In Deutsch-Eylau I also saw again the medic who had shamelessly bitten into the full block of chocolate in front of all the hungry men in our room. I refrained from speaking to him. Elsewhere on the meadow a soldiers’ choir was singing a song which at that time belonged to the firm repertoire of German Gesangvereine: Wenn ich den Wanderer frage, wo gehst du hin? Nach Hause, nach Hause, spricht er mit frohem Sinn. (‘If I ask the wanderer, where are you going? I’m going home, home, he says cheerfully’). Here at least the German spirit, which had evidently remained intact, was still alive and kicking.
We stayed a week in the area of the border that had just been drawn in Potsdam between Russia and Poland. There would not be a journey into the unknown lasting for weeks, as many men had feared. In Insterburg we had already reached our destination. I recall marching past the huge undamaged Martin Luther Church. Then the column moved along the road over a valley bottom lined with poplars that stretched for a few kilometres. Our destination was the Georgenburg camp, an old estate. In previous decades it had been home to a stud farm. Georgenburg was the home of the Barrings and was known to the educated German middle-class from the novel of the same name. It was only after I returned home that I read Die Barrings and its sequel Der Enkel by William von Simpson. But even in 1945, without knowing the novel, I could imagine clearly enough how things had been before, and the defeat that had taken place. We marched along the drive and through a gate on which there was the date 1268 in old figures.
There in Georgenburg was Main Camp 445. Later it was called 7.445. It was the headquarters of the prisoner of war camps in the Russian-occupied part of East Prussia. From there, camps were established in Königsberg, in Tilsit, and in other locations in East Prussia. At that time there was still the infectious diseases hospital in Insterburg that was later closed down. I cannot recall many facts from our short first stay there in Georgenburg in the summer of 1945. The main thing I recall is the soup made out of turnip scraps. They constituted the main part of our food. The turnip scraps had been used as fodder for horses on the stud farm, and I cannot believe that this was unknown to the Russians.
Then I recall that many officers, particularly staff officers, were there. Amongst them, was an Oberst Remer, the elder brother of Major Remer. After 20 July 1944 Remer, on Goebbels’s orders, had occupied the Bendlerstrasse with the Berlin guard battalion. He had crushed the rebellion, and for that had been personally promoted by Hitler to Generalmajor. By contrast to that Remer, who was said to have been something of a simple unit officer, our Remer was a real man of the world with the best address and international experience. He had himself been military attaché in Spain or had been attached to the military attaché. He could speak several languages. As once many Russian noblemen and Tsarist officers had done, after the First World War, he had hoped to be able to see out the rest of his life as a hotel porter. I also recall the appearance of a quartet of men who sank the famous French hit song Parlez-moi d’amour to great applause. ‘Tell me of happiness’ was the first line of the song in German. That much I understood.
But I also recall some political speeches made by officers. They were attempts to come to terms with the new situation. They were completely apolitical men. Their world, their only world, had collapsed. Finally, I can still remember that there in the Georgenburg camp all insignia of rank had to be taken off and all heads had to be shaved. We officers found that to be an additional humiliation. It was the intention that its main purpose was a hygienic measure to prevent epidemics. In the Red Army shaven heads were the regulation, even if not for officers. Most of the prisoners in any case were suffering from diarrhoea mixed with blood, like dysentery, for which there was no kind of help.
Among the most significant industrial plants in East Prussia, where there was little industry, were the pulp factories attached to the Feldmühle concern. In Königsberg they were the Werk Sackheim and the Werk Zosse. Those factories were supposed to be rebuilt by German prisoners of war as part of the restitution process. For that reason there was a camp in Sackheim and another in Holstein, below the town, where the Pregel emptied into the freshwater lagoon.
We had been transported on lorries from Georgenburg to Königsberg. The town appeared to have been dreadfully destroyed. In Danzig, while being transported from the Technical High School to the Medical Academy, I had happened to get a glimpse of the Marienkirche, the landmark of the town. There on the journey through Königsberg was offered sufficient opportunity to imagine how beautiful that town must once have been. We drove past the destroyed castle and a comrade from Königsberg showed us where Kant’s grave was.
The British air-raid of 30 August 1944 had turned the inner town into a heap of rubble. Before the town surrendered on 9 April 1945 the Russians had circled it to the north. The first suburb they had taken was Metgethen. The Russians were in fact driven out of there again. But the fate of the inhabitants and of the refugees who had been caught by surprise was a terrible indication of what was waiting for the German civilian population. General Lasch, conscious of his responsibility for a large civilian population, and for his troops who were uselessly shedding their blood, had surrendered the town on 9 April. He may thus have saved the lives of countless other people. But Hitler personally sentenced him to death by hanging, because he had not fought to the last man. Unspeakable things had then indeed gone on. In their despair, women and young girls had thrown themselves into the Pregel, or committed suicide in some other way. After the rapes, murders, arson, and plundering, there came hunger and many deaths.
Hugo Link, one of the few Protestant pastors to stay behind in Königsberg and survive, tells in his book Königsberg 1945 bis 1948, that in autumn 1945 the number of Germans in Königsberg was still 96,000. The number of civilians in Königsberg during its last period as a Festung had been 126,000. Thus, in the course of half a year 30,000 people must have died. Epidemics and hunger decimated the population still more, so that finally only 24,000 were left. They were to be transported away. According to that, more than 100,000 must have been snatched away by death.
The prisoners of war were hermetically sealed off and guarded so intently, that for most of them or even all of them, no contact was possible with the civilian population. I cannot recall any particular occasion, even if now and again news of the civilian filtered through. The German camp leader of our small Holstein camp, which was supposed to hold 200 men, was Oberleutnant Kahl from Königsberg. It was said that his family was still in the town. The process of living, suffering and dying thus went on unseen by the prisoners of war.