In the Fire of the Eastern Front: The Experiences of a Dutch Waffen-SS Volunteer, 1941-45

CHAPTER 20 In the Eastern Zone

The sound of the wheels was a monotone taking the exiles with every turn of those wheels, further and further away from their homeland. From a small ventilator in the roof our wagon, I could see the flat fields, green woods and the decorative farmhouses, now threatened with dereliction. I could understand only too well, the bitterness of my fellow passengers, for this land had found its way into my heart too. The fate of Silesia had been a turning point in my life, particularly in Breslau. There I had fought my last battle against Bolshevism, been wounded, taken prisoner and became a civilian once more. The 24 hours’ respite had grown into a year, one with falsified papers, and an adventurous one at that. Above all I had met a young woman whom I could not wait to see once more, and who, with luck, would become my wife.

We made a stop in Sagan, another in Forst, where we were deloused, and then again Görlitz. After another two days, we reached Zittau, but we were not in the Western zone. Our train rolled over the railway bridge spanning the river Neisse, into the farthest most easterly corner and the Soviet zone in Zittau, in Saxony. Lorries, one after the other then drove us to a regimental barracks, a transit camp. Not even rested from the stress of the journey, we had to assemble on the square the next morning. There we were forced to hear a welcoming speech from the representative of the Socialist Party of Germany, the SED. Worn out, cold and apathetic nearly 2,000 of us stood, huddled together and surrounded by Communist red flags. Degradation was on the agenda that day. After all that we had been through, we were forced to hear that we should be grateful, grateful that we had been freed from the yoke of Fascism, and by the peace-loving Communist Josef ‘Uncle Joe’ Stalin. This Saxon had perhaps more to say but his insulting comment had met questions of disbelief from the brave as they asked “Freed from WHAT? our house and home!” So he cut his speech short, but not before he turned the knife and welcomed the future German/Soviet friendship, before he disappeared and we were put into quarantine. We were therefore not allowed to leave the camp for the next fourteen days.

It was on the second day that I found the hole in the fence and took my-selfoffon a one-man recce into the city. Once upon a time Zittau had been a beautiful city, with its Renaissance and Baroque architecture and buildings and their decorated portals. Now it could only be described as something similar to ‘a worker’s paradise’. The shops were empty, and I mean of goods. They did have window decoration, made up of empty boxes, offering the thick layers of dust for free. The Zittauer went on their way, when they were to be seen, in streets that had not seen a street cleaner in many a month. The women did not appear to be any different to the Russian women except that they were not so stout and round. In fact, when you took a glance at their faces under the headscarf that they all wore, you could see sad and empty eyes, small mouths and hollow cheeks. They were quite haggard. I bought and wrote a postcard to Brigitta, and then made my way back to the camp, using the hole in the fence once more.

All of the deportees wanted to leave this camp as quickly as possible, for here in Saxony it was situated far too near the Czechoslovakian and Polish borders, but they had no say in the matter. The occupying forces were responsible for our distribution. Just as the ‘little soldier’ was never informed of military strategy, we for instance didn’t even know the destinations of the transport, when leaving that transit point.

In 1946, on 29 October, a National Census took place, and alone in the western zones, 1,622,907 Silesians were to be found, mostly in Lower Saxony (626,087) and Bavaria (434,281). In the Eastern zones there were 1.3 mil lion.

The results of deportation, evacuation, and illegal trans portation of east Germans, were even beyond the imagination of the occupying forces. So much so, that Sir Orme Sargent, State Secretary of the Foreign Office in London declared that “it is unbelievable that the Germany of today can solve the resettlement problem of 14 million of their starving people. For me, it is beyond my imagination”.

A Commission, the ‘Papal Protectors for Refugees’, declared that “the Germans have to master a problem, the like of which has never ever before existed in world history. Such an exodus robbing such a mass of people of house, home and existence has never ever taken place, and at such short notice”.

When one assesses that 8,000 people can occupy a small town, then one can imagine that a small town arrived every single day, somewhere in Bavaria. In Hesse alone, 67,000 were counted in one month as ‘new citizens’. The transport brought the dead too. The Councillor of Control, attached to the German Evangelist Church, and the Allies, described the situation as of “half-starved, exhausted to the point of death, they arrive, having been robbed on the way of everything that they possessed”. And it happened in peacetime!

Germany performed the impossible, however, due to the discipline and will to work of the war generation. Germany absorbed all of the refugees from the east, not in a day, but in a few years. Their industriousness also produced a boom. It was an economic and industrial wonder.

