Read Do the Birds Still Sing in Hell? Online
Authors: Horace Greasley
Horace took her hand again and started to walk. He had the idea of a book firmly in his head; the images and memories were so clear. The only thing that was missing was the ending.
Rauchbach understood. It was a surreal meeting, a prisoner, the owner of a German prisoner of war camp and his daughter, who’d been having a three-year sexual affair with that same prisoner. Only once did Rauchbach ask Horace to reconsider. The man and ultimately his daughter would come to respect the decision.
Horace made the long journey back to the camp. The landscape seemed to dissolve out of the dawn. He watched his boots and the road in front of him, not even bothering to hide in the forest any more. Each step placed a greater distance between him and Rose, between him and a normal family Christmas dinner. Horace and normality. With each footfall that crunched on the thin film of snow, he regretted the decision to return to captivity.
E
ach night Ivan went to bed with the images of Auschwitz as fresh in his head as if it were yesterday. The job of liberating each camp was supposed to have been an honour.
General-leytenant Karpov, in charge of the 322nd Rifle Division, had stood proudly, four miles from the camp in Silesia. He had warned his troops of the atrocities committed in the camp but said they would cope and that the prisoners would welcome them like heroes. Ivan watched the faces of his comrades. They were smiling, some looked proud, others relieved that this damn war was ending. Was he the only one not smiling? Even General-leytenant Karpov, a man who never smiled, had what could loosely be described as a slight grin on his face.
Sergei wasn’t smiling. Sergei was in pain. The shrapnel wound in his leg was beyond repair and the medical men had all but given up. Sergei would not be liberating the next camp at Freiwaldau; he would be on a wagon heading for the hospital in Prague. Ivan wiped at the sweat on Sergei’s brow. He was concerned: it was freezing cold and Sergei shouldn’t be sweating.
Sergei had been his close comrade right through the war and had held him like a son when they’d encountered the
horrors of Auschwitz and he’d broken down and cried like a small boy. It had all seemed so innocuous as they’d walked through the gates. A sign hung above the camp that read
Arbeit Macht Frei
– work makes (one) free.
The SS had massacred most of the prisoners before the Red Army had come into the camp, and 20,000 more had been sent on a death march. The 7,500 prisoners left were the most pathetic, wretched souls Ivan had ever seen, their sunken, shallow eyes devoid of any hope. They had simply been left behind to die. The SS thought it unnecessary to waste a bullet on them. Some were so weak they were unable to speak. The Red Army would find upwards of a million items of clothing, evidence of the scale of the Nazi massacre in Auschwitz alone. Most victims were killed in the gas chambers but many were also killed by systematic starvation, lack of disease control, forced labour, and individual executions for little or no reason. A Jewish prisoner told of one SS officer who executed two or three prisoners each day as target practice from an office high above the camp.
The Russians would also find documents buried in the grounds, detailing the mass extermination of Jews, Poles and Romany gypsies. Worse still, the papers would name and shame the so-called doctors in the camp. The Nazi doctors at Auschwitz had performed a wide variety of experiments on the helpless, defenceless prisoners.
General-leytenant Karpov, a man fluent in several languages, would read the letters to his disbelieving troops. He would tell them how SS doctors tested the efficiency of X-rays as a sterilisation device by administering large doses to the female prisoners. Dr Carl Clauberg was accused of injecting chemicals into women’s uteruses in an effort to glue them shut. They used prisoners routinely as guinea pigs for testing new drugs.
The worst was yet to come. An emaciated Pole, in a voice
barely above a whisper, told Karpov the story of a doctor called Mengele, the ‘angel of death’. Karpov translated his account word by word. Mengele was particularly interested in research on identical twins. He induced diseases in one twin and killed the other when the first died. He was simply curious to examine the different autopsies. He took a special interest in dwarves and the mentally handicapped. The Pole told how he had worked in Mengele’s office and that his paperwork detailed how he injected the prisoners with gangrene simply to study the effects. It was at this point that Karpov announced there would be no quarter given to any German they found, military or otherwise, and they were to be beaten then shot on the spot. He finished by telling his comrades that shooting an SS stormtrooper would be too good for them. The men in black would be spared the bullet: much worse lay in store for them.
