Unlikely Warrior (31 page)

The hope that we would be sent home as soon as the war ended had been in vain. Once, when we were standing for our daily count and the number didn’t come out correctly, the Russian officer in charge became very upset. Then he yelled, “You will learn to do this right, and if you think we are taking care of you here so that you can be returned to Germany fat and happy, you couldn’t be more wrong! You will remain here for years, until you have built up again all that you destroyed!” That sentence made the rounds very quickly and produced a heavy depression among the prisoners.

All the Germans and Poles who were not patients but employed in some fashion in the hospital as kitchen help, doctors, clergy, administrators, and so on, slept in small rooms on the top floor of the building. One day a one-handed German, who spoke Russian well and was employed as an interpreter, came to my bed and said, “I noticed that you play chess. Would you like to try a game with me?”

“Why not?” I replied.

“If you wish, we can go upstairs to the room where I sleep. It is quieter there and better for concentration.”

I would later sit for hours with this intelligent partner, playing many exciting games of chess—we were about equal in our ability—and engaging in numerous interesting conversations.

There were six beds in my chess partner’s room, but his roommates were seldom present. They got used to me, and in time I also became accustomed to the manner in which these unusual prisoners lived. Once, as I entered the room, a door was closed very quickly, but not before I had caught a glimpse of one of them fooling around with one of the Russian nurses.

Then there was the matter of how the upper-floor prisoners dressed. It was obvious that some who slept in this room at night went into the city by day to pick up supplies for the hospital. They went accompanied by their Russian girlfriends and were guarded, of course, by soldiers with submachine guns who probably received a portion of the bartered-away foodstuffs or their equivalent in rubles.

Thanks to their connections to the civilian population and their financial resources, a number of the top-floor prisoners had been able to order tailor-made uniforms and boots. They were of the finest materials but so exaggerated in design that they turned their wearers into comical caricatures. Most of these men had been simple soldiers; in this manner, they seemed to be promoting themselves to officers.

The jodhpur pants were widened at the thighs, bulging to twice their normal width. The epaulettes were also 50 percent too large, with an overabundance of gold or silver thread. Topping it all off were small caps, which were so narrow that they resembled tiny canoes, almost lost on top of the bald-shaven heads.

I decided that my chess partner must not be a member of this group, since he often made disparaging remarks about the others and was dressed in a fairly shabby lieutenant’s uniform.

One day, around the middle of September, I was involved in a good chess game with my partner when a chess figure fell on the floor. I crawled under one of the beds to pick it up, and there, pushed back near the wall, were three wooden suitcases fitted with metal bands, all the same size and color. That wouldn’t have been so unusual in itself, if I hadn’t noticed a bundle of German bank notes caught in the lid of one of them.

Strange,
I thought, but I said nothing.

We finished the game and I went back downstairs to my room, the money still in my thoughts. All Germans at the front had had German money with them. There had been few opportunities to spend it, but some had played cards and won or lost their pay that way. Others had made bets, and those who were able to go on leave had made good use of their winnings, I’m certain. Some, like myself, had sent most of their money home. After I was taken prisoner, we were all searched innumerable times, and everything was taken. First the Russians relieved us of our watches and any other valuables, then our boots. All that finally remained, being of no use to our captors, were family photos and German money. The prisoners were usually also permitted to keep their wedding rings, probably because it was too much trouble to get them off their fingers.

Still thinking of those mysterious trunks, I began to ask myself what became of the money after a prisoner was brought to the hospital. It was taken when we handed in our uniforms. A few of us still had a photo or two, but no one had any money.

The next time I went upstairs to play chess, I decided to get another look at those suitcases. My partner was still in the next room when I opened the box of chessmen so clumsily that they all fell on the floor and I had to crawl under the bed again to pick them up. I lifted the lid of the suitcase where the money was peeking out. Incredible! It was filled from top to bottom with German bills. I gathered the chess figures together, but before I crawled out from under the bed, I lifted the lid of the next suitcase. The contents were the same, plus a paper sack filled with gold dental fillings and wedding rings.

That afternoon I wasn’t able to win even one chess game. I kept thinking of the man, or men, who had collected all that money. What could they have in mind to do with it? I knew it was still legal tender in Germany.

Two weeks passed. On October 4, a group of Russian officers, including a few doctors, visited the hospital. They went from room to room examining all who had been assigned to work group
0
and dystrophy group
3
. Only non-Germans were examined: Romanians, Hungarians, Czechs, Poles, and Austrians. I wasn’t included, of course, even though I was skinnier and weaker than many who had been chosen and placed on the mysterious list. I was no longer a member of work group
0
because of my job with the dentist.

When the officers left, the speculations began. Those who were on the list would receive better rations, would be sent home, would be transferred to another hospital, et cetera.

Two days later, on October 6, the excitement intensified when two orderlies came across the courtyard from the warehouse, staggering under piles of old uniforms: jackets and pants, coats, caps, and shoes, as well as mess kits and bread bags. The official news began blazing through the hospital like a brushfire: “Tomorrow a westbound train is leaving with 1,000 non-Germans. The transport will be carrying only sick prisoners—280 from our hospital, everyone who is on the list!”

Now, wherever you looked you saw either ecstatic faces or very sad ones. The chosen ones, those with enough strength, tried on different pieces of clothing and shoes. They were delighted if they were able to put together a uniform that more or less fit. Some on the list were too weak for this game and had to be content with whatever the orderlies laid on their beds. I was convinced that a number of them would never survive the trip.

