Reign of Hell (38 page)

Gregor walked to the steps.

‘It’s exactly what I’m going to do.’

The Old Man made no move to stop him. We remained where we were, every muscle tensed for instant action.

‘We’ll give him five minutes,’ said the Old Man. He ran his tongue over his lips. I had never seen him so nervous. ‘Five minutes, and then we’ll follow him up.’

Before we could follow him, Gregor had returned. We heard him coming along the street, raving and shouting like a madman. He capered down the cellar steps, followed by Uule and his Finns. It seemed to me that they were all drunk.

‘Well?’ said the Old Man. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Peace!’ shouted Gregor, and fell headfirst down the last six steps.

‘Peace!’ shouted Uule, raising a bottle of vodka to his lips.

We stared at them, and said nothing at all. Uule came down into the cellar and held out the vodka bottle to the Old Man.

‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘They signed the surrender at eight-thirty this morning. It’s all over.’

‘All over?’ I said. For a moment I felt almost a sense of loss. Suddenly they had taken away my reason for living and I was a man without a purpose. ‘All over?’ I said. ‘But it can’t be! It can’t be! Not after all this time . . . It can’t be!’

But apparently it was. Peace had come at last, and I
couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t understand why Tiny and Porta were suddenly wrapping their arms round each other and yelling and hooting at the tops of their voices. I couldn’t understand why everyone was suddenly hell bent on throwing down their weapons, tearing off their badges, kicking their helmets across the floor.

‘It’s over!’ shouted the Old Man. He turned and punched me in the ribs. ‘It’s all over!’ he said, and the Finns joined in with a chorus of ‘Miri, miri!’ From further down the street we heard voices calling out in Polish and in German:

‘It’s over! It’s all over!’

‘Spokoj! Spokoj!’

And now I, too, was caught up in the general rejoicing and went surging up the steps behind Uule and his Finns, out into the daylight. Heide was still obstinately clutching his rifle, and Uule had his knife pushed down the side of his boot. Other than that, we were unarmed. We had no means of defending ourselves. I felt as if I were walking stark naked through the town.

‘Miri, miri!’ shouted Uule, but there was unrest in the streets, and I wondered again if the war had really ended.

We seemed the only creatures who had ventured out. There was still no sound, save for the steady crackling of flames from burning buildings. If the Poles came out now from their hiding-places, the Fifth Company would be at their mercy. What a way to end a war.

‘Eh, Stanislas!’ called Porta. He put his hands to his mouth and shouted, and his voice went echoing through the empty streets. ‘Eh, Polaks! Come out and show yourselves! The fighting’s all over!’

From a group of ruins twenty yards further on, three Polish soldiers wearing French helmets rose cautiously to their feet and stood waiting for us. Two of them were clutching automatic rifles. Porta gestured with his hands. There was a moment’s hesitation, and then they dropped the rifles to the ground and came running and laughing towards us. Suddenly the town was alive with people. They came swarming up from every cellar and every basement, soldiers and
civilians, men, women and children, laughing, crying, dancing in the streets. Pole and German alike had laid down their arms, and I saw many uniforms stripped of their Nazi eagles. Of the Fifth Company, only Heide appeared to see no reason for rejoicing. He perched moodily on the edge of the burnt-out tank, with a charred mummy that was lying half in and half out of the turret. He still kept a tight hold on his rifle, and he watched in grim silence as old enemies joined hands and laughed together in the streets of Warsaw.

And suddenly, in the midst of it all, came the sound of an explosion. A hail of grenades fell around us. The tank was blown to pieces, and Heide was flung across the road. Women and children ran screaming for cover. Men who only seconds ago had been embracing each other as brothers now broke apart, cursing themselves for their naïveté.

Tiny came hurtling across the street towards me, and together we dived down the steps of the nearest cellar.

‘I told you so!’ he panted. ‘I told you it was a trick!’

We thought at first that it must be the German artillery who were firing. It was some time before we realised that it was the Russians. They kept up their bombardment of the stricken town for over an hour, in an attempt to finish off Germans and Poles alike. They succeeded that day in slaughtering many thousands of people.

The Fifth Company re-grouped and was pulled out of the area. Uule and his Finns had disappeared, and we never saw them again. The following day we were sent to the Rue Kransinski to supervise the Polish surrender and check that all fire-arms and other weapons were duly handed over. We felt no jubilation as the long line of soldiers passed silently before us on their way to captivity. They had fought a good fight, and we bore them no ill will.

And so, at last, had it really all come to an end? Not quite. Not yet. The psychopaths of the Dirlewanger and Kaminski Brigades still had one last ritualistic orgy of blood-letting to perform.

That same evening, the executions began. Friend turned against friend, neighbour against neighbour, in frenzied
attempts to save their own skins. This man was a Communist, that man was a Jew; this woman had slept with a Russian officer, that woman was known to have Soviet sympathies. One word was sufficient to condemn a person. The executioners were not concerned with evidence.

The terms of surrender had extended only to soldiers of the regular Polish Army. The thousands of others who had taken up arms against the German invader were treated according to Himmler’s instructions – they were outside the law and had no right of appeal. They were therefore shot without trial.

What little remained of the civilian population after the night’s massacres was rounded up and cattle-herded into an immense concentration camp situated to the north-west of Warsaw. There they were kept without food and water, with no proper sanitary arrangements, with no provision for the sick or the elderly, until transport could be arranged to take them to Germany. Considerable numbers of them died
en route
.

Meanwhile, companies of Pioneers were sent in to begin the task of the wholesale destruction ordered by Himmler. It was not until the end of January that the ruins of Warsaw were finally left alone to die in peace. There was nothing left to burn, nothing left to demolish. The people had all been murdered, the buildings had all been destroyed. Himmler’s command had been carried out with typical Prussian thoroughness. Every man, woman and child; every dog and every cat; every street and every building . . .

It had finally been achieved. Warsaw had been wiped off the face of the map.

THE END

¹
Opium cigarette.