The Willow Wren by Philipp Schott (free ebook reader for iphone txt) 📕

pictures of the atrocities committed against men, women and especially children . . .

Here Kohl paused and made a point of looking around at us, catching as many eyes as he could.

. . . by the bestial Bolshevist soldateska. They are too terrible to publish. The cultured world should cry out with anger and horror, if not about the misery that threatens us, at least about the misery that threatens them.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are racing across the east and southeast of our continent.

And on it went in increasingly gruesome detail. I think Kohl read from the speech for close to an hour. Hitler had more flair with the language, but Göbbels knew how to implant fear into your brain and how to encourage it to burrow in deeply.

“Why did Kohl have to read that to us? I will have trouble sleeping tonight,” I said to Jolf after. We had heard many speeches before on the radio, or extracts quoted by Kohl or Tischendorf, but this was the first time we had been assembled to have an entire one read out to us like that.

“I think it’s obvious, isn’t it? The Russians are probably closer to overrunning this area than the Americans and he wants to inspire us to fight them to the death rather than accept occupation.”

“Or inspire us to flee.”

“Flee where? Will the Americans really be that much better? And how far away are they?”

This bothered me because Jolf was usually more positive. It was a Monday, so it was six whole days until the partial and temporary solace of Colditz. I found a quiet corner where I would not be observed, and I wept.

The bad news just kept coming. The first official report from the propaganda ministry was that 200,000 people had died in Dresden during two nights of intensive British and American incendiary bombings in mid-February. Hellfire had melted steel supports in buildings, rendered cars into amorphous blobs and quite literally vaporized people. Dresden was less than a hundred kilometres directly east of us. Children were already arriving in the camp from there, brought by the truckload in rattling old farm trucks. Days later some came on foot, having been rejected by other over-full camps. All were pale and thin and quiet. We were pale and thin and quiet, but these children were more so.

“How can that be? 200,000? Were there even that many people left in Dresden?” I asked Jolf as we stood in the courtyard stamping our feet and rubbing our hands against the cold, watching another group of bomb refugees being sorted and processed.

“Factor of ten, Ludwig. It’s a good rule of thumb. Whenever the Party says something where it suits their purposes to exaggerate, divide by ten. This is an example because it shows the enemy to be cruel and barbaric. Or enemy losses in a battle because it shows us to be strong and winning. So probably 20,000 killed.”

“But why? Why kill so many people who are not even soldiers? Have they not won the war already?” I asked. This was still dangerous talk, but we were by ourselves and Jolf was safe.

“I don’t know. War is crazy. The Führer calls them gangsters, but I wonder what they call us. I’m sure our people have done the same or worse.” Oddly, given the way Felix and Hauptmann Kohl behaved, I had not carefully considered this before. It could have been a shocking statement, but even at the age of eleven I had already lost my capacity to be shocked.

(An aside: about three weeks before, on January 27, Soviet forces entered the Auschwitz extermination camp and liberated the 7,000 survivors. Eventually it was determined that 1.1 million had been murdered in that one camp alone. So yes, our people did worse. Far worse. An entirely different category of worse. I would learn this soon enough.)

“I suppose so, maybe. I just hope it all stops soon.”

“It will. Two weeks ago, Zhukov’s divisions reached the Oder, just a hop and a skip east of Berlin. They stopped there, but probably just to strengthen their flanks and supply lines. And last week the Canadians took Kleve on the Rhine in the west.”

I just nodded and did not say anything in response. I wondered where the front was in relation to where Theodor had been sent. I caught the eye of a newly arrived young boy. He looked like a ghost. His skin was white and his eyes dull. I smiled at him, but he did not smile back.

“But, Ludwig, it will get worse before it gets better.” Jolf inclined his head slightly in Hauptmann Kohl’s direction. He did not have to explain. Kohl had just finished screaming at a group of refugees to line up properly for dormitory assignments and now he was screaming at a group of our boys to stop staring at the refugees and get busy digging more foxholes. It was one of those grey winter days that are so common in Germany. The old snow on the ground was grey. The sky was grey. All the new arrivals were shades of grey and Kohl’s uniform was grey. In my memory of that day the very air was grey. But Kohl’s bald screaming head was red. It was like one of those black-and-white photographs where one object, like a balloon or a rose, is picked out in red as an artistic effect. This is a vivid memory.

One Sunday in late February was the second last time Papa visited Colditz and I remember it because it was the last time he spoke to me directly.

It was another relentlessly grey February day, distinguished only by a noticeable increase in traffic on the Schönbach to Colditz road. When I write “traffic,” I do not mean cars and trucks. There were some, but very few. It was mostly people on foot or with small wagons pulled by donkeys or horses. These wagons were piled high with furniture