For the 80th anniversary of the storming of Koenigsberg and the anniversary of the Great Victory

 

That’s it!

by I. Ehrenburg,

translated by S. Ogneva,

Impregnable Königsberg did fall. It fell just 12 hours after the Berlin Radio assurance that Russians would never take Königsberg. Chronicles lack the time to  etch the tide of historical events. The Red Army is in the heart of Vienna. The allied forces approached Bremen and Brunswick. Krauts are trapped in Holland and will not get away. Neither will they get away from the Ruhr. The Germans were speculating on “the Elbe line” last week. Just a while ago, Hitler contemplated hiding in Austria, yet now he has put his frightened eyes far on the southern territories. It is not easy to list all the areas he has lost such as the Baltic coast (from Tilsit to Stettin), all the industrial areas (Silesia, Saarland, the Ruhr, granaries of Prussia and Pomerania, the richest City of Frankfurt, the capital of Baden – Karlsruhe), big cities of Kassel, Cologne, Mainz, Münster, Würzburg, Hanover. American tanks went on tour around the scenic Harz. They are going to see the peak of Brocken, which is witches’ abode according to the legend. They are unlikely to be surprised since they have seen almost true witches in German cities. Another American unit approached Schweinfurt – the Bavarian city that pleases my ear with its literal name “Swine Ford” I repeatedly mentioned in my articles.

There are agonies full of grandeur. Germany is dying miserably with neither any pathos nor dignity. Consider bombastic parades and Berlin Sportpalast that saw Hitler snarling world takeover. Where is he now? What corner did he cower in? He brought Germany to the edge of the abyss and prefers laying low. The only thing his henchmen are preoccupied with is saving their skin. Americans have found German gold stock the fleeing villains abandoned.  Well, German women lose their stolen fur coats and spoons whereas the Third Reich authorities lose tons of gold. Everyone is running, rushing, trampling on their way to Swiss border. “1918 is not to happen again,” Goebbels loftily claimed a few months ago. Nowadays Germans cannot even conceive of another 1918. 1918 will not happen again. At the time, Germany was led by real politicians, albeit dumb, generals, albeit beaten, diplomats, albeit weak. Today, Germany is led by gangsters, a posse of felons. The eminent criminals do not care about the future of surrounding petty thieves. The criminals are not concerned with the fate of Germany but fake passports. They can deal with neither negotiations nor takeovers – they are growing beards and dying their hair. World press has discussed the term “unconditional surrender” for about a year. But it is not about whether Germany wants to surrender or not. There is no one to surrender. There is no Germany, there is a huge crew that scatters when it comes to taking responsibility. Everyone is surrendering: generals and Jerries, mayors and their assistants, regiments and companies, cities, streets, apartments. In other companies, houses and apartments, the criminals are still fighting back hiding behind the name of Germany though. This is how the venture of ignorant and bloodthirsty fascists to conquer the world ended.

Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung assures their readers (if any, because Germans do not feel like reading newspapers now) that German soldiers “are rabidly fighting against both Bolsheviks and Americans”. Our allies can laugh at this statement as one day they captured 40.000 Germans with almost no fight. According to reporters, while moving to the east Americans have no obstacles other than crowds of prisoners that flooded the roads. At seeing Americans, Germans get truly determined to surrender. The prisoners move without any escort. Sentries near the camps are not meant for preventing escapes but for surrendering krauts not to trample each other on their rushing way to the camps. They all at once have forgotten Odin, Nietzsche, Adolf Hitler, also known as Schicklgruber. The übermenschen encourage each other, “Hold on, dude, Americans are getting closer.”

Foreign readers might ask me why Germans were fiercely trying to hold Küstrin? Why are they furiously fighting in the streets of Vienna hated by the Viennese? Why were Germans desperately defending Königsberg hundred kilometers away from the Oder battleground? To answer the questions, one has to consider Russia’s terrible wounds that many others ignore and want to forget.

On April 1, 1944, Germans killed 86 inhabitants of Ascq village in France. The German officer who orchestrated the massacre explained what had made him shoot.  That was because he “executed the order relating to an occupied Soviet area by mistake”. I do not underestimate suffering that France experienced. I love French people and understand their grief. However, let everyone reflect on what the maneaters have said. General de Gaulle has recently visited ruins of the village of Oradour the residents of which were massacred by Germans. In France, there are four villages that suffered the same fate. How many villages like that are there in Belarus?

Let me remind you about the villages of the Leningrad Region where Germans burnt people and their huts. Let me remind you about route Gzhatsk – Wilno, namely Oryol, Smolensk, Vitebsk, Poltava and hundreds more cities German soldiers had been meticulously burning. Those were neither the Gestapo nor even SS men but most ordinary krauts. When Germans killed a few English war prisoners, foreign press was right to describe it as unprecedented atrocity. How many Soviet war prisoners have Germans shot, hanged, starved? If the world has any decency, it ought to plunge into mourning bearing in mind the tragedy of Belorussia. One can hardly find a Belorussian whose nearest and dearest avoided German torturers. What about Leningrad? How can we remain unmoved by the Leningrad tragedy? Those who do forget this are not human but men of straw.

One day an abused person tragedy shocked the world conscience. That was the case of the Dreyfus affair: an innocent Jew was sentenced to imprisonment in a fortress. It outraged the world. Émile Zola was indignant, Anatole France, Mirbeau and the best minds of Europe went public. In our country, Hitlerites have not killed one but millions of innocent Jews. In the West, there appear people who complain about “exaggeration” in our emotionless and concise reports though. I would like the foreign appeasers for the rest of their lives to have dreams of half-dead mangled-bodied children in Yars crying for their mothers in their last moments.

The tragedy of our motherland, the tragedy of all orphans, our tragedy, you are always with us now, on the verge of the Victory. You are stoking the fire of intransigence, you are awaking the conscience of unaware people. You are casting a shadow – the shadow of a mutilated Russian birch tree, the shadow of gallows, the shadow of a crying mother – over the spring in the world. I am trying to control myself, I am trying to speak as quietly as possible, as strictly as possible but I am lost for words. I am lost for words to once again remind the world of what Germans have done to my native land. I had better reiterate just these names: Babi Yar, Trostyanets, Kerch, Ponary, Belzec. I had better give some raw figures. There was a survey within a unit of 2103 people. Here is the record of blood and tears:

Relatives killed in battles — 1288.

Shot and hanged wives, children, relatives — 532.

People forced to work in Germany — 393.

Beaten relatives — 222.

Damaged and destroyed houses — 314.

Burnt down houses — 502.

Cows, horses, small livestock taken away — 630.

Relatives returned disabled — 201.

Beaten in German-occupied territory — 161.

Wounded in fighting — 1268.

But if the figures have lost your hearts, ask the four tankers why they are striving for Berlin. Lieutenant Vdovichenko will tell you that in Petrovka settlement Germans found his photo and tortured his sister Anya with hot iron asking, “Where is the Russian officer?”. Then they tied tiny Alla to two young oaks and made her mother see them tearing the child apart in two. Sergeant Tselovalnikov will explain that in Krasnodar Germans strangled his father, mother, sisters. All the relatives of sergeant Shandler were burnt alive by Germans in Velizh. Sergeant-major Smirnov’s family died in the City of Pushkin during its occupation. These are stories of lives of the four tankers who fight side by side. There are millions like them. That is why Germans are so afraid of us. That is why it is easier to take ten cities in Westphalia than a village on the Oder. That is why Hitler sends his last divisions to the East against all reason.