This massive absorption was not without its problems. There were many who were irritated, overworked, and tearing their hair at the organisation belonging to this enormous overwhelming problem. It was particularly serious in the Western zones, where four million houses had disappeared. There were so many refugees who had to be given a home in amongst those who already existed. This was not very diplomatic, particularly when you did not have a ‘say in the matter’. In his book Die Vertriebenen, Siegfried Kogelfranz reports that particularly in Bavaria, a wave of ‘religious pilgrimages’ started. That meant that without the owners at home, their houses could not be inspected for spare rooms, or space for refugees or house-mates. When the dear Lord did not ‘help’ those unfortunates, those stout believers in Jesus Christ, then they ‘helped themselves’ out of their plight and bricked-up spare rooms or excess space, wallpapered over, and were therefore not encumbered with ‘guests’.

The situation had to be resolved by force from the local mayor or the police, so Brigitte reported to me. Such was the situation in the village where she was evacuated, near Detmold. The very sorry truth of the matter was that upon arrival, and as fellow-Germans, in Germany, they found that they were not wanted by their own people. “What is mine, is mine!” was the attitude, and those who possessed nothing were ostracised by those others who had plenty. The Westphalian farmers were well nourished. They had survived the war without drastic bombing raids in the region. They viewed the eastern deportees as ‘lousy gypsies from the East’, interlopers, who should have stayed where they were. Such behaviour was however, not the rule. When there was a hard case of resistance, Allied Regulation No.18 came into force. It allowed the refugees to occupy a place to stay in the absence of the house-owner.

Our quarantine period was coming to an end and immediately the Laska family was transported to Taucha, near Leipzig. That was not where I wanted to go, in an area for the masses. I myself had no ties at that moment, so I decided that perhaps I had to give my fate a helping hand. The farewell to the Laska family was very hard for me, for they had become my beloved family.

The experiences of the last few years washed over me. I had met brave and frightened people. Friendliness, faithfulness and the dark side of human nature, all had been mixed with suffering, destruction and death. In the middle of it all, I had found love, founding the very strong will to survive. This will, in the striving for a little luck in life, could not be broken.

Before I had left Breslau, Inge Rudolph, the wife of the company commander that I had had in Pomerania had offered me a home, in her birthplace Finsterwald. That was in case we lost the War and I could not return home to Holland. I had written to her as soon as I had arrived in Zittau, and by 13 October, her husband, Hermann, brought me the necessary settlement permit for the area of Finsterwald. At that time, this permit was the most treasured and necessary that a man could possess, for without it you did not receive a ration-card.

Hermann lived with Inge ‘in sin’, or a ‘wild’ marriage which had nothing wild about it, for it was one without a marriage certificate, and he lived there under another name. He had escaped from a POW camp following some dangerous adventures. No one knew that he was not Inge’s legal husband (in those times it would have been a scandal) or that he had been a former Waffen SS officer. We had no inhibitions in deceiving the absurd and bureaucratic ‘collective’ régime that masses of others also sought to avoid.

The excessive number of criminals now found within the Communist authorities was just as much of a scandal. It did not need a very high intelligence on our part to hide our identity or our past from them. In my case, I had been a Dutchman under the Poles and now, I was a German with the Christian name of Heinz.

I lived with Inge and Hermann in a room at the back of their house, which was warm and comfortable, the warmth coming from the traditional tiled stove. Inge was well-known since her childhood, which was not so surprising, for her family’s textile business could be found on the market square. It had been one of the leading businesses for the last 100 years. It was highly respected, the reason for the very quick settlement permit when one had contacts!

It did not take long for me to find a circle of friends who shared my own tastes. Tastes? With that I mean in beliefs and convictions, all having been part of the young war generation, growing up in the Third Reich, and not being able to throw off its fascination. On top of this, the shock of losing the war ran deep. They would tell you that they did not feel freed, or even agreed that they had been, but that they had been betrayed of their ideals. Added to this was the brutal régime of the Soviets, which did nothing to bridge the gap between them and their convictions, and most certainly did not make them change sides! The continual defamation of the German soldier from the occupiers hardened their attitudes, beyond any doubts. We were soon to become just as much of a conspiratorial band, a corps bound together, as that which I had found in Breslau.

This new chapter in my life did not bring a new routine into it, for we were all hungry. When you needed something as nourishment, then your empty stomach had to groan until you found something to eat, which usually meant travelling for miles around. It was a catastrophe when the distance to the local farms was just too far for a bicycle ride. It sometimes resulted in going away empty-handed, because the farmers had nothing themselves. Then you had to take the train, which meant special permission. I had no trouble in obtaining this special permit for a long train journey in 1946 in those Eastern zones. I obtained a permit at the office of the ‘Antifa’, because I was a representative of the firm of Inge’s parents, and I went on buying trips for them. This process was not however possible without a certain ‘denazification’ procedure.

