Marion Kummerow - From the Ashes

“Not in Berlin,” Lotte said, and both her friends stared at her.

“Are you saying Zara should move to the West Germany?” Marlene asked in disbelief.

“There she would be safe from the Russians, as they can’t go walking around in the other zones.” Lotte took another sip from her cup.

“But how? It’s not like people can just move around as they please,” Zara sighed. “I would need a permit, and a job. I don’t even know anyone outside Berlin.”

“I can ask around,” Lotte offered. “My sister works for the American hospital and she has quite a few friends there.”

Once again Marlene was grateful that she had moved out of the Soviet sector after that fateful night. The notion of what could have happened to her still sent shudders of angst deep into her soul. Even though she was still angry at Werner for breaking her heart, she secretly thanked him for rescuing her and wished she could one day see him again under different circumstances.

But so far it didn’t look as if politics would ever leave her life. Maybe she should consider moving to the Western zone as well? But the next moment she shivered at the idea. Berlin was her home, she’d never lived anywhere else and she couldn’t fathom leaving the city she loved so much.

Putting on blinders and keeping her head down was the best way to weather the current tension. She and the other Germans were only pawns in the game about their own future.

Several days later she and Lotte listened to the Soviet-controlled Radio Berlin and she dropped the cup filled with tea when the radio speaker announced an important news program with the newly appointed radio chief editor Werner Böhm.

The hot liquid spilled across the kitchen table and dripped to the floor, despite Lotte’s efforts to contain the damage. Marlene herself sat frozen in place, rapt by Werner’s sonorous voice as he announced, “In the matter of the illegal and radical protests by some students against the wellbeing of the working population, the two main perpetrators Georg Tauber and Julian Berger have confessed their crimes and retracted from the hateful imperialist propaganda they have spewed.”

Marlene glued her ears to the radio, Werner’s image appearing in her mind and she listened full of horror as he read first Julian’s and then Georg’s confession.

“That can’t be true!” she yelled. “Georg would never say such a thing.”

Lotte put a hand on her arm, trying to calm her down. “Maybe he did it to save himself or his family. You know what the others have said…”

“No, no, no…” Marlene slumped onto the table, her head resting on her forearm and she barely heard the conclusion of Werner’s speech. “…these two parasites to the people have no place in our democratic state and according to their heinous crimes they have been sentenced to twenty-five years of hard labor.”

“No!” she yelled with all her strength and jumped up from the table, ready to storm out of the apartment and take on the world.

Lotte stepped into her path and said, “You need to calm down. There’s nothing you can do. Or do you want to join them in Siberia?”

Marlene slumped back on her chair, disillusioned by the world. “I’m not going back. I’m dropping out,” she muttered.

“Don’t be irrational, you can’t give up now.” Lotte poured her some more tea.

“Irrational? Me? The Russian thugs are irrational! I’ll never set foot into that wretched place again,” Marlene said bitterly.

“If you give up, then the Russians win,” Lotte replied. “They don’t care if you stay or quit. You make no difference to them. The only person you will be hurting by stopping your studies is yourself.”

“I know you’re right, but how can I carry on as if nothing has happened? Oh, God, there has to be something I can do to help Georg and Julian.” Marlene held her head in her hands as if it was going to burst.

“Maybe there’s nothing but keep studying, so one day we become lawyers and may help others unjustly arrested.” Lotte looked as desperate as Marlene felt. They sat for a few moments in silence, before Lotte said, “You know what? Let’s go shopping!”

“Shopping?” Marlene looked at her friend in stunned amazement, certain the other woman had completely lost her mind. Almost two years after the war there was rarely anything to be found on the shelves, except for food and the most basic necessities of life.

“Yes. Let’s go to the black market.” Lotte broke out into a huge grin, already anticipating the joys of window-shopping at the area around Tiergarten in the British sector.

Marlene of course knew that the black market existed and desperate Germans disposed of everything not in immediate need, like fine clothing, jewelry, silverware, paintings and children’s toys. Buyers were mostly the Allied soldiers, or those who worked for them, but also army-issue goods like watches, clothes and rations could be found, discreetly sold by those in the business of bartering between occupiers and occupied.

Out of fear of being caught, Marlene had never been there herself. It was well known that the British frequently raided the market but could never really shut it down. Rumors had it that they once picked up a Russian general engaged in illicit trading, but the Allied personnel were never sent to prison for such a crime, unlike the Germans doing the same.

Maybe the thrill of visiting the forbidden market would take her mind off Georg’s awful fate.

“Okay, let’s go,” Marlene said, and she grabbed her hat and coat.

Werner left the radio station after the program where he condemned the two young men and read the fake confessions he’d been forced to write himself.

Disgusted was too benign a word for what he felt. While he hadn’t tortured the men himself, he’d been the willing tool of those who couldn’t defend socialism without resorting to violence. He hunched his shoulders forward, the gnawing pain in his stomach becoming more forceful every day.

Politische Bauchschmerzen, political stomachache it was called among those people who still believed one should put country over party and not the other way round. He scoffed. The situation was long beyond the question of party or country and had come down to human decency.

Julian and Georg were good men, not the heinous traitors they were painted to be. Both of them had resisted the Nazis, the same way they now resisted the Soviet oppression. And the so-called communists treated them the same way the Nazis had done: sending the men to a concentration camp.

Georg could have thrown Werner under the bus by revealing his part in the American shooting of the Russian soldiers who tried to rape the German girl, but even under extreme torture he never did. Werner admired and envied the upstanding character of the young man who chose torture and death rather than undermine his integrity.

He did not recognize the theories of Marx and Lenin anymore. These great thinkers had always striven for a better, more just world for the oppressed workers and farmers. But Stalin had perverted the communist ideal and transformed it into a tool of terror, inequality and unlawfulness. Every single critical thought could result in arrest, incarceration or even death.

With sudden clarity of mind, he realized that Stalinism was exactly what George Orwell had written about in his book Animal Farm, published two years earlier. The critical book, although it never mentioned the Soviet Union or Stalin, had been put on the index of forbidden books in the Soviet zone the moment it was first published, but here in Berlin, Werner had been able to find a copy in a British library.

Dominion of the swine, how fitting. And I must be one of the cruel and merciless dogs, keeping the other animals at bay. A painful ache drilled through his heart. Marlene had called him a beast who sold his soul to the devil.