Answer: I don’t know what you mean by that. What is UVOD? I do not understand.
Question: UVOD is the Home Resistance Network here in Prague. We know you are working for UVOD. Why?
Prisoner refused to answer the question.
Prisoner refused to answer the question.
Prisoner refused to answer the question.
Answer: Yes, I am working for UVOD. Following the deaths of my husband and my father in February and May 1940, for which I held Adolf Hitler ultimately responsible, I decided to work for a foreign government against the National Socialist government of Germany. Since I am from Dresden and my mother is Czech, it seemed logical that this foreign government should be Czech.
Question: How did you go about establishing contact with UVOD?
Prisoner refused to answer the question.
Heydrich interrupted the stenographer. ‘Perhaps I did not make myself entirely clear, my dear young woman,’ he said patiently. ‘I asked you to read out only the salient points. What I meant was that it will save a great deal of time if you omit all mention of when the prisoner refused to answer a question.’
The stenographer coloured a little. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’
‘Now continue.’
‘Yes sir.’
Question: How did you go about establishing contact with UVOD?
Answer: I made contact with an old friend from university called Friedrich Rose in Dresden, a Sudeten German communist, who put me in contact with a Czech terrorist organization that is part of the Central Leadership of Home Resistance – UVOD. I am part Czech myself and I speak a little Czech and I was pleased when, having investigated my background, they accepted me into their organization. They said a native German could be very useful to their cause. Which is all that I wanted. After my husband died on a U-boat all I wanted was for the war to be over. For Germany to be defeated.
Question: What did they ask you to do?
Answer: They asked me to leave Dresden and to undertake a special mission on their behalf. In Berlin.
Question: What was this mission?
Prisoner refused to—.
‘Sorry, sir . . .’
After a short pause, while she tracked down the transcript with a well-manicured fingernail, the stenographer started reading again.
Answer: At the request of UVOD I joined the Berlin Transport Company in the autumn of 1940 and worked for the BVG director, Herr Julius Vahlen, as his personal secretary and sometime mistress. It was my job to monitor Wehrmacht troop movements through Berlin’s Anhalter Station and to report on these movements to my Czech contact in Berlin. This I did for several months.
Question: Who was your contact?
Answer: My contact was a former Czech German Army officer I knew only as Detmar. I didn’t know his surname. I would give him a list of the troop movements on a weekly basis. The troop movements were passed on to London, I think. Detmar would give me some more instructions and some money. I was always short of money. Living in Berlin is so much more expensive than Dresden.
Question: What else did Detmar tell you to do?
Answer: At first I had to do very little. Just give him the troop movement reports. But then in December 1940 Detmar asked me to help the Three Kings organization in Berlin to plant a bomb in the station. This was much more important work and much more dangerous, too. First of all I had to obtain a plan of the station building; and then, when the bomb was ready, I had to prime it and put it in a place where it had been decided it would cause the most damage.
Question: Who taught you how to prime a bomb?
Answer: I am a qualified chemist. I studied Chemistry at university. I know all about handling difficult materials. It’s not difficult to prime a bomb. I’m better at that than I was as a stenographer.
Question: What was the purpose of that bomb?
Answer: The purpose of the bomb at Anhalter Station was to cause panic, to demoralize the population of Berlin; and to disrupt troop movements in and out of the city.
Question: Wasn’t the real reason for planting that bomb altogether different? Wasn’t the real reason that you had inside information about the train belonging to the Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler, that was due to be leaving the station? And that the bomb was meant to kill him?
Answer: Yes. I admit that this bomb was really designed to assassinate the Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler. I planted the bomb in the left luggage office in February 1941. This is right by the platform where Himmler’s train was to leave from; and, even more importantly, the office is also beside the place on the platform where Himmler’s personal carriage was usually located. The assassination was unsuccessful because the bomb was not powerful enough. It was meant to bring down a joist on top of the train and it didn’t.
Question: Then what happened? After the failed assassination?
Answer: With the war in Europe more or less won, it was decided by my controller that troop movements in Germany were of less importance to UVOD; and a few months afterwards I left the BVG’s employment. I was not unhappy about this as my boss, Herr Vahlen, was besotted with me and something of a nuisance. Thereafter I worked in a series of nightclubs. Especially the Jockey Club, where I was supposed to befriend Germans from the Foreign Ministry in order to sleep with them and get information useful to the Czech cause. I did this. Again I was short of money and sometimes I was obliged to sleep with some of these men in the Foreign Ministry for money so that I could keep myself. I also worked for UVOD as a courier. Then in the summer of 1941 my contact Detmar was replaced by another Czech called Victor Keil. I do not know what happened to Detmar and I don’t know Victor’s real name. But we were very uncomfortable comrades. Victor was a very demanding man to work for and I did not like him at all. He was not brave like Detmar. He was fearful and he did not inspire much confidence. He didn’t understand my situation at all, how difficult it was for me in Berlin. And we often quarrelled. Usually about money.
Question: Tell me what Victor asked you to do for him.
Answer: He gave me a gun and asked me to shoot someone for UVOD. I don’t know the man’s name. All I had to do was meet the man and shoot him. I didn’t want to do this. I was worried the gun would attract too much attention and I’d get caught. So Victor gave me a knife and ordered me to use that instead. Again I refused. I am not a murderer. So Victor murdered the man himself at a railway station in Berlin where I had arranged to meet him. He was a foreign worker, Dutch I think, and all I had to do was ask him for a light and distract him and Victor would commit the murder. Which he did. But it was horrible. And I said I couldn’t ever do something like that again.
Question: What station was this?
Answer: The S-Bahn station at Jannowitz Bridge.
Question: What else did he ask you to do?
Answer: Victor had come into possession of an important list of Czechs who were working for the Germans in Prague. I don’t know where he got this list. He was intending to return to Prague with it. Leaving me on my own. Which greatly alarmed me as I suspected he wasn’t planning to come back. He was scared he was being followed and so, temporarily, he gave me the list to look after until he was sure he wasn’t being shadowed by the Gestapo. Then Victor and I quarrelled, again about money. I was broke and I said that if I was going to stay on in Berlin and do important jobs for UVOD like help to kill people I wanted more money to cover my expenses. We’d arranged to meet at the station in Nollendorfplatz, in the blackout, but as he went away there was an accident and Victor was knocked down and killed by a taxi. Which was a disaster.