One witness to the looting at Karstadt’s was Pastor Leckscheidt. His presence on the scene had come about in a surprising way. One of his parishioners had given birth to a stillborn baby and the infant had been cremated. The mother, deeply distressed, wanted the urn containing the ashes properly buried and Leckscheidt had agreed to be present—even though it meant walking several miles, under constant shelling, to the cemetery in Neukölln where the woman wanted her child buried. As they tramped along, the woman carrying the little urn in her shopping bag, they passed by Karstadt’s and saw the mobs looting. His parishioner stared. Suddenly she said, “Wait!” Leckscheidt stood in amazement as “she left my side and disappeared into the store, urn, market bag and all.” Moments later she returned, triumphantly swinging a pair of sturdy boots. Turning to Leckscheidt, she said: “Shall we go?”
On the way back, Leckscheidt was careful to keep her away from Karstadt’s. It was just as well. That afternoon the huge store rocked as explosives tore it apart. The SS, which reportedly had stored 29 million marks’ worth of supplies in the basement, had blown up the emporium to deny the Russians the treasure. A number of women and children were killed in the blast.
In the face of the plunderers many store owners simply gave up. Rather than let their shops get smashed by unruly mobs, they emptied their shelves and gave supplies away without accepting either ration stamps or money. There was another reason: shopkeepers had heard that if the Russians found hoarded food, they burned the shop down. In Neukölln a week before, film projectionist Günther Rosetz, had tried to buy some marmalade at Tengelmann’s grocery store and had been refused. Now Rosetz saw that Tengelmann’s was selling tubs of marmalade, oats, sugar and flour—all at ten marks a pound. In panic the store was giving goods away just to move everything out of the shop. In the Caspary wine shop on the corner of Hindenburgstrasse, Alexander Kelm could hardly believe his eyes: bottles of wine were given away to all comers. The Hitler Youth, Klaus Küster, making another foray through his neighborhood, got two hundred free cigarettes at one place, two bottles of brandy at another. The owner of the liquor shop in his area said: “Here, you might as well drink it up. Hard times are coming.”
Even for looters there was virtually no meat to be had. At first a few butchers had supplies which they doled out to special customers, but soon that, too, was gone. Now, all over Berlin, people started carving up horses, which lay dead in the streets from the shelling. Charlotte Richter and her sister saw people armed with knives cutting up a gray-white horse that had been killed on Breitenbachplatz. “The horse,” Charlotte saw, “had not fallen over on its side, but sort of sat on its haunches, its head still high, eyes wide open. And there were women with carving knives cleaving at its shanks.”
Ruby Borgmann found that she enjoyed brushing her teeth with champagne; it made the toothpaste very foamy. In the luxurious cellar beneath Heinrich Schelle’s fashionable Gruban-Souchay restaurant, Ruby and her husband Eberhard were living an almost exotic existence. Schelle had kept his promise; when the shelling began, he invited the Borgmanns to join him in his resplendent underground quarters. The restaurant’s reserves of silver, crystal and fine china were stored there and Schelle had provided creature comforts as well. The floor was carpeted with Oriental rugs. On either side of the entrance, sleeping accommodations were screened by heavy gray-green draperies. Luxurious overstuffed chairs, a sofa and small tables—each covered with beige and rust-colored linen cloths from the restaurant—were placed about the room. There had been no water for days but there was champagne aplenty. “We drank champagne morning, noon and night,” Ruby remembered. “It flowed like water—the water we didn’t have.”
Food was the real problem. The Borgmanns’ good friend, Pia van Hoeven, who sometimes shared the cellar’s comforts with them, was occasionally able to produce some bread and even a little meat on her visits. Mostly, however, the occupants lived on tuna fish and potatoes. Ruby wondered just how many ways there were to fix these staples. The restaurant’s temperamental French chef, Mopti, had yet to repeat himself, but he could not go on forever. Still, now that there seemed no hope that the Americans would come, the little group had decided to live it up. At any hour they might be dead.
“Papa” Saenger was gone.