October 7, 1945. Everyone was dressed, shoes on feet, caps on heads, cloth bags with mess kit, cup, and spoon over each shoulder. But the order to leave never came. They waited all day long, but nothing happened. Evening brought the explanation; there was no locomotive.

October 8. The uniforms were laid once more on the beds, but no train arrived that day. Everyone put on his white hospital shirt and long white pants again. I played chess, went for vodka with the dentist, and waited while she enjoyed her weekly meeting with the warehouse supervisor. I also tried to squelch the rising and ignoble wave of gloating I felt because the locomotive hadn’t arrived.

*   *   *

October 9. No news. October 10 and 11. The same. On October 12, I went upstairs to play chess. When we were about to begin my partner was called downstairs, and he asked me to wait for him. I leafed through a book for a few minutes. Then, from the neighboring room, through the slightly open door, I heard voices. Two men were arguing. I began to pay attention when I heard the words “the German money.”

Although they suddenly lowered their voices, I could still make out most of the conversation.

“We’ll only report one of the three who have died.”

“But how?”

“Alfred and I will take our places in the other column. We’ll be counted twice.”

“And?”

“Well, since we are the thinnest, we will have the best chance of slipping in without being noticed. We’ll carry as much as possible of the money and gold with us to Germany. You’ll get your share later, of course.”

At this moment my chess partner returned. I lost the game, making a headache the excuse for my poor playing.

I passed a sleepless night, and the next day a statement was issued that those on the list would be brought to the train station the following morning.

As I went about my duties with the dentist that day, my mind was elsewhere. Without wanting to, I had uncovered a plot that didn’t please me one bit. Two of those upstairs prisoners, healthy, overfed, and with brand-new German uniforms and Russian girlfriends, were planning to smuggle themselves in place of two dead prisoners into the group of those leaving in the first transport. What’s more, they would arrive in Germany as rich men, having plundered their dead comrades of everything, down to the fillings in their teeth.

With each passing hour and the growing excitement of those about to leave the next day, I could feel the fury building inside me. Two of the 280 would not be sick men sent home by the Russians so that the death toll wouldn’t be so high when the International Red Cross arrived for their inspection. No, those two would be Germans with Polish accents, their pockets stuffed with money and gold.

At 5:00 p.m. I went to the head physician and spoke with her a few minutes. She became very excited and upset.

At 6:00 p.m. she watched from the second floor while the afternoon count was being taken in the courtyard. She saw how two men were counted twice each.

At 6:15 she went up to the top floor, accompanied by an officer and four guards, the latter carrying submachine guns with the safety catches released. Three suitcases full of German money and an unspecified quantity of gold were brought out of the room.

At 6:25 all the German administrative and kitchen personnel were shoved into trucks and driven away.

That evening there was nothing to eat in the hospital. I had lost my appetite anyway. The next morning, as the uniformed prisoners began going down to line up in the courtyard for their departure, the head doctor came into my room with an orderly. He was carrying parts of uniforms and shoes in his arms.

The doctor glanced around the room and pointed, seemingly indiscriminately, to a fellow sitting on a bed and said, “You there, and you (pointing at me), get dressed and get down to the courtyard right away. I’m adding your names to the list!” Without another word, she turned and left.

The other man was the only German among the first thousand to leave. Many months were to pass before any more Germans were released from the Russian camps. I doubt whether he ever found out why his fate so suddenly changed for the better.

PART 3

Marching west

HOMEWARD

With forty others I sat on clean, dry straw in a cattle car and waited. My heart hammered even more rapidly than usual in recent months. Outside an official was yelling something unintelligible. A whistle blew; the train gave a jerk. That was the only thing that counted, the moment the train actually began to move in the direction of home. No one could now come and say, “You’re on this train by mistake. Get down. You belong to work group number
1
.”

The train rumbled over the switches of the suburban station, and one of the soldiers began a song. All those pale creatures with the sunken eyes—old men, many of whom hadn’t yet reached their twenty-fifth birthdays—joined in. It seemed I heard the words “home,” “homeland,” “far away,” and “I’ll see you again” in every stanza. A few who were still standing began to hug each other and to dance around in circles until the train rattled over another switch, and everyone fell to the floor. One man kept repeating over and over, “I can’t believe it. It can’t be true.”

I rolled myself together like an embryo in one corner of the car, pulled the collar of my coat over my head, and attempted to digest in solitude the importance and implications of the situation. I would have preferred just falling asleep and waking up again in Vienna.

Before the train pulled out, one of the soldiers had figured out that we were about 1,000 kilometers away from home and should be able to make it easily in three days, because 330 kilometers a day wasn’t that much for even a slow train to accomplish. In spite of those calculations, I was reassured to catch sight of a car with a goulash cannon (field kitchen) and another, supposedly filled with food, at the end of the train next to the guards’ passenger coach.

On this trip the sliding doors were no longer locked. Depending on the time of day and the weather, we were able to leave a portion open and look out at the passing landscape. God knows there wasn’t much worth seeing, only burned-out villages and plains with already harvested fields, everything veiled in a late autumnal gray. Yet it all seemed wonderful to me, since I was already busy imagining how soon I would wander through nature, in sunshine or rain, as a free man. I would stop when and where I wished for as long as it pleased me. I would bend down to look at a flower, stretch out in a meadow, or stand on my head, and nobody in the whole world would be able to command me to do otherwise.