The Vengeance of Rome

FIFTY-FOUR

I am ordered out of the crowded bunk and into the cold air of the compound. I am to be transferred to Sachsenhausen. I am not told why. I am afraid to leave. I am familiar with that note: Rückkehr nicht erwünscht. Not wanted back. If I leave I will die. I think they mean to kill me. They say that Sachsenhausen is worse than Dachau. That is where I could be killed. Sturmbannführer Schnauben congratulates me. He seems almost light-hearted. Is this how he evades the responsibility of slaughtering me?

We are marched at a run to the railway yards. We are formed into groups. A label is placed round my neck. Other prisoners are going to Belsen. Belsen is a show camp. Belsen has restaurants. A choice of menu.

Even in the cattle car the Belsen-bound prisoners act arrogantly. As soon as I say where I am going they treat me as if I have somehow failed a test.

‘They’ll kill you there for certain,’ says one obnoxious young Jew. A lawyer, I understand. I do not find it mysterious why he was sent to prison.

The train is filthy and stinks in a way that Dachau does not stink. We move off. Through the slats I look out at the distant camp. I half expect Sturmbannführer Schnauben to be standing outside, waving me goodbye.

The journey to the north-east takes days. We receive almost no food or water. Some of us die. Our corpses start to rot. Near Berlin, when we are shunted into a siding, the guards climb on to our roof and grin down at us through the openings. They unbutton their trousers and piss into the truck just as we start to eat our bread.

I change trains in some remote, unpeopled place. I am forced into a truck far more crowded than the last. This truck is full of crazed-looking criminals. I have no idea who they are. Most of them do not speak German. Perhaps they are gypsies.

When next we disembark it is early morning. A mist rises. I am immediately singled out. Shouted orders are indistinguishable from the shrieking barks of the dogs. Steel-helmeted soldiers with guns aimed at our heads. At the double I am marched to a wooden hut and pushed into an office with filing cabinets and desks. There stands Kolya, smiling, as if he welcomes me into paradise. He wears his big leather coat. Even inside his breath turns to clouds.

‘Good news, Dimka. The authorities have at last reviewed your case. Those letters and designs you sent to Reichspräsident Göring? You have convinced them of your usefulness. Your efforts have not been wasted.’

Only dimly can I make sense of what he says. ‘Convinced?’

‘Your design for flying infantry, I believe. They don’t tell me much. Now war has broken out in Spain we have a practical theatre in which to test your idea. You are to go to Berlin, to a special camp. You will be given the chance to build your prototype.’

Uncertain whether or not this is some SS joke, I give no reaction. If I knew what was expected of me I would display the appropriate behaviour.

‘I’d have thought you’d be delighted, Dimka!’

I understand then that I must smile. I do my heroic best.

‘Excellent.’ Kolya puts his beautiful hand on my shoulder blade. ‘I am to take you to the Institute myself.’

Had my friend rescued me at last?

August 1937. After I had showered and been equipped with a civilian suit, Kolya took charge of me. We entered a large Mercedes with a chauffeur. At once the car began moving.

The landscape, so lush and golden with harvest, was too rich for me. I felt almost nauseated by the sight of it. The food we ate on the way was difficult to hold down. I had to close my eyes to keep the images in. If I opened them for too long I began to cry. Sometimes Kolya would pat my arm and offer me a little distant comfort. Sometimes he would croon to me. ‘There, there. It’s over. You’ve paid your debt. It’s over.’ But I could no longer really believe that. I did not know there had been a debt to pay.

Once I ventured to ask him who had issued the instructions for me to be taken from Dachau. He would not tell me.

‘Circles far above my head, dear.’

Kolya could not be responsible for my imprisonment. Maybe Mrs Cornelius was responsible for my release. Perhaps she had spoken to our old friend Göring. He was a well-known humanitarian. But what if this were an SS charade? I did not allow myself to hope too much.

At night we reached a group of buildings protected by a high concrete wall. As the car’s great lamps threw the compound into shadowy perspective I thought at first they were film studios.

