It was evidently the girl's name, because she turned and looked in our direction.
"Come here!" yelled Fr&ulein Louise. "Come here at once!"
"No!" the girl yelled back. "I want out! I want out!" And she started to run.
"Pastor Demel!" screamed Fraulein Louise, and a young man in a black suit, whom I hadn't noticed before, grabbed the girl whose name was Irina Indigo by the arm.
Meanwhile the fat man had scrambled to his feet and broken loose from the beefy fellow. He kicked the latter in the stomach and tried desperately to reach the camp gate. He shoved two men who tried to stop him aside, and struck a third in the face. The beefy one caught up with him, grabbed him from behind and clubbed him again. The fat man collapsed. The beefy fellow yanked him to his feet. "Herr Kuschke!" Fraulein Louise screamed wildly.
The beefy fellow—Herr Kuschke, evidently— turned around, and with a Berlin accent you could cut with a knife, yelled, "It's okay, Fraulein Louise. Everything's all right."
"Bring Indigo to me, Herr Pastor!" cried Fraulein Louise to the man in the black suit. "And the man, too!"
"No, no!" screamed the girl whose name was Irina Indigo. 42
The pastor, whom FrSulein Louise had designated as one of the good men she counted as a friend, dragged the protesting girl to our barracks. Kuschke, also a friend of FrSulein Louise's and counted by her among the good, had the fat man by the collar and one of his arms twisted behind his back. You could see the fat man didn't like it. The whole group approached the barracks, and Bertie took pictures furiously.
Frankfurt. Kassel. Gdttingen. Hannover. Bremen. 466 kilometers on the autobahn. A hop for a Lamborghini 400 GT. That was my car—a white 3.93 Iter V-12 with 9:1 compression ratio and brake horsepower of 330 at 6500 RPM. Twin carburetors. 80-liter gas tank. Top speed: 250 km. an hour. A two-seater. All under the heading, Snob!
To go back for a moment—Bertie and I had left Frankfurt for Neurode at 7:00 a.m. His stuff was in a duffel bag, mine was in a large leather suitcase, and my suits were on hangers in the back. We didn't know how long we'd be gone, so I'd taken along three bottles of Chivas and filled my flask.
Bertie had slept all the way to Bremen. He had just returned from overseas the day before. I let him sleep. It was a strange thing, but in my car I always felt first-rate. For instance, I didn't have a drop to drink all the way to Bremen. Didn't need it. In the hotel I had two double whiskeys, but actually only because I felt so good.
It was foggy on the autobahn, once we had inched our way out of the chaos of Frankfurt. Everything came floating toward us and passed us by as in a nightmare, as if in another world. There... I've written it again I
At about 8:30 the fog cleared. The sun shone and I stepped on the gas. Still, we didn't get to our hotel in Bremen until 12:30. The Park Hotel, naturally, since there was nothing better. The secretaries in the editorial office knew what they had to order for me—everything deluxe. It had taken me a while to impress my firm with the fact that I worked best in the most luxurious
surroundings available, but now they knew. This was a must, especially when I was writing about human misery, which both of us were hoping to find in Neurode. Sells well, human misery. In this case Publisher Herford had something special in mind, and that was why two ultra-pros like us had been chosen to go to Neurode.
After a quick lunch at the Park Hotel, we drove on. We wanted the advantage of daylight as long as possible, for picture taking. Besides, something told me we should hurry, and this "something" had never yet given me a bum steer.
After Zeven the road was a mess. No shoulder, potholes, right-angle curves, and things got worse until it wasn't much better than a dirt road. On both sides of the road gorse and other thorny bushes were growing, and stumps of osier willows reared up, and many bulrushes. About half a kilometer ahead of us the moor began and didn't seem to want to end. Wild areas of brown heather, everything else had finished blooming and was rotting. Here and there you could see water, brown or black. And you could smell it. It smelled good. But the landscape grew increasingly dreary. In many places peat had been cut and piled high. There were black and white birches, bare black alders, and gnarled willows.