In the West, Germans say, “Bags!” - as if they get out of the game. They have not reached America after all. That is right, it was three years ago that I heard a cocky kraut saying to my American friend Leland Stowe, “We will come to America as well although it is far”. However, intentions neither set fire to any cities nor kill children. Brash Germans present themselves as some kind of a neutral power when dealing with Americans. English and American correspondents give me a number of spectacular examples. I would like to highlight an eminent specimen - von Galen, the Bishop of Münster. He is sure to be aware of Brüning – Fuhrer of German Catholics – which lives in the US surrounded by utmost care. The bishop hastens to assure, “I am against Nazi too.” After that, the bishop outlines the programme: a) Germans are against foreigners; b) the allies must repair the damage to German cities caused by bombing; c) the Soviet Union is an enemy of Germany, Russians should not be allowed into Germany; d) if the previous steps are taken, “in 65 years or so, peace will come to Europe”.  I should mention that American and English Catholic newspapers are quite satisfied with creative programme by the enemy bishop eating people. Let us have a look at laymen, which are no better.

The Daily Herald correspondent describes an incident. Residents of a town asked the allies to “help them capture escaped Russian prisoners of war”. All English newspapers have reported that in Osnabrück the allies let a Hitlerite policeman remain on watch and so he set fire to the house with Russian women inside. The Daily Telegraph correspondent writes that a German farmer insisted, “Russian workers must stay here or else I will not be able to begin my spring fieldwork.” Moreover, the English journalist is quick to point out that he is quite agree with the slaveholder’s reasoning. He is not alone – military authorities printed leaflets in five languages to ask liberated slaves go back to their slaveholders to “complete spring fieldwork” on the farms.

Why are Germans on the Oder and those on the Weser not alike? That is why no one can imagine the following: in a city controlled by the Red Army, a Hitlerite policeman on watch burns Americans. Or Germans ask the Red Army soldiers to help them find escaped English prisoners of war. Or Germans request Russians to hold French slaves for them for a month or two. Or Ilya Ehrenburg writes that “it is necessary to make Dutch workers stay on German farms so as not to undermine farming in Pomerania”. No, eaters do not seek from us any coupons for human flesh, slaveholders have no hope for getting slaves from us, fascists cannot find any patrons in the East.  That is why we did not take Königsberg via the phone. That is why we are not taking Vienna via cameras.

These days the allies have informed that their tanks are approaching Saxony border. The Red Army is along the eastern border of Saxony. We realise that we will have to break through German defence, yet the criminals will fight off. However, the Red Army is used to speak with Germans through weapons -–we will finish our conversation this way. We do not insist on our role because of our ambition but because we have too much blood on our laurels. We insist on our role because the day of the last judgement is coming. Blood of our heroes, conscience of Soviet Russia is crying out to cover the unabashed nakedness of the Bishop of Münster! Hitlerite policemen must be locked up before they commit new atrocities! Reason with Germans who “capture Russians” until it is too late, until Russians start capturing them! Send slaveholders to work for them to bust their brazen humps! Seek genuine peace now, not in 65 years. Moreover, it should not be in the Munich-or-Münster way but just and human.

We are united in our indignation with all the nations experienced the boot of German invaders – Poles and Yougoslavs, Czechoslovaks and the French, Belgians and Norwegians. The one suffered more than the others but all of us did suffer and everyone wants the same that is to subdue Germany. American and British soldiers are with us. They currently see violence and vileness of the Hitlerites. The Associated Press correspondent has written that, at seeing Germans torture Russian prisoners of war and Jewish girls, soldiers of the 2nd armoured division said, “The worst we can do with Germans will be too good for them.” In another German concentration camp, an American colonel brought Germans together in front of human corpses of all nations and said, “We will hate you for these for the rest of our lives.”

The day we meet our friends is approaching. We will be proud and happy at the meeting. We will wring hands of an American soldier, an English soldier, a French soldier. We will tell everyone it is enough. Germans call themselves werewolves, yet the hunt will be true.  Do not put yourselves out, friends of bishop von Galen, lady Gibb, Dorothy Thompson and other patrons of murderers. There will be no werewolves. We are not in 1918 any more, that’s it! This time, they will neither turn into anyone nor return.

9 April 1945

 

“Their way”

by Ilya Ehrenburg

translated by Lenar Milushev and Gleb Kireev,

the Nakhimovites  from Kaliningrad Nakhimov Naval School:

edited by Marina Narushevich, Yevgeniya Chertova, Dmitriy Golov,  

the teachers of the English language

 

They were taught in school: ‘We will fight in foreign soil.’ The Führer used to tell them: ‘We will fight on foreign soil.’ They fought in Kuban, in Algeria, in Norway, in Macedonia. They smirked: ‘This is a foreign soil.’ They were burning foreign cities, ravaging the homes of innocent people, and slaughtering their families. They did this not just for a day, not just for a year. Like divine music, the repulsive, guttural, and grating words resonate within us: "Grünheide, Kraupischken, Schuppinnen." With each passing day, we push deeper and deeper into East Prussia. We stormed into the very heart of Germany – Upper Silesia. Now the war is in their soil. Now it is their cities that are burning to the ground. And I want to say from the bottom of my heart: 'I am happy to have lived to see these days.'

The German scribblers are at a loss. At times they admit: "The Russians have achieved significant success," while at other times they try, as usual, to deny everything: "In East Prussia, the German troops continue to hold the initiative in their hands." The initiative of what? Retreat? They are trying to reassure the home front: 'The ferocity of the fighting demonstrates that the German troops have retained their discipline. Who could find solace in such admissions? When they are forced to prove that discipline still exists in the army, it means that people are losing their heads not only in Königsberg, Marienburg, Breslau, and Danzig, but even in Berlin itself. In autumn, when we took control of the border towns of East Prussia, the Germans wrote that these were ‘sparsely populated, remote outskirts of the Reich.’ They pointed out that Russian troops had already briefly entered East Prussia back in 1914. They insisted that the loss of a few pastures, or even Göring’s hunting estate, would have no effect on the German economy. They swore that the Red Army would never reach the country’s vital heartsoils. Where are these strategists? Where are these economists, these so-called prophets? What dark cellars are they hiding in? What beds are they trembling under? We are in Upper Silesia. This is no trivial matter; this is about coal and ore: Silesia provides over half of Germany’s armaments. We’ve got the witch by the throat, and there’s no escape for her now.

Oh, naturally, they will resist fiercely. No one imagines that capturing German cities is a simple task; they are known for their brutal defenses. However, we are seizing them, step by step. The Germans know they will have to pay off everything, and they are fighting furiously. We have come not to a sheep pen, but to the lair of savage beasts. And we have come not with a bundle of grass, but with tanks, artillery – everything required to annihilate these beasts. And annihilate them we will.

I still have a letter from a woman in Tilsit. A certain Gertrude wrote to her husband in 1943: «I like the Russian servant for her modesty – you don’t have to give her anything to eat, literally anything; she scavenges for her own food and sleeps in the stable.» We are in Tilsit, in Gertrude’s house. The German woman has fled, of course – but there’s only so far she can run: she won’t escape Germany. Gertrude took pleasure in the ‘unpretentiousness’ of a lonely, helpless Russian girl. Now Gertrude and the rest will learn the full weight of justice. We are in the cities of Prussia and Silesia, in the homes of commercial advisors and Obersturmführers, in the mansions of Gauleiters and slave owners. What a delightful twist of fate!

The Völkischer Beobachter writes: ‘The hour of reckoning has come!’ A long hour, indeed – but undoubtedly the hour of reckoning.

Once Heinrich Heine wrote his poem ‘The Silesian Weavers’ with his own blood.

" The shuttle flies in the creaking loom;

And night and day we weave your doom —

Old Germany, listen, ere we disperse

We weave your shroud with a triple curse.

We weave — we are weaving ! "

That time, the witch managed to survive. Heinrich Heine died in Paris, in exile, and the Nazis publicly burned his books in grand ceremonies as he was not ‘Aryan’ and  cherished freedom. As for the old Silesian weavers, they never managed to weave their shroud. Some of their grandsons were brutally tortured by the fascists, while others sold out their working-class honor, becoming nothing more than ordinary Krauts who ravaged foreign countries.

The Silesian weavers who once wove the shroud of Germany have vanished Yet we will weave the witch’s shroud, even without their hands to guide us. We will weave her shroud from shells, mines, and bombs. It’s not about dressing up the witch, but about nailing her coffin forever. And that is precisely what we will accomplish.

