by Heinz Rein
‘How should …’
‘Yes, that’s right, how should you, I know. Then I’ll tell you what that smooth evacuation looked like. The city was surrounded on all sides, as the Party and all the authorities had fled on speedboats the SS took charge. The only gap in the encirclement was the sea, and now the SS drove the people like cattle, in storm and snow and rain, the harbour under constant artillery fire and attacks by low-flying aircraft; they were loaded onto small boats, because the transporters lay at anchor in the roads, fifteen kilometres from the city. Over twenty thousand people lost their lives, Joachim, in the capsizing overloaded boats, in the street battles, in the explosions, in the mass executions by the SS of all those who refused to leave the city. That was what it was like, son, and that is also what it will be like here in Berlin, mark my words.’
Lassehn stared at the floor in front of him. ‘And now the black storm clouds hang menacingly outside our city, their shadows fall upon it already, and yet we act as if we haven’t noticed anything, the people go on living their lives apathetically, they go on working and leading what remains of a private life, the police and the authorities still make their rulings and demand that their instructions be obeyed, and that all happens as naturally as if it were bound to go on like that for ever, today, tomorrow, the day after.’
‘Yes, son, that is the much-praised perseverance,’ Klose says, ‘but in fact it is neither perseverance nor courage, it is a stubbornly phlegmatic attitude and a fatalistic indifference, that is the great talent of the Germans, to pretend something to themselves and almost to believe it. And if the T-34s or the Shermans roll over Alexanderplatz tomorrow, then they will take that into consideration, ensure that they heed all the traffic regulations and calmly get on with their lives, as long as they have saved a scrap of private existence.’
‘That sounds very pessimistic,’ Lassehn says.
‘There is no option but to think pessimistically about the bourgeoisie and all those who are part of it,’ Klose replies, ‘and it is also the bourgeoisie that still clings to Hitler and his state because it senses that with the fall of the Third Reich the bourgeoisie is finished as an autonomous class. They didn’t even blame Hitler for the war, it’s only because he’s now losing it that they’re suddenly starting to have reservations. What’s wrong, Joachim?’
Lassehn has craned his neck, listening.
‘I think someone’s knocking at the door, Mr Klose,’ he says.
Klose gets up and takes a few steps towards the door leading to the corridor. ‘You’re right,’ he says, ‘you disappear into the tap room, just in case.’
XII
15 April, 8.30 p.m.
When dusk falls upon the urban canyons and grey islands grow in the sea of clouds that fills the sky, Wiegand leaves his flat. He stops, apparently irresolute, outside the front door and lights a cigarette, but that is only an opportunity to look around, he calculates that a spy might be lurking somewhere nearby to keep an eye on him, but he sees nothing, at this time of the evening there aren’t many people in the street, only some very cautious individuals are already on their way with their belongings to the high-rise bunkers in Friedrichshain.
After Wiegand has smoked his cigarette to the butt, he walks slowly up Lebuser Strasse to Grosse Frankfurter Strasse, stops a few times and sets down his suitcase as if it’s getting too heavy for him and glances cautiously behind him, but can’t see anyone. However, the gloom would not encourage a pursuer, the streets are unlit, only every now and again does a faint beam of light emerge from a front door.
On the corner with Grosse Frankfurter Strasse Wiegand stops again, he has heard footsteps behind him, he wants to let them get closer and overtake him, so he busies himself with a cigarette and glances back to Lebuser Strasse again. A man with a rucksack walks past him and turns into Grosse Frankfurter Strasse, he stops outside the ruined ‘Filmstern’ cinema, rests a foot on a pile of rubble and busies himself with a shoelace. Wiegand looks down the street once more, but again there is no one to be seen, it is very quiet now, he thinks he heard the footsteps of several people a moment ago, but only one man has walked past him, the same man with the rucksack who is now standing uncertainly outside the ‘Filmstern’. Wiegand picks up his suitcase again, he originally wanted to go straight to Klose’s, but now he decides to take a few detours and shake off anyone who might be pursuing him, he turns into Grosse Frankfurter Strasse and walks slowly along it towards Strausberger Platz. Huge piles of rubble obstruct the pavements, no houses have been spared here, over the last few months the area has been hit by one massive blow after another, after previously having been barely affected, a few blockbusters had had a devastating effect during the night, by day volley bombing had rained down, because here in the blocks at the rear of the tenements and factory buildings, surrounded by residential blocks, there was a diverse precision-engineering and electro-technical industry, and a large number of textile workshops, all working for the arms industry.
At Strausberger Platz Wiegand stops again. On Strausberger Strasse a Line 1 tram is about to set off after reaching its terminus here, since the tracks on Grosse Frankfurter Strasse have been torn up, and the driver furiously rings the bell, probably because a handcart refuses to come off the tracks. The sound of the bell produces a strangely flat echo in the half-ruined street; the audience of the second-last performance, the only one that is guaranteed with some certainty to run undisturbed between the end of work and the beginning of the air-raid warning, is emerging from the cinema opposite, between Kleine Markusstrasse and Krautstrasse, and for a few minutes the street is filled with a hubbub of voices and a lively clatter of heels. Then the silence falls all the more heavily back into the darkness. A dull light glows from Böers’ chemist’s shop, and the wind rattles the loose window frames of the branch office of the Deutsche Bank.
