Chapter 52
The majority of prisoners were quickly separated and transferred to other POW camps. The huts on the perimeter were out of bounds, and the garden, too, and a new influx of guards and dogs patrolled the barbed wire with rigorous enthusiasm.
The remaining hundred or so of us prisoners were moved to accommodation in the centre of the camp, well away from the fence. It was the worst outcome for me, because I had no more opportunity to see Cora.
I kept hold of the sensation of her palm on my cheek, my mouth on her hair. I could see her in my mind’s eye but more importantly I felt the essence of her, her smell, her smile, her warmth. I longed for her painfully and hopelessly.
We received the news with silence. It was over.
We gave up the dream that the mighty power of the Third Reich would make the world a better place.
A new German Empire hadn’t proved to be a good thing after all and after months of trying to work out the direction of the war, the guesswork was over.
Through the news we learned of the devastating destruction of German cities and the awful death toll.
Hitler, our glorious leader, had made a mess of it. He’d bailed out like a coward and had willingly abandoned us to the disaster he’d created, leaving us like orphans to fend for ourselves.
A month or so later, we were invited to listen to a lecture on British democracy, and then, by way of a bribe, we were told that this would be followed by a documentary.
‘Be cautious,’ Kurt said to me. ‘They’re brainwashing us, of course.’
But when each day was the same as the last and the same as the next, any deviation from the norm was very welcome.
Not only that, although it was described as an invitation, attendance was not optional.
We filed into the cinema and I sat on an uncomfortably hard chair, arms folded, telling myself to try to be open-minded about it.
I listened to the speaker, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to work out the truth until I returned home and found it out for myself but I was beginning to wonder if the truth was impossible to find.
They are brainwashing us, I reminded myself.
I sat forward intently, my arms resting on my knees, listening to what the British officer had to say about democracy and the parliamentary system.
I wasn’t finding it easy. It was surely easier for citizens to be told what to think and do, because if they were left to their own opinions, what if they made the wrong choice?
But I found it interesting that the lecturer emphasised the importance of open discussion. He also pointed out the difference between patriotic Germans and Nazis.
I had always believed they were one and the same, but I began thinking of the brutality of the SS and their arrogance, their pride, their use of violence as the mood took them.
Of course, I reasoned, trying to be fair about it, the Nazis wouldn’t have to be brutal if people just behaved themselves, so it was a reasonable response, wasn’t it? I wondered if my own beating had been a reasonable response.
The British officer was concluding his talk. ‘I have faith in our ability to start afresh after this, to rebuild, and to begin to understand each other’s feelings a little better,’ he said. ‘Or at least,’ he added with a faint smile, ‘head in that general direction.’
I thought about the officer’s lecture, wondering gloomily if there was room in my own head for this different point of view.
Putting my fingers to my lips to whistle so as to add to the noise, my opinions were confused and drifting, and then the lights were dimmed and a cine camera flickered into life onto the screen in front of them, blotches of black and white.
A film!
We cheered heartily at this new piece of entertainment.
For a moment, seeing the barbed wire, I thought it was a film of Island Farm Camp. ‘We’re going to be famous,’ I said to Kurt, nudging him, and he joined in with the bout of foot stamping which thundered through the room.
But when we saw the internees of the death camp we fell silent. The screen was filled with shuffling skeletons with dull eyes, too near to death for hope. Hairless men and women, suffering, and mountains of naked bodies in the background.
My chest tightened. I couldn’t breathe.
It was hard to watch, and because it was hard to watch I didn’t want to believe it. I started doubting it as I’d doubted so much in the last few weeks. And then I wanted it to stop.
On the flickering film we watched the SS forcing concentration camp victims to dig their own grave. Then bang, bang, bang, pistols firing, they toppled into it one by one.
‘It’s a lie, isn’t it,’ I asked Kurt, flinching in horror. ‘I don’t believe it for one moment.’
Kurt didn’t take his eyes off the screen and he didn’t turn his head. ‘Don’t you?’ he asked tiredly.
Did I?
If it were true it didn’t bear thinking about and yet I desperately wanted to understand the truth of it. I thought of my church at home, and the one single teaching that I remembered from that time when I was a boy and the world still seemed reliable and regular: God Is Love.
It had been wonderful to know that. I’d believed it with all my heart, which was easy because I was loved. I lived comfortably with my mother, father, little sister and God, safe and loving in our midst.
But on the screen was a relentless world of nightmare brutality, bodies being thrown naked, children, adults, babies piled up in a heap in a tangle of limbs and the impassive Nazi guards watching it unmoved. ‘Nobody is seeing the horror,’ I said to Kurt desperately, tugging his arm.
By the time the film rattled to an end the jeers had stopped and the room was filled with a heavy silence, broken by Kurt.
‘You’re wrong about that. The whole world is seeing it, Frank,’ he said.
For the first time since my imprisonment, I felt the urge to go and talk to the German military padre, to see what he thought.