22 January 1945

 

The Great Offensive

By I. Ehrenburg

translated by N.Denisova, an attache of the Representative Office of MFA of Russia in Kaliningrad

 

Our offensive looks like the sequence of inevitable steps of History. We have taken over Oppeln, one of the largest German industrial centers. We are approaching Königsberg and threatening Breslau. As we are getting closer to Danzig, the names of West Prussian towns are appearing in our reports. Our vanguard elements are closer to Berlin than to Warsaw now.

The Germans can't hide their dismay, I mean their leaders. There are articles by Minister Ley, the head of the press department, Zunderman, and General Ditmar in front of me. The articles are full of exclamation marks that convey their howl and ellipsis that reveal their tremor.

"We are experiencing what people experience when the raging elements destroy the dams they have built" (Ley).

"We can say nothing but: to the barricades!.." (Zunderman).

"Space is no longer by our side. Now the outcome of the war is being determined " (Hamburger Fremdenblatt).

"The gravity of the situation is incredible... Events on a knife's edge... Some islands are sinking in the flood... Apocalyptic hordes are moving towards us... What recently has been a distant threat to residents of the central regions, remote from the border areas, has now become their immediate fate... Everything is at stake... It remains for us to win or die..." (Dietmar).

Win? Even a German with no sense of humor will laugh out loud. What a victory is here! "Or" looks odd in the context: they have nothing left but to die.

Minister Ley frankly writes that "great events give him no chance for any reflexion." He had hardly been reflexive ever before, this marauder, famous for large-scale embezzlement and minor scandals. By now he's completely lost his mind.

Needless to say, what happens to ordinary Germans. They are neither writing articles, speaking about the barricades nor quoting the apocalypse. They're being preoccupied with the other problem: where would they flee? They have turned their attention back to geography. Three years ago, they were fascinated by the riches of the Urals and Mesopotamia, and they were looking at maps of Egypt and the Caucasus. Now they are being more concerned with Bavaria, they are dreaming of a shelter in some South Germany villages. Ubermenschen resemble ordinary rats.

Beaten in the east, the Germans are still trying to keep a straight face in the West. Oh, of course, they're beaten in the West, too. It's not about winning, it's about saving face: by turning to the west, the Germans are still pretending to be unperturbed. They no longer expect to take over Belgian cities, they have become more modest: they want to fool some military observers in Britain and America. And indeed, they managed to fool some journalists. The press wrote that the Germans had fled "according to a premeditated plan."

I think back about everything written about us during the war years, and I keep asking myself if people can be that naive. How can readers still follow the columnists who have been cheating them for four years? Have American and English readers forgotten that in some newspapers Russia was invariably referred to as a "colossus with feet of clay"? Now it's high time to ask the observers how Russia managed to get from the Volga to the Oder “on feet of clay”. The observers once wrote about the inevitable fall of Moscow. They did not care to get new pseudonyms to start writing about the inevitable fall of Berlin. The Allies had been preparing for military operations in France for three years. The observers attributed this solely to strategic circumstances. After three years of fierce battles, the Red Army spent four months preparing to break through the powerful German defense in Poland. The same observers attributed it solely to political circumstances.  When the Red Army defeated the Germans in Belarus, some allied newspapers said that the German army had been exhausted and it was not the strength of the Russians, but the weakness of the Germans. When the Germans advanced fifty kilometers into the Belgian Ardennes, the same newspapers began to repeat that the German army was unusually strong. Now these newspapers are being confused with the rapid advance of the Red Army; they mutter that the Germans themselves might have “presented” the Russians such knick knacks as Lodz or Oppeln. These gentlemen are equally unhappy with our advancements and 1-minute stops. One might think that the Red Army is not engaged in defeating the Germans but in a polemic with foreign journalists.

However, these are just moans and sighs that should be neglected on our way to Berlin. We are being busy with much more substantial thing than refuting the military reviews of the Daily Telegraph or the New York Times: we are advancing. War correspondents on the Western Front report that British, American and French soldiers are delighted to receive news of the victories; every evening they wait for new fireworks in Moscow. They might want to respond to these salutes with their guns and complement the invasion of Silesia with the invasion of the Ruhr. German newspapers are trying to reassure their shocked readers: "We are fighting in the East, but in the West there is peace and quiet, thanks to the skillful strategy of our Fuhrer." The Germans might lose the West as well. The Reuters and Associated Press report that there are far fewer Germans on the Western Front: they are rushing from the Ardennes not to Antwerp, as they had expected, but to Breslau and Danzig. It is quite possible that after such a movement of Germans, Americans and British will begin to move as well: from the Ardennes to the Ruhr, to Cologne or to Frankfurt. By the way, there are two Frankfurts — Frankfurt am Mein and Frankfurt an der Oder. If we tackle with the one on the Oder soon, our allies may well decide to do the same with the one on the Mein. I know that the British outraged by the continued shelling of peaceful cities are eager to finish off the Germans as soon as possible. I am also aware of the spirit of America and the anger of offended France. A railway runs through the whole city of Berlin; the station on the eastern outskirts is called Silesian, we have chosen this station. Also there is Charlottenburg station in the western suburbia of Berlin, an elegant rich area that seems to be suitable for our allies.

 Our offensive should make both enemies and friends think twice. Military experts from various countries have repeatedly said that the Russian army is only suitable for war on its own territory and that it is powerless outside its native forests. The Red Army is now fighting outside: on the Carpathian passes, in the streets of Silesian towns, by the lakes of East Prussia. And it is doing well. It's time to see who we are judging on real people and current actions but not on old tales, or legends or Dostoevsky books.  The Red Army is not an epic hero, it's a modern army. It can defend its Fatherland not only in its own terrain but also outside. There has been a lot of unclaritiues in our history for the rest of the world. Foreigners were amazed by Peter I,  the Decembrists, Tolstoy, now they are amazed with our victories. As if the world had overslept our progress: it did not see us developing skills of writing, building and fighting. Now we neither rely on audacity of Cossacks, nor on talents of some commander, selfless humility of old soldier. No, we have developed fighting skills. We don't impress housewives with super planes; we operate with attack aircrafts, excellent artillery, new tanks that turn “Tigers” into lambs. Our armies are led by experienced and educated commanders. The Germans accepted the art of war as a privilege of their caste. However talents are not titles and gout to be inherited. The sons of the German generals do become generals. However this fact alone does not make the latter to be into warcraft. Our commanders have learnt the military science themselves. They got the stars on their shoulder straps on their own and never took the ones of their dads. We are winning due to our own talents and skills.

The soldier of the tsarist army was brave, he loved his country, but he had a vague idea of the world. Any Red Army soldier knows why he is fighting and what he is fighting for. He is a citizen in a soldier's greatcoat. He is one of the masters of his state, who obeys the orders of the chief not because the chief has blue blood, but because he understands the justice of military discipline. Some smart foreign guys assume that the Red Army is winning due to inherent qualities of the Russian soldiers. Nonetheless, we have the right to object: you are praising the tsarist army as you do not like October revolution. The Red Army  has occupied Tannenberg in East Prussia. The defeat of the tsarist army is associated with this place. We keep winning in the area, where the arrogant and stupid tsarist generals were powerless and their soldiers were dying bravely and submissively,  We don't mind if foreigners talk lovingly about old Russia. Let them remember the Soviet Union with respect and reverence, if not with delight.

We set out on that last journey. We were thinking about it silently at sad soldier camps for three long years… endlessly long years. Swedish newspapers report that Hitler is now exerting all his strength to stop us. The Fuhrer has  mobilized even the former German ambassador in Budapest, von Jagow, and allegedly sent him to the front as an ordinary soldier. Well, we'll cope with this ambassador as well. Of course, there are terrible battles ahead, but when we are being in Oppeln and Morungen the situation seems to be easier and simpler. Stalin is leading the Great Offensive. At this hard time he said that every dog had its day. Stalin definitely saw an arrow piercing the heart of East Prussia, our breakthrough to the Oder, and a lot of different streets — from Oppeln to Berlin. We have already been walking along ones of Oppeln. We will stroll along the streets of Berlin.