I travelled with a rucksack and a cardboard case filled with textiles as exchange wares, just as I had in Breslau at the junction of Scheitniger Star. I was once more ‘king’ of the road and the barter business. My expenses from the firm did not run to anything like a good square meal on the way. It was nothing more than a potato cooked in its jacket and spiced with a little salt. This pomme de terre was cold, the carriage was cold and my fingers were blue with the cold. I ate it usually just after the train rolled out of the station, in the hope that I could replace it with something edible from the farmer, on arrival. There was no heating in the train, for many a window was broken, or did not have any glass in it at all. Many were provisionally repaired with cardboard or wood but the wind whistled through the carriages nonetheless. Others could not be moved, up or down, because the leather strap for this had been cut off by passengers and taken away, most probably to sole a pair of shoes.

The whole population was now a caravan of merchants, all travelling hundreds of miles for corn, flour, potatoes or apples, anything to fill those groaning stomachs. Perhaps if one was lucky, one took possession of a bundle of dried tobacco leaves, for a puff or two. In every carriage of the train, small textile or household businesses were represented with tools, saucepans or an iron, rugs, underwear or suits as exchange wares for the farmers.

Such train journeys were not without danger and led to many accidents. A permit most certainly did not ensure you a seat. Every inch of the train was used as one, be it by climbing on to the roof, sitting on the buffers, or clinging for dear life on to door handles whilst standing and journeying on the running-board. All the ways were as dangerous as the other. For those on the roof, a tunnel meant lying flat and holding on tight in order that you were not blown away. For this far from luxurious method of travel, I invested in a pair of motorbike goggles against the soot and black smoke from the steam-engine, not only to protect my eyes, but in order to see better. When I found that there was no seat for me, then I always favoured the buffers between the carriages, where there was a little protection against the wind.

A situation that I experienced in Berlin is burned into my memory. For me it represented the basic instincts of man and took place in the almost destroyed transit station. At 11 o’clock at night, the station looked like something out of the Balkans, or a soldiers’ camp. Everywhere were bodies, men and women snatching sleep, with their arms tightly holding the treasures of that day against thieves. All were waiting for the next train, which departed at three in the morning.

As the train slowly rolled into the roofless station, there was an eruption of movement and a flood of people stormed the train. People shoved, people were pushed, elbowed and all fought for a place on the train. They screamed and fought one with another like animals. One man I saw paid the penalty of using his ingenuity, climbing in through a window, half in and half out, someone saw the opportunity of a lifetime and, from behind, helped him out of his shoes. Decent behaviour or consideration, if brought up with it, was in this situation worthless. One had to reduce yourself to that basic instinct just like everyone else.

Another time I had to journey home on the running board of the train and experienced at first hand the depths that basic instincts sink to when hungry and in need, from people in despair. I hung on, with my precious bundle strongly held between my knees. The quality of coal was not the best and public transport suffered. Second-grade coke fired the furnaces of the steam-trains and this poor quality showed itself when pulling a heavy load uphill or around bends. The train puffed its way nearly to a standstill. Those standing with their treasures on the outside of the train, were subjects of attack, from people who had reconnoitred and were standing at those points, armed with long sticks with hooks. They tried their best to snatch whatever they could away from you. Many a bundle changed hands this way, in trying to ward off the attacks with hefty kicks.

One of my journeys to Berlin forced me into the lions den, i.e. the Dutch Consulate. I had enough cheek to ask for one of those CARE packets, even as a bogus ‘displaced person.’ It was dangerous being on ‘Dutch soil’, so to speak, I could have been arrested, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, and I was not asked for any proof identity. As a German soldier I had no right to this treasured parcel, a ‘generous gesture’ from America. But my cheek paid off and I walked out of the Consulate with one under my arm. So it should not be wondered at, when some time later I was ordered to register myself in Berlin, for my name was on a wanted list. I was accused of entering foreign service without the permission of Her Majesty. That ‘Her Majesty’ had deserted her land and her people, whereas I had defended both from Communism, would not be a debatable point or argument, and so I ignored this.

I was deeply moved by the sight of the city of Berlin, the old capital city of the Third Reich. No matter in which direction one looked its destruction stretched for miles and miles. In the Zoo there was not one tree standing. It was nothing more than the bones now of the capital that it had once been. Bones that had been licked clean of its charm, culture, and its beautiful facades. Stripped of its character it stood derelict from horizon to horizon. Berlin had died, been mercilessly killed. The former American Consul for Germany, Vernon Walters, on a visit in October 1945, declared that “Not even the war damage that I saw in Italy can compare with that which I have now seen in Berlin. It resembles a crushed skull”.

German discipline and industriousness came to the fore, an example shown by the Trummer-Frauen. They were the women who for nearly six years, had hidden in cellars by night to survive the bombing of the Allies. They had taken over the important work left behind by their soldier husbands. At the same time they brought up their children. They showed the world that it was time for a new start. They sorted half a brick here, a whole one there, and threw them into piles. From houses that had once been, they were now symbols of reconstruction.