I liked the little chapel that they’d set up, with its homemade wooden altar, hand-drawn pictures of saints and the good-looking Virgin Mary with her fair hair rolled back from her face in a modern style that I found very relatable.
It had been turned into an SS gym at one point, and now it was a chapel again.
The candles flickered their gentle glow over the padre who was praying on his knees when I got there.
I shut my eyes and tried to pray myself, looking deep into the bleakness of my thoughts. I wondered if I’d lost my faith, not so much in God as in man.
I waited patiently while the padre finished his prayer.
The priest straightened up very carefully, as if he was in pain, and turned to me with a strained smile. He looked tired. ‘How can I help you?’
I could see white hairs threaded through the priest’s dark hair. ‘I’m not sure,’ I said uncertainly. ‘I don’t know what to think any more. I just came here to talk things over with you, really. It seems the right place.’
The desperate look in the padre’s eyes made me feel as if both of us were sliding slowly down a steep hill with nothing to stop us except the bottom of a crevasse. ‘I was hoping you would tell me something reassuring.’
‘I’ll do my best. What is it you want to be reassured about?’
I told him about the lecture on free discussion and tolerant thinking, and about the film they’d shown us of the death and the suffering. ‘I want to be able to recognise the truth when I see it.’
‘They say the first casualty of war is truth,’ the padre said with a broken smile.
I nodded with nervous impatience. ‘Yes, but that’s not much help to me, is it?’ I didn’t know if I was brave or crazy for believing in democracy. How could you tell? ‘Is tolerant thinking the answer?’
The padre looked down at his hands, and he closed his eyes. He was silent for some moments. Then he said, ‘Look where the alternative has got us.’
It was a depressing thought. I looked at the Virgin Mary, who in the candlelight seemed to be suffering with us. ‘Padre – will I ever see my family again?’
‘I’m not a fortune teller. That way of thinking didn’t work out very well for Hitler, did it,’ he replied ruefully. ‘But one day you will have a family of your own, no doubt. A wife, children, and you will find in them the qualities you thought were lost.’
It wasn’t the answer I wanted and I covered my face with my hands for a moment. My thoughts flickered on Cora, and her father’s worn suit. I looked up. ‘But in the meantime – will it help me to pray about it, do you think?’ I asked hopefully.
The padre gave an unexpected laugh. ‘It always helps!’ he said.
Some time later, I was instructed to go and see Major Topham.
I saluted and waited patiently for my new orders.
The commander flicked through forms, shuffled his papers and finally looked up at me.
‘You’re probably wondering why we are keeping you here.
We are shortly to have an influx of generals staying while awaiting war trials in Nuremberg.
We need you and men like you, decent and fair men, to ensure their stay here is as comfortable as possible in the circumstances.
’ Major Topham gave a faint smile. ‘You know what the top brass is like – helpless as children. They’re used to being looked after.
In the meantime you can enrol on an English course, if that is something that would interest you?
It’s tough on you still being kept here now that the war is over, but as soon as the order comes for you to be repatriated, we will see you get home safely, you have my word. ’
‘Jawohl,’ I said smartly, wondering whether home still existed. ‘Thank you, sir.’
With the arrival of the German generals, Island Farm Camp now became Special Camp X1.
I was very busy during that time. My job was to make sure that the generals understood the charges against them, and in the meantime to see to it that they were kept in relative comfort, considering the circumstances.
They trusted and respected me, and gave me their military medals for safekeeping, and in return I respected them.
I particularly liked General von Rundstedt and found him good company, especially when he was in a cheery mood.
On occasion, he would do a very amusing imitation of Hitler at his most frantic and furious.
And he shared our frustration at being kept there despite the war being over.
A new influx of prisoners was brought in from other camps to repair the bomb damage and rebuild the infrastructure in the town.
Shortly after they arrived, there was a knock at the door of the office.
The messenger told me apologetically that there was a man here in the camp asking to see me personally. No one else would do.
‘All right. Send him in,’ I replied.
‘I’d heard you were here,’ a familiar voice said. To my utter astonishment it was my dear father, stooped and round-shouldered, greeting me with his warm and gentle smile.
We caught up over cups of Camp coffee. Six years had passed since we’d last seen each other.
The news from home was as grim as I had expected.
Although I had guessed that there could only be one reason for my mother not to reply to my letters, I’d always hoped that she and my sister were alive.
But here was my father sitting in front of me, solid and comforting, and we talked about putting our lives together again, about rebuilding for the future as best we could.
Now that I knew I had no home to go back to, I told my father about the girl with green hair.
‘Don’t get too hopeful,’ my father warned me sympathetically, polishing his glasses as if in the hope of seeing the situation more clearly. ‘I don’t expect you’ll have a very warm welcome, you know.’
However, at Christmas, the local people handed in gifts for us, small things which meant a great deal to us at the time. And in return we gave them wooden toys that we’d made for the children in the town. Another rule broken, for the sake of good.
And I could see that was how the healing of nations would start; through kindness and a person-to-person peace.