January 26, 1945

 

Heroes of “Normandie-Niemen”

By I. Ehrenburg

translated by Fedor Galiy and Maria Pribor,

students of Kaliningrad Boarding lyceum

edited by Tatyana Dobronravova,

the teacher of the English language of Kaliningrad Boarding lyceum

 

There are two Frenchmen in the world who can proudly say about themselves: “We are the Heroes of the Soviet Union”. These are joy and happiness for the French; these are joy and happiness for us as both our nations are dedicated to freedom. The people from Valmy and Verdun, Perekop and Stalingrad are equally proud of the brave soldiers Marcel Albert and Roland de La Poype.

Now we have lots of friends: winners’ gathering is fairly big. The “Normandie” pilots came to us in the autumn of 1942. We were not in East Prussia that time, but the Nazis were at the Volga then. We were fighting desperately as there was no way to retreat any further. Abroad they were wondering if we would last long. In that dark autumn our friends, the French pilots, came to us. They realized our strength and believed in our friendship. When the German fascists were still in the Caucasus, the French patriots understood that the battle of Russia was also the battle of France and they could fight for the French soil in the Russian sky. Marcel Albert and Roland de La Poype were among the first ones. They joined us before the battle of Stalingrad. We will never forget it.

France has been liberated from the invaders. In the battles for Alsace, the French army covered itself with glory. In 1942 France was silent: the Nazis clamped its mouth shut. Even then, we believed in the star of the French Republic and the soldiers of the Red Army were speaking respectfully and lovingly about this beautiful country. Now France has been recognized though we were recognizing it when it was shacked. The French will never forget it.

Marcel Albert shot down 23 enemy planes on our fronts. He is the first ace of the French army. It was Russia that gave him a wonderful plane, it was France that gave him the heart of the true hero,  it was Nazi Germany that fostered hatred in him. And so, this cheerful Frenchman, a Parisian, a son of a worker became a Hero of the Soviet Union. There were three pilots: Lefebvre, Durand and Albert. They all flew from Northern Africa captured by the Germans to Gibraltar. All of them said: “We want to fight in Russia”. They were inseparable, and their comrades jokingly called them the “three Musketeers”. Durand and then Lefebvre died in battles. Marcel Albert continued beating the enemy.

The unity of the French people in the struggle against the invaders is great: Marcel Albert was a son of a worker, and de La Poype was a representative of the old aristocracy, and he could have showed off his titles whenever he wanted to. But La Poype is a true democrat, liberty-minded individual who is proud of his contribution to the victory, the downed planes. When the German fascists captured France, de La Poype did not hesitate to take a boat to England and went on fighting against the invaders there. Upon learning that a group of pilots wanted to go to the Soviet Union, he stated: “Please send me to the East to fight side by side with the Red Army”. He shot down 16 Nazis.

The art of a pilot is hard to describe. It is poetry. Who can explain why a great poet writes beautiful verses? I will not dare to speak of the aerial victories of two French heroes. I will merely remind you that they took part in those operations, each of which made up a new chapter of the war: Orel, Smolensk, Orsha, Neman, East Prussia. These names tell us more than thick volumes. In all these battles the blood of French pilots was shed, in all these battles Albert Marcel and Roland de La Poype struck down the enemy.

Their love for France is passionate, say no more. They love its
vineyards, its gardens, its gray stones, its joyful girls, its freedom, its history. However, I will tell you a thing: they have fallen in love with our Motherland. They have not only learned the Russian language, but have also
grasped something not written in the dictionaries or grammar books: the Russian heart. They have seen the ashes of our burned cities and the sorrow of our women. They have witnessed the courage of the Red Army, its way from Orel to East Prussia. Each of them is bound to us not by words, but by their blood. Someday in the Pyu-de-Dome, among the green pastures and gentle alders, Roland de La Poype will tell his children about the land of vast spaces and great heart, about a distant yet close Russia. Someday, cheerful Marcel Albert amid the noise of Paris which is never silent, like the Seine, will suddenly
recall the silence of the Smolensk forests and say: "There I learned the measure of
human sorrow and the strength of hearts."

The warriors of the Red Army welcome their trusted friends, the heroes of France, now the Heroes of the Soviet Union. If friendship is tested in the fires of the war, than the friendship of the Soviet Republic and the French Republic has been tested. It has endured sorrow, it has endured joy. We will clink with the French in Berlin soon.

November 28, 1944

 

 

Retribution.

By I. Ehrenburg

translated by N.Denisova, an attache of the Representative Office of MFA of Russia in Kaliningrad

 

I have spent two weeks in the smoke of terrified and burning Germany. The Germans are trudging along snowy and muddy roads. These roads are littered with furniture, utensils and rugs. Their cities are burning. Feral pigs enter the deserted town halls. The wind flutters the tatters of city banners with eagles, lions and deer. If we were malevolent, we could have said: “To each what he deserves”. But we have risen above it. We are inspired with the triumph of justice. When speaking of the retribution, a lot of people were thinking about the paragraphs of the upcoming treaty only. I have no idea on the verdict of diplomats. Undoubtedly, fascist obscurantism will find its defenders, the zealots of the "balance" between light and darkness. Whatever the future world may seem to us, the only thing is clear: retribution has already begun, Germany has learned what the war really means. I wonder if the Germans are going to remember these weeks and months of war in their land much more than all the obligations of the peace treaties

There have been street battles in Elbing for several days. When they were over, I saw a rather picturesque queue: the Germans were standing by the prison gates — the line was endless. No one forced them to come. However, the prison seemed to these "superhumans" to be the most peaceful and even a cozy place...

They are desperately resisting, they are shooting from every house, they look irreconcilable. However when their officer is killed or they are running out of weapon, the "irreconcilable ones" immediately  salute not only our riders but also our horses. They begin proving their innocence to the conquest of the world. It's not just the Krauts, but Colonel Heinskenk is changing right in front of our eyes. At first, out of inertia, he repeats: "Germany is invincible," and then, as if he got immobilized, he adds in a different voice: "Am I a Nazi? I was married to a Jewish woman..."

The population is trying to escape. Thousands of wagons are moving west. All sorts of things are stuffed inside— chests, feather beds, furniture, moustache trainers, and (under the hay) several Italian carbines, knives with the inscription: "Everything for Germany" or "Blood and honor". Germans should kill Russians with these knives. And now the Red Army has cut their way. Not only the arm chairs have been abandoned, but even the moustache trainers. Thousands of feather beds are lying around (Germans use them as blankets); and the down of all geese from the Bismarck era to the present day blizzards East and West Prussia. As for the ordinary Germans, who have been caught red...they are trying to get rid off their past saying: "I am French... I have non-Aryan blood... My mother is Dutch... I'm half Polish, half Lithuanian..." They hurriedly curry favour with us. Their young women look at our passing soldiers ingratiatingly and lasciviously, as if they are not the daughters of burghers, but the waitresses in a night cabaret. The Germans know by heart all the orders of our commandants; they repeat in prayer: "This is the order of the lord, the Russian commandant!" I've seen a lot of forests, they're empty... The Germans who used to rush to the west and vowed to kill the Russians, are zealously marching to the east and bowing low to us. The farther we move west, the more frequently we encounter the German population: there is nowhere to run. In West Prussia I saw residents of the eastern regions ... hundreds of thousands. They're finking on each other.: "The butcher is an active Nazi... Herr Muller used to beat Russian girls... Willy the groom shot the Pole... Frau Schmidt received a commendation from Gauleiter himself..." Everyone is trying to prove their innocence. One of them brought a certificate: eleven years ago, the Nazis kept him in prison for a month. Another one presented a certificate signed by yesterday's slave, a Belgian prisoner of war. The third one found his Social Democratic verein ticket issued in 1928. Here is a German woman climbing up the facade of a house to remove the coat of arms with a swastika. No one ordered her to do this, she is sweating gallons and seems to be glad. In her opinion she has been rehabilitated now. Don't even dare to ask her how she bullied Galya, the girl... Here the German turns the clock hand two hours forward and says solemnly: "It's exactly three hours and twelve minutes in Moscow." He's beaming: he's ready to live not only according to Moscow time, but Vladivostok time also, as long as we don't ask him how happened that four Frenchmen were working for him from dawn to dusk. A venerable doctor says, "How could I be with the Nazis? After all, I am a doctor, that is, a humanist, and the Nazis are animals." A Vicar General, rubbing his hands, babbles: "The Catholic Church has always condemned Hitler, of course, I couldn't condemn him out loud, but I condemned him to myself. While the evangelical church..." At the same time the Lutheran pastor swears: "We also condemned the God-defying regime..." An engineer in Elbing reports: "As a man of progress, I am against Hitler," and adds with a sly smile: "I can work for the Russians." A worker keeps saying, "Who's going to classify me as a Nazi? My father was a real Social Democrat. I once voted for the Communists myself. Of course, I couldn't speak out against the regime as it was strictly forbidden. But now I agree to speak out even against Hitler..."