Kolya seemed relieved we had arrived. When we got out of the car, we were greeted by a man in SS uniform to whom Kolya gave my papers. ‘You’ll have to sign for him,’ he said.

‘Are you leaving me, Kolya?’

‘For the moment,’ he said. ‘By the way. Your friend Mrs Cornelius is in custody. She will be well treated if only you cooperate fully with us.’

In a state of some shock I was taken directly to the SS cells. Was I to meet Mrs Cornelius here? The cells were clean, well ordered and smelled strongly of pine disinfectant. I answered basic questions: my name, nationality and political affiliations. The interrogator’s sallow face was shadowed by the peak of his cap. Satisfied with my answers, he made some rapid marks on the papers in front of him and grunted. I had learned never to speak until spoken to. He got up and left me standing at attention. Tired as I was I did not move until another SS man returned and told me to follow him.

I went with him across a courtyard into a taller building, along several identical lime-washed corridors until we arrived at a door painted pale green. ‘These will be your quarters.’ He pushed the door open and made me go in ahead of him. He showed me the sink with running water, a glass, a chamber pot. He then left, closing the door behind him. I did not hear it lock.

Standing in the little cell of my own, with its pristine bed, its sheets and blankets, its radio set and its copy of Mein Kampf, I hardly dared to move, let alone undress and get into bed. Everything was antiseptically clean. Opening the top drawer of the little chest at the end of the bed, I found a pair of blue pyjamas, some slippers, not quite my size, some soap, a toothbrush, some toothpaste and other toiletries, all held in a little cotton bag which had my name and a number stencilled on the side: Prof. M. Gallibasta. At last they had recognised my qualifications and accepted me as Spanish!

But I was not free of the nightmare. I still trembled with terror as I put the pyjamas on, expecting the door to fly open and guards to be standing there. Even when I had settled between the sheets and switched off the light I listened for boots in the corridor. But it was quiet. There were no screams, no shouts, no barking dogs. Through the unbarred window I heard the ordinary sounds of a late-summer night.

In the morning came a knock on the door. Though I had slept very little I was in better spirits. Already up, I called for the person to come in. A tall, stooping white-haired man greeted me. He wore a loose, blue serge suit, a white shirt and a bow tie. Shaking hands, he introduced himself as Professor Mueller. I accompanied him to breakfast in a big, well-lit canteen full of other men and women clearly of our class, yet all carrying something of the familiar air of Lagerfliegen. They did not speak except to say ‘good morning’. Few smiled. I imitated them. Mueller offered me a little approving nod. ‘We are a monastic order here. We have taken a vow of silence. If we did not, we should be returned to our former condition. That is the first rule.’

I understood. I accompanied him to the counter to collect my breakfast of good-quality bread, a kind of roasted muesli, butter and jam, a slice of luncheon meat, a small piece of cheese.

For the first time in months I wondered about the things I had hidden in Signor Frau’s barrel organ. Where, I wondered, was the family now? And were my papers and keepsakes still safe? With SS help, I thought, I might find them again.

As I left the dining hall I was met by an SS man and told to go with him to an unmarked door. He knocked and stood back to let me pass. In a neat office was a large, tidy desk and behind the desk a plump, pale man in pince-nez, his black uniform jacket opened and his tie loosened. He stood up, buttoning his tunic, giving the raised-arm salute. Obersturmbannführer Ludwig Wolfowitz was our SS commandant. He welcomed me to the camp, which he called the Institute. Ordering me to sit down he presented me with the list of questions I had already answered. By now I was a little bolder.

‘You understand, Herr Obersturmbannführer, that I am first a scientist?’ I told him humbly. ‘You know, of course, that I am among other things an engineer. Before my arrest I submitted certain plans to Reichsmarschall Göring.’

‘Those ideas are what brought you here, Professor Gallibasta.’ Wolfowitz frowned. ‘You wish to serve the Reich. We are here to be served! We are interested in your designs, especially your one-man airship, what you rather fancifully call your flying infantryman. We would develop the idea for observational purposes, equipping the flyer with a radio. We will help you in any way you need. You now have a special rank, a new number. You are an F prefix, which means you are the Führer’s prisoner. Only our leader can have you moved from here. You will take your orders directly from his office. You will be further rewarded if your work significantly helps the Reich.’

