The other source of her information, strange as it may seem, was Wolfgang. It was late in ’43 when, all of a sudden, Wolfgang accosted her in the street. She panicked and was about to run away. She was glad she didn’t have little Manfred with her. But Wolfgang stopped her with a firm grip on her right arm.
“Listen, stupid bitch, I have some news for you. It’s about your weakling of a lover-boy,” he laughed.
This stopped her. “All right, I’ll listen to what you’ve got to tell me, but I won’t go anywhere with you.”
“Hey, hold your horses. I’m not going to hurt you. You don’t interest me. I’ve got better women I can get if I want. Real knock-out women, classy women any man would be proud of.”
Anna decided to listen to him. But she was careful not to provoke him. Her eagerness to learn anything about Manfred even made her follow Wolfgang to a café in the Sorge, where they sat down at a table in the corner and ordered tea. They had the table between them, and the café had people in it, so she felt safe enough. She wondered what this awful man had to tell her. He was in a uniform of the Wehrmacht.
He registered her scrutiny of his uniform. “As you can see, I’m only a sergeant, which is a type of non-commissioned officer.”
“I wouldn’t recognize the difference between any ranks anyway,” she said with a dismissive gesture.
“Well, you should, with your lover-boy such a big shot these days.”
“What about him, then?”
“Didn’t you know he’s an Untersturmführer in the Waffen-SS?”
“That’s impossible!” she cried. “You’re only saying that to annoy me.”
“Not at all,” he smirked and chuckled. He must have known how to shock her best.
“How can you know such a thing anyway?” she asked.
“Well, I have my connections. Although I didn’t make it into the officers’ ranks while your lover-boy made it into the super class, I have my secret connections. Believe me, what I’m saying is true. Your Manfred is one of the Nazi hardliners. The SS wouldn’t have made him an officer otherwise.”
“But why are you telling me? You wouldn’t do this unless there’s something for you in it.”
“Isn’t that obvious? For years I had to listen to your intellectual babble. You and your loverboy with all your liberal freethinker attitudes, ridiculing the good cause for our fatherland. You always thought you were better human beings and looked down on chaps like me, but now look who is on the winning side? It’s us, the proper ruling party of our great nation, and we’ll build our empire, we’ll make Germany great again. Das tausendjährige Reich! And as you can see, your boy has turned his back on your floozy intellectual ideas. He’s joined the winning side. Let that be a lesson to you, you silly woman.”
“So you’ve had your satisfaction, or as they say, your innere Reichsparteitag, haven’t you?”
Wolfgang only smiled his dirty smile.
Anna left the café and ran home. Back in her father’s study, she told her parents what she’d heard from Wolfgang. They couldn’t believe her at first, but then the father said he’d seen stranger things and many young men could be led astray by the promises made by the Nazis. It was the brainwashing process of Pirna which might have changed Manfred so sadly. After all, the fact that he had given up writing to her could be an indication of his volte-face, couldn’t it?
“Can’t you find out about this, with your connections at the Stammtisch?” Anna begged her father.
“I’ll do my best, my dear girl. But we’ve got to be very careful. One doesn’t just ask questions about SS officers, just like that. I’ll have to see what can be done to find out. But listen, you’d better get used to the idea that your Manfred might have become a staunch Nazi. It will be easier to forget him.”
“I’ll never forget him.”
“Well then, put him behind you, as they say.”
* * *
I received a phone call from Renate Erdinger. She said her mother was having a good spell, and I was welcome to come and talk to her. So I decided to give Anna a break and see Renate’s mother before returning to Anna’s report. So I told her I would be back after a few days to which she replied, “I know you must have other sources for your search.”
“And do you mind?” I asked.
“Not really,” Anna replied. “It’s only possible you might hear some really bad things about my dear Manfred, because many people hated the SS, especially after the War. So they invented all sorts of crimes for them. But I just refuse to believe that your father could have been involved in really awful crimes. He was too good for this world.”
I decided to let this stand and promised to be back after a few days.
Renate received me in her flat near the town centre. It was an old house which hadn’t been refurbished yet. The plaster was peeling off the walls and there were cracks all over the façade. The staircase creaked as I was climbing up to the third floor, and the banister didn’t really look very trustworthy. There were smells of cooked cabbage and spicy sausages oozing out of other flats, but when I entered Renate’s flat, I was surprised to find a fine smell of lavender and an extremely tidy place. There was no dust, everything was nicely polished and smelt good. If fact, the entire flat had a very elegant atmosphere. Quite a contrast to the dilapidated outside of the building and the decrepit staircase.
“We like to keep up our dignity,” Renate explained when she ushered me in, as if she had read my thoughts.
I handed her a small parcel, which contained some sweet confectionery from a nice shop in the Sorge. “It’s really very kind of you to remember me,” I added.
“Oh, that’s quite all right,” she answered. “My mother has been very eager to see you these two weeks, ever since I’d told her about your search.”
