All those symptoms indicated the end to be imminent. It was a collapse that was taking place around and within us. Had we deserved that fate? Should they leave us there to kick the bucket like miserable dogs? Should they leave us to the tender mercies of the Bolsheviks? Bitterness and disappointment came over me, and doubtless also over my comrades. There was silence in the room. Nobody spoke. Everyone, lying there so wretchedly on the floor, was alone at a turning point in his life.
On 27 March 1945, the Tuesday before Easter, a bright spring morning dawned. Neither doctor nor medic appeared. The enemy artillery fire had become more and more intense. A direct hit on the wall of the building sent window-frames and panes flying crackling into the room. Then rifle fire could be heard.
Thus it was finally clear that no one else was to get out. We would be consigned to an uncertain fate. But why, I thought, should they not leave me alone there? Who was I, to be able to claim that the course of my life should be only smooth and good? I realised that I had considered myself to be too important. I realised that I had been just a tiny interchangeable part in the massive German war machinery. But by then it was obviously grinding to a halt. I reached once again for the pistol. I took hold of it, but put it down again. The thought of suicide, was at first as strong and serious as it had been that time in Powielin. But by then it was done with.
Suddenly I knew that an important part of my life was certainly coming to an end, with us losing the war. However, life even if perhaps under completely different circumstances, would go on. It would still be worth continuing to live, but not to give in to oneself. A wonderful clarity came over me. Praying, I experienced the certainty that God would not leave me in the lurch, and that he would be with us, with me. I thought long and hard about my Mother. Lost in all those thoughts I detached myself more and more, finally completely, from the situation.
Then another medic appeared. He had orders to collect up pistols and medals. He announced that the hospital had been surrendered to the Russians. He said that two doctors and ten medics had remained behind with 800 severely wounded men. ‘The white flag’, he said, ‘had already been raised’.
Another hour passed. Franz Mahnart stood at the window and reported back on the situation. He saw our infantry retreating and the Russians moving closer and closer. Meanwhile, again and again, there were moments of anxious quiet. Finally voices could be heard, announcing an approach from room to room. Andreyev shouted out several times. They were the same dull, throaty sounds that I had heard for the first time three years before in the woods at Upolosy. The voices had exactly the same effect on me as they had then. Both wings of the door were opened as the first Russian entered. His machine-pistol at the ready, he stood at the doors and looked around. Meanwhile, outside, next to the house, German shells were still falling.
PART IV
CAPTIVITY, THEN FREEDOM
12
April 1945–April 1946: Captivity and recovery from wounds
In Holy Week of 1945 the destruction of the old German town of Danzig was completed. It was the eve of that dreadful night, the 27 March. On that fearful night, the city of Danzig and all the Vistula area were in flames. An eyewitness report stated: ‘From as far away as Hela, a wall of flames and smoke, 3000 to 4000 metres high, could be seen over the city’. It had been caused by air-raids with high explosive and incendiary bombs. The book Unvergänglicher Schmerz, or ‘Endless Agony’ is a record of the history of Danzig’s fateful year of 1945, by Peter Poralla. The section Das Inferno (p. 378) reads as follows:
The enormous development of heat in burning Danzig prevented German units becoming established in the town. So it was only at the entrance to Danzig, between the Schichau Wharf, the Olivaer Tor, taking in the Hagelsberg and the Bischofsberg, that a weak defensive line was constructed. Our soldiers were fighting there doggedly against the superior might of the enemy. There was always the certainty that every minute’s delay to the Soviet advance meant that some women and girls were saved from being raped. There was the possibility too that children and old people could flee. In actual fact they still succeeded in getting thousands every day across the bay to Hela and from there across the Baltic into the safer West. There are daily records showing the movement of 46,000 persons.
On the evening of 27 March the Russians succeeded in breaking through the Schicherowgasse to the Hansaplatz, and from there to the main railway station. Our soldiers were at the end of their strength. They were short of ammunition and weapons. There were no more replacements for the dead and wounded. The German Army command therefore decided to retreat to the Mottlau, and finally across the Vistula towards Heubude and Plenendorf. Danzig was occupied by the Red Army.
On Good Friday, 30 March 1945, Danzig’s fate was sealed. For Danzig’s population, and the many refugees from East Prussia and Pomerania, there began a via dolorosa of indescribable horror. The Soviets, and a little later the Poles, took their revenge on the innocents, on children, on women, on old people. That was done with unimaginable atrocity and brute force. What the people in Danzig at that time had to undergo, nobody can begin to imagine. Thousands, oppressed and beaten, committed suicide. Many women and children begged and pleaded, ‘Shoot me!’ Entire families were wiped out, shot or murdered, because they wanted to protect children from being raped, or were not quick enough to hand over their jewellery. Robbery, plunder and rape were committed day after day by the Soviets, and by the Poles who turned up later. They suffered death through hunger and diseases for weeks and months on end. That was the fate of the people who did not succeed in fleeing across the sea.
One in every four inhabitants of Danzig lost their lives as a result of war and from outrages committed by the Soviets and the Poles. They were starved to death during the Polish occupation. They died in forced labour camps. They died because they were not given proper help when they fell ill. At least as high must be the number of victims among the refugees from East Prussia and Pomerania who remained in Danzig.
That the city of Danzig was an ocean of fire was also described in the Divisional history. Hauptmann Franz Hrabowsky described it there and added to his description of the misery of the refugees: ‘In addition the women, concerned for the lives of their children, begged the soldiers many times to give up the fight. So it happened that in many places the officers, even using all their authority, did not always succeed in getting their people back out of the cellars. That was supplemented by an eyewitness account in Poralla, according to which in the Halbe Allee, and also in the Grosse Allee, deserters are said to have been hanged in rows.’