Through four years of bombing and through the shelling of the last few days, the 78-year-old World War I veteran had refused to be intimidated. In fact, it had taken all of Erna Saenger’s powers of persuasion to prevent her husband Konrad from going out for his customary meeting with his World War I comrades-in-arms. She had put Papa to work digging a shallow hole in the garden to hide her preserves. Konrad also thought it might be a good idea to hide his old army sword along with the jams and jellies, so the Russians would find no weapons in the house.
But once the work was done, Papa had gone out into the streets despite the pleadings of the entire family. They had found his shrapnel-riddled body in the bushes outside the burning wreckage of Pastor Martin Niemöller’s house, only a short way from home. While shells blanketed the district, the family brought Papa home in a wheelbarrow. As she walked alongside the cart, Erna remembered that during their last conversation she had a slight difference of opinion with Konrad as to which Biblical quotation was more appropriate for the times. Papa maintained that “one can only live by the 90th Psalm, especially the fourth verse: ‘For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.’” Erna had disagreed. “Personally,” she told him, “I think that psalm is much too pessimistic. I prefer the 46th: ‘God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.’”
There was not a coffin to be found, and a trip to the cemetery was too dangerous to attempt in any case. Still, they could not keep the body in the warm house. They left it on the porch. Erna found two small pieces of wood and nailed them together for a cross. Gently, she placed the crucifix between her husband’s hands. As she looked down at Papa, she wished she could tell him that he had been right, for the 90th Psalm continued: “We are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.”
Father Bernhard Happich looked down at the notes for his sermon. The chapel of Haus Dahlem was softly lit by candles, but outside the sky to the east of Wilmersdorf was almost blood red, and the shelling which had awakened the Sisters at three that morning was still going on nearly twelve hours later. Somewhere nearby, glass shattered and a tremendous concussion shook the building. Father Happich heard loud shouts from the street and then the heavy thudding sound of the Czech anti-aircraft gun just across the road from the maternity home and orphanage.
The nuns sitting before him did not stir. As he gazed out at them, he saw that, in keeping with an order from Mother Superior Cunegundes, the women had removed the heavy silver crosses they normally wore. Instead, small, inconspicuous metal crucifixes—so-called Death Crosses—were attached to their habits. The silver ones had been hidden, along with all rings and watches.
Father Happich had made some preparations of his own. In the Dahlem villa where the priest lived, a large box had been packed. In it Father Happich had placed some medical instruments, the contents of the medicine chests, plus drugs, bandages and white sheets contributed by neighbors. Before becoming a priest Father Happich had received a medical degree, and now he was working again at both vocations; each day now he cared for casualties of the shellings, attended to accident victims and treated hysteria and shock. His white medical coat was beginning to see as much wear as his clerical robes.
He looked once more at his little flock of nuns, nurses and lay sisters, said a silent prayer that God would give him the right words, and began.
“Within the near future we expect Soviet occupation,” he said. “Very bad rumors have been spread about the Russians. In part they have proven to be true. But one should not generalize.
“If one of you present here should experience something bad, remember the story of little St. Agnes. She was twelve when she was ordered to worship
false gods. She raised her hands to Christ and made the Sign of the Cross and for this her clothes were ripped off and she was tortured before a pagan crowd. Yet this did not daunt her, though the heathens were moved to tears. Her public exposure brought flattery from some and even offers of marriage. But she answered, ‘Christ is my Spouse.’ So the sentence of death was passed. For a moment she stood in prayer and then she was beheaded and the angels bore her swiftly to Paradise.”
Father Happich paused. “You must remember,” he said. “Like St. Agnes, if your body is touched and you do not want it, then your eternal reward in Heaven will be doubled, for you will have worn the crown of the martyr. Therefore, do not feel guilty.” He stopped and then said emphatically: “You are not guilty.”
As he walked back down the aisle, the voices of his congregation sang a recessional. “I need Thy presence every passing hour … what but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s power?” They were the words of the ancient hymn, “Abide with Me.”