Three villages—you could barely call them that—a handful of houses, rather, each smaller than the other. A church, a grocery store, an inn... and we were out on the desolate moor again. I couldn't drive faster than fifteen kilometers. The car lurched from one hole to the other.
"And this is the road on which they transport the children," said Bertie, who had taken a few shots of the area. "I feel sorry for the camp driver, with a bus on a road like this! That camp's going to be there forever, I'd say, the way things look. They could at least build a road on it!"
Again a cluster of houses, and the moor on our left, behind bushes and reeds. "That prickly stuff is juniper," said Bertie. He was interested in nature; I wasn't. "This strip of land down to the moor is still part of the coastal plain; that's the sandy landscape on our right, an eruption of the Ice Age. It's higher than the moor and runs all around it. This happens to be a high moor."
"So what else is new?" I asked, driving as cautiously as I could, so as not to damage the car. I had a very spiritual relationship with my car. There weren't many people of whom I could say that.
Bertie warmed up to his topic. He explained about lower moors that formed where there were open expanses of water, and the flora of the high moors. There were many interesting plants besides erica; insectivorous plants, for instance—he was obviously enjoying filling me in on every detail—different species of sundew, two kinds of bladderwort and some butterwort. I took his word for it. Once he had wanted to be a naturalist; I had wanted to be a lawyer. Neither of us had stuck it out.
"Where there's peat, you're usually on a high moor, and a high moor rises more slowly than a lower moor."
Not as far as I could see. In some places ground fog hid the landscape, and the sun glanced off it in misty rays. Never in my life had I seen such desolation. "A high moor is shaped like an hourglass," Bertie went on. "Where there's a lot of rain and high humidity and the earth is poor and acid, you'll find peat. And peat builds up the moor. Sphagnum is present in..."
I watched out for potholes and Bertie told about the delicate peat-bog plants, how ramified they were, how highly leafed. "They die very gradually, from the bottom, but they keep growing at the top because a tiny branch under the crown develops into a stem that is just as strong as the mother stem and in the end becomes independent. Peat moss stores the water it needs to survive, can store it for ages. Peat soaks up water like a sponge—"
"Look," I said. "Isn't this strange?"
"What?"
"For over a kilometer now, I haven't seen any peat, only moor and water and tree stumps. Don't they cut peat any more here?"
"They evidently got as much peat out of this area as they could," said my friend. "There's nothing much more, probably, except corpses."
"What kind of corpses?"
"People who fell in and couldn't get out again. Haven't you ever heard of moor corpses?"
"Maybe. Can't remember. So what about them?"
"They don't decompose!"
"You mean they look exactly as they did in life?"
"The moor corpses that have been found did. Totally preserved. Even their clothes. In Sweden they've got one from the Bronze Age."
"But how can that be?"
"The acids in the soil act as a preservative and prevent disintegration," said Bertie.
That was the first time we mentioned moor corpses, and it's why I've reconstructed Bertie's description of the moor in such detail. Yes, that's when we talked about corpses for the first time, in the weak noon sunlight of a beautiful November day, on the miserable road that led to Neurode. And had no idea of what lay ahead of us. Alders and birches rose high and bare into the blue sky above us.
Neurode showed up after a sharp curve and consisted of about a dozen houses. Here the earth was covered with a fine, br
ick-red dust. We passed two inns and a few stores, then we were on our execrable road again. A sign with weathered letters read: To The Youth Camp—1 km.
We got that kilometer behind us, too. The area was so eerie, I told Bertie, "If I was driving through here at night and had to take a leak, I wouldn't get out. I'd pee in my pants."
"You're right," said Bertie. "It's dangerous as hell on the edge of the moor. And to walk across it.. .man! You sink into the waterlogged moss, the water glitters in the moonlight, will-o-the-wisps beckon you away from the path into impenetrable depths, down, down "
"Oh, shut up!" I said. "There it is. Next to the signpost."
I turned sharp left. The moor was much farther back here; the sandy earth seemed to have pushed it aside with what looked like a broad sandbar. In front of us, and surrounded by the moor on three of its four sides, lay the Youth Camp Neurode. A short, broad road—asphalt, no less!—led to the entrance.