I only learned later about the battle for Berlin. I heard from French volunteers, who had like me, volunteered to fight against Communism and who, in Kolberg and especially in Berlin had given their last drop of sweat and blood for the cause. Their sacrifice is without comparison. In the centre of Berlin, it was the ‘Charlemagne’ who fought to their last man and destroyed sixty enemy tanks. The American historian Cornelius Ryan reports in his book, The Last Battle, that nearly 100,000 women were raped in Berlin, by Russian soldiers. A further 6,000 committed suicide rather than live under the rule of the Bolshevik régime. At that time the ‘missing persons’ list increased out of all proportion, as the people of Berlin were dragged from their homes by the Reds and transported away to the East.

I was to experience the extreme contrast of misery and amusement at that time. Hundreds froze and starved in the extremely cold winter of 1946/47. The old people were the sacrifices, not having the strength to trudge cross-country with a rucksack for their needs. That was one side of the picture and the other presented itself in the amusement of the newly presented American way of life. I ventured one evening to the area around the railway station, ‘Berlin Zoo’, to take a look for myself. Already in the early evening I heard the ‘swing and jazz’ oozing from the murky underground bars and clubs. It was an offence to the ears of every normal German. They were newly formed in the cellars of the houses. In those bars, a bottle of whisky cost the princely sum of 800 marks. The well-nourished ‘kings of the black market’ enjoyed the spoils of their unscrupulous business deals. Needless to say, there were the highly made-up madams, who were willing to hop around, to ‘jitter-bug’ with the crew-cut styled and sweat-bathed GIs in an ecstasy of wild movement, which released all their inhibitions.

The ‘black’ market in the Scheitniger-Stern was harmless in comparison to Berlin, for it was strictly forbidden. Forbidden or not, it flourished. The people were in dire need and already there were new selling spots for one’s dealings, be it in house doorways, or an abandoned bus, or a cellar. Once more everything was there. Once more, the ‘man in the street’ could not afford the prices. When one was caught scheming and dealing, then one could expect the hardest of sentences from the authorities. Every one took the risk, for they had no other choice. It was a code of honour to procure what one could for the simplest or the most urgent of needs. Prison was the result. More than once I came close to this, although I never had any ‘hot wares’ on my person.

This happened in Berlin, Dresden and in Leipzig, where police sirens were to be heard. Police in old Wehrmacht uniforms dyed black stormed out of lorries, together with Russian soldiers in jeeps. The streets were very quickly cordoned off encircling the innocent as well as the scheming dealers. One had to be like the wind to escape. One had to be fit in order to be far quicker than they. I thanked my lucky stars for my sports training as a soldier, that life-saving training for the battlefield. This was also a battlefield, but of another sort and the ruins gave plenty of cover.

One should not be too critical of the ‘black’ market, however much one thinks it criminal and unjust. It was however the only possibility one had of surviving the drastic conditions that reigned, and more drastic they could not have been. This ‘black’ market forced the last ten pounds of potatoes or carrots out of the farmers’ cellars. The only commodity one could not buy for one’s welfare was coal.

It was a very hard winter, with polar conditions in 1946/47, with the same below freezing temperatures of 20—25° that we had experienced in Silesia and Russia. People not only starved to death, but they froze too, some not being able to fend for themselves. They died by the dozen. The goods section of the railway station in Berlin was guarded like Fort Knox, to avoid the theft of fuel brickettes which were now worth more than gold. The thieves, professionals and or simply fathers of children, were now forced to thieve whilst the goods train was in motion. Some times they found outlying stations where they could uncouple a whole wagon on a dark night, and empty it of its contents. Those goods were meant for the Russian Army and the warmth of their soldiers. The joy of the ‘little German man’ was therefore doubled and trebled, for why should they be the only ones who were warm? So they joined the bands of thieves, wheelers and dealers, who were to be found in the whole of the land. “Steal what you can” was the word in those days.

The normal citizen yearned for an orderly way of life. The Soviets put the pressure on, spraying the land with psychological terror, in the form of political propaganda, such as “learn from the Soviet Union to be victorious”, or “Long live Stalin, the best friend of the German people”. The media were also involved in this brainwashing, particularly in films, in which the German soldier, the Wehrmacht was always the cowardly rogue. Russian actors roared in mime, depicting simple and naive Teutons with helmets sitting crookedly on the backs of their heads, in a stupor from alcohol. Was it an interpretation based on their own behaviour? The Waffen SS were to be seen in the field, in their black parade dress, naturally with white-blond hair, their eyes in a bestial gaze as they took part in erotically sadistic torture of a lovely lady member of the Russian partisans. Naturally enough this lady held the Russian flag high in not giving anything away. It was distaste ful and the worst sort of propaganda, but so apt coming from the Communists. They however were not the only ones.

Already at the end of the thirties, incitement against the German race started in America. They too used their film industry for their propaganda, with one of ‘those nasty Germans’ replacing one of ‘those nasty Red Indians’. Uncountable numbers of those films flooded the screens in the western zones after 1945. Everyone could see spine-chilling and gruesome stories on celluloid, for the brainwashing had begun on the screen!