At the main switchboard in the long-distance exchange on Winterfeldtstrasse in Schöneberg, the lights were going out one by one as outlying communities were cut off by the Russian attack. Yet, in the exchange itself people were as busy as ever. Rather than go down to the basement shelter, supervisor Elisabeth Milbrand and operator Charlotte Burmester had brought steamer chairs with mattresses and pillows into their office; the two women intended to stick it out on the fifth floor, where the main exchange was located, as long as they could.
Suddenly the loudspeakers in the building blared. In the shelter hospital, Operator Helena Schroeder was overjoyed by what she heard. On the fifth floor, operators Milbrand and Burmester were taking down the news so they could phone it to all areas still connected to the exchange. “Attention! Attention!” said the announcer. “Don’t get restless. General Wenck’s army has joined with the Americans. They are attacking toward Berlin. Hold up your courage! Berlin is not lost!”
They cracked the outer ring of the city’s defenses and gouged their way into the second ring. They crouched behind the T-34 tanks and self-propelled guns and fought up the streets, the roads, the avenues and through the parklands. Leading the way were the battle-toughened assault troops of Koniev’s and Zhukov’s Guards, and with them the leather-capped soldiers of four great tank armies. Behind came line upon line of infantry.
They were a strange soldiery. They came from every republic of the Soviet Union and, apart from the crisp Guards regiments, they varied as much in physical appearance as in battle dress. There were so many different languages and dialects among them that officers often could not communicate with elements of their own troops.* In the ranks were Russians and Belorussians, Ukrainians and Karelians, Georgians and Kazakhs, Armenians and Azerbaijanis, Bashkirs, Mordvinians, Tartars, Irkutsks, Uzbeks, Mongols and Cossacks. Some men wore dark brown uniforms, some wore khaki or gray-green. Others were dressed in dark pants with high-necked blouses; the blouses ranged in color from black to beige. Their headwear was equally varied—leather hoods with bobbing earflaps, fur hats, battered, sweat-stained khaki caps. All of them seemed to carry automatic weapons. They came on horseback, on foot, on motorcycles, in horse-drawn carts and captured vehicles of every sort, and they threw themselves on Berlin.
In the Schöneberg telephone exchange, the voice coming over the loudspeaker commanded: “Everyone pay attention. Discard your party badges, your party books and please take off your uniforms. Throw the stuff into the big sandpile in the yard or go to the engine room where it will be burned.”
Milkman Richard Poganowska stopped his milk cart and gaped as five Russian tanks, surrounded by infantry, rumbled up the street. Poganowska turned his wagon around and drove back to the Domäne Dahlem dairy. There he joined his family in the cellar.
For a time they waited. Suddenly the shelter door was kicked open and Red Army soldiers entered. They looked around silently. Then they left. A short while later some soldiers returned, and Poganowska and the other employees of the dairy were ordered to the administration building. As he waited, he noticed that all the horses were gone but the cows were still there. A Soviet officer, speaking perfect German, ordered the men back to work. They were to care for the animals and milk the cows, he said. Poganowska could hardly believe it. He had expected a great deal worse.
It was the same in all the outer districts where people were seeing their first Russian troops. The forward elements of the Soviet Army, hard-bitten but scrupulously correct in behavior, were not at all what the terrified citizens had expected.
At 7 P.M. Pia van Hoeven was sitting in the cellarway of her apartment house in Schöneberg, peeling a few potatoes. Nearby, several other women from the house chatted together, their backs to the open shelter door. Suddenly Pia looked up and stared open-mouthed into the muzzles of submachine guns held by two Russian soldiers. “Quietly I raised my arms, knife in one hand, potato in the other,” she remembers. The other women looked at her, turned, and put their hands up, too. To Pia’s surprise, one of the soldiers asked in German, “Soldiers here? Volkssturm? Any guns?” The women shook their heads. “Good Germans,” said the soldier approvingly. They walked in and took the women’s watches, and then they disappeared.
As the night wore on, Pia saw more and more Russians. “They were fighting troops and many spoke German,” she remembered. “But they seemed to be interested only in moving up and getting on with the battle.” Pia and the women in her apartment house decided that all Goebbels’ talk about the rapacious Red Army was just another pack of lies. “If all the Russians behave like this,” Pia told her friends, “then we have nothing to worry about.”
