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

I do not remember why I was travelling somewhere with Bystrov when we got stuck and were sitting by the roadside on overturned empty cans, waiting for a vehicle to be going our way. We got to talking about the future, because I, too, had applied for demobilization. Bystrov, forgetting the failure of the ‘creative’ days he had allowed me for writing stories, told me with solemn confidence and hope, ‘There were three of us at every stage of this Hitler saga. Of those three, you are the only one who can write about it. It is your duty.’ He had taken care to keep copies of records not known to the rest of the world, and had also given copies to me. He had supplemented his private collection with invaluable photographs, and these he shared as well.

Five months had now passed without war. Little news reached us from Moscow, and it was beginning to look as if the future would not differ much from the patterns established in the years preceding the war. But if, in the midst of the war, our pre-war life had seemed alluring, vivid and varied, somehow now it had dulled. Some of those who were older than me, and had already had jobs in the past, now decided life had been better during the war. That was true primarily of the officers, although similar sentiments were to be found among the rank and file, who had found the front exhilarating.

In the war, they found, there had been more freedom, more room to breathe; there was not the same suspicion and persecution, not the same danger lurking round every corner, and the goal for which you might have to give your life was necessary, was righteous, not just a lot of hot air and speculation. It was clear, indubitable and palpable. Staking your life on that, a person could feel like a human being, a hero – something you had been deprived of before the war.

In Potsdam, Raya the telegraphist and I sat, taking our farewell of each other in an autumnal garden. It was the quiet hour before sunset. The German owner of the house climbed a stepladder he had placed by a fruit tree and carefully picked the apples with a gloved hand. Everything was right, as if a deep peace had descended on the Earth. Only not in my heart.

The demobilization paperwork might have been completed but it was not possible just to go home. Demobbed troops besieged the trains and battled for a place in them, clung to the roofs of the carriages. We heard it could be months before things settled down. Everyone was in the grip of a furious urge to get back home. Every day of delay counted as a disaster. Yells and guffaws from those who had climbed in, or clung on, or clambered up; singing, wanton recklessness. ‘We are back from the war!’ proclaimed posters along the carriage. ‘Welcome us!’ ‘We won!’ ‘Back from Berlin!’ It was only later, when people actually were back home, moving away from all that, settling down to peacetime living, that they began to feel nostalgia for the war and you would hear, as contagious as a yawn, the officers joking, ‘Oh, for an hour of that damnable war again!’ as they remembered, or now imagined, their finest hour.

Meanwhile I was wilting in this demoralizing wait to get away. There was nothing I could do, except live in hope that someone would do me a favour. For the present, I was accommodated in the officers’ hotel – a vast building with wide corridors and spacious rooms which, until recently, had been an almshouse. Where were the old ladies who had inhabited it living now?

In the room I had been allocated there were traces of its recent occupant: under a glass dome was a little ivory church with a crucifix in it, crosses on a rosary made of mother-of-pearl or wooden beads. Soon these objects of devotion were joined by a prominently displayed white enamel colander. It belonged to Tanya, the girl now sharing with me. I was leaving but she had just arrived in Germany, having served the whole war in the army, but seeing it through to the end in the USSR.

Her large, happy, hospitable family had all been killed in Stalingrad, with the exception of her mother, who lived on among the ashes, a prey to deprivation and loneliness. Tanya, womanly and gentle, was full of positive feelings about life and of constructive intentions. Once she had a job in Germany she intended to bring her mother over. She wanted to have children and, to that end, to marry a good man, never doubting that she would soon meet one here. The colander, purchased or otherwise acquired, was the first step in realizing that life, and the therapeutic news about it flew by mail back to Stalingrad to her mother who had lost everyone and everything, including her kitchen utensils that were completely irreplaceable in our devastated country, and in the midst of which she had spent her life, taking care of her family. Tanya had nothing other than the colander to show for the present, but she had made a start. Her calmness, her warmth, her very basic human aspirations and attractive, womanly appearance made it easy to like her.

There she was, waiting to be appointed to a job, while I was waiting to be sent home, and neither of us had anything to do. We walked through the outskirts of Potsdam in the warm autumn haze of the lakes. How still it was here, and beautiful. The German gardens were preparing for their winter rest: we had no inkling on those walks of the terrible winter about to befall the Germans in their unheated homes.

Living in Potsdam at that moment, I knew nothing of Cecilienhof, where just over two months previously a conference of the Allies had taken place. I knew nothing of the Garrison Church to which, when he came to power, Hitler immediately repaired, wearing a tailcoat, to pose for journalists at the grave of Frederick the Great. I did not even know about Sanssouci, the palace of that emperor in Potsdam, which had suffered during the war. If I had, I would in any case have had no interest in it, because the only thing I wanted was to go home. That gentle, healing autumn, Tanya and I wandered by the shores of the lakes, in the park, along the streets past the hedges in front of the houses, and a sense of joie de vivre was born in my heart. It was not that keen, animal sense of being alive that could transfix you for a moment at the front, but a different, quiet feeling, consoling, lifeaffirming.

We did not stray far from headquarters, and one day I was sent for to report immediately to the aerodrome. I cannot remember now who the kind person was who had taken the trouble to help me. Perhaps it was just the headquarters commandant, for whom I was a burden. It is a pity, though, that I do not remember. It can have been no simple matter to get me a place on Marshal Zhukov’s cargo plane. It was going to take off even though it was not ‘flying’ weather and Moscow would not give permission for it to land. The aerodrome there was closed because of the bad weather.

In order not to overload what was, after all, a cargo aircraft, I was ordered to, and did without regret, leave behind the radio receiver, the official ‘valuable parting gift’ awarded me by my military unit. A car hastily transported me, and Tanya who came to see me off, to the aerodrome. It was a gloomy, overcast day. A few sturdy, surly chaps in leather coats, Zhukov’s aircrew, were standing by the plane. In Poznań Zhukov’s aircrew had often dropped in to have tea or a meal with us, but theirs had not been a cargo plane. These were pilots I did not know. One of them silently jabbed a finger at the leather case hanging from a strap over my shoulder with a complete set of Vertinsky’s records, an unofficial gift when the radio centre was dismantled. ‘The aircraft is already overloaded,’ the others chimed in. I obediently took it off and transferred the strap to Tanya’s shoulder, rescuing only my favourite record.

Whether they were genuinely concerned about overloading the plane, or whether they just thought it was bad luck to have a woman on board, especially in bad weather, I do not know. Perhaps they hoped that, reluctant to part with my booty, I would refuse to fly. At all events, if they were wanting to get rid of this unwelcome passenger, they may have had a point, because I was to give them a hard time on the flight. Then, though, I had no such thoughts in my head and just wanted to make sure they took me with them. My cardboard suitcase, my rucksack, and the box with the doll presented to me by the Italians in the already far-off days of May were grudgingly lifted into the plane. I said goodbye to Tanya and, through her, to everything that had happened or would happen here. I had nobody else to say goodbye to as I bade what I thankfully supposed to be my last farewell to Germany.