We exchanged a few more niceties and made some brief comments on the weather, before she led me into her grand parlour with the polished parquet floor and her elegant and stylish Biedermeier furniture.
Her old mother was sitting in a comfortable armchair which was a stark contrast to the rest of the furniture because it was obviously a modern Stressless easy chair. Quite an aesthetic shock within the context of the lovely Biedermeier parlour. She looked like a tough woman with her short black and grey hair.
“So, you are the daughter of one of the Weidmann boys,” she croaked, as she was offering me her shaky hand.
“Yes, my father was Manfred Weidmann, you know, the son of the family with the delicatessen shop in the Sorge.”
“I know who Manfred was. My husband went to school with Thomas, the older Weidmann boy.”
“Oh, I see. Did you know the family personally?” I asked.
“Not very well, not personally, but we knew of them. My husband Gerhard didn’t get on very well with Thomas. He considered him the most arrogant prick. But he admired Manfred. I’m afraid my dear Gerhard passed away a long time ago, otherwise he could tell you everything himself.”
“I am sorry. If it is too difficult for you to talk about those times, I perfectly understand. It must have been a very hard time.”
“Not hard at the time,” Frau Erdinger said. “It became hard after the War.”
“Yes, I see. But how did you cope with the difficulties during the War? I mean the depravity, the food and fuel rationing, the political indoctrination.”
“There was no political indoctrination, as you call it. We had a thoroughly good time. Gerhard was assistant to the Stadtrat, a protégé of Walter Kiessling, he had joined the NSDAP very early and managed to rise to important posts. He was awarded several medals of honour, two of them even from the Führer personally. In such a position, we never suffered from any rationing or other disadvantages.”
I hesitated before I asked my next question. “So, you were proper Nazis?” For a split second after utteri
ng the question I regretted it, fearing to offend Frau Erdinger, but then quickly remembered that I had resolved not to condemn any former Nazis - or former SED members - in the course of my search. For, who knows how I would have reacted had I lived at that time? Let those who are without blame throw the first stone.
“Of course, we were. And I’m glad we were, whatever people said about us after the War.”
Now this was a new situation for me. While, after the War, all the big Nazis tried to hide and pretended to be ashamed of their crimes, here was a woman who openly admitted that she and her husband had been Nazis and were even proud of it. I wondered which was more honest: Frau Erdinger’s open confession or all those liars. After the fall of the GDR a few years ago, we had a similar problem. There were those who couldn’t escape their criminal past in the SED and those who became what people referred to as Wendehälse, the German word for wrynecks, birds that could turn their necks around and face the other side of reality. Many who had been Nazi criminals under Hitler managed to erase their pasts and move into high positions after the war. They became top politicians, bank managers or industrial tycoons. And today, as we are sitting here, several of the top politicians in Germany are former SED members or Stasi sleuths.
After digesting my slight shock, I continued with my next question. “Did you hear about Manfred after he’d left Gera for Pirna?”
“Of course, we did. Once he was an Untersturmführer in the Waffen-SS, he visited the town several times, usually in the entourage of a Sturmbannfüher, a Standartenführer or some other high SS-officer. One evening there was a big reception in the Rathaus when an important delegation of the SS happened to be in town. I think it was in ’43 or thereabout. There was some function or other going on, I don’t remember what it was, but I remember the reception. It was very grand indeed. Gerhard and I were invited. I wore my long red evening dress that one of his friends in the SS had brought back from Rome. It was ever so elegant, and I felt like a princess.”
“That must have been a big occasion. But what about Manfred Weidmann?”
“Oh yes, Untersturmführer Weidmann was presented to us, and of course, we recognized him immediately. He was so wonderful, resplendent in his impressive black uniform. He had a short chat with us before he moved on to other people who were obviously more important for him. But I won’t forget what a dashing young officer Manfred was.”
“So, you are absolutely sure he was in the SS?” I wanted to know for sure.
“Absolutely.”
“Then how is it possible that he could get himself arrested and deported to a concentration camp later?”
“Who told you such rubbish?” she asked, surprised.
“It was what he always told us. Ah yes, and he had a tattoo on his left arm, which he had removed after the War, of course. All we ever saw was the scar.”
“Where was the scar, between his wrist and his elbow?”
“Yes.”
“And that was the only scar on his left arm?”
“Why do you ask? He was in the camp only once, and I don’t think they tattooed their inmates more than once.”
“Well, did he have another scar or not?” Frau Erdinger was quite persistent.
I had to think for a moment. Then I remembered. “Oh yes. He did have another scar, but that was on the inside of his upper arm. He told us it was from an accident in the swimming baths when he was a young man. He’d slipped on the metal ladder and scratched the inside of his arm as he was trying to grasp one of the railings. So that’s got nothing to do with a tattoo or with his time in the concentration camp, I can assure you.”
Frau Erdinger sighed. “I am sorry, young woman, but I have to destroy an illusion of yours. The scar on the inside of his left upper arm is proof of his membership of the Waffen-SS. All their officers had their blood type tattooed there. The idea was to ensure quick first aid in case they were injured. They all had it. You can believe me.”