Bertie whistled between his teeth; I, too, was surprised. The camp was enormous. I hadn't imagined it would be nearly so large. There were big free areas between barracks, countless barracks; and the whole thing resembled a concentration camp, with its wire fence, barbed wire at the top that bent inward and high poles with searchlights, which of course weren't turned on 46
now. The asphalt ended at a very wide, locked gate. A small gate next to it was open. Direcdy beyond it there was a barracks, obviously for guards. But the most astonishing thing was that on the area in front of the entrance, cars were parked in the brown heather, at least two dozen. Expensive cars. Big cars. Mercedes. Diplomats. Buicks. Fords. A lot of American cars.
"What's going on here?" I said, parking my Lamborghini beside an Oldsmobile. We got out, Bertie with his cameras, the pockets of his leather jacket bulging with film. I had my recorder and pad, and we walked up to the entrance.
The owners of the cars, male and female, were standing beside the fence that surrounded the camp. Many of the women were wearing fur coats—leopard, mink, Persian lamb; elegant ladies, rings glittering on their hands. Most of the men were wearing dark suits, white shirts, classy ties, a few wore homburgs. A first-night audience! Outside the fence. On the inside were the young people, boys and girls from about fifteen to eighteen. Some of them were also dressed well (remnants of their flight?), others had on training suits, pullovers, and jeans or simple clothes.
A lively discussion was going on between the two groups. The ladies and gentlemen were being persuasive, they gestured with their hands, they were excited. The young people listened. I wanted to listen, too, but as soon as I approached, all conversation ceased and everybody looked at me suspiciously. Among the men I could see quite a few questionable types, in spite of their elegant dress. And on the other side of the fence I saw blond girls, redheads, girls with black hair—a sensational sight, all in all. And Bertie took pictures. A man turned around suddenly, saw that Bertie was going to take his picture, threw his arms up to his face, and yelled, "Get the hell out of here or I'll knock your block off!"
"Nice people," said Bertie.
"What is going on here?"
"Let's find out," said Bertie.
We walked through the small gate which had a sign over it—No Admittance Without Permit!—and we had a camp guard on our necks before we'd taken three steps. "Good day, gentlemen. Where do you want to go?" An elderly, sickly fellow.
I showed him my press card, Bertie showed his. I had informed the camp director, Dr. Horst Schall, that we were coming, and he had given us permission to visit, interview
whomever we liked, and take pictures. The guard looked us over sharply, then checked our identification cards again while I told him that we were expected. He nodded. "You're here because of the Czech children."
"Mainly, yes. But we're interested in other things, too."
He said, "Follow me," and walked on ahead to the barracks nearest the gate where three more guards were seated. They greeted us after we greeted them. All three were well over fifty. One of them was telephoning. They were very polite. One of them asked us to be seated—somebody would come and show us through the camp. Six minutes later Fraulein Louise Gottschalk appeared.
"Gruss Gott, gentlemen," she said smiling.
We introduced ourselves, she told us her name. "Because the gentlemen are interested mainly in the Czech children, I have been sent to show you around. Because I'm the one who looks after the Czech children." She laughed, a short angry laugh. "That's why I'm here. Otherwise they would certainly have sent someone else. Please come with me. I'll show you the camp first." Her last words were almost unintelligible because the first squadron of jets we were to experience flew overhead, so low that the earth seemed to tremble.
In the course of the next two hours, Fraulein Louise showed us the camp—not all of it, but enough to give us the general idea. She explained how it functioned. It was supported and run by the Red Cross, the Inner Mission, the Catholic and Protestant churches, and by the Labor Welfare Board. Subsidies were provided in Bonn. "Not enough," said Fraulein Louise, "Not enough."