You can't trust any of them. They look like sheep now, but they have always been the wolves, and they still are. They are throwing away carbines and daggers; but who knows what is going happen in a month. The Germans cannot start fighting on their own, they are waiting for the order. Among the confused and frightened crowds, there are people who are charged with arranging sabotage and putschs. They are hiding now: the fear of their compatriots is too great; they need to take a break. And if they are allowed to catch their breath, if they are not examined, carefully checked and enlightened, soon the most submissive, those who shout "rot front" and trample on images of the Fuhrer, will start raving about "Greater Germany" again. For sure, they will take up rifles, bombs, knives if their camouflaged Oberleutnants or Rotenfuhrers give an order.  After all, I have not seen true remorse in any of the Germans: I have seen just fear and pretense.

One can feel sorry only for German babies, distraught unmilked cows and abandoned pets; only these creatures are not involved in the atrocities. Honor and glory to the Soviet man that never believes in the magic of blood. An infant remains just an infant for us. We are not being at war with children and old women — we are not fascists; and we came to Germany not to unburden ourselves but to destroy even the memory of this fascist state.

The Germans have repeatedly claimed that they got to the warpath out of need, that they had been cramped in Germany. We are sure they kept lying: it wasn't the hunger that made them unleash the war. It was their greed. The war did not mean any deprivation for them but it was profiteering. When the war was raging on the Seine or on the Volga, it seemed attractive to them. They had enough living space and stuff. Here is the house of the rich Prussian farmer. There are spacious rooms with tiled stoves, clocks, oleographs and deer antlers on the walls. A dozen of Dutch cows, pigs, geese. His farm suffered little from the war: the Germans kept eating other people's cows and ravaged other people's huts. I have visited dozens of German cities. A month before the arrival of the Red Army, the burghers were still reveling in their impunity. A German was buying a hotel in Rastenburg. In Gutstadt, a 42-year-old landlady, "a dark brown-haired woman who retained grace" (as the newspaper ad says), was looking for a man. In Deutsch-Islau, a furniture workshop was preparing a luxurious office for a some Mr. Demke. Next to the town halls there are the apartments of the burgomasters, beautifully furnished, with portraits of the Fuhrer and Rhine wine green glasses. Pubs and tables with signs "for frequenters" are also touches to the portrait of Germany. Furthermore, Germans spent most of their income on apartments' decorations, in peacetime they had not spent on entertainment. They dressed plainly but their apartments were filled with sofas and armchairs, vases and pillows, statuettes, cupboards with dishes and various knick-knacks. During the war years, they were bringing various pieces of bric-a-brac, utensils and trinkets from Paris, Rotterdam, Florence, Warsaw, Kiev to fill their homes. Their apartments are thrift stores, as our soldier said jokingly , "Life is livable in such apartments." But that abundancy wasn't enough for them: the greed was pushing them to the Urals and Iraq. Slaves were working for them. In small, remote Rastenburg, not only the rich, but also the working class used to have Russian servants as there was no need to pay for the job done.

German farmhands looked up on their Prussian landlords; these farmhands were dreaming of land allotments in Ukraine. After all, Erich Koch promised every Prussian a good piece of Russian land. The German workers believed that if their masters captured Russian manganese and French bauxite, then they would also get a piece. Here in Germany, you can see how fascism corrupted hearts, and it's not easy to draw a line between those who fooled and those who were fooled.

In the saddler's closet there are twelve German bed sheets and two Ukrainian ones -- "son's gift". Why did he need those two? Read the maxims on the wall. Here, "Order is your wealth," and "Useful work during the day means pleasant sleep at night," and finally: "Excess never hurts." It seemed that two stolen sheets would not interfere with the saddler; but the wages of their sins followed: his son was killed on the Dniester, the saddler himself lost the workshop, the bed, and these twelve German sheets...

You can advance the clocks, you can rip off the Hitlerstrasse street plates, you can't destroy the evidence as it is everywhere. After all, next to the terrified slaveholders, we see shining slaves everywhere: they have just been freed. There are so many French, Poles, Czechs, Belgians, and Dutch here! There are lots of girls from Ukraine and Belarus who have cried their eyes out,   Soviet prisoners of war who survived miraculously. A French military doctor told me: "Of course, the Boche tortured us, but we lived much better compared to the Russians. We tried to share food with them, and the Germans sent us to the Graudenz penal camp for this, saying: "If you help the Bolsheviks, you betray the idea of a new Europe." Typhus was rampant in the Russian camp. Corpses were taken out every morning. The Germans were shouting: "Drag those too!" I myself saw that they laid the living with the dead ones, the living ones groaned, and the Germans buried them alive" Clock turning will never end the cases of German crimes!

The world now knows that the Germans have killed six million Jews. They killed all the Jews, from infants to the elderly. Until recently, the Germans kept the last thousand Jews alive near Elbing: they were killing the Jews with sadistic pleasure. There were Prague architects, a composer from Amsterdam, Kovno doctors, and a professor from Belgrade. They were placed on stools naked and poured with ice water in the freezing cold. Then they killed them. Is it really enough to remove the street name plate to forget such atrocities?

They come and swear: "We didn't know anything. We are innocent..." The evidence is there. They were fleeing so hastily that they left not only the city banners, the seals and archives of the police, they even left their personal papers. Here are the memos by Erich von Bremen. This is not an ardent young man, he is 57 years old. After reading his autobiography, I learned that he is married to Ursula von Ramm and that his two sons took part in the conquest of the world. The well-bred German left two memos at his escape. One of them is dedicated to the colonization of the Baltic States, the other one - to the development of the Caucasus. Here is an excerpt from the letter: "We must have the Caucasus, because we need oil from Grozny and Baku to improve our economy. Thus we will free ourselves from America... The bread of the North Caucasus will be provided by Transcaucasia, while we will be able to export, in addition to oil, wood, fruits, canned goods, wine and tobacco. Thus, the Caucasus will become a German colony." I assume that somewhere near Stettin the Red Army will find Erich von Bremen. So, the author of the report on the Caucasus will undoubtedly say: "I am against Hitler and I am switching the clock to Moscow time."