The gloom has thickened in the meantime, darkness has almost spread over the city, the few inhabited buildings are placed like huge, dark boxes in the picturesque mountain range of stones and rubble, only the strips of light in the blacked-out windows or a banging front door revealing for a moment the view of a blue light bulb indicate that there is life inside. A group of men come from Weberstrasse, but there are also two or three women among them, laughing brightly and fending off advances, the conversation is noisy and unrestrained. For a few seconds Wiegand listens to the melodious French sounds and envies the people their insouciance. He is still standing in Strausberger Platz outside the café where he met his wife a few times as he couldn’t risk making the journey to Eichwalde. He looks around, but the man with the rucksack has disappeared.
Wiegand slowly climbs down the steps to the underground and buys a local ticket, and when he turns round to glance at his watch, a man with a rucksack is passing through the barrier. These days there are a lot of men with rucksacks in Berlin, but Wiegand thinks he recognizes him as the man who came out of Lebuser Strasse a short time before and then stood outside the ‘Filmstern’. He might of course be mistaken, but at any rate he will behave as if he were being watched by the man, and there are various tried-and-tested tricks to shake off a troublesome pursuer. Buildings with a passageway that leads to another street, shops with paternoster lifts, jumping onto a moving train or, last of all, going up to the pursuer and politely pointing out that his pursuit has not gone unnoticed.
Wiegand walks up and down the pavement a few times. The man with the rucksack is sitting on a bench reading the Nachtausgabe without looking up, he lets the train for Alexanderplatz go past, but an attempt to join it would in any case have been pointless, since it was full to the gills. It is the last half-hour before the evening alarm, most of the underground trains are almost empty, only a few individual lines are overcrowded, and one of those is Line E from Friedrichsfelde to Alexanderplatz. Alexanderplatz exerts the greatest gravitational force on the anxious souls of the north-east, since not only does it have two secure underground bunkers, it also has an underground platform which, being two sto
reys below ground level, is considered bomb-proof in the truest sense of the word. The evening alarm has become a constant part of life. It is not seen as an unknown, it is an event firmly built into the course of the day, which is almost unimaginable without it. The evening is quite naturally divided into the time ‘before the alarm’ and the time ‘after the alarm’, just as history is divided into ‘before the birth of Christ’ and ‘after the birth of Christ’.
Wiegand stops in front of a noticeboard, the paper still smells of printer’s ink, and particularly important passages are emphasized in red:
Compulsory registration of refugees
Over the past weeks many national comrades have sought protection in the interior of the country; manual workers, office workers and functionaries have lost their jobs, soldiers the connection with their offices or units as the result of enemy activity. To make them active once again in the defence of our people, the following orders have been issued.
Leave, except in cases of illness, is initially granted only for acts of courage.
Exemption on grounds of indispensability of all men from enemy-occupied territories is cancelled.
All members of the Wehrmacht who are not with their offices or units, including soldiers on leave and on missions, must immediately report voluntarily to the relevant offices (garrison commander, garrison headquarters, local police or regional war office).
All other people who have left their domicile since 1 January 1945 must immediately upon being assigned to accommodation voluntarily perform the following acts of compulsory registration at their new place of residence: a) All Germans must report to the police registration office of their new place of residence.
b) All non-registered men born between 1884 and 1929 must also report to the military registration office or local military garrison of their new place of residence, showing their military papers.
People who have been compulsorily registered receive salaries from the public coffers only once compulsory registration has been performed. The food kitchens, supply authorities etc. are instructed only to issue food cards and make payments once proof of registration has been shown.
Anyone giving shelter to someone obliged to register must show by presenting the stamped registration document that compulsory registration has occurred. If these papers are not immediately presented, the person providing shelter must report to the police registration office.
Anyone knowing of individuals suspected of avoiding compulsory military service must immediately report to the nearest police department.
Violation of compulsory registration is a criminal offence. But anyone neglecting to report in order to avoid compulsory military or labour service will be seen as a deserter and treated accordingly. Punishment will be applied not only to the guilty party, but to anyone who has helped in any way.
Wiegand reads with an ironic grimace, he recognizes this proclamation as what it is: the last gasp of a defeated system that is still trying to prolong the agony using the same means that it has always used: after introductory phrases the blow to the stomach and the hand in the wallet, the threat of punishment and last of all the order to denounce. Wiegand is so immersed in his reading that he has ignored the arrival of the approaching train and turns round in surprise when the train enters the station and the brakes screech against the wheels. He gets into a smoking carriage and sits down calmly on the red-leather upholstery, the man with the rucksack seems to have gone into a different … no, there he is, he boards the same carriage as Wiegand, except that he uses the door at the other end of the carriage and stops in the shelter of the side wall which closes off the middle row of seats. His cover is imperfect, because the carriage is almost entirely empty.
