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

That captured Ford 8 saloon, with our driver Sergey at the wheel, drove for many hours through the streets of Berlin that day. Here I have him, in a photo I have kept, Sergey from Siberia, a big lad who said little, lounging against the car he pulled out of a ditch. He had painted it himself, black, with its mounds and clearings on the bodywork, and now it bumped its way down barely passable streets strewn with masonry from collapsed houses, sometimes braking, sometimes roaring away and racing along highways cleared of debris.

We stopped beside a functioning hospital and asked the doctor in charge – who had looked after Hitler’s teeth? He did not know. Of those who treated Hitler, the doctor could give the name only of the internationally renowned laryngologist Carl von Eicken, who headed the Charité clinic. ‘Is he in Berlin?’ That the doctor could not say.

The road signs attached to lamp posts had been flattened along with the lamp posts. It was impossible to navigate using our map of the city. More than once that day, pedestrians told us how to get to this or that street. The Berlin youngsters who willingly clambered into the car to show us the way had no idea of the historic adventure in which they were bit players.

Finally, our quest led us to the Charité university clinic. Its buildings had quaint, coloured stripes painted on them as camouflage against air attack. We drove to the ear, nose and throat department. Here the hospital had mainly civilian patients. It was located in a basement, where dim lamps flickered under low vaulted ceilings. Nurses in grey, with white headscarves bearing a red cross in the middle, looked exhausted as, sternly and silently, they went about their duties. Wounded patients were being carried on stretchers.

Because the wounded in this gloomy, cramped basement were nonmilitary, the brutality of the war that had come to an end yesterday was starkly in evidence. And it was here that we found Professor von Eicken, tall, old and thin. Working in dreadful conditions, he did not leave his post in the days of danger and tragedy, did not flee from Berlin before the surrender, no matter how forcefully he was urged to, and, taking their cue from him, all the other staff stayed too. He conducted us to his clinic, also painted in camouflage colours and still empty, and there in his office we had an unhurried conversation.

Yes, he had had occasion to provide medical care to Reich Chancellor Hitler when he had a throat ailment back in 1935. After the attempt on Hitler’s life in July 1944, Eicken had again treated him because his eardrums were damaged when the bomb exploded and he had significant hearing loss. His hearing gradually returned and there had been no need to operate.

Of Hitler’s personal physicians, Eicken was able to name Professor Theodor Morell. He, we knew, had been sent to Berchtesgaden, where the Führer was intending to go himself before the worsening situation obliged him to abandon the plan. The dentist in the Reich Chancellery was, Eicken believed, also Hitler’s personal physician, but he did not know the man’s name. That was our man.

On that single occasion I got to know Carl von Eicken in far greater depth than is possible under normal circumstances, because the circumstances in which we met were far from normal. It was as if we were at the same time having a private conversation.

‘Are you the director of the ear, nose and throat clinic?’ ‘Quite so.’ Why had he not left, not fled, not saved himself? There had, after all, been such insistent invitations. Are you not afraid to be meeting us? Yes, of course, there was his duty as a doctor, as the head of a clinic, but in the person sitting opposite me, in the eyes watching me through his spectacles, there was something else. But what? Oh, there is no mystery. I naturally follow tradition because I am German. He could have brushed it off as easily as that, but there was something more to our conversation. Yes, he had treated Hitler. A throat problem. An occupational hazard for a politician. He had treated Trotsky, too, when he arrived in 1923 and settled near Berlin.

But what tradition was this venerable old gentleman referring to in our private conversation? It was an inviolable tradition. Not that drill, that damnably alien tradition of obedience without choice. Here I was confronted by a personal, moral choice based on the genuine traditions of German culture. He had taken on the running of the clinic in 1922, and was to direct it for another five years after our meeting, until 1950. He lived ten years after that in peaceful retirement and died at the age of eightyseven. So back then, in May 1945, he was already seventy-two. ‘Er war sehr berühmt.’ He had a great reputation, his staff reminisced.

Eicken sent for someone from the dentistry department and a student arrived. He knew the name of Hitler’s dentist, Dr Hugo Blaschke, and volunteered to take us to him. The student wore a light black coat, no hat, and had dark, wavy hair above a round, soft face. He was friendly and sociable, got into the car and showed us the way. We learned he was a Bulgarian, had studied in Berlin but, as the result of events in Bulgaria, had not been allowed to return there.

Soviet vehicles, flying red flags in honour of the victory, were driving through the streets in the city centre, which had just about been cleared. Germans were riding bicycles, of which there were a lot, with large baskets. A child might be sitting in the basket, or it might be stacked with belongings. The war in Berlin had been over for a week, and the sense of relief the Germans had felt for the first few days had given way to pressing concerns that now affected everyone. The number of pedestrians in the city had also increased noticeably, and they walked along the pavements with children and bundles, pushing prams and wheelbarrows laden with baggage.

We drove into the Kurfürstendamm, one of Berlin’s most fashionable streets. It was in the same calamitous state as the others, but No. 213, or at least the wing of it where Dr Blaschke’s private surgery was located, had survived, as if specifically to serve the needs of history. How otherwise would we have managed to find our essential witness?

At the entrance we met a man with a red ribbon in the buttonhole of his dark jacket, signal of good feelings, of welcome and solidarity with the Russians. This was unusual – at this time it was far more usual to see white, the colour of surrender. The man introduced himself as Dr Bruck.

Hearing that we were looking for Dr Blaschke, he replied that Blaschke had flown from Berlin to Berchtesgaden together with Hitler’s adjutant. We went with Dr Bruck to the mezzanine and he took us into Blaschke’s dental surgery. Realizing that Bruck was not going to be able to help us, Colonel Gorbushin asked if he knew of any of Blaschke’s employees. ‘Of course I do!’ Dr Bruck exclaimed. ‘You mean Käthchen? Käthe Heusermann? She is at home in her apartment right on our doorstep.’ The student volunteered to go and fetch her. ‘No. 39–40 Pariserstrasse, Apartment 1,’ Bruck told him.

He seated us in soft armchairs in which the Nazi leaders had sat before us, as patients of Dr Blaschke. Since 1932 Blaschke had been Hitler’s personal dentist. Bruck also settled himself in one of the armchairs. We learned from him that he was a dentist, used to live and work in the provinces, and that Käthe Heusermann, Dr Blaschke’s assistant, had been his student and later his own assistant. That was before the Nazis seized power. Later she and her sister helped Bruck to disappear, because he was a Jew and needed to live under a false name.

A slim, tall, attractive woman in a dark blue flared coat came in. She had on a headscarf over luxuriant blonde hair. ‘Käthchen,’ Bruck said familiarly, ‘these people are Russians. They seem to need you for something.’ Even before he had finished she burst into tears. She had already suffered from encountering Russian soldiers. ‘Käthchen!’ Dr Bruck said in embarrassment, ‘Käthchen, these people are our friends.’ Bruck was considerably less tall than Käthe, but he took her hand as if she were a small child and stroked the sleeve of her coat. They had found themselves at opposite ends of the Nazi regime. She, as a member of the staff serving Hitler, was in a privileged position, while he, persecuted and living outside the law, was given support by her family, for which she might have paid a terrible price.