Next to prosperity, we see savagery everywhere. There is a library in every apartment. What wonderful covers! Just don't open the books —"Mein Kampf" by the ogre, a collection dedicated to Himmler, "Campaign against Poland", "Racial Hygiene", “Jewish Plague", "Russian Subhumans", "Our Faithful Prussia"... What a squalor and spiritual poverty! However, it was obvious that these books were little read; the volumes were furniture, like vases and porcelain kittens. I searched in vain for city libraries in Letzen, Rastenburg, or Tapiau: there were none. I found the only museum, in Bartenstein. What was exhibited there? Portraits of Hindenburg and shoulder straps of an officer of the Tsarist army with the caption: "Victory at Tannenberg." Polish officer's uniform and photos of the destroyed Warsaw: "A trip to Poland." A monkey skeleton, at least a hundred images of Hitler, a beer mug from the Bismarck era, a mock-up of barracks and photographs of the city's benefactors. That's it. There's a Nazi Party club in Heilsberg; it's merely a pub with a beer stand and a few bloodthirsty books. Huge police buildings are everywhere: here the Germans thought, made up, fantasized and repented. Maps of the world with faded paper flags still stuck in El Barani and in Maikop. The school building in Letzen is excellent, and I found a songbook there. I will quote several songs for young superhumans: "Bombs, fall merrily, on England...", "May Jewish blood splash under the knife...", "Let the Bolsheviks writhe from the roar of our drums...", "We pushed the French pigs from Strasbourg..." And a huge photo: The Fuhrer, and in front of him is a kid of about five or six with a toy gun. No, you can't live in such a den! Culture is not determined by vacuum cleaners and meat mincers. We see the awful face of Germany, and we are proud that we turned inside out the awful beast's den.

I have no idea what the diplomats are going to talk about at a round, oval or long table; but I know what people from ten countries are talking about on the roads of Germany, people liberated by the Red Army, the French and Poles, the British and Czechs, Belgians and Serbs, Dutch and Greeks, Americans and Australians. I spent many hours talking to them. I have seen the talkative and the silent ones, the light and the dark ones, the severe and the laughing ones, but I have not seen any single supporter of the Germans. If there are still people in Paris who are inclined to restore the climate of Munich, the French I met say one thing: "Let them send us to Germany!.. And let there be no Germany..." I spent an evening with the British. These people have been through a lot. It would be nice to bring them to London and show them the honorable deputy who has recently called the Germans "brothers." I'm afraid they wouldn't be fraternal to this kind-hearted gentleman. People who have survived the German concentration camps, all these oflags and stalags have an idea of real Germany. People liberated by the Red Army know well what Soviet Russia is. People from ten different countries on the roads of Germany are eagerly waiting not for a suspicious "balance" between evil and good, but for the triumph of justice. That's why you so often I hear the same words in all languages in Germany: "Death to the Germans! Long live the Red Army!"

The retribution has begun. It will be completed. Nothing will save rogue Germany anymore. The first words of the treaty, which will be called the peace treaty, are written with the blood of Russia. Germany hears these words now. But for me, as a Soviet citizen, as a Russian writer, as a man who has seen Madrid, Paris, Orel, Smolensk, it is my greatest happiness to trample on this land of villains and know that it was not chance, fortune, speeches or articles that saved the world from fascism, but our people, our army, our hearts, our Stalin.

March 1, 1945

 

People, Years, Life (an extract)

By I. Ehrenburg

translated by Artem Abdumazhitov, Gleb Berezin, Milana Danchenko,  Nika Kostoglod,  Alina Kovalenko,  Artem Stanulevich,  Alexander Onistratenko,  Maxim Shalavin,  Mark Zebzeev,  Shadrin Mark, students of the Gymnasium 32, Kaliningrad

edited by Yevgeniya Kislitsyna and Svetlana Aleksandrova, the teachers of the English language of the Gymnasium 32, Kaliningrad

 

In 1944, a war correspondent of Krasnaya Zvezda wrote about me, “A middle-aged unmistakably civilian man dressed in a baggy brown coat and a fur civilian hat, with a cigar in his mouth was riding in a mud-splattered Willys along the frontline strip. Slightly hunched, he was unhurriedly walking along the forward positions speaking in a quiet voice and never for a moment attempting to conceal the fact that he was a deeply civilian person.”      

In late January, when I told General Talensky that I wanted to go to the East Prussia he smiled and said, “You’ll have to wear a uniform, or else, heaven forbid, they might take you for a kraut.”   I had no rank and so my brand-new officer’s greatcoat lacking insignia probably looked even more ridiculous than the baggy brown coat on me. However, I did not realise it until the Germans began persistently calling me “Herr Kommissar.”  

Our troops were rapidly advancing westward leaving behind isolated pockets where encircled German forces were still holding out. In the city of Bartenstein, buildings were still burning; enemy positions were nearby. I met General Chanchibadze there—he smirked and said, “This isn’t Rzhev…”   He spoke about the soldiers’ eagerness to push forward but complained about the shortage of shells. (The Germans held out in that “cauldron” for another two months.)   In Elbing, when I arrived, street fighting was still ongoing despite the previous day reports claiming the city had been taken. Sometimes the enemy retreated hastily, sometimes he resisted desperately. Mines were planted everywhere—in school buildings, peasant barns, shoe stores. A general shouted into the phone, “Listen, turn up the heat—he’s biting back, the devil…”   And a soldier told me about his comrade, “He kept saying, ‘The Fritzes are spent,’—and in less than a day I had to carry him to the field hospital. They took one look and said, ‘Too late…’”  

Everyone understood that the end was near but no one was sure they would live to see it. In early February, the weather changed sharply— spring had already come. The sun was warm. In the abandoned gardens, snowdrops and purple crocuses began to bloom. The nearness of the final victory made death seem all the more senseless and terrifying.  

The thought that we were moving deeper into Germany made my head spin. I had written so much about this when the Nazis were at the Volga and now I was driving along a good, smooth road lined with linden trees, looking at the old castle, the town hall, and the shops with German signs, and I could not believe it: could we really be in Germany? At one point, I met my old friends – Cossacks from Tatsinskaya village in the Rostov Region. Smiling, we were mindlessly repeating for a long time: "So this is where..."

Almost everyone had their own grief: two brothers were killed, house was burned down and sisters were taken to Germany, mother was killed in Poltava, the whole family was tortured in Gomel' - the hatred was alive, not yet quieted. My God, if Hitler or Himmler, ministers, Gestapo officers or these executioners appeared before us! But on the road, there were only creaking wagons, elderly German women were running around helplessly, kids were crying because they had lost their parents, and my heart was filling with pity. Of course, I remembered that the Germans were not sparing our relatives, of course I did, but one thing is fascism, Reich, Germany, and another is an old man in a ridiculous Tyrolean feathered hat running around the damaged street, waving a shred of a sheet.

 In Rastenburg, a soldier of the Red Army violently stabbed a woman made of papier-mâché, which was put on display in a wrecked shop. The doll smiled flirty, and he was stabbing again and again. I said, “Stop it! The Germans are watching...” He replied, “Bastards! They tortured my wife...” He was from Belorussia.

In the same Rastenburg, Mayor Rosenfeld was assigned the role of city's commandant. Hitlerites had killed his family but he did everything he could to protect the population of the German city. He let me stay overnight at his place. In the house of a wealthy fascist there was an amateur photo on the wall: the house owner's daughter giving a bouquet to Hitler. Locals told me that Hitler stayed in this house when he visited East Prussia. Mayor Rosenfeld honed for being separated from his regiment but he worked almost around the clock. While I was there, a small girl was brought to the governor - her parents had died. The mayor looked at her with some affection and sorrow in his eyes, perhaps remembering his own daughter. How many times he must have repeated to himself the words about “sacred vengeance” and in Rastenburg, he realized it was an abstraction and that the wound in his heart would not heal.

The joy of victory was again mixed with that sorrow which invariably arises when you see the war – neither in battle painting nor on a screen, but in touching distance: splintered houses, down feathers from bedding, refugees, bundles, unmilked cows, and someone's long, piercing scream that lingers in the ears for a long time.

Some cities and towns were shattered by artillery; in Kreuzburg, only the prison remained intact. Among the ruins of Wehlau I did not find a single German: they had all fled. Other cities survived. In Rastenburg, the residents were clearing the streets of furniture debris, broken carts. In Elbing, there were sixty thousand people– a third of the population remained.

