“Where are you heading now?” Karl shrugged. “Who knows? Only one thing is sure, that we cannot stay in Germany. It would be like being a deer during the hunting season. But this hunting season will last for years. There’s going to be lots of hangings around here, Hans.”
“That might concern me but not you,” I exclaimed. “No one is going to hang paratroopers as war criminals.”
“Don’t be so naive.”
Pfirstenhammer uttered a short laugh. “Everybody is going to hang. The SS is only on the top of the list of the guests. The generals are going to hang because they won victories but were imprudent enough to lose the war. The Luftwaffe will hang because it bombed Coventry to smithereens—a war crime; the Kriegsmarine for having torpedoed ships, the Medical Corps because they nursed vicious Nazis back to life, and Hitler’s cook will hang because he did not poison the Fuehrer in 1939. Everyone contributed to Hitler’s crimes, Hans. We are like a big manufacturing company where the board of directors are holding the stocks. Joint responsibility and no bankruptcy court.”
“They cannot hang or jail two-thirds of Germany.”
“They won’t have to.”
Karl glanced at me, rubbing his hands. “In a year’s time they will have lots of loyal German patriots to do the dirty work for them, Hans. Every country has her traitors. Why should we be an exception? Some Nazis will surely slip through the great sieve and they are going to be the real screamers who demand justice, denazification, and democracy. Wait until the shock waves abate. You will see twenty million anti-Nazis and ten million devoted resistance fighters chanting “yessir” whenever an American corporal snaps his fingers. They are going to be more anti-Nazi than the chief rabbi of Jerusalem.”
“You no longer believe in our country, do you, Karl?” I asked him slowly, accepting his pipe.
“Our country?” He repeated my question, pursing his lips. He let the sentence hang.
“Karl,” I spoke after a while, “would you care to come along with me?”
“To Konstanz?” he said. “It is in the French Zone.”
“Is it an advantage or a disadvantage?”
“I guess it is good enough there. The French are probably too lazy to hunt. Besides when they do hunt they prefer to hunt for girls.”
“Are you coming along?” I urged him.
“Konstanz is on my way.”
We swam the Danube that evening and walked halfway to Augsburg. We walked during the nights and slept through the days. Abandoned bunkers, ruins, tanks, burned-out trucks, and remote farmhouses gave us shelter. By luck, prudence, but mostly due to our people’s goodwill, we managed to evade occasional pursuers and avoid controls. Sometimes the peasants, many of them women and children, would lead us from farm to farm and from forest to forest. One young farmer, an army veteran both of whose arms had been amputated, escorted us safely past Landsberg, where the U.S. Army was maintaining a huge prison for arrested Nazis. As a result the whole area was especially heavily guarded and patrolled.
“I am celebrating tonight,” he said before we parted. “You were my number two hundred!” He had escorted two hundred German fugitives safely past Landsberg. A twelve-kilometer trip for no payment whatsoever, except for thanks.
Peasants told us that the Americans were raiding the villages too, but they could always see them coming and had time to usher the fugitives into the fields or the woods. In the cities it was different, for the hunters could come without warning. They “would seal off a street, then comb the area house by house, room after room, from the cellar to the attic. Using trained dogs, the MP’s would even search the ruins. Many traitors were helping them. “In the village we have no traitors,” a farmer said proudly. “We would know about them right away.”
It was a comforting thought that the victors had not yet succeeded in corrupting our rural folk.
I decided not to look for my relatives in Augsburg. “We are making good progress in the woods. Why risk everything by entering a town?” Karl said and I agreed with him. We continued across the fields and into the forests. We beheld many scenes of utter debacle but met no one who condemned the Fuehrer.
“You cannot stay here, son,” my father sobbed into my ear as he embraced me, still unable to believe that I had returned. “We have two officers living in your room, and they usually come in before midnight. One of them is quite friendly, but his companion, a captain, is full of hatred. He would arrest you the moment he saw you.”
“You will be safer in Switzerland and you will be close to us,” my mother said, wiping away her tears. “You should go to see Josef Weber. He will help you across.”
“The old U-boat skipper? I am glad to hear that he is back.”
“He has been asking about you ever since he returned.”
We stayed only long enough to shave and wash up. My mother brought in two of my old suits, one of them for Karl.
“It might be a little short for him,” she excused herself, “but it is still better than the one he has on.”
She packed a small suitcase with clothes and some sandwiches. “I know it is not much, Hans, but food is so difficult to get.”
“You shouldn’t worry about us, Mother.”
She slipped a small leather pouch into my hand which felt hard and heavy for its size. “I am giving you some of my jewelry and your father’s gold coins,” she said.
“There is no need—”
“Yes, there is,” she cut me short. “We don’t need them, Hans. It’s going to be a long time before German women wear jewels again.”
I knew how my father loved to collect coins but now he insisted on my taking them. “I knew they’d come handy one day, Hans—this seems to be the day.”
I handed him the colonel’s gold watch, the cigarette case, and the letter, and asked my father to try to locate Steinmetz’s wife later on, when life became more consolidated.
A short embrace, a last kiss, a quick “Take care of yourself,” and we left as quietly as we had come.
“I am glad your folks are all right,” Karl remarked as we skirted the town along the lake. “Where are we going now?” I had known Josef Weber since my childhood, when he used to be the skipper of a ferryboat between Friedrichshafen and Romanshorn on the Swiss side. In 1941 he was commissioned in the navy and when I met him during a leave in 1943, he was a U-boat commander. Weber was a short, powerfully built man with an aggressive chin, steely blue eyes, and a small reddish beard.
“Welcome aboard,” he beamed as he embraced me after such a long time. “Glad to see you back and all in one piece.”
He shook hands with Karl. “You want to jump the lake. A-wise decision. Especially on your part, Hans,” he said, stressing his words significantly.
“That’s what I’ve been hearing all the way home.”
“It is the truth!”
“Dammit, skipper—I wasn’t out to shoot Jews!”
“I believe you but it might take a long time to convince the Allies, Junge.”
He went to the other room and returned with some jackets and ties. From a drawer he took a small camera.
“Change your ties and jackets,” he commanded briskly. “I am going to take your pictures for your new papers and we wouldn’t want them to look too recent.”
We changed and he took our pictures.
“Make yourselves comfortable,” Weber spoke, putting on his hat. “You will find some drinks and glasses in that cabinet. I shall return in about an hour. The windows are properly shaded but should anyone come, do not open the door, just put out the candles and wait. If the visitors seem to insist on entering, they are the French. Now come with me.”