I had lived for a whole year in Silesia under the yoke of Polish Communism, and nearly a year under Russian Communism in the Eastern zone. But had I a future? There would never be one for me here. My intuition was at work. More than ever, I feared for my safety with each day that went by. My intuition had never let me down. I was therefore more than overjoyed when receiving a telegram from the West that was to end my ‘guest status’ under that ‘red flag’ flying in the wind.
CHAPTER 21
In the Western Zone
I received the news from Brigitte that my brother Evert had suddenly appeared in Detmold, having escaped from a forced-labour camp in a Dutch coal mine in Limberg. He had gone straight away to Brigitte. The case that was to be made against him, as a Waffen SS officer, was something that he was not going to wait for. The ‘special courts’ of hate, revenge and reprisals was not for him. With help from the civilian coal-workers, he managed to escape, without wire-cutters or a ladder. He was shown the way over the darkened border by Dutch smugglers in return for some ‘hot’ wares, i.e. cigarettes.
Now my decision was to be made, and had to be final. Brigitte was in the West, Evert was in the West, and I? The friends I had on this side of the Elbe were dear to me, but Brigitte and Evert meant far more. My decision was without any doubts. With a determination that was stronger than ever, I knew that it was time and that I must leave. My landlady in Taucha had only the minimum of trouble with my change of abode, for she did not inform the authorities of my leaving or of my true identity. They now knew who I was. Her penalty was the refusal to give her a new coal oven. My instincts had been 100% correct. Had I stayed I would had have been arrested in no time at all. So I escaped that forced-labour camp. I had had a piece of good luck, and left that worker/farmer’s ‘paradise’.
Without map or compass, I arrived in the West, in Detmold. I cannot describe my joy at seeing Evert and Brigitte. I had not seen Evert for several years. He had quarters with a Dutch couple, Mr and Mrs Snuverink. Their two sons, both in the Waffen SS, were both reported missing with our troops in Russia. So they were in the same situation as we, for they feared reprisals against themselves in the absence of their sons. They had left everything that they had owned and escaped to Detmold. Evert and I were now welcomed with open arms and became ‘provisional sons’ for them. We both owed much to this couple. Mr Snuverink had had a large and successful building firm, and it was to be assumed that he would again, one day.
Most important for Evert, was for him to have a new identity, without it he would have no ration card. So as I had more experience in this, I presented myself before the authorities as Evert. He was three years older but this was not noticed. I had explained that my papers were lost upon fleeing from the Russians, but this was not acceptable. “No, Sir, you could be Hitler’s son for all we know!” They were friendly, but a solicitor was more helpful. We found one who believed the story and for a fee gave me the needed documents, attested and sealed. I presented them to an Eton schoolboy-type British officer, who smelled of leather and whisky. “Documents, all correct, goodbye!” Evert and the Snuverinks waited for me with impatience. He had never trusted himself to go out on the street before I returned with his identification. But now he could, with papers declaring that he had been born in Finsterwald and had fled to the West. And I? I did not know who I was anymore, for I was now my brother!
In Holland, Evert’s escape and my non-return would mean our deaths, if we were to go back, for there was now ‘ethnic-cleansing’ at home. Families of those who had kept Communism away from their door were penalised. ‘Ethnic-cleansing of traitors’ was also happening in Western Europe. The families were persecuted and mobbed. I find it difficult to write about the behaviour of my own people, about their crimes, that were similar to those of the Soviets in east Germany, and which I would never have believed of them.
The German people were to feel vengeance. But they knew nothing of the crimes against the non-Germans, the friends of Germany who had fought for a federalised Europe, with autonomy and rights of self-determination at their side. The younger generation had been the driving force behind that ‘voluntary’ sacrifice. The Germans were busy with themselves in the immediate years after the war. So it is not to be expected that they were interested in the personal fates of those beyond their borders. Revenge was now the order of the day. When the sons were not present, then the mob vented their spleen on the family members, not only the male members, but female members and their children too.
This applied not only to ‘the man in the street’, but also to the Prince Consort, Prince Bernhard von Lippe of Biesterfeld. He came under the scrutiny of MI5 and the CIA, even during his asylum in England. His past record, i.e. his position with the IG Farben firm, plus being a member of the SS, gave Eisenhower’s staff differences of opinion. An army in exile was formed by Dutch Government officials in London. Prince Bernhard vonder Lippe of Biesterfeld was its commander.
The principal offenders and agitators were those exiled members of the BS and OD, i.e. Ordnungsdienst administrative authorities or public policy officials. Their orders were carried out by uniformed bands of men, with an orange band around their arm and carrying Sten-guns. There were decent but disapproving Dutch police, reserve-officers and former resistance fighters, Prince Bernhard too. But they did nothing to interfere with the shameful atrocities of those mobs on their own people, the political misfits and others. The conservative members of the exiled government in London, in 1943, had enough forethought to form new laws and resurrect old laws, in case of public unrest. At all costs, they wanted to avoid the workings of Communist and Socialist infiltrators/agitators, in the chaos after a possible defeat of Germany, and the possibility of them taking control, although at that time, one could say that they actually supported Bolshevism. Some laws were backdated, and some were changed. For instance, the law on freedom of action, some actions formerly not being punishable offences before 1940 were now an offence, for instance.
Unqualified judges could now sentence Dutch citizens to ten years in a concentration camp. Other judges were given special jurisdiction to give the death-sentence, which had not taken place for centuries in Holland. Sentences included having one’s nationality taken away, having no right to vote, and one could have property/possessions taken away.
The revenge was planned, and former volunteers and collaborators were the targets of unimaginable and inhuman behaviour. Wives of German soldiers, girls who were engaged to German soldiers, or even if they befriended one, had their heads shaved, had swastikas smeared on their foreheads and were then hunted through the streets. The homes of former NSB members had their homes plundered, as were those of any linked associations.
In comparison with the unending flood of literature on the ‘heroic acts’ of the resistance against the Germans, their crimes against their own countrymen were never written about. Virtually nothing was published, for no one dared. One of those who attacked this theme was the Dutch theologist Dr. H.W. van der Vaart-Smit, who interested himself as early as 1949. He wrote a book Kampteostanden 1944—1947, on the atrocities taking place in prisons on political prisoners, all of which were recorded. It was a horror. The foreword to this book was written by Professor G.M. Russell, who states that “The truth of this black chapter in our post-war history should not stay silent, nor be denied”.