The American high command possessed, of all things, a Psychoiogical Department! The Chief of this department readily admitted having manipulated and falsified stories, including parts of Hitler’s speeches.

Upon her arrival in Detmold and before I had left Breslau, Brigitte had written to my parents on my behalf. Her letter was the first contact with my parents in which she could but did not mention my name, although she informed them that I was alive and well, and that we were befriended. One must remember that letters were censored. It was in September 1946 that she received an answering letter, from my younger brother Cornelis. He had written that every member of my family had been interned. He wrote that under no circumstances was I either to return to Holl and or even write to my family. Those few words confirmed my fears and my opinions of the political situation back in my homeland. A second letter was to arrive in Detmold. This time it was from my eldest sister Louisa and contained very sad news for me. Brigitte had to in form me that I had lost two very dear members of my family, my father and one of my brothers, the eldest.

My father had died just a few weeks before she had received the first letter from Cornelis. He had died in the Dutch Internment camp in Amersfoort on 27 August. There were only bare facts because of the censorship. Therefore there were no details on the death of my brother Jan, other than that he had died eighteen months before in Assen, on 3 March. I had seen both, for the last time, two and a half years before, but had heard nothing from my family since the end of 1944. My brother Jan was just 27 years old when he died. The news was very bitter for me, very painful. My father had died in an internment camp at the age of 62. For days I could only read and re-read those few lines. I turned to stone trying to imagine the cause of his death, for those lines filled me with fear. For days this brought me to tears trying to assess the cause of death of both my father and my brother. And I could not go home? I could not write? I could not give any support in what had to be a terrible time, for the ominous warning from Cornelis had been clear enough. It was only later that I was to learn of the dimensions of the tragedy, of the Odyssey that my parents, my five brothers and my two sisters had had to suffer in my absence.

My longing to go to my family was replaced with that of wanting to go to Brigitte and it gave me no peace. However, she warned me against a visit to her in the British zone. It was too dangerous. Thousands however had managed to escape from the Russian zone, and from the organisation of their distribution. They wanted to escape from Communist rule, and did so in such numbers, that on 5 July 1946 the borders were closed. One could only travel from one zone to another with a special permit and by train. This ‘inter-zone’ permit was impossible to obtain.

Despite being trapped ‘behind the Iron Curtain’, a term first used by Joseph Goebbels and which was thereafter used also by Winston Churchill, there were escape routes, but one had to find them. I had to find them, for I was not going to be deterred from my visit to Detmold. With a map, and advice on a possible route, I started an illegal journey over the border, to an area that was called the ‘Green Border’ and checkpoint. It was still dangerous, despite its description, but did not have a minefield, barbed wire, or the wide coverless strip called the Death Strip, in full view of the guards. There were however patrolling Russian guards.

Such spots were well-known to the German Police on the other side, and by criminals too. Particularly in the winter of 1946/47, there was heavy criminal activity at the checkpoints, leading even to murder. Criminals, released from German prisons and concentration camps, returned to their former professions that had put them there in the first place. They lurked in the darkness to rob the refugees of all that they had. They were all using the protection of the popular ‘politically prosecuted’ status.

I had not known any of this as I arrived in the British zone at the end of October. My route had taken me through Berlin, Magdeburg and Halberstadt. There, prior to reaching the station, the train stopped, having used up all of the coal allowed for the journey. The passengers had to alight from the train and walk the rest of the way along the railway tracks. So far, so good. I was in the Harz region and the next stop was Dedeleben, which I reached through thickly wooded slopes, on foot. In the railway station there I had a wait of ten hours, before the next train left at two in the morning. In order to hold on to the little that I had with me, I hooked my bags through my trouser belt as I slept. Dedeleben was the end of the line, with no other connections to the West, and so there were few using the train. Those that did, were like me, on their way to the ‘green border’. I found out the way after requesting directions from the railway porter, on leaving the train at five in the morning.

We were a group of around 30 people. All were heavily laden, like mules, with bulging rucksacks, baby-prams and little carts. I looked, with my coloured and checked coat from Breslau, like a pauper in contrast. It just seemed to happen that I became group-leader, possibly because of my orienteering talent. I warned the others of obstacles and Russian patrols, although I did not know exactly where we were going. Our route away from this ‘iron curtain’ was not easy, and more than once some stumbled into holes in the ground, and our shoes and socks were wet through, for it was still dark. That was all the better for one’s target, when shooting at something or someone, was harder to hit.

When on the road through the woods we could hear the sounds of motors, long before the Russian patrol lorries reached us, we had time to hide. We hid from the strong searchlights mounted on the lorries and after the pause I gave the order Gepäck aufnehmen, ohne tritt marsch. Not in parade-style of course, but it did not take them long before they behaved like a regular army recce patrol. Once a Russian soldier saw us, as we crossed a well-lit open space, and we heard Halt! come here!” which we ignored. The group followed my order not to stop, but to disappear as quickly as possible into the woods on the other side. There were two shots and then silence. He did not attempt to follow us, possibly because he was on his own.