‘I am honoured,’ I said. He dismissed me.

Everyone at the Institute was equally well treated. We had an opportunity to redeem ourselves, some chance of eventually regaining our former lives. If we did well we could look forward to status, honour and freedom in the community. I had the use of a fully equipped drawing office staffed by highly skilled men and women. Anything I needed was requisitioned for me. My old drawings, the ones I had sent to Göring, were brought in to remind me of my original ideas so that I could prepare a practical design for my one-man airship.

My men and women would rise into the air like spiralling smoke. They would fly like birds between golden cities travelling the skies in orbit above our abandoned globe.

The Institute was a dream, not a positive experience of the real world but at least a temporary release from the nightmare. It offered hope. It returned a future. I laboured hard and swiftly, knowing if one idea were successful I would be allowed to work on others. Always uniformed SS came and went, reminding me that I was F2106 and could be returned to Dachau or worse at any moment. This meant that I kept obsessively to the rules. The facility had many workrooms and sheds I was never allowed to see, just as other inmates were not permitted access to me or my designs. I saw them in the canteen, but only the minimum communication was permitted us. I had a closer relationship with my radio, which broadcast the German programme, chiefly consisting of light classical music and some news broadcasts which kept me apprised of the nationalist struggle against the republicans in Spain and the achievements of Hitler and the Nazi Party in rebuilding a modern homeland.

The only people I talked to at length were the SS and technicians who came to learn how to build the first prototype of what we were calling my LWIX, the hydrogen-filled wing-shaped one-man airship which within months sat tethered in her hangar waiting to be tested. The ship’s construction had gone rapidly, for it was a fundamentally simple design. I was very proud of her. The harness below the wing held a small but powerful engine, the aerofoils and the airscrew. Suspended from the wing in a mixture of canvas and plywood, the pilot would be buckled in, using various instruments together with his own arms, legs and feet to steer the little vessel through the air. We called her the Luftgeist. She could glide silently through the clouds undetected once her engine was switched off. Then, when necessary, she could become a darting hawk, attaining a height of over five thousand feet. Hovering above a desired location, the pilot, by means of a radio apparatus attached to his flying suit and helmet, also integral parts of the machine’s design, could send messages back to base. I had originally planned for her to be armed, but for the moment the Führer wished only to see a non-combative version.

In the hangar I was able to demonstrate the machine to visiting groups of air staff. Surprisingly respectful, they often called me ‘Herr Professor’ and asked insightful questions. Some were particularly interested in the power/weight ratio, wondering how she would behave in high winds. I believed her light motor, the latest Heinkel could produce for us, was more than capable of propelling her against anything but the most powerful hurricane. Clearly my ship would be better able to perform in conditions where high winds rarely prevailed, such as the European theatre.

I began at last to emerge from the nightmare. Even the SS, impressed by what the air generals had to say, subtly changed their attitude towards me. The Luftgeist was certainly a good-looking machine. Her silver wing-shaped airbag was shaped like an aerofoil suspending an empty atmosphere suit capable of protecting the pilot against the worst weather conditions. Swinging from the ceiling of the hangar my Luftgeist resembled nothing so much as a gigantic moth.

She was ready for her tests.

The morning of 5 May 1937 I was disturbed at my shaving by a knock on my cell door. Behind his sallow adjutant stood Obersturmbannführer Wolfowitz. He was almost cheerful, waving a piece of paper. ‘Good news, F2106. We have been given clearance. The Air Ministry is ready to try our Luftgeist out!’

My soul, repressed for so long, began to come to life again. ’Where are we going, sir?’ I expected him to name a nearby airfield.

‘I must stay here with my duties. But you, F2106, are privileged to be going at once to Burgos by special train. The Führer wishes the Luftgeist, which does not officially exist, to have immediate trials in the Spanish arena. A matter of secrecy. We do not want the world to know too much about Germany’s business. Your great moment is almost here. I envy you. You will have a chance to meet those filthy Reds at first hand!’