Light music was playing over loudspeakers. We saw young people and children of all nations. The little ones were playing with a social worker or alone. The older ones moved to and from the various administrative barracks or walked, talking earnestly, up and down the cracked cement walks, which were lined by bare birch trees and black alders. 48
All the barracks were the same—long, low, and built of wood. They seemed to have been painted recently, but when you went inside you could see how old they were. There was a smell of many years, of many people, the sort of smell you can't get rid of, despite the fact that everything was scrubbed clean. I noticed that there was a camp for girls and one for boys. We saw recreation rooms, dormitories, triple bunk beds, mess halls. Everything was orderly. There were a few flowers and photos of film stars and pin-up girls on the walls, some pictures painted by the inmates. Where the little ones were housed there were toys.
Yes, everything was in good order, yet it reeked of despair and poverty, of homelessness, of wet clothing and a great, pervading sadness. A veil df melancholy lay over the entire camp. Weathered names in Gothic lettering were inscribed beside the entrances of barracks: East Prussia, Memel, West Prussia, Danzig, Posen, Ktinigsberg, Stettin, Upper Silesia, Mark Brandenburg, Saxony, Thuringia, Mecklenburg. Under the names somebody had painted the shields of the various provinces or cities—a long time ago, apparently, because the colors were faded by the weather. Many of the barracks bore names like this, names of the regions that had been surrendered by the Soviet Union or Poland or East Germany after the war. Children from Poland and East Germany lived in them, but also young people from many other countries.
We met a lot of girls. There seemed to be more girls than boys in the camp, or did it just seem that way to me because so many of them were beautiful? For the most part they were serious; very few smiled at us. The boys seemed less reticent. Everybody greeted us politely.
There was a fairly large wooden church with a tower consisting of four columns at each corner so that you could see through it to the bell inside. It was cold in the church. Bertie took a picture of a little boy kneeling in front of the altar, fast asleep.
Fraulein Louise hurried on ahead of us, explaining everything as she went along. She told us what an Emergency Admission Procedure was and took us to see the county representative responsible for it. A Czech and an interpreter were with him. An emergency admission was a complicated business that took a long time and demanded a lot of paper work, but that was the way it had to be, said Fraulein Louise Gottschalk. She took us to the branch office of the Labor Bureau, to the Delousing Center, and to the infirmary, where every new inmate was taken at once
49
for a thorough medical checkup. She took us to the office of the Security Police, where two men from the Internal Security Department were sitting at desks talking to a Spaniard and a Greek. The men spoke both languages. When we came in, they immediately stopped tal
king. Both men were taciturn. Bertie wasn't allowed to take pictures.
One of the men was called Wilhelm Rogge, the other Albert Klein. Klein was big and fat, Rogge was thin and wore thick glasses. I spoke Spanish and asked if I could Us ten to the conversation with the Spanish boy. Rogge said no, that was out of the question.
"When you've finished looking around," said Klein, "would you please leave us? Were very busy."
"Now look here—" I said.
"Please" said Klein.
There was nothing to be got out of Security. I could understand that such precaution was necessary and said as much. The gentlemen Rogge and Klein smiled politely and noncommit-tally.
Fraulein Louise took us to the Caritas Center, to the Welfare Department, to the office of the camp psychologist. She showed us the two white barracks where the social workers lived, the big communal kitchen where girls in blue aprons were peeling potatoes, the doctors' barracks. The doctors weren't there, but we could see that the place was well equipped; in one room there was even an operating table. Fr&ulein Louise showed us the central telephone office. A pretty girl was sitting in front of an old switchboard, plugging in connections. Her name was Vera Griindlich and I flirted with her briefly.
We wanted to talk to adults, young people, and children. Fraulein Louise got us two interpreters who spoke all the languages spoken at the camp. We let the children and young people tell us why they had fled. Always for political reasons. The recorder picked up everything. I held the microphone in my hand.
"It's not always political," Fraulein Louise whispered to me. "Very often it's for quite different reasons, but that's what they have to say so that they 11 be recognized as political refugees, you understand?"
Two hours later Fraulein Louise said she wanted to show us where she worked. We walked across the heather to a barracks in the rear of the camp. "There we are," said Fr&ulein Louise. SO
We passed a tall flagpole imbedded in a big cracked cement block. This must once have been a parade ground. I asked, "How old is the camp?"
The Traitor Blitz Page 5