East Prussia had long been considered the most reactionary part of Germany. There were few factories and few workers here. Prosperous peasants voted for Hindenburg and then unanimously shouted “Heil Hitler.” The landowners were true reactionaries. Any liberal concession seemed to be an insult to their ancestral honour. In the towns, there lived merchants, officials and lawyers, doctors, notaries, people of intellectual professions who were difficult to classify as the intelligentsia. The houses were clean, well-maintained, with a bourgeois cosiness, with deer antlers in the dining room, with embroidered maxims like “Order in the house - order in the state” or “Work hard to see sweet dreams”. In the kitchen, there were faience jars labelled “Salt,” “Pepper,” “Cumin,” “Coffee.” On the shelf, there were some books: the Bible, poems by Uhland, an occasional volume of Goethe, inherited from the past, and a dozen new editions – “Mein Kampf,” “Campaign in Poland,” “Racial Hygiene Basics,” “Our Faithful Prussia.” In the cities like Rastenburg, Lötzen, Tapiau, there were no public libraries. In Bartenstein, I was told that the museum building was undamaged. I alarmed the commandant, “Set up a guard immediately.” I went to the museum and felt uneasy: besides stuffed animals, there were very monotonous exhibits: a huge portrait of Hindenburg, a map of military operations in 1914, trophies – the shoulder straps of a Russian officer, a photograph of destroyed Warsaw, portraits of local benefactresses.

Our soldiers were surveying the surroundings. One of them, I remember, smirked, “In such a den, one could live.” Another cursed, “Bastards, they lived well, why did they come for us?” He pointed at the embroidered Ukrainian towels in the festive kitchen. “Look, even these are ours!”

 I was having dinner with General G.I. Anisimov, commander of the corps, in Elbing when a lieutenant rushed in, “May I report?” The lieutenant said that thirty or forty people had been found in one of the basements. They refused to come out shouting that they were Swiss and demanding to be left alone. The misunderstanding was quickly cleared up. Someone brought a man to the general. The former was dressed in a suit soiled with coal and unshaven for a long time. He introduced himself as Karl Brendenberg, Vice Consul of Switzerland. Quite a few Swiss turned out to be living in Elbing, they had settled here as cheese-making specialists. The general ordered that the hungry vice consul be fed and given something to drink, and then all the Swiss citizens should be taken out of the basement. I was surprised that the charter of immunity presented by the neutral cheese-maker was written in Russian and issued by the Swiss government in autumn 1944. The vice consul explained, “They foresaw events in Bern.” And smiling slightly, he added, “In Bern, but not in Elbing...”

The General Vicar complained to me that under Hitler the Germans had lost their faith (two pastors also spoke about this). It seemed to me that they had simply changed the object of their worship. The infallibility of the Pope no longer interested Catholics but they believed fervently in the infallibility of the Führer. The Red Army's invasion of East Prussia caught its inhabitants off guard: they believed not only in Hitler but also in his assistants and Gauleiter Erich Koch wrote in early January, “The Russians will never break through into the depths of East Prussia — over four months we have dug trenches and ditches totalling 22,875 kilometres.”

The figure was reassuring. In Liebstadt, I found an unfinished Certificate of Aryan Origin - on January 12th, a certain Scheller, intending to marry, filled out a questionnaire about his ancestors but did not manage to submit the certificate for one of his grandfathers: on January 26th, Soviet tanks entered Liebstadt.

 In 1944, I often asked myself: what would happen when the Red Army entered Germany? After all, Hitler had managed to convince not just individual fanatics but millions of his compatriots that they were a chosen nation, that plutocrats and communists, having united, were depriving talented and hardworking Germans of living space, and that a great mission laid upon Germany to establish a new order in Europe. I remembered some conversations with prisoners of war, diaries that were striking not only in their cruelty but also in their cult of force, death, a mixture of vulgar Nietzscheanism and resurrected superstitions. I expected the population to meet the Red Army with desperate resistance. I saw inscriptions everywhere made on the eve of our troops' arrival, curses, and calls to fight, “Rastenburg will always be German!”, “Elbing will not surrender!”, “Residents of Tapiau remember Hindenburg. Death to Russians!” I read a leaflet that mentioned the traditions of the Werwolf for some reason; I asked a captain who was engaged in propaganda among the enemy troops and therefore knew German well what Werwolf meant. He replied, “A general's surname, I think he fought in Libya...” I decided to check, looked into an explanatory dictionary and read, “In ancient Germanic sagas, the Werwolf possesses supernatural power, it is clad in a wolf's skin, which lives in oak forests and attacks people destroying all living things.” In Rastenburg, I found a school notebook where a boy had written, “I swear to be a Werwolf and kill Russians!” But in the same Rastenburg, not only teenagers or old people, but also residents of military age who were stuck there behaved like model children. The Hitlerites had produced small daggers with the inscription on the blade, “Everything for Germany.” The instructions said these daggers would help German patriots fight the red invaders. I took such a dagger; it served me as a can opener. I never heard anything about stabbed Red Army soldiers. It was all just talk, Goebbels' fantasy, sinister fascist romanticism. Of course, among the civilian population there were not only harmless old men and boys, there were wolves too but unlike the mythical Werwolves, they preferred to dress sheep's clothing temporarily and diligently followed any order from the Soviet commandant.

I visited dozens of cities, spoke to various people: doctors, notaries, teachers, peasants, innkeepers, tailors, shopkeepers, turners, brewers, jewellers, agronomists, pastors, even a specialist in family trees creating. I sought answers from a Catholic vicar, a professor at the University of Marburg, elderly people, and schoolchildren. I wanted to understand their attitude towards the idea of a “herrenvolk”, the dream of conquering India, Hitler's personality, and the ovens of Auschwitz. Everywhere I heard the same thing, “We had nothing to do with it…” One said he had never been interested in politics, the war was a disaster, it was only the SS that supported Hitler. Another claimed he had voted for the Social Democrats in the last election in 1933. The third swore he was related to his brother-in-law, who was a communist and participated in an underground organization in Hanover.

Near Elbing, in the village of Hohenwald, a German raised his fist, greeting the “Mr. Commissar”, “Rot Front!” In his house, our soldiers found an album of amateur photographs: Russians being hanged, a sign with large lettering next to the gallows, “I wanted to set fire to the sawmill, The Partisans' henchman”; Jewish women with stars on their chests are waiting to be shot in a wagon. The discovery did not silence the pseudo-member of “Rotfront”. He kept talking about his fight against the Nazis, “An unknown Sturmabteilung member left these photos. He might have visited my brother. My brother was very naive, they killed him on the Eastern Front, and I fought in Holland, France, Italy – I have not been to Russia. Believe me: deep inside, I'm a communist…”

Of course, among the hundreds of people I spoke with, there were some who seemed to be sincere but I could not tell the difference between them - they all repeated the same thing. I would respond with a polite smile. Perhaps the sincerest one was an elderly German I met on the road to Preußisch Eylau, who was returning from the west. He said, “Herr Stalin hat gesiegt, ich gehe nach Hause” (“Mr. Stalin has won, I'm going home”).

The people I talked to initially claimed they knew nothing about Auschwitz, the “torchbearers,” the burned villages, the mass extermination of the Jews; but then, after realizing that they personally were not in danger, they admitted that soldiers on leave had told many stories and condemned Hitler, the SS, and the Gestapo.

The Third Reich, which had recently seemed to be unshakeable, collapsed instantly, and everything (for a while) went into hiding, crawling into cracks - the simplified Nietzscheanism, the talk of German superiority, of Germany's historical mission. All I saw was a desire to save their possessions and the habit of punctually obeying orders. Everyone greeted me respectfully, trying to smile. In the Masurian Lake District, my car got stuck; Germans appeared from nowhere, pulled the car out, and eagerly explained the best way to proceed. In Elbing, there was still shooting but a correct, portly burgher took the initiative to bring a folding ladder and move the hands on a large clock forward by two hours, “It is keeping good time now, it's twelve past three Moscow time…”

A frontline officer was appointed as the city commandant, and of course, he was not specifically trained for that kind of position. They pasted a stereotypical announcement with rules. One of our commandants said laughing, “I haven't even read what it says but they've studied it from the first letter to the last - what's allowed and what's not. In under an hour, they started coming: one was asking if he could climb onto the roof and repair a hole, another was asking where to take a Russian worker – she was lying ill, the third was snitching on a neighbour...”