Sergei spoke. ‘My leg, Ivan.’ He lifted the dirty material, exposing a gaping wound. ‘It stinks like the fucking arsehole of a dog.’
Ivan gagged as the aroma hit the back of his throat. ‘It isn’t too bad, Sergei,’ he lied. ‘I have smelled worse, and tomorrow you will be in a hospital bed in Prague with a pretty Czech nurse washing your cock.’
Sergei smiled. ‘I hope so, comrade… I hope so.’
Ivan recalled how Sergei had suffered his injury. The sight of children’s clothing had brought Ivan to tears. As they’d searched the camp for survivors, the skeletons and mass graves were discovered. The small bones of the boys and girls had rendered him hopeless. Sergei had approached General-leytenant Karpov and was given permission to take him out of the camp. Ivan blamed himself when their convoy was attacked by long-range German artillery and Sergei had been injured. It was a guilt he would carry with him for the rest of his life.
T
he news filtering over the airwaves was welcomed by the prisoners, as it told of the liberation of the extermination and concentration camps at Auschwitz and Plaszow and many POW camps such as Sagan and Gross Tychow. The men in Freiwaldau wondered when their turn would come.
Horace listened carefully as the news hinted at the revenge being carried out by Russian soldiers. It seemed nobody was spared and a mass exodus of German civilians was on the run from the bitter Red Army. Incredible as it seemed, they were running to the Americans.
On 20 March 1945 Horace met Rose. Their after-war plans were not discussed; New Zealand and sheep farms and babies were not on the agenda. Horace was persuading Rose to run for her life. He had been trying to make her see sense for weeks. This evening was different. Horace was adamant he wouldn’t break out of the camp again. He knew she would not join the exodus as long as he continued to meet her. This was their last meeting and Rose knew it.
‘I will go,’ she announced, just a few minutes into their meeting. ‘I will run to the Americans, but only if you come with me.’
‘No, Rose, no!’ he cried. ‘It’s too dangerous. The place is teeming with German soldiers on the run making their way back to Berlin, Hamburg and Dusseldorf. If we are caught together we’ll be shot on the spot. You must take your chance alone. You can…’
She was crying again as she interrupted. ‘But we can help each other, we can…’
‘No, Rose. As soon as a German hears me speak he’ll know I’m an escapee and he’ll think nothing of putting a bullet into me. Is that what you want?’
It was a cruel but necessary blow, anything that would make her see sense. Horace knew that if they were caught together it would mean a bullet for the escapee and one for the collaborator – after the Germans had had their fun with her. He wanted so much to take his chance with her, felt sure between them they’d probably make it. But probably wasn’t good enough. On their own they’d stand a better chance.
He held her shoulders, tried to make eye contact. ‘Look at me, Rose. I won’t meet you again, do you hear? You must go to the Americans. Please… tell me you’ll go the Americans.’
It was barely a nod – hard to distinguish between the trembling and the sobbing – nevertheless it was a slight nod of the head.
Horace lifted her forcibly from the ground as he wrapped his arms tightly around her. He was so relieved. They kissed and hugged and sobbed as the two of them broke down and the tears fell to the forest floor. The decision had been made. There was no going back.
‘It’s for the best,’ he explained as he handed her a note with his address in Ibstock. ‘As soon as you can you must write and tell me where you are.’
‘We can be together, Jim?’
‘Yes, of course we can. The war will be over in weeks and I’ll come for you.’
‘But you do not know where I will be.’
‘You’ll tell me.’
‘Yes, I will tell you where I am.’
Rose hesitated. ‘You will come, Jim, won’t you?’
