. Like a doctor, one might be summoned from a party, or one’s bed, to unlock the office and then open the combination safe where the coding tables were kept, and settle to ‘wrapping up’ or ‘unbuttoning’ a telegram. This shift system meant that our freedom at week-ends was severely curtailed, so any escape from Riga was doubly welcome.
Winter was beginning to bite, but one Saturday the cold relaxed a little and Harold Hobson took us in his car to the White Lake, a stretch of water lying in the forest beyond the town, where ice yacht races would be held as soon as the lake froze over. Leaving the car in a clearing we walked for about ten miles, crossing the canals which link the stretches of water, and sat in a fisherman’s hut to eat our picnic. Hobson had filled a flask with strong vodka cocktails which braced us against the tingling chill. All round us the birch stems shimmered against the grey sky, their twigs a purplish veil across the blue-grey distance. We planned to warm up over a steaming coffee at the inn on the shore of the lake, but when we got there it was shut and the ground floor filled with white cocks and hens, warm and dry but cooped up for the winter in a situation not very different from our own.
Chapter 12
On November 26th the Russians demanded that Finnish troops should withdraw fifteen miles from the Karelian frontier with Russia. Two days later the concentration of troops in the neighbourhood of Helsinki was pronounced by the USSR to be an act of hostility on the part of Finland and the Russians denounced the Soviet-Finnish non-aggression pact. The Finns offered to remove all forces but the Customs guards still further from the frontier. On November 29th Molotov announced the rupture of diplomatic relations with Finland, declaring that Russia ‘had no wish to violate Finnish independence or annexe Finnish territory, but only to protect the security of the Soviet Union and in particular of Leningrad’. Next day, Helsinki and the principal towns of Finland were bombed without warning, and the Russians attacked north of Lake Ladoga. Petsamo on the Arctic Circle was reported captured, but Russian attempts to land on the south coast of Finland were unsuccessful.
Russia, however, was concerned to preserve a respectable image in the eyes of the world and set up a ‘Finnish People’s Government’ which issued an invitation to the Red Army to come to the help of the ‘revolutionary peasants and workers and to end their struggle against provocateurs and reactionary plutocrats’. This notional Finnish government asked the Russians to draw up a pact of mutual assistance with a view to fulfilling the Finnish national dream of uniting the people of Karelia. In other words, instead of restoring that part of the province which had been stolen from Finland in 1920, the Russians were to take over what still remained in Finnish hands.
Two days later, on December 2nd, a treaty designed to remain in force for twenty-five years was signed by Molotov and Kuusinen of Finland, which leased to the Russians the naval base of Hanko, west of Helsinki, and allowed them to buy for one and a half million pounds eight islands strategically placed in the Gulf of Finland. The Russians offered arms to the ‘Finnish Democratic Republic’ and at the same time launched parachute attacks, presumably against the reactionary plutocrats of Finland. Finnish refugees crossing into Norway were ruthlessly attacked from the air.
Proposals by the legitimate government of Finland for further negotiations were ignored and the undeclared war had begun. During the long arctic twilight, deep in the forests, Finnish patrols hunted their adversaries with cold ferocity while the world looked on.
One free Sunday we went down to the Strand to lunch with the Addisons. Seen from the windows of the train, autumn and winter combined in a delicate drypoint of bare branches and rustling reed beds, finely etched.
We walked along the beach with the wind behind us, following the spoor of small feet in the sand and the track of a bicycle, wavering as if the rider had turned his head to look at the sea, or been blown off course by the wind. Drifts of crisp shells crunched beneath our feet. The waves were tumbling in, white against the grey sea. And then, coming fitfully on the gusts, a deeper sound. A small biplane with wire struts between the wings was following the shore line, almost skimming the water, flying so low that I thought for a moment it would run us down. It was painted khaki and as it passed two men wearing shiny flying helmets and goggles leaned from the cockpit and waved. We waved back and the plane, with an awkward hop, disappeared over the pines towards Maiori.
Later, as we were drinking vodka in the Kurhaus at Edimburg the barman told us that it was a Soviet machine and that we had been fraternizing with the Russians.
We decided, before the last of our foreign drink ran out, to give a small party, and invited colleagues from the American Legation and our own, the Whishaws, Tom Brimelow, the vice-consul from Danzig on temporary loan to Riga, and Madame de Roemer, a Polish countess, mother of five and a skilled portrait painter, who was hoping to leave with her younger children for Canada.
On the evening before the party Mrs Orde came round with flowers and an armful of precious magazines. I was preparing party food, immensely hampered by Lotte’s goodwill, and wondering how to manage, as our wedding-present glasses and party dishes were all in Stockholm.
‘I will se
nd round glasses and everything else you will need, and a maid too.’ Mrs Orde glanced at Lotte’s flushed face. ‘You mustn’t pay her anything at all. This is a present.’
A few days later, a Polish refugee told us how the wife of Colonel Shelley, the Passport Control Officer in Warsaw with whom we had dined on our way through, had been killed by a bomb as they sheltered in a squalid little village on their flight from the city.
Snow was lying in the streets now and the droshkies had once more been replaced by sleighs, and the flat horseshoes of summer by spikes that bit into the ice.
When we left for the office one morning we found our favourite izvozchik waiting for us in the street below. As a skilled man he was given the trotting horses from Solitud to exercise in winter, and the ride was well worth the extra tip. With his flaming red beard and his great body bulked out by two or three bearskin coats he was a magnificent sight. In Tsarist times an extra coat or two was the sign of a rich employer, and a satisfaction to master and driver alike. Until Easter, when the ice began to melt, he waited for us each day. It was wonderful to thrust our feet into the hay piled on the floor of the sledge, wrap ourselves in the bearskin rugs with their musty plush linings, and fly off over the icy roads, the runners screeching round the corners and our izvozchik roaring a challenge to the drivers we passed.
On December 12th the Latvian papers announced that the Germans had stopped the steamer ESTONIA on her way from Tallinn to Stockholm and taken off certain passengers. One of these was Gordon Vereker, Counsellor at our Embassy in Moscow, who was on his way home via Sweden. What the papers did not say was that Vereker had been carrying a Bag. We heard later that on the arrival of the boarding party he had thrown the Bag overboard, but as it had not been equipped with the mandatory lead weights, it floated and was picked up by the Germans.
Baltic Countdown: A Nation Vanishes Page 8