We then, unbeknown to us, walked in a complete circle, not knowing that we were so close to the British zone, which we entered, and left to return to the Russian side and where we were seen by two Russian guards. The unbelievable happened, for they looked, saw and indicated with a nod of their heads, that we should continue on our way! We did.

One of the group, a woman, was much older than the others, and was exhausted. The journey and possibly the tension were so great that she wanted to give up. So I supported her for the rest of the way, while others pushed her small wooden cart, with her possessions in it. At daybreak and with the rising of the sun behind us, I knew that we were nearly at our destination. We saw a farmer on his bike, and as he approached us we asked if we were already in the British Zone and he answered in the affirmative! Not long after, at around seven in the morning, we reached the transit camp in Jerxheim, where we had a friendly reception, not from soldiers but German police, once again black-dyed Wehrmacht uniforms. They inspected our luggage for ‘hot wares’, i.e. cigarettes and alcohol. One man in our group was a handler, he was the man that had his hands already in the air as he had heard the two shots when in the woods. He had a good stock of vodka in his baggage, which was immediately confiscated.

The rest of the journey needed a lot of patience with hour-long stops between stations, ten hours in Jerxheim, and another four, via Brunswick to Hannover. It had taken the whole day until after dark. And dark it was, for the trains had no lighting, or heating. The passengers standing or sitting were cold, frozen through, and silent. Those sitting could at least warm themselves on the stranger sitting alongside. Upon looking through the window, it was dark outside. There were no lights to be seen in the countryside houses. As we chugged our way through the towns, there were no lights there either, just the ruins rising into the night sky as ghosts out of the darkness.

The main railway station in Hannover was very dimly lit, but the masses of travellers were the same, just as they had been in Berlin, with hollow cheeks and in tattered clothes. They drifted over the platforms, perhaps with hope in their heart that things would normalise, that “everything changes”. Perhaps it would be today. But on that day, they appeared to me to be the driftwood of war.

I saw British soldiers, for the first time, in their khaki uniforms, walking comfortably through the grey throng, well nourished and chewing gum, as I went on my way to a bed. It had been offered to me by Jan Reilingh, the brother of my fallen friend Robert. As a student in Dresden, he had managed to land near the ‘Brits’ in Hannover. He now worked in a hospital, which was where he found me a place to sleep, in the boiler room in the cellar. It was not very comfortable, but it was warm! The next morning found me under way once more.

I sent a telegram from Hannover to Brigitte and it worked. Brigitte was waiting for me on my arrival. It was now nearly six months since we had seen one another and it was a very happy wiedersehen. Despite the food problem, Brigitte looked just the same, and at least she had found some luck over the last few months. We were happy that we had both survived the evacuation. Her first quarters in Horn-Oldendorf, she told me, had been primitive. She was given work, like all the others, in order to be given a ration-card. Her work was in a factory making wooden lamps, in Detmold. There she caught the eye of the factory owner who took her away from the factory and she now worked in his house. It was a villa where she had her own room. She was taught to cook and was well looked after.

During my stay I had a guestroom in Heiligenkirchen and we spent a lot of time walking and talking and when I accompanied her home, it was always after dark. Our feelings for one another had not changed. They intensified and there were no doubts in either of us that we were meant for one another. At the same time we both knew that I could not stay. I had managed the dangerous journey into the British zone, but I did not feel safe with the close proximity of the Dutch border. I did not feel safe with the thought that I could, when caught, be classified once more as a DP and handed over to the Dutch authorities. I had neither that very precious settlement permit in this situation, or an Inge to procure one for me. No settlement permit and no roof over my head. No roof over my head, no work, and no work meant no ration card. Brigitte had all of these in Detmold, in the land of the river Lippe, and the British zone. I had all of these too, in Finsterwald, in the Russian zone. With heavy hearts that is where we knew that I had to return. We had no other choice. We had been patient for so long, and knew that we had to be just as patient for a little longer, to see what the future held. It was cold reality and we could not alter the situation. I returned after those wonderful days in the land of the Lippe, using the same route by which I had come.

I was once more in the land of the ‘Ivans’ on 13 November. My return trip, on my own, had not been a problem. I had had no companions. Who wanted to return willingly to this ‘Red paradise’ on the other side of the Elbe?

Once more in Finsterwald, I came to the conclusion that life in the Western zones was not all that the German refugees had hoped. They did not find the quality of life that they were used to or expected, in comparison to the Stone-age ‘Nirvana’ to be found here in the Russian zone. Although there was no arbitrary deportation in the Western zones, ‘power to the full’ was well practised over the vanquished.

