A Kiss for the Enemy (59 page)

Robert nodded, face grave.

‘All that filth and panic and screaming and shouting and death, she had dignity. She walked towards the SS and called out. I heard her. I was lying on the ground. I heard her. She called out,

‘“Please stop shooting. I am sure we can all help each other.” It was simple, but it made sense.'

‘There was no response? They kept on shooting?'

‘No, there was a command shouted, I remember it. She'd made an impression. They stopped shooting. The screams went on because people were bleeding, wounded, dying but the shooting stopped. Then there was a sort of commotion in another part of the crowd and another surge towards the SS. Mad! You see there weren't many SS. Maybe about thirty. They were frightened, I could see it. Then it was their turn to panic. They started shooting again.'

‘And this woman?'

‘She shouted at the officer, “Stop firing!” It was like an order! She had real authority, you see. And for a moment I almost thought he'd obey. Then I expect he felt ashamed, felt he'd almost shown weakness, hesitated – and on a prisoner's order! And a woman's! He shot her. With his pistol. I saw it.'

‘Was this woman a foreigner? A Jewess? What?'

‘No, she was German. I knew her quite well. There was nobody like her.'

‘A German anti-Nazi?'

‘Was she? I imagine so,' said Fraülein Meier with a shrug. ‘We didn't talk politics in Tissendorf! Her name was Langenbach. Anna Langenbach.'

Lieutenant Robin Oliphant drove up to the farm, an attractive, mellow building with rose-coloured brick supporting massive timbers. Two huge barns, set at right angles, formed with the dwelling house three sides of a square. Robin climbed down from his scout car and stood, admiring. These places gave a superb impression of being built to last. He had orders, ten days after the capitulation as it now was, to search such farms on a random basis. Not much had been found and by now, 19th May, he doubted whether much would. Every member of the Wehrmacht had to be corralled into a Prison of War Camp, investigated and retained to await the pleasure of the victorious Powers. It was thought that a good many had slipped away before the final surrender ten days before, contrived to melt into the countryside; but so far Robin had found no traces of it. He banged on the door of the farmhouse and asked the usual peremptory questions.

The farmer was a hard-faced man of over sixty. He stood in
the doorway shaking his head, his equally hard-faced wife at his elbow.

‘We need more men but we've nobody. We're doing all the work.'

He seemed deliberately to be misunderstanding Robin's questions, assuming that the enquiries were concerned with whether there was enough labour to work the farm rather than the hunt for illegally concealed German soldiers.

‘Are the barns empty?'

‘We're storing apples and there are my carts. The beasts are all out.'

Robin turned on his heel. His troop sergeant, Sergeant Tompkins, had been moving round the buildings while Robin stood at the farm door. Now he called,

‘Mr Oliphant, sir! Are we going to search?'

‘Certainly we are. I just wanted to give them the chance to admit it, if there are people here who shouldn't be.'

‘There's somebody in here, sir!' Sergeant Tompkins was standing by the huge door of the nearest barn. Robin shot a look at the farmer and his wife, moved to the barn door and listened.

Voices. A gabble of shrill sounds. The door was bolted.

Robin shouted to the farmer who was watching, not moving.

‘
Kommen sie hier
!'

The man moved over sulkily. He said, ‘It's the refugee children.'

Robin spoke and understood a certain amount of German.

‘Refugee children?'

‘We were asked to take some in. For humanity.'

‘Open up.'

Slowly, he did so. Robin moved into the barn. At first the darkness after the strong sunlight blinded him. He was conscious of movement, of chattering. Then he saw shapes, small, scampering, huddling away in the corner farthest from the door.

‘Christ!' said Sergeant Tompkins softly.

About twenty children of ages which might range from four to eight, were cowering as far from Robin as they could. As his eyes grew accustomed to the light he could see that most were naked, while a few wore scraps of clothing. The air was
foul. The barn, it was clear, was used for every purpose. In the middle of the floor was a large, old-fashioned trough with vestiges of some swill in it.

Robin walked towards the little group and spoke gently. They looked at him, absolutely silent.