Horace leaned forward and kissed her gently on the forehead. ‘I will come for you, my English Rose. Wherever you are I will come, even if I have to walk there barefoot over broken glass.’
‘My mother and father are staying in Silesia to take their chances with the Russians.’
‘No… no! Surely not, Rose?’
‘They are too long in the tooth. My mother was born in the village, my grandmother is nearly 70 and barely able to walk, she lives only three doors away.’
‘But your father, he was in charge of…’
‘The camp, yes I know. It is hoped the Russians do not find out. He will tell them we are Silesians, not Germans. They will survive.’
Horace and Rose sat and talked for most of the night, and made love as the dawn tugged at the top of the forest trees. His orgasm seemed to last for an eternity. Rose noticed too as she felt his ejaculation explode inside her again and again.
‘Where did all that come from?’ she asked with a smile. Horace grinned and said it was down to the extra rations.
They watched the sun come up. Horace was in no hurry to get back to the camp. The security had been scaled down dramatically; it was as if the Germans were no longer concerned whether men escaped or not. The night patrols had become sporadic to say the least and the roll calls that had been part of daily life for nearly five years had stopped altogether.
Rose looked at her watch. ‘It’s nearly 7.30. You must be going.’
She spoke gently in German. Horace didn’t stop her.
‘Ich moechte mein ganzes Leben mit dir verbringen, so gerne mit dir alt werden.’
Horace picked up the words, understood the meaning. She wanted to spend her whole life with him, wanted them to grow old together and in her fragile, desperate state had drifted into the language she’d known from childhood, the language the Germans had forced her ancestors to speak.
Horace nodded silently, aware of the tears forming in his eyes. He had known this moment would come eventually but it didn’t make it any easier. What a crazy turn of events. The war was won and the Allies victorious, he would be a free man any day and yet the woman he loved, the woman who had achieved so much, the woman who had made the difference, was running in the opposite direction in fear of her life.
March 1945
The Soviet army marches towards Berlin.
Patton’s troops capture Mainz in Germany.
US and British forces cross the Rhine at Oppenheim.
Montgomery’s troops cross the Rhine at Wesel
The Red Army enters Austria.
The Allies capture Frankfurt.
It is clear the German Army is under attack from all sides; the soldiers are in general retreat.
April 1945
Ohrdruf death camp is liberated by the Allies.
Heavy bombing at Kiel by the RAF destroys the last two major German warships.
Bergen-Belsen is liberated by the British Army. One of the first on the scene is the BBC reporter Richard Dimbleby. He wrote:
Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which … The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them … Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live … A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British sentry to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny mite into his arms, then ran off, crying terribly. He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days.
This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life.
The Soviet Army reaches the suburbs of Berlin.
Still the prisoners of war at Freiwaldau wait for their liberation.
Hitler swears an oath to stay in Berlin and head up the defence of the city.
Himmler, ignoring the orders of Hitler, makes a secret surrender offer to the Allies.
The 1st Belorussian front and the 1st Ukrainian front of the Russian Red Army encircle Berlin.
30 April 1945
Hitler and his wife of 24 hours, Eva Braun, commit suicide.
Goebbels and his wife kill their six children then take poison in the same bunker.
T
he German guards roused the prisoners just after three in the morning. They were ordered to prepare to evacuate the camp. Thirty minutes later they had left the compound and were walking up the road alongside the forest that Horace was so familiar with. They passed the spot where he had stood with Rose on Christmas morning. He looked for the robin but it was nowhere to be seen.
The men were unusually subdued; they were in unknown territory as the march snaked silently along the twisting road. Horace had noticed some of the guards had gone; they were not with them on the march. The officers had disappeared and the sergeants too, and the camp commandant was nowhere to be seen either. He wondered what it all meant. The longer they marched the more reassured he felt that they were walking to freedom. If the guards had wanted to shoot them they would have taken them into the forest beside the camp and massacred them there. There was simply no reason to march them mile after mile for no reason.