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

Voss stared stonily through the car window the whole time. Terrible, smoking ruins. A crowd of Berliners at a camp kitchen where a Russian cook was ladling out hot soup… Overturned barricades, over which the car drove before crawling on through narrow alleys carved through streets blocked by fallen masonry, rubble and rubbish.

‘Did you know these children?’ Major Bystrov asked. Voss nodded in the affirmative and, asking permission, sank wearily into a chair. ‘I saw them only yesterday. This one is Heidi,’ he said, pointing to the youngest girl. Before coming here he had identified Goebbels and his wife.

Goebbels, with his retinue of journalists, had come on board the cruiser Prinz Eugen, commanded by Voss, in the summer of 1942. Voss owed his advancement to Goebbels. Not so long ago, only back in February when the headquarters moved to Berlin, Goebbels, his wife and Voss were invited to a family dinner party by Grand Admiral Dönitz. The conversation was diverse, and concerned the organization of the defence of Berlin. ‘We talked about the need to build stronger street fortifications and to draw more young people from the Volkssturm group into defence duties. All these issues were touched on, however, only superficially; in passing, as it were.’ They did not allow the intrusion of alarming thoughts to spoil their pleasant evening.

Forced by events down into the underground complex together, they met as old friends, and yesterday, before Voss left with Mohnke’s group, Goebbels had said to him in parting, ’Everything is lost for us now.’ Magda Goebbels added, ‘We are tied here by the children. There is nowhere we can go with them now.’

Major Bystrov and Voss stood together in this dank, dreadful underground room in which the children were lying under their blankets. Voss was shocked, devastated, and sat there hunched. They were silent, each with his own thoughts. That same day Major Bystrov told me about what happened next. Voss, this seemingly completely broken man, suddenly leapt up and started running. Bystrov went after him along the corridor of the dark cellar, fearing he might disappear up a sidestreet and dive into some unknown hiding place. Bystrov caught him, however, and could see this had been an act of complete despair, pointless. Voss had never imagined he could get away.

The children were found in one of the underground rooms by Senior Lieutenant Leonid Ilyin on 3 May. They were lying in bunk beds, the girls in long nightgowns, the boy in pyjamas of light material, just as they had climbed into bed for the last time. Their faces were pink from the action of potassium cyanide. The children seemed alive and only sleeping.

Later, when Leonid Ilyin read these lines, he wrote to me,

I am that same Senior Lieutenant Ilyin. Thank you very much for remembering me… There was me, my soldier Sharaburov, Palkin and another soldier whose name I do not know, a Jew by nationality, who we had been given in case we needed an interpreter. At that time we were shooting, being shot at, but fortunately we were all alive. I took a loaded Walther 6.35 mm with a spare clip from a desk drawer in Goebbels’ study. There were also two suitcases with documents, two suits and a watch. I have Goebbels’ watch to this day. It was given to me as being of no value and I have kept it as a souvenir.

On 3 May, when I had a moment to spare, I wandered round the Reich Chancellery and food stores. Well, now that’s all forgotten history… Well, that’s everything I wanted to write….

But in the room where the poisoned children lay, there was absolutely nothing apart from bedding. I asked through my interpreter why they had poisoned the children. They were not guilty of anything.

In the hospital of the Reich Chancellery there was a doctor among the medical staff, Helmut Kunz, who had been involved in killing the children. He worked in the medical department of the SS in Berlin and on 23 April, when the medical unit was dissolved, was sent to the Reich Chancellery.

He was unshaven and had sunken eyes. He was in SS uniform and spoke jerkily, sighing a lot, clasping and unclasping his hands. He was, perhaps, the only person down there in the complex who had not lost his sensitivity, his jitteriness about everything he had witnessed. He said,

Before dinner on 27 April, at eight or nine o’clock in the evening, I met Goebbels’ wife in the corridor by the entrance to Hitler’s bunker. She said she wanted to talk to me about a certain very important matter. She immediately added that the situation was now such that she and I would evidently have to kill her children. I gave my consent.

On 1 May he was summoned from the hospital to the Führerbunker by phone.

When I came into the bunker, I found in his study Goebbels himself, his wife and Naumann, the state secretary of the Ministry of Propaganda, talking about something.

I waited at the door of the office for about ten minutes. When Goebbels and Naumann came out, Goebbels’ wife invited me into the office and stated that a decision had been taken [to kill the children] because the Führer was dead and that at 8–9 o’clock that evening the units would try to get out of the encirclement, and ‘accordingly we must die. There is no other way out for us.’

During our conversation, I suggested to Goebbels’ wife that she should send the children to the hospital and transfer them to the care of the Red Cross, but she disagreed with that and said it would be better for them to die.

Some twenty minutes later, while we were talking, Goebbels came back to the study and addressed the following words to me: ‘Doctor, I shall be very grateful if you will help my wife put the children to death.’

I suggested to Goebbels, as I had to his wife, that he should send the children to the hospital and place them under the guardianship of the Red Cross, to which he replied: ‘It is impossible to do that. They are, after all, the children of Goebbels.’

After that, Goebbels left and I stayed with his wife, who spent about an hour playing patience.

Approximately one hour later, Goebbels again returned with Schach, the deputy Gauleiter of Berlin. Schach, as I understood from their conversation, was to leave with the German Army units attempting to break through. He said goodbye to Goebbels…

After Schach left, Goebbels’ wife stated, ‘Our people are leaving now. The Russians may arrive here at any moment and obstruct us so we need to hurry with resolving this matter.’ Goebbels came back to his study, and, together with his wife, I went to their apartment (in the bunker), where Goebbels’ wife took a syringe filled with morphine from a cupboard in the front room and handed it to me, after which we went to the children’s bedroom. At this time the children were already in bed, but not sleeping.

Goebbels’ wife announced to the children, ‘Children, do not be frightened. The doctor is going to give you a vaccination which is being given now to children and soldiers.’ With these words, she left the room, and I was left alone in the room and proceeded to give the morphine injections. After that I again went into the front room and told Frau Goebbels that we should wait about ten minutes for the children to fall asleep, and at that time I looked at the clock. It was 20.40.

Because Kunz told her that he doubted he had the mental strength to help administer poison to the sleeping children, Magda Goebbels asked him to find Hitler’s personal physician, Ludwig Stumpfegger, and send him to her.

When I returned with S. to that room next to the children’s bedroom where I had left Goebbels’ wife she was not there, and S. went straight to the bedroom. I stayed waiting in the next room. Four or five minutes later S. came out of the children’s bedroom with Goebbels’ wife and, without saying a word to me, left immediately. Goebbels’ wife also said nothing to me, only cried. I went with her down to the lower floor of the bunker to Goebbels’ study, where I found the latter in a highly nervous state, pacing up and down the office. Entering the office, his wife stated, ‘Everything is finished with the children, now we need to think about ourselves,’ to which Goebbels replied, ‘Quickly. We have little time.’