At Memeler Strasse Station a group of Ukrainians board the train, wearing the blue badge of the Ostarbeiter, and use the rare opportunity to sit in the underground without being jostled or stared at, they bring the stale, musty smell of the barracks with them, the aroma of rarely aired clothes. It is as if, while working in the fields or walking in the streets, they had fallen into the hands of modern slave drivers, pressed into Sauckel’s army of forced labourers and transported in cattle-trucks to Germany. Wiegand has always seen them as the oppressed brothers, but he has also been forced to observe that some workers see them only as workhorses placed under their dominion, and the example of the foreign forced labourer has made it clear to Wiegand more than any other the extent to which the National Socialist way of thinking about the master race and inferior human beings has taken hold of the people, the depth to which the poison of racial madness has eaten into the brains of the nation. The contemptuous treatment, the stupidly superior attitude of many German workers, the lack of any feeling for the situation of the abused Russian people has startled him again and again. But he has often also experienced his colleagues seeing the Ostarbeiter as class-comrades oppressed in a special and different way, bringing them relief and helping them to find a sense of direction in a strange world and protecting them against the prejudices of the foremen or other horse traders. Of course, that can only happen under circumstances of the greatest possible caution, since works security and the factory troops, the political inspector and the intelligence officer cut short all so-called attempts at fraternization from the outset, or choke off any initial approaches, constantly use the threat of the Gestapo and ruthlessly dispatch the spokesmen of the Russians to a labour camp from which nobody returns except in the rarest of cases. And still, no amount of espionage and arrogance has been able to prevent an understanding between class-conscious workers and their Russian comrades. ‘Tovarich’ is by now a common form of address.
Wiegand lets his eye wander over the broad, good-natured faces of the Ukrainians, and has almost forgotten the man with the rucksack, who is still standing by the door and now busy trying to light a pipe. When the train pulls into Petersburger Strasse he glances quickly at Wiegand, and when Wiegand stays in his seat, he too sits down on the bench at the back of the train and unfolds his newspaper again.
Now Wiegand wants to make his move, he wants to leave the train at the last minute before it sets off again, but he can’t put his plan into action because the train doesn’t move at all.
‘Everyone out! Air-raid warning!’
The cry of the platform conductress rings out dully in the arches of the railway station.
Wiegand picks up his suitcase and gets out, he deliberately fumbles around by the barrier for a long time so that he can be the last to leave the station. There are barely more than three dozen people going through the barrier, the man with the rucksack is one of the last, and even he seems to have postponed leaving the station for as long as possible.
The Frankfurter Allee is a single, dark canyon, the sky is black, not one star is embroidered into the dark shroud of the sky, it is so dark that Wiegand can barely see five paces in front of him. He takes his chance walking down Petersburger Strasse, a massive rubbish dump rises on his left, and the row of houses only begins a few hundred metres further on. Wiegand has some difficulty making out the white arrow and the white letters ‘LS’, he sets down his suitcase and stops by the door to catch his breath, the gentle rise of Petersburger Strasse to Baltenplatz has left him slightly breathless. A gloomy silence has fallen on the street, the piercing hiss of a heavy freight locomotive roars from the Ringbahn. Down Warschauer Strasse, from the direction of the bridge, comes the rattle of a motorcycle, the faint, blacked-out beam of its headlight spreads through the darkness.
When Wiegand is about to pick up his suitacase again, a hand rests on his shoulder from behind, he spins round and finds himself facing the silhouette of a man of small rather than medium height.
‘You can’t stand around here,’ the man says in a harsh and peremptory tone, he has a thin, croaky voice. ‘Go to the shelter immediately!’
‘Let’s not get worked up,’ Wiegand replies and picks up his suitcase. ‘Where is the nearest cellar?’ He shines the beam of his torch into the hallway a
nd sees for a moment a brown uniform and shiny knee-length boots.
‘Have you lost your mind?’ the man roars at him. ‘Put that torch out immediately!’
‘You aren’t exactly being polite,’ Wiegand says, and walks into the hallway. ‘Show me the way to the shelter.’
‘Straight down the hallway, right in the courtyard, first door.’ The voice delivers the words like a verse repeated a thousand times. ‘But get a move on!’
Wiegand is tempted to punch the man in the brown uniform in the teeth, he has been ordered about too many times and had to choke back his internal explosion. But this time the opportunity seems favourable, there’s only him and the man in the brown uniform in the hallway. He has already clenched his fist and turned half the way back, but then he violently regains control of himself, he mustn’t act impetuously, and in any case the man with the rucksack might be somewhere nearby.
In the air-raid shelter, a long, twisting space with lots of columns, he sits down on a bench that is not directly lit by a lamp. He isn’t bothered about any of this, the hubbub of voices, the loudspeaker that alternates between insignificant music and reports of the state of combat, conjectures about the goal of the British units. As far as he is concerned, visiting this air-raid shelter is only one stop along his flight, which actually began on 30 January 1933 and finally forced him into hiding.