‘Can you understand me? We'll help you, I promise.'

They gazed, disbelieving, frightened of the unknown. He awkwardly raised his hand, with some inner reservation, seeking to pat the head of the nearest small figure, to establish some sort of kindly credentials. He felt black anger when the little creature shrank away, obviously fearing a blow. He could now see that these children were not only naked but filthy, their hair caked with dirt, their bodies streaked with their own excrement. On several small bodies he recognized weals and what looked like dried blood. These were animals, unloved and unvalued animals, jostling to eat on all fours from a trough, beaten, degraded, wretched and afraid. He went outside the barn.

‘Sergeant Tompkins, we're going to see that all these children are got away. I'll talk to squadron Headquarters on the radio. There is an organization already working on things like this.'

To the farmer he said, in passable German,

‘You and your wife are under arrest.
Verhaftet.
'

‘Why?' said the man, astonished. ‘We did what they told us, sheltered them, fed them. We got paid little enough for each, for our trouble, I can tell you. It was worth nothing to us.'

‘Where are the families of these children?'

‘How can we know? They told us they're children of people in the camps – you know! The camps.' He spoke with hesitation. He was unused to speaking freely of such things. His wife joined in.

‘That's right. They're all children of people in prison or in camps, so they've no families, nobody to look after them.'

‘And you've been looking after them,' said Robin, voice trembling.

‘Yes. And we've got a list of them.' The woman darted back into the farmhouse and reappeared with a paper.

‘I've kept it up to date. They're all there. Twenty-three. You can count.'

She looked pleased. Robin glanced without interest at the list, his nausea mixed with angry compassion. The woman had scrawled name after name with a mauve pencil on a dirty piece of lined paper, as each poor little inmate had been brought to that cruel place.

‘Schmidt K., Velten K., Langenbach F., Milch O., …'

‘You will be held responsible for the way you have treated these children,' Robin said, hoping he was right. Sergeant Tompkins said,

‘Just leave the barn open for now, sir?'

‘I think,' said Robin, ‘that it might be better to burn it down. We must see to moving these children. That will take time. Then it will be better to burn it down.'

‘My dear Anthony, you seem to be in trouble, you old ass.' It was 20th June.

Robert wore his customary frown and Anthony hoped that his friend's duties in connection with war crimes were not making him self-righteous. Robert always had firm convictions, but humour had generally saved him from pomposity. And Anthony was grateful for the visit which Robert had contrived to pay. Robert had heard that his friend was in trouble, that he had been placed in close arrest and then released, but released as one to face a charge, trial by Court Martial or some other form of military justice. He had immediately managed to drive to Anthony's battalion and was relieved to find him accessible to friends. They had a splendid reunion.

But Anthony did not show himself keen to discuss his own case. He said, briefly,

‘Yes, I'm for it. I'm going before the Divisional Commander next Tuesday.'

‘Hm! I suppose you just boiled over?' Robert had heard something of what was alleged.

‘Yes, I think you can say that. And I'm glad of it.'

‘Oh dear,' thought Robert. ‘He's defiant, he's sure he's right about something, he's going to do himself harm.'

Anthony said nothing more, and Robert changed the subject
for a little. He would return to it but he could see Anthony was in a difficult mood.

They had already reminisced gleefully, caught up with each other's news, re-lived the days of their escape from Oflag XXXIII. They had not seen each other since parting in rain and distress on a train at Kranenberg. Robert was now working exceptionally hard, he said. He had a grim look about him.

‘One of the smaller fry against whom we've got a case is a brute you must have suffered from in the later stages. He was Commandant of your camp. Bressler.'

‘Bressler?' said Anthony, unsmiling. ‘Of course. He saved me.'

‘Well, he didn't save others, it appears.'

‘Robert,' said Anthony with urgency, ‘if Bressler is to be accused of anything, I insist on giving evidence on his behalf. The man rescued me from the Gestapo.' He told Robert the story in greater detail. Robert nodded with a touch of impatience.

‘Where there's something to be said for any of these people it will be said, you know. But I hope you're not going to turn into too much of a crusader for unpopular causes, Anthony. There's no need to get over-excited about it.'

