ONKEL DIETER UND TANTE GRETEL (Part 3)

The story Onkel Dieter shared about his experience as a ten year old in firebombed Dresden remained in their attorney neighbour’s mind for the next week or so. It was deeply distressing for the young man to have vicariously witnessed the terror visited upon that great city, as related by Dieter. He knew that Tante Gretel was still to tell of her experience in wartime Berlin as the Soviets swept through that city. The neighbours relived the trauma as vivid images occupied their thoughts. 

On the following Friday the invitation was extended to the two elderly neighbours to pay a reciprocal visit to his abode in the apartment block. The young chap would order in pizza. His refrigerator was typical of any twenty-something bachelor, well stocked with Germans’ favourite lubricant: beer. Cans would usually spill out onto the kitchen floor as the Lego-like puzzle of the brew began to unravel with each one removed. Mirth followed.

As the evening wore on with banter about the attorney’s settling-in in Cape Town. They chatted about the colleagues and friends he was steadily meeting. As the evening wore on, talk turned to Tante Gretel. She was a reluctant interlocutor, but the social situation inevitably loosened her tongue and she began to share her story. Her pain was deep-seated, it was clear. Her recollection of being a seven year old waif in the shattered city was etched in her memory.

“Berlin, April and May 1945. Two months I’d much rather forget,” said Gretel as she took a swig of beer. It was customary for her to gently sip – break through the froth and do little more than moisten her lips every time she raised the glass. This time it was different. A substantial swig was called for in anticipation of that which she was about to tell, although the deepest anguish she would keep to herself. The sheer terror of what the vanquished Germans in Berlin suffered, most survivors would never share.

“Berlin. The end of April and beginning of May 1945. A time far more bitter than this beer we are drinking this evening. Dark days.”

Another swig and then: “Mutti had taken me with her to an underground shelter near the Reichs Chancellery to escape the incessant bombardment and artillery fire. Ivan was approaching relentlessly and fear gripped every German, particularly women trapped in that wretched city. Ivan! The brutish Soviet troop. Vengeance was Ivan’s! To the rotten behaviour of his troops in Germany, Stalin turned a blind eye. He regarded the conquered nations of Eastern Europe, and particularly Germany, as fair game for his rampaging forces.”

“Some Russian officers tried in vain to restrain the behaviour of the troops that followed them. Marshalls Ivan Konev and Gregory Zhukov issued orders that would have, if they were obeyed, put a dampener on the outrageous antics of the rabble that swarmed into the capital city. However, the orders were honoured in their breach more than their observance.”

Another deep, long swig before she continued in a low tone. “Stalin brushed thuggish behaviour off as perpetrated on a people deserving of the terror to which we were subjected. He encouraged the worst excesses and the ultimate depravity. Murder and mayhem on an unprecedented scale followed. Rations were hard to come by and most Berliners teetered on the brink of starvation.” 

Mutti sought out hiding places that provided her and little Gretel shelter from the carnage of Russian rockets and Allied bombing from the skies. In the deep recesses of shattered structures pockmarked by gunfire, she sought out dank, dark basements. When darkness descended on the city at nightfall, Mutti would leave Gretel in the hiding spots and emerge to discreetly scrounge for morsels to eat and water to keep her and her little one hydrated.

During daylight hours German snipers hiding in buildings still standing or partially intact, picked off the odd Soviet soldier. Retribution was inevitably swift as Katyusha Rockets levelled buildings in an instant from which sniper fire had been directed. There was no respite from the overwhelming might of the Soviet advance and Gretel and Mutti looked forward to the moment the guns would fall silent. Each time Soviet soldiers in the vanguard encountered civilians whom they treated reasonably, they warned of the second wave behind them that was barbarous to the nth degree. And they told the truth. Those that followed had been at the front for years, had become acquainted with death, and were ready to unleash on any they came across, their basest instincts. Little distinction was drawn between civilians and soldiers in those dying days of the War.

There was no escape from the beleaguered city!

“Mutti desperately attempted to keep out of sight. She smeared ash and mud on her face. Ragged clothes were torn to make them more unattractive, lest ‘Ivan’ live up to the vile reputation that had preceded him. Mutti did her best to keep us safe, bless her soul. We only survived because she had become a master at stealth. In Berlin it was said that no woman aged between eight and eighty was safe from the Russians. We survived by remaining out of sight. From our hiding places, though, we could see and hear the planes overhead, the rockets demolishing buildings. The presence of marauding platoons of Soviet troops struck fear in all of us.”

It speaks to the resilience of “Mutti” that she survived. It is testimony to the strength of character of Tante Gretel that she could relate the experience so many years later. Mutti never spoke of it again until the day she died in East Germany.

The day in May 1945 when the guns fell silent brought little relief for Germans trapped in the Russian zone. Life in the other occupation zones was hard, too. Rations doled out by the British and Americans were meagre – far less than troop rations. However, the Soviet sector was poised to suffer under the heel of a Marxist economic and political system for years to come. The return to a semblance of normality in the Western occupation zones proceeded throughout the ‘50s and ’60s, whereas the East Germans endured decades under the heel of the USSR, even after the German Democratic Republic was established in October 1949. The Soviet system itself impeded progress.

Tante Gretel was more forthcoming with what she was willing to speak about when discussion turned to “life in East Germany (GDR)” and the subsequent struggle to escape to the Federal Republic of West Germany. 

[Next week the story continues with the account of Dieter and Gretel growing up in East Germany under the heel of the USSR during the Cold War]

©Paul M Haupt

Photo credit: Military History Now (Katyusha Rockets)