Елена Ржевская - Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter - From the Battle for Moscow to Hitler's Bunker

‘In German literature much was written about the faithfulness of German women and the frivolity and duplicity of French and Italian women, but I was very happy in my marriage.’

Soon the policy of ‘repatriation’ of Germans began, and he found himself in Poznań where, on this bridgehead, National Socialism blossomed in all its glory. The authorities would not register his daughter, because he had called her Fiametta.

He stopped. His eyes were dilated and motionless. He knew nothing about his family and was indifferent to what fate might hold in store for him now. He was infinitely tired of living in this world of Nazism and war.

The Poznań citadel was taken on the eve of 23 February, the twenty-seventh anniversary of the establishment of the Red Army. It seemed a significant gesture on the part of history, of which there were many on our path to victory. From the records of our interrogation of the German officers, I was able to piece together the last hours of the commander of the citadel, Major General Ernst Gonnel. He gave the order to surrender, arranged for it to be communicated to the troops, and spent the rest of the night in an armchair in the large vaulted underground hall of the citadel. He still had radio communication with the German high command, but was in no hurry to make his report.

When it was dawn, Gonnel went upstairs and headed to the southern gate, which had been designated in the capitulation terms as the point of surrender. Here, during the night, the soldiers under his command had been gathering, making no secret of wanting to get as close as possible to the gate. It was worse than he had imagined. They were no longer subject to his inexorable will and when, at the hour appointed, the gates were opened, they turned into a rabble as he watched, worn down by hunger and thirst, flinging their rifles in a heap, raising their hands above their heads, and rushed past, pushing Gonnel aside, taking no notice of him. It might have struck him that this was how he took the salute at the last parade of his troops. It lasted a long time, because the remnants of many other units had ended up in the citadel under his command. When the last stretchers with the wounded lurched through the gate, he hastily unfastened his holster, put the pistol to his temple and fired.

The surrendering troops, headed by the fortress commander, Major General Ernst Mattern, straggled in a long, glum column through the streets of Poznań. Among the ranks, tin trunks were visible above their heads where staff officers were carrying the papers of their headquarters. Those at the head of the column were already behind barbed wire, in a camp where only recently Russian prisoners of war had been confined, while those at its tail straggled through the city for a long time yet, exhausted and hungry.

To this day I preserve three blue invitation cards: to a service of thanksgiving, a parade, and an evening of celebration.

The service took place on Wednesday 7 March 1945 in the market square. There, before an altar, shoulder to shoulder, were ranks of Polish soldiers. Closer to it were the Sisters of Mercy in their white headgear. Carpets hung from every balcony. Men and women came running up the street. The voices in the square were raised in unison, and high up to the lowering sky there rose a solemn hymn of praise, thanksgiving and faith. Women with babies in their arms came out onto the balconies to join their voices to the singing.

Later, also in the market square, there was a parade. The commander-in-chief, General Michal Rola-Żymierski, reviewed a march-past of troops on the paving in front of the tribune. Beside him stood his tall, lean chief of staff, General Wladyslaw Korczyc. Banners fluttered. A dark red banner with a cow’s head and crossed poleaxes was borne by a man with a ginger moustache and a kerchief round his neck, the standard-bearer of the Guild of Butchers. The banner of the Polish Workers’ Party was carried by an old man in blue spectacles. Up there, by the tribune, a young man in a worn grey coat, raised a microphone to his lips and, removing his hat while the national anthem was played, gave a running commentary.

The tribune was covered in greenery. The safely preserved banner of the municipality was brought, escorted on both sides by women orderlies girdled with red and white brocade.

The infantry were wearing helmets, with the Polish bicolour on a Russian three-sided bayonet. Then a platoon of anti-tank gunners, a platoon with submachine guns, with girls in the front rank. Then machine-gun carriages. Then the cavalry, with bicoloured ribbons braided in their horses’ manes. Public societies came to the tribune with their banners. Flags fluttered, red, and red and white.

‘Niech żyje Armia czerwona !’ Long live the Red Army.

‘Niech żyje !’ we heard from the tribune.

Children and adults climbed up telegraph poles and trees, and stood on the church wall.

‘Niech żyje bohaterski Poznań !’ Long live heroic Poznań.

Hats were thrown in the air, bouquets of greenhouse flowers were thrown to the soldiers. The last to clatter past the tribune were six tanks, and no sooner had their clamour died down than an astonished, joyful exclamation was heard and taken up by the crowd: ‘Look! The cranes are flying back!’

Taking off their caps, their heads thrown back, the crowd gazed upwards to where, in a sky that had meanwhile cleared, cranes returning from the south soared over the city. A sign of spring!

Today in a newsreel I caught a glimpse of the snowbound Russian winter and samovars and felt unhelpfully homesick.

Here, spring is on its way, even though in places last year’s leaves have not yet fallen from the trees. A long autumn passes into spring, almost omitting winter.

Imagine such a dull, monotonous life, not wakening to new excitement from autumn to spring.

In Russia every season is clearly marked, and with each new season you start your life afresh.

Perhaps because there was a war on, I was still eager for challenges, but somehow no longer in the thick of the action. I was looking around to see if I could find something new and exciting.

Poznań stagnated, ever further from the front line of the advancing army, which had already forced a crossing of the River Oder. Troops of the 1st Byelorussian Front, under the command of Marshal Zhukov, had fought their way forward 400 km in two weeks.

The city was changing in front of our eyes, primarily by becoming springlike. Although that was entirely natural, many people may remember the sense of solidarity of that spring of 1945 in the West, with gentle breezes wafting the aroma of fields ploughed, for the first time in freedom, by Polish peasants, with their green, tender shoots and hopes of peace and work.

The city was coming back to a life that was still austere but enlivened by the coming of spring. The plasterers and painters were suspended on the walls of buildings in their cradles. The chimney sweeps in black top hats and with all their appurtenances rode everywhere on bicycles. The schoolchildren of Poznań hurried to get to school in time for the bell, and any one of them, with their satchel bumping up and down on their back, was sure to say good day if they met me: ‘Dzień dobry, panno lieutenant!’

Wiktoria Buzińska sewed me a green dress from the lining of a coat, and ornamented it with a yoke from a piece of polka-dotted satin. How amazing that was, what luxury suddenly to be wearing, if only for a moment, a light, feminine dress with short sleeves, after three-and-a-half years of constantly wearing a tunic. What a delight to lock my door and secretly put it on. The SS man’s room had no mirror, and I tried as best I could to make myself out in the glass of the windows when evening darkened them. There is no describing how enchanted I was by my own appearance.