Marianne Bombach felt the same way. She came out of her Wilmersdorf cellar one morning and saw a Russian field kitchen set up just outside her back door. The soldiers, fighting units bivouacked in Schwarze Grund Park, were sharing food and candy with the neighborhood children. Their manners particularly impressed Marianne. They had upended some square garbage cans and were using them as tables. Each was covered with a doily, apparently taken from villas nearby. There they sat in the middle of the field on somebody’s straight-backed chairs eating off the garbage cans. Except for their fraternization with the children, the Russians seemed to be ignoring the civilians. They remained for just a few hours and then moved on.
Dora Janssen and the widow of her husband’s batman were shocked and frightened. After the fatal shelling of the aide and the wounding of Major Janssen, Dora had invited the widow to stay with her. The two defenseless women, their nerves raw from grief and fear, were in the cellar of the Janssens’ building when Dora saw “a huge shadow appear on the wall.” In the shadow’s hands was a gun. To Dora the apparition “appeared like a cannon being held in the paws of a gorilla and the soldier’s head seemed huge and deformed.” She was unable to breathe. The Russian came into view, followed by another, and ordered them out of the cellar. “Now,” Dora thought, “it is going to take place.” The two women were led outdoors, where the Russians handed them brooms and pointed to the debris and broken glass that littered the walk. The women were dumbfounded. Their surprise and relief was so obvious that the Russians broke into laughter.
Other people had more harrowing encounters with the newly arrived front-line troops. Elisabeth Eberhard was almost shot. A social worker employed by Catholic Bishop Konrad von Preysing, Elisabeth had been hiding Jews for years. She was visiting a friend when she met her first two Russians—a young blond officer accompanied by a woman interpreter. Both entered the house heavily armed; the woman carried a submachine gun. The phone rang just as the Russians came in. As Elisabeth’s friend picked it up, the elegant officer grabbed it from her. “You are both traitors,” the interpreter told them, “you have contact with the enemy.” The women were rushed out of the house and into the garden and were backed against the wall. The officer announced that he intended to shoot them. Elisabeth, knees shaking, shouted at him, “We have been waiting for you! We have always been against Hitler! My husband has been in
prison as a political offender for twelve years!”
The Red Army woman interpreted. Slowly the officer lowered his gun. He seemed greatly embarrassed. Then he came toward Elisabeth, took her right hand and kissed it. Elisabeth was equal to the Russian’s poise. In as casual a voice as she could muster, she politely inquired, “Will you both join us in a glass of wine?”
The discipline and orderliness of the first troops amazed almost everyone. Druggist Hans Miede noticed that Soviet soldiers “seemed to avoid firing into houses unless they were sure German defenders were hiding there.” Helena Boese, who had lived in dread of the Russians’ arrival, came face to face with a Red Army trooper on her cellar steps. He was “young, handsome and wearing an immaculately clean uniform.” He just looked at her when she came out of the cellar and then, gesturing to indicate good will, gave her a stick with a white handkerchief tied to it as a sign of capitulation. In the same Wilmersdorf area, Ilse Antz, who had always believed that the Berliners were going to be “thrown like fodder to the Russians,” was asleep in the basement of her apartment house when the first Russian entered. She awakened and stared at him in terror, but the young, dark-haired trooper just smiled at her and said in broken German: “Why afraid? Everything all right now. Go to sleep.”
For one group of Berliners the arrival of the Soviet troops produced no terror at all. The Jews had long ago come to terms with fear. Leo Sternfeld, the former Tempelhof businessman forced to work as a garbage collector for the Gestapo, had sweated out every mile of the Russian advance. A half-Jew, he had lived all through the war in anguished suspense, never knowing when he and his family would be sent to a concentration camp. For most of the war, his name had made Sternfeld and his family unwelcome in air raid shelters. But when the shelling began, Leo noticed a remarkable change in his neighbors. “The residents of the house,” he recalled, “almost dragged us into the shelter.”