I was stunned. When I’d first heard that outrageous accusation in Anna’s report of Wolfgang Löffel’s verbal attack, I still believed it was probably wrong. But now it was confirmed by this old woman who had known my father personally. And she had seen him in his black SS uniform.
I needed time to reflect on this. So, I steered the conversation away from the SS, the Nazis and the War. When, shortly afterwards, I thanked Frau Erdinger and took my leave, she urged me to come back soon, because she had a lot more to tell me. I promised to call again and climbed down those creaking stairs with a heavy heart. I needed the fresh air outside.
* * *
Anna had some information that she had got from her father back then. As he’d said he had good connections and could find out things that were not openly accessible.
“And did your father really find out more about my father’s career?” I asked on my next visit to the retirement-home in Gera-Lusan.
“Yes,” she replied. “It’s no use pretending. We knew by then that he’d become an SS officer.”
“Indeed,” I said, “sad as it is, I have to get used to the fact that I’m the daughter on a proper Nazi.” I paused. “But please, do tell me what your father found out. Did Manfred just disappear within the construction and protection of Hitler’s empire and the machineries of the War? Or is there any definite information about his career at that time?”
Anna told me how her father had found out that for a certain time Manfred had to work for a man called Bernhard Krüger, whose job it was to forge foreign banknotes, especially pound sterling. He was working in a secret printing factory at the Concentration Camp of Sachsenhausen with a workforce of 142 inmates. Manfred, who by then had reached the rank of Hauptsturmführer, something equivalent to a captain, was also responsible to channel the newly printed banknotes to the right squadrons of the Luftwaffe that were to drop them over British towns at night. The idea was to weaken the British economy by flooding the country with money, which would eventually lead to an inflation that the British economy would no longer be able to cope with. Not all the money was dropped by the Luftwaffe, some of it was also channelled to Swiss bank accounts. The idea was to flood the world market with sterling.
Of course, this job gave him the unique chance to get enormous sums stashed away for himself, albeit in counterfeit money. Nobody knows if he succumbed to the temptation or, if he did, whether he could use any of that money after the War. I asked Anna.
“But wouldn’t Krüger have found out? Wasn’t he his boss?”
“From what my father found out, Sturmbannführer Krüger was indeed one rank above Hauptsturmführer Weidmann, but it appears the two were as thick as thieves, in the real sense of the phrase. Manfred probably covered Krüger’s thefts and Krüger covered Manfred’s. Nobody can tell for sure after such a long time.”
“And was their counterfeit operation successful? Did they manage to weaken the British economy?” I asked.
“It seems that Operation Bernhard, as it was called, didn’t have a heavy impact on the British economy, although they produced some six million pounds in high-quality counterfeit currency. You tell me how much that would be today.”
“From what I know, about six billion pounds. Was that where my father worked for the rest of the War?”
“No, not at all. He was only part of Operation Bernhard for a relatively short period. When, in 1944, the operation was transferred to a different concentration camp in Austria and switched from sterling to American dollars, Manfred was promoted to Sturmbannführer and assigned to the security service of the Nazi legal system. He had to work with a man called Hans Filbinger, a Nazi judge.”
“What did he do there?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to extend your research to Filbinger and his role during the last years of the War in order to find out anymore. All I know is that Manfred disappeared towards the end of the War. Nobody knows wha
t happened to him in the end. It was general knowledge that SS officers who were caught by the Russians were shot on the spot. So, we all assumed that Manfred didn’t survive. It would have been extremely difficult for him to escape.”
After I had all that information from Anna, we spent a long time chatting about my father, what sort of person he was after the War, what kind of a father he was to me, and also about his declining health these days.
Anna and I parted as good friends. I returned to the hotel to write my diary and to do some research about Filbinger. I remembered the name Hans. Dad had mentioned it several times after his trips to Germany. It must be the same Hans.
Twenty-One
I only saw Renate Erdinger and her mother once more. Even though the old woman had been very friendly and very helpful on my previous visit, I wasn’t completely comfortable with her. Renate sensed this.
“I could see how my mother’s report shocked you,” she admitted when she fetched me from my hotel a few days later.
“It wasn’t only her report,” I replied.
“Yes, I know,” she said. “It was also her pride in being a Nazi, wasn’t it?”
I confessed that it was. Renate nodded and told me how she had been trying to change her mother’s mind for the past thirty years. She said she used to be ashamed of her parents’ stubborn adherence to the Nazis when she was at school. The schoolchildren throughout the first twenty years after the War had to learn to cope with their country’s past. They had many lessons dealing with recent history in an extremely critical light. Vergangenheitsbewältigung was the watchword for many years.
“We learnt to be watchful of populist politicians, we learnt to abhor any form of racism, we learnt to be heedful about national pride and feelings of superiority. Words like Heimat or Volk were tainted and became practically banned from our vocabulary. We were even discouraged from flying the German flag.”
White Lies Page 32