The power was soon to be seen in all its force, beginning on 20 November 1945 in the form of the Nuremberg Trials, which lasted for nearly a year, until October 1946. The Germans looked, waited and hoped for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, plus the resurrection of rights. They were treated to the wrath and revenge of the conquerors, decorated with a ‘holier than thou’ attitude in a ‘show trial, in which the laws were made by the ‘victors’. The prosecution was made up of the ‘victors’, judge and jury were ‘victors’ and the hangmen too. We returned to Medieval laws that were now wrapped in modern, new, and the fictitious, accompanied by the guiding principle that “those who lost the war must forfeit their lives”.

Orders and obedience were crimes. The breaking of our oath was, perhaps, a mitigation. Denunciation was rewarded with the ‘closing’ of your case. All of the principles of law were not only ignored but were trampled into the ground by the feet of the ‘victors’ in Nuremberg. For example, “No sentence without lawful rights, or carrying out of orders under force”, meant non-convict ion. One could not be sentenced for the actions of others.

In many prisons under the Western Allies the use of torture was allowed. It was on the daily agenda, be it physical or psycho logical. The means justified the end. The use of manipulated gallows to ‘hang’ the said prisoner was one of those psychological methods. Spinal injuries and irreparable damage to the vertebrae of the neck were the result. Torture continued until the said prisoner signed a confession that had been dictated and typed beforehand by the ‘victors’. No one questioned the self-same format of the hundreds of prisoners presented as evidence. Illegal Courts Martial were held within prison walls. There was blatant disregard of Church Law, using soldiers disguised as priests to hear the intimate ‘confessions’ of the prisoners. Nothing, but nothing was sacred and all entered the court as wrecks, with broken bones, broken spirits, abrasions or burns, to take their places in court or in the witness-box. Defence lawyers who protested at the lawless justice, were whisked away under arrest. Insight into the prosecution documents, bringing clarity, was refused. They were shipped off by the ton, to disappear and in many cases to be destroyed.

Outside the courthouse, people were starving to death. Inside the ‘victors’ were judging Germany’s crimes against humanity. Outside, hundreds of thousands sat in prisons without any proof their crimes. Inside the ‘victors’ sat and judged the arbitrariness of the Germans. The sweet odour of epidemics wafted over the victims of the bombing of the ‘victors’ outside. Inside an International Tribunal judged the behaviour of the Germans. Meanwhile, thousands at that time were being dragged out of their homes and deported as slaves into labour camps. There they worked until they died. All of which happened in the Malmedy trial.

A Transitional Agreement was drawn up in 1954 in Paris, on 23 October, after the Declaration of Sovereignty over the Bundesrepublik. It stated that German jurisdiction would not be allowed to judge the crimes of the Allies. Rights? Revenge? “Don’t do what I do, do what I say?” What cannot be denied is that it was not a case of “Rights for all”. One has to ask what did the Nuremberg Trials alter? The answer is nothing. Most certainly it did not affect the number of wars that have taken place since 1945, and with far more sacrifices than in the Second World War. Most certainly not for the ‘victors’. No one however has brought the warmongers into court.

It took twenty years before the former American Minister of Defence could admit to the world that the American government had made “a terrible mistake” with the Vietnam war! Robert McNamara used the term ‘mistake’ in that 58,000 American soldiers lost their lives in fighting for their fatherland. It was a ‘mistake’ that cost two million Vietnamese their lives? Two million?

The historian Dr Golo Mann, declared that “To research the crimes of the Allies against the Germans in Germany, is absolutely necessary for German history”. I will do that.

The Americans held over three million German soldiers prisoner in the summer months of 1945, in Europe. The American General, and Commander-in-Chief of the Allies, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who later sat in the top-most seat of the government, that of the US President, said it all when declaring, “We did not come as liberators, we came as conquerors”. He never said a truer word. Liberators have no need to torture, have no need to rape and have no need to harass. Liberators possess the self-esteem to keep to the rules of human rights. They have no need to plague, or deliberately let people starve, as he did.

Dwight D. Eisenhower begrudged the prisoners a roof over their heads, begrudged the prisoners even the simplest and most meagre portion of food, even though huge reserves were available. Prisoners were given less consideration than animals that had a burrow to keep them dry and warm. Out of the rain? Protected from the sun? The prisoners on the meadows of the Rhine had none of that. They lived in holes in the ground and were forced to go there. Holes that filled with rain produced a bog. They did not even have the most primitive of sanitary conditions, which in turn produced epidemics and death, adding to that of being left to rot. Many died in the Rhineland between Remagen and Sinzig. It was a deliberate programme of extermination. It happened not only in the Rhineland, but in other places as well. Places of extermination!

