Philip Kerr - The Other Side of Silence

After the British bombing, the Russians halted their attack on the city for the winter and regrouped. Somehow the Alhambra movie theater on Hufenallee managed to keep going despite having been hit by a bomb, and while plays were no longer performed we often went there to see a movie, even though that always meant having to sit through newsreels telling us how well the war was going for Germany, and how victory would be ours in the end. Sometimes, after the film, Irmela would ask me if things were really as good as the Ministry of Truth and Propaganda described, which was a safe and secure way of asking if they were as bad as everyone said they were. Mostly I said that reports of mass rape and atrocities that stemmed from East Prussian towns nearer the Russian front were always exaggerated. But she knew I was lying and not because she thought that I believed in the final victory; she knew I was trying not to scare her, that’s all. And one day toward the end of October 1944, she confronted my lies and evasions head on. Of course, she’d read some of the signals traffic about a place called Nemmersdorf, which was about a hundred kilometers east of Konigsberg; she also knew that I’d been there to report on the situation for the FHO. We were in bed at her parents’ place in Hammerweg Strasse at the time, and had just finished a particularly noisy bout of lovemaking.

“Christ,” I said, “I hope the neighbors don’t complain. Anyone would think I was raping you, or something.”

That was the only time she hit me.

“Don’t make jokes about that kind of thing,” she said gravely. “I don’t know a single girl in the auxiliary service who isn’t petrified about what’s going to happen when the Ivans turn up. You hear things. Bad things. Terrible things. We’re all terrified.”

“It’s not as bad as people say.”

“Liar,” she said. “ Liar. Look, Bernie, neither of us is a Nazi. The Gestapo aren’t listening. Just for once don’t spare my feelings. I know you’re trying to stop me from worrying, but I also know you were somewhere near Nemmersdorf. Your name is on the report. You don’t have to give me the details, only please tell me if anything of what I’ve heard about that place is true or not. If the Ivans really are as monstrous as people say they are. Or if the whole thing really is meant to deter us from surrendering. Which is the other rumor, of course. That the Ministry of Truth is trying to scare us out of surrender.”

I lit a cigarette and helped myself to some of her father’s brandy.

“Please,” she said. “I need to know. Every woman in Konigsberg wants to know what to expect. Particularly the women in the auxiliary services. You see, none of us in the auxiliary is particularly sure of our status as noncombatants. We’re in uniform and are obliged to obey military orders but forbidden to use weapons and we’re subject to civilian law. So where does that leave us? Will we be treated like civilians or prisoners of war? And will it matter a damn which is which when the Russians turn up? I don’t mind dying. But I’d rather not be gang-raped before I die.”

I didn’t speak. How could I tell her what I knew? The things I’d heard from the few survivors of Nemmersdorf beggared description.

“Please, Bernie. Look, the word is that there were seventy-two women and girls in Nemmersdorf aged between eight and eighty-four. And that all of them were raped.”

I nodded. “As a matter of fact, it’s worse. Much worse than anything you’ve heard.”

“How is that possible?”

“Raped, mutilated, and murdered.” I paused. “All of them. Women crucified. Breasts cut off. Violated with vodka bottles. Your worst nightmare. What happened at Schulzenwalde was worse. There were ninety-five at Schulzenwalde. Dr. Goebbels is already organizing a team of Swiss and Swedish reporters and observers to go and see the place for themselves so he can tell the world’s press that this is what Germany has been fighting against all along. Frankly, I think you can expect the newsreels to start getting worse from now on. They’ll be telling the truth, in other words. As you say, their intention is now to deter us from surrendering. As if fighting on to the last is really going to make any damn difference.”

“Why are the Russians doing this? I thought there were supposed to be rules on how you treat people in war.”

“There are. It’s just that we’ve treated Soviet POWs and Jews so very badly that we can expect no better treatment ourselves. There’s a concentration camp to the west of here called Stutthof where more than a hundred thousand people-mostly Poles-are currently imprisoned. But we’ve been starving and murdering Jews there for a year.”

Irmela nodded. “Which would fit with what we’ve heard in the signals. Naval captains have been complaining to their superiors here and in Danzig. Ships from the German navy have been used by the SS to take Jews to Stutthof from a camp called Klooga in Estonia. Apparently those prisoners were in a pretty bad way.”

“Look,” I said, “I think there’s every chance we’ll get all of the women and children out of Konigsberg before the Red Army finally gets here. But before that happens, things in this city are going to get an awful lot worse.”

One night, we were going to the Spatenbrau Restaurant on Kneiphofsche Langgasse, near Cathedral Island. But en route we went to see the ruins of the cathedral and Immanuel Kant’s grave, which was largely undamaged, mostly to give ourselves an appetite for life. Irmela knew a lot about Kant but was always kind enough not to tell me too much at once since I was an intelligence officer more by default than by aptitude. What I knew about Kant you could write on a spinning gas nebula. The cathedral itself was like a huge, empty skull found in the embers of a fire after some medieval execution. It was hard to know exactly what the RAF had been aiming their bombs at, since the nearest military target was more than a kilometer away. Or was it that they figured the only way to beat Germany was to be as bad as Germany? If so, then it certainly looked as if they had a good chance of winning.

“I always thought I’d get married in here,” said Irmela as we wandered hand in hand around the ruins.

“Anyone in particular?”

“There was someone, but he was killed at Stalingrad.”

“One of the lucky ones, probably.”

“You think so?”

“We won’t see most of those boys again. From what we know in the FHO, they’re most of them working in Soviet slave-labor camps. If you ask me, your boyfriend was spared.” I nodded. “So, let’s you and I get married instead. In here. Right now. Come on. Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, you’re already married,” she said, “in case you’d forgotten.”

“What’s that got to do with anything? Besides, my wife is back in Berlin and I’ll probably never see her again. Oh, and there’s this for good measure: You say you love me and I certainly love you and I just happen to have a ring on my finger that will do for a ceremony until I can buy another. Besides, you’ll probably be a widow before very long. And the blasphemy and bigamy certainly doesn’t matter either since I’m going to hell already. If it makes you feel any better I’ll take full responsibility for this when I get down there. I’ll say, ‘Look, it wasn’t Irmela’s fault, I persuaded her.’”

“You promise?”

“I can include that in the vows we make, if you like.”

“We don’t even have a priest.”

“Who needs a priest in a Lutheran cathedral? I thought that was the whole idea of the German Reformation. To abolish priestly intercession. Besides, I can remember all the damn words. I’ve been married enough times already to know them by heart.”