Until this point individual cases had been distinguishable in the great passing stream, and some compassion had been shown according to the degree of need, but now all those arriving in open railway wagons were in the same lowest state of misery. It took a long time for the trains to be loaded, but things calmed down a little when the trains moved off with shapelessly bundled figures huddled together, packed on the bare floors of the wagons. Here and there a piece of sailcloth or even a carpet provided some basic shelter from the cutting cold. The overcoats of those who had found places inside protected them from the shower of sparks coming from the engine.
Two wagons in which typhus had broken out were detached and medical orderlies carried off a corpse on a stretcher. Several women and children were admitted to hospital with frostbite. The others remained incapable of doing anything, sitting on the platform until they were led away, several forgetting their baggage.
All the accommodation near the station was filled to capacity and more. Even the seats in the cinemas had been removed to provide space. Two schools in the Altstadt had also been made available, but that involved a 1.5 kilometre walk as there was no transport available. No one had thought of providing an adequate aid service or making proper arrangements when this evacuation began. Because of the propaganda put out by the government, the lower level civil servants were unaware of the extent of the approaching avalanche. Consequently only the relatively limited resources deployed for the reception of the evacuee trains from Berlin in the late summer of 1943, providing a brief stop for refreshments, had been implemented. Now considerable improvisation, mainly using helpful members of such organisations as the German Red Cross, the Frauenschaft (Mothers’ Union) and Jungvolk (junior branch of the Hitler Youth), had become necessary for the preparation of sandwiches and hot drinks, laying down straw in classrooms for overnight accommodation and providing medical care for the worst cases.
The boys served as guides to the emergency accommodation scattered all over the town, carrying baggage on their toboggans, while the girls assisted with handing out food and looking after the youngest refugees. After the numbing stress of the journey, aggravated by the sudden cold, exhaustion and other ailments, many refugees had fallen ill but there was now a shortage of simple medicaments for the unskilled helpers in the mass accommodation to hand out. Adolescents were determining requirements on their own initiative, obtaining them from an understanding chemist, who gave them a wide selection of medical items free of charge. Such good will, sympathy and ingenuity lessened the distress of the refugees and made survival possible.[3]
Werner Melzheimer wrote about this period:
1945 began in Küstrin with crackling cold and worrying events. The first refugee transports arrived in the town, showing the state of collapse of the German eastern front. The first groups came by train in about the middle of January. But no one could believe that the east front had completely collapsed. But when the transports continued and the refugees started arriving in open goods wagons in temperatures of minus 15 Celsius and more, it became obvious that catastrophe was impending.
The care of the refugees required the commitment of all available resources. Almost without exception, the Küstrin women volunteered to help. They stood on the railway platforms and in the goods station handing out food prepared in the Reichsbahn kitchens. The four big steam cauldrons heated nourishing soup in regular sequence, while the Küstrin women prepared sausage sandwiches for the refugees at long tables. The number of arrivals streaming in increased. At first they came by railway, but then the streets of the town became filled with vehicles of all kinds. They were blocked with the horses and carts of refugee treks arriving packed with the freezing refugees and their bare necessities. All halls and schools were filled. New kitchens had to be set up, such as in the old gun club and the Lyceum. The bakeries were no longer able to cope and the garrison bakery had to assist.
Ever more threatening was the news brought by the people fleeing from the east, from East Prussia, West Prussia, then from Schneidemühl and finally Landsberg on the Warthe, all flowing through the town. Then on the 31st January it suddenly stopped.[4]
The Küstrin battalion of the Volkssturm was mobilised on 24 January under Commander Hinz, head of the Küstrin Technical School. Volkssturm weapons were supposed to come from Party resources, but none could be found, so the battalion was sent off unarmed by rail to Trebisch, north-west of Schwerin on the Warthe. Their allotted positions were already occupied and Hinz, unable to obtain further instructions, decided of his own accord to bring his battalion back to Küstrin. Meanwhile the men’s wives had been pestering the local authorities for news and eventually a vehicle was sent to find them. Some 35 kilometres beyond Sonnenburg the car was stopped by sentries, who warned the men in it not to go any further, as the Russians were thought to be in the next village. On the way back, about 20 kilometres from Landsberg, they took a break in a village pub that was full of soldiers drinking while Hitler’s speech on the anniversary of the Nazi assumption of power in 1933 went unheeded on the radio.[5]
At this time there was a group of about forty German officers imprisoned in the Schloss, mainly members of families believed to have been involved in the attempt against Hitler’s life on 20 July 1944. They included Generals Hans Speidel (Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s former chief of staff), Ferdinand Schaal, Hans-Karl Freiherr von Esebeck, Groppe, Adolf Sinzinger, Leopold Rieger, and von Hollwede, as well as the former commander in chief of the Royal Netherlands Army, Lieutenant-General Jonkher van Roëll. The prison commandant was Major Fritz Leussing, an unusually tolerant character for such a role, who allowed his prisoners to listen to foreign broadcasts behind closed doors. An inspection by an SS general at the beginning of the year had found the commandant’s Party credentials wanting and the general had departed leaving the fate of both the commandant and his charges in doubt. General Speidel then persuaded Major Leussing to prepare a travel order for them all that was deliberately smudged. Speidel then signed it as ‘Chief of the General Staff’ and they set off on 30 January for Württemburg, where Jonathan Schmid, the former head of the civilian administrative staff at military headquarters in Paris, was now regional Minister of the Interior. A Waffen-SS unit then moved into the Schloss.[6]
Stalag IIIc, the big prisoner-of-war camp on the outskirts of Drewitz, had already been emptied, the prisoners being driven off to the west towing their possessions on home-made toboggans. Some of them had passed through Küstrin, but the majority had crossed straight over the frozen Oder. Many of the village inhabitants followed them, but an equal number remained behind while the village Nazi Party chief awaited instructions.[7]