An article in the magazine Der Spiegel, in their 40th edition from 1989, reported, “Foodstuffs, although in huge reserves, were deliberately withheld, so that the interned died. They also died from lack of hygiene and sanitary conditions, both leading to epidemics which killed”. “Ten times more than those Germans who lost their lives on the battlefields of Normandy, and from then until the capitulation, died in POW camps”. A quote from the former candidate for the US Presidency, Pat Buchanan said, “Nearly a million prisoners died, not only in American POW camps after 1945, but in French camps too”. That quote is from the bestseller by James Bach,.

The figures are only the official ones and most certainly could be added to, but the official figures should not be used to judge or for revenge, conquerors or not. They should be used to add weight on the other side of the scales to achieve a balance that was not done in Nuremberg. There, morals, conscience and most of all justice, were non-existent, and also deliberately ignored. Can we now interpret the words from Carl von Clausewitz as, “The prisoner of war status is another form of the progress of politics”?

The war had now ended, but not in the POW camps. The German people have the key to unlocking the door of the past that is necessary for German history, necessary for the future. But those who stay ‘mum’, together with those who will not take a look into the past, are lost. One-sided accusation, one-sided “researched facts”, and one-sided withholding of documents of historical importance in their archives, plus those who keep silent, all that has to end.

For me, it was at that time important not only to have a full stomach and a roof over my head, it was a daily battle to stay incognito and not to become one of those POWs. There were however always checkpoints and inspections of papers. It was all too easy to be noticed at these inspections and arrested. Between 1945 and as late as 1950, 122,671 Germans were to become prisoners of war. 43,000 of those died. 776 were sentenced to death, and that happened in peacetime.

In Finsterwald the same situation slowly evolved as in Breslau. The longer that I stayed, the more well-known I became, and that I had been a Dutch volunteer for the German Waffen SS. What if someone were careless with this information? This fear was always breathing down my neck and so I moved away. I moved very near to the Laska family once more. But I was to spend the next few weeks and months in the northern part of the East zone and not in the suburbs of Leipzig.

The eldest sister of my fallen friend, Robert Reilingh, had been married to a German soldier, an officer who fell in Russia. Now being widowed, Eva Gahrmann lived in Greifswald with her parents-in-law. A circle of very nice people, her friends and family members welcomed me with open arms. Greifswald lay on the coast and had surrendered to the Russians. It had remained undamaged, possessing the oldest University in the whole of Germany, dating from 1465. It lay in a romantic setting with old gabled houses. Extreme want or need was not to be seen here, for the Gahrmann family, just like that of Inge, were the owners of a large furniture and textile business. They were respected in the vicinity. They had contacts with the farmers in the country, the academics in the University, and with the chemists in the city, who possessed alcohol, for the ‘black’ market. Yes, I was also the executive here, in Greifswald, in the wheeling and dealing business. I undertook the long and uncomfortable train journey from Saxony to Mecklenburg.

I had, in both the pre-war and post-war years, experienced from many people evidence of unity, and of help and support. That included the medical care of a doctor upon falling foul of malaria. It was during my second visit to Brigitte in May 1947. I detoured on the way back, calling in on friends of the Laskas and from a very short visit, I had to stay for five weeks. I was cared for by those very dear Laska friends as a refugee, and also cared for free of charge, by their doctor, Dr Schuler. The summer months of 1946 had wandered into the summer months of 1947 in the East zone. I spent wonderful days on Germany’s largest island of Rügen, in the very large sum-merhouse belonging to the Gahrmanns. We arrived with more than enough ‘black’ market provisions, with friends who had journeyed with us on the train, over Stralsund and the Sound of Rügen, to Germany’s largest island.

It was paradise! It was a paradise of flat land, steep cliffs, calm and raw angry seas, woods of beeches hiding moorland and labyrinths of reed. The long, long sandy beaches I remember were empty of people, and were guarded, as we bathed, by towering chalk cliffs. We never saw any Russian military. Tourists? There were none. I thought of Rügen as sitting under a large glass dome, which resisted the disturbance of the occupying government. But even there in the north there were moments that sickened and saddened, such I was to see in Bad Kleinen in the railway station.

There was a column of German prisoners standing on the platform and after counting, it was found that they were one man short. One had obviously escaped. Without much ado, one of the Russian guards snatched one of the other travellers and forced him into line with the other prisoners. Now the numbers were correct! The shocked man made no protest and neither did the passers-by who witnessed what had happened. They remained shocked and ‘mum’. I protested to a German railway policeman who did not want to know. He didn’t want any trouble with the army and was annoyed with me that I had the privilege of travelling the way I did, as a disabled person, i.e. war-wounded, so he took away my permit.

I had lived for a whole year in Silesia under the yoke of Polish Communism, and nearly a year under Russian Communism in the Eastern zone. But had I a future? There would never be one for me here. My intuition was at work. More than ever, I feared for my safety with each day that went by. My intuition had never let me down. I was therefore more than overjoyed when receiving a telegram from the West that was to end my ‘guest status’ under that ‘red flag’ flying in the wind.