‘On the contrary,' said Anthony. ‘I suspect there's every need.'

Robert looked at him. ‘If you read, day after day, the horrors I have read: if you took down, day after day, the evidence I take down – you might be rather less, shall we say, sensitive? A month ago, for instance, I took depositions from people who were in a camp not all that far from here, a place called Tissendorf. The things they told me were fresh in their memories. They didn't exaggerate, they told me the same things, their stories tallied. And, of course, that was nothing to what went on in these death camps in the east. In the east, factories were built near the camps, near an inexhaustible source of labour, you see. So many days or weeks could be extracted from the fit ones. Then they'd die – of disease or ill-treatment and there'd be plenty to replace them.'

Anthony was silent. Robert said quietly,

‘And because there were so many deaths, so many corpses, such a problem of disposal, the Nazis built their big idea on it
– which was to use these places, also, in order simply to kill hundreds and thousands of people. They arrived only to die. It was murder at once or murder after a short period of work. Murder on a vast scale, an unimaginable scale. Hundreds of thousands. Perhaps millions. Their plan was to dispose of all European Jews, you see. But it wasn't, of course, only Jews.'

Anthony looked at him. He had no illusions, he thought, about the Nazis but he had always ascribed to wartime propaganda a good deal of the stories of the concentration camps. But Robert was collecting evidence. Robert was speaking from knowledge. Anthony thought of Bressler. He thought of Frido, of old Kaspar, of Lise. He thought of Anna. Could people of the same race as they, do things like this?

‘You should,' said Robert remorselessly, ‘see the photographs I've seen, read the depositions I've read. In these places people starved, were flogged, clubbed to death for the merest trifle. Where they weren't murdered at once as a matter of policy, that is.'

‘Do you think many people in Germany knew? Apart from those actually involved?'

‘That,' said Robert, ‘we don't know. And perhaps we never will know. Fully.'

‘Robert, you mentioned a camp called Tissendorf.'

‘Yes. The Tissendorf unfortunates suffered from callousness rather than premeditated murder. Nevertheless, it showed one vividly the level to which people were reduced. And there was killing as well as dying there too.'

‘Please tell me everything you can about it.' And Robert did.

They sat for a while, silent. (‘My father,' Lise had said, ‘says she was taken to a place called Tissendorf. That is what people whispered.') Robert supposed Anthony was worried at his predicament. Who wouldn't be? He'd been an ass. But Robert had come to perform an additional duty.

‘Listen, old boy, I see a lot of papers in my job. I want to talk to you about your sister, Marcia. I've seen something that concerns her.'

Anthony's mind seemed elsewhere. ‘Marcia? She's got home all right – went back about the time I came out again. Rather absurd, because I told my parents one of the reasons for pulling
strings to get back here was to find if I could help her! I've not seen her. I had a long letter. She had an extraordinary war! She ended up with the Americans. She says they were wonderful to her.'

‘I dare say. She was processed quickly but of course it's not yet complete.'

‘What do you mean “processed”? She was repatriated. She's at home now. At Bargate.'

‘And subject to further enquiries. You see, Marcia wasn't interned.'

‘I know. I know the whole story. She wrote it all to me, pages of it.' And, thought Anthony with a bitter pang, I had news of her before that. He remembered Anna, naked, lovely, lying in his arms in a dusty attic at Schloss Langenbach, talking of Marcia, stroking his hair, saying, ‘I love your little sister. Everybody loves her.' Yes, he'd had news of Marcia all right. And in her letter Marcia had written one paragraph he carried everywhere, every hour, in his head,

‘Ant, darling, I know Anna Langenbach's little boy is your son. Frido, beloved Frido, wrote this to me, before he was arrested. Anna had confided in him and he didn't want to be the only person to know in case something happened to him –
and
to Anna – and my God, it has, hasn't it? So I know that much, and I'm glad, darling Ant, because she was the most marvellous person I've ever known. But nobody else knows – unless Anna's told them. I didn't even tell Lise. But oh, darling, can anything be done to find out what's happened to them?'