Armin Scheiderbauer - Adventures in My Youth

Meanwhile, there was no question of a ‘normalisation of conditions’ so soon after the hospital was handed over. German shells were still exploding. However, a new development was that the unmistakable smell of burning was spreading through the building. The air in the house was thickening into fumes heavy with smoke. Nobody knew whether the building had been set on fire by German gunfire, or had been set alight by the Russians, or perhaps even by the Poles. It later turned out that it was arson. In fact it was said that, of the 800 seriously wounded men who had remained behind, 150 lost their lives in that fire.

The saviour of the men in our ward was Franz Manhart. It must have been after mid-day and the fumes were apparently preventing the Russians from moving about freely in the building. Franzl took advantage of the opportunity to seek out a way that we could save ourselves. He succeeded in discovering a staircase close to our ward. Although wide, the stairway itself was blocked with the furniture that had been in the rooms before the hospital was set up. Nevertheless, enough space had been left for one man to get through between the banister and the furniture. For us it was a matter of leaving our beds and struggling through that exit to freedom. For Eberhard Nabert and me – I can only remember the two of us – it was a risky undertaking. Neither of us had left his bed since we had been wounded. I was so enfeebled that I could scarcely stand. With little time, I did not know what I should take with me. I can still remember that I only had on my collarless soldier’s shirt, and that I put my field tunic on over it. I needed both arms to hold on to the wall and to the banister.

Under Franzl’s direction we managed to get out into the open and into a sort of yard. There were remarkable scenes that I can only recall happening in a blur. Wounded men who seemed to have just got out into the open were lying on the bare earth and only crawling or scrabbling about. Others were being taken by helpers, including Russian soldiers, to an undetermined destination. Russians seemed to be still plundering and arguing over plunder. One of them had several wristwatches on his arm. Smoke was still belching from the building. Flames could not yet be seen. The following night, according to an eyewitness account from the book mentioned above, the ‘TH’ went up in flames. It shared the fate of many buildings that were destroyed by fire only after they had been taken over by the occupation forces.

Free of smoke and fumes was a single storey building that had served as a physics laboratory, as could be seen from the wide windows reaching to the roof. That area had similarly been set up with basic bunks that were all occupied of course. Because of the fire it had been necessary to fill each bed with two or three wounded men. I had the good fortune to have to share such a bed with only one comrade. In the next three days and nights it was our refuge. My comrade must have been wounded in the head, because they had bandaged his skull in such a way that only one eye, his nose, and his mouth could still be seen. When he spoke, he spoke incoherently, but soon I could tell, at least by his accent, that he must be from Vienna. When during the night he was rambling in his coma, I began to recognise him more and more, and finally I was able to identify him as a comrade from my own regiment. He was Leutnant Robert Kelca, who had relieved me in the summer of 1944 as second orderly officer with Major von Garn. It was a sad, but unusual reunion.

It was dreadful that German women and girls had hidden themselves between and under the emergency beds. Of course, the Russians noticed. Again and again a Russian would come past, track down a woman and wave or drag her out. According to their temperament, the women would be led out of the room by their violators either resisting or resigned. The next day or the day after that the Russians were looking for men who had not been wounded who might have been able to go to ground among us. One Russian went from bed to bed and ordered, Aufstehen , which for most of us was not possible, whereupon he shouted, Schlaffen , after which we were allowed to stretch out again. I have to say that no healthy man was among the wounded. That was on Easter Sunday.

Women continued to hide in the room, and when their torturers had let them go, returned to us again. A certain Friedl obviously felt particularly attached to me. On Easter Sunday, after something dreadful had apparently happened to her, she came back into the room, visibly overflowing with emotion. Without a word she dashed over to me.

In the week after Easter we were transported to the complex of the Medical Academy. It seemed to be an intact hospital and not a temporary military hospital as the ‘TH’ had been. We were moved over there in Sankas . The drivers were Russians, but the porters were German prisoners. As we were being loaded up and unloaded we were surrounded by Polish civilians who followed the proceedings with hostility.

It is true that Danzig had not possessed a university, but as well as the Technical High School it had had this Medical Academy, where it was possible to study medicine before the ‘collapse’. Head of Surgery was Professor Klose, an old gentleman. His senior registrar Dr Johanssen was middle aged. The rounds of those two gentlemen provided a welcome change. As civilian doctors in a university clinic, the operation of a military hospital was strange to them. They carried out their work as they had been accustomed to do and as the conquerors permitted. There were even private consultations.

Professor Klose, as we found out, enjoyed a measure of respect in the eyes of the Russians. In 1932 he had operated for acute appendicitis on the Russian State President Kalinin who had been on a cruiser on the way to a state visit to Sweden. Professor Klose, a worthy and corpulent gentlemen, told us that he spent his summer holidays in Pechtoldsdorf near Vienna, where he had a house. One day he reported – but this was certainly not true – that the express train connection from Danzig to Vienna had been re-established. The senior registrar Johanssen was a cheerful, bright man who shared our pleasure when a cure was progressing well. From the conversations I had, I recall the theme of the future, which, in accordance with the euphoria of the convalescent, appeared to us in rosy hues. Conversing with Dr Klose and Dr Johanssen, I told them about my parents’ parsonage and told them that I, too, would most want to study theology.

We did not stay long in the Medical Academy. Instead of the many Russians, who at the beginning continued to come, then it was Poles in some kind of official capacity. The hospital was evidently taken over by a kind of Polish civilian administration. Various commissions came, of which it was said that they were ‘Lublin’ Poles, that is, they belonged to the wing of the Polish resistance that was allied to Russia. I can recall a civilian doctor who had a seven-figure number tattooed on his lower arm. He showed it to us and said that he had got it in a concentration camp. In the Third Reich we had heard by hearsay of the existence of such camps, above all Dachau. But we knew nothing at all of their extent and of what their inmates had to suffer. At one of those inspections by Poles, a German-speaking Communist was present. He had fun rocking on my bed in order to hurt me. He succeeded, too. But I was even more astonished at the sadistic temperament of a man expressing itself in such a way.

From the shell splinter injury on my left buttock an abscess had formed. It required opening by a lengthy cut at the top of my upper thigh. Today I cannot recall whether this intervention was carried out while we were still in the ‘TH’ or whether it was carried out by Dr Johanssen in the Academy. But I do remember that afterwards for some weeks I was only able to lie with my leg drawn up. There was as yet no question of getting out of bed, especially as I was also really weakened by hunger. In the sick room, food was an important topic of conversation. Doubtless it was a sign that we were getting better. We imagined what sort of celebration meals we would have if, with God’s help, we were once again able to eat them.