In Elbing, I witnessed an extraordinary sight—thousands of German men and women, elderly people, and small children were desperately waiting to get into the prison. I approached one of them, the most peaceful-looking of the crowd, and asked, “Why are you standing here in the cold? Show me the city. You must know which neighbourhoods are still dangerous…” At first, he complained—he had lost his place in the line and explained that the prison was now the safest place. The Russians were sure to put guards there, and he could wait out the chaos in peace. He only calmed down when I promised to bring him to the prison in the evening. He was a tram conductor. I did not ask him about Hitler—I already knew what he would say. He told me his house had burned down, and he had barely escaped with nothing but the jacket on his back. It was a cold day. As we walked past a clothing store, coats, raincoats, and suits lay scattered on the street. I told him to take a coat for himself. He recoiled in fear, “What are you saying, Herr Commissar? These are Russian trophies…” I offered him to issue a written permit. After thinking it over, he asked, “Do you have an official stamp, Herr Commissar? Without a stamp, it’s not a genuine document. No one will take it on trust.”

In Rastenburg, my guide was a boy named Vasya whom the Germans had taken from Grodno. He told me he had worked in a wealthy German’s house, forced to wear an identification tag on his chest, everyone shouted at him. Now he was walking beside me and passing Germans greeted him politely, “Good afternoon, Herr Vasya!”

Later, the West German press wrote frequently about “Russian atrocities” trying to explain the submissive behaviour of locals as fear. To be honest, I personally was afraid that after everything the invaders had done to our country the Red Army soldiers would seek revenge. In dozens of articles, I repeated that we must not—and indeed could not—seek retribution. We were Soviet people, not fascists. Many times, I saw our frowned but silent soldiers walking past refugees. Patrols protected civilians. Of course, there were incidents of violence and looting—every army has its criminals, thugs, and drunks—but our command fought against such crimes. The people’s servility was not a result of Russian soldiers’ tyranny but of their own confusion: their dream had collapsed, discipline had crumbled, and those who had been accustomed to marching in step got scattered like a herd of frightened sheep.

I rejoiced at our victory, at the war’s nearing end. Yet, it was unbearable to look around. I do not know what unsettled me more—either the ruins of cities, or the snowfall of down feathers on the roads, or the humiliation and submissiveness of people. It was in those days that I realized the bond of shared guilt, linking the ruthless SS officers with the gentle Frau Müller of Rastenburg, who had never killed anyone—she had merely acquired cheap labour, a maid named Nastya from the Russian City of Oryol.

Looking at the smiles of the burghers of Rastenburg or Elbing, I did not feel gloating. Disgust mingled with pity within me and it sometimes poisoned the great happiness I felt seeing our soldiers who had fought their way from the Volga to the mouth of the Vistula. I rested while talking with the liberated people, with Soviet girls, with citizens and soldiers of countries enslaved by Hitler. In Bartenstein, I happened to witness a rare meeting: among the liberated Soviet women a soldier, originally from Smolensk, ran into his sister with two children of eleven and nine years old. Until recently, this woman had been digging the trenches Erich Koch boasted about. She could not utter a single word but cried, “Vasya!... Vasenka!...” And the older boy admired the two medals on Uncle Vasya's chest.

Was there anyone I did not meet! Among the liberated, there were people of different countries and professions: French prisoners of war, Belgians, Yugoslavs, Englishmen, several Americans, a student from Athens, Dutch actors, a Czech professor, an Australian farmer, Polish girls, some priests, the crew of a Norwegian sailing ship. Everyone was shouting, joking, and having no idea how to express their joy.

The French had obtained German bicycles and were riding east. They wanted to get home as soon as possible. Among them, there was always someone who cooked well, and, after slaughtering a ram, they would arrange a feast, invite our soldiers, sing, joke, and amuse even the imperturbable Englishmen.

In captivity, everyone had learned to speak a little German. A Belgian was telling a Czech what he had experienced, while the Yugoslavs and Englishmen were discussing what to do with Germany now. It was much easier to reach an agreement here than at the Yalta or Potsdam Conference: people understood each other.

In Elbing, in the barracks where prisoners of war were held, I saw their rules printed in ten languages. In the Masurian Lake District, the French had to cut down forests and build military fortifications. On the von Dinghof estate, there were French, Russian, and Polish workers—one hundred and five souls in total. A railway worker from Dnepropetrovsk, Chulovsky, made friends with a Moroccan and taught him a little Russian.

In the small backwater town of Bartenstein, each family with three children was assigned a labourer—a Russian or a Polish woman. One farmer’s wife told me she lived frugally; she had only a Ukrainian woman and an Italian man to work for her. She paid sixty marks to the Arbeitsamt for them. Today everyone knows this but back then it shocked me: they had revived the slavery of the ancient world.  The only difference is that now Euripides has given way to Baldur von Schirach and Auschwitz has replaced the Acropolis.

A French military doctor told me that not far from their camp there was another one where Soviet prisoners of war were held. A typhus epidemic broke out. The Nazi doctor said, “There’s no point treating them—they’ll die anyway...” Every day the dead were buried. “I saw,” the Frenchman said, “how they buried the living along with the corpses... I can’t remember it without horror.”

In Bartenstein, our sappers found a notebook in a kitchen—it was a Russian girl diary. I took it with me. The entries were simple, which made them all the more powerful:

“September 26. Took advantage of her absence and tuned the radio to Moscow. Kharkov is ours! I was crying with joy all day. I kept telling myself, 'You fool, we’re winning,' yet I couldn’t stop crying. I thought of Petya. Where is he now? Is he alive? Maybe he’s forgotten me? It doesn’t matter, as long as he’s alive! I know I won’t live to see freedom, but now I am certain—we will win...”

“November 11. My birthday. I remembered how Tanya and Ninochka used to come over. We drank tea with cakes and discussed books. Tanya always praised her ‘I.’ Did I ever think I would end up carrying out her chamber pots and putting up with her ridicule?...”

I do not know the girl's name, I do not know if she lived to see freedom, and what happened to her afterward, but I could not help admiring the people who truly liberated human souls, whereas it was unbearably sad to think of those who perished in the Kiev encirclement, near Rzhev and Stalingrad.
I spent the night in Gutstadt and was to leave in the morning. The division commander urged me to stay for lunch. He said I absolutely had to see the ancient monastery. I gave in. Instead of a monastery, I saw the ruins: the monastery had been shelled. A pile of books lay on the ground: the small ones, those in leather or parchment bindings, the kind I had seen in other cities: prayer books, Psalters, Bibles, works of the Church Fathers. I was about to leave when - I do not know why -  I bent down and picked up a small book. I was stunned it was the first collected edition of Ronsard’s poems published in Paris in 1579! Volume two, three, four – poems by one of Ronsard’s friends, Remy Belleau. A volume of Lucian’s works translated in French. (I later gave Lucian to diplomat Y. Z. Surits, but I kept the Ronsard and Belleau.) On the first page was a note: so-and-so bought it there, paid so much. In the 16th century, monks who were overly fond of women and wine were sent to remote monasteries, to the fringes of the Catholic world. Naturally, a man who enjoyed Ronsard's poetry and Lucian's satires was not an ascetic. Probably, when the errant monk died in forgotten Gutstadt, his books ended up in the monastery library – the Germans did not understand what these books were; no one looked at them, and they were miraculously preserved.
In the car, I opened the Ronsard volume and was stunned again – I opened it to the very poem from which I had taken excerpts for “The Fall of Paris” – the lines read by Jeannette to Dessers:

Even death acknowledges your dominion.

The earth cannot withstand love,

Together we shall see the ship of oblivion

And the Elysian Fields…

It was all so incongruous: the ruins, tanks, field hospital, and Ronsard, love, the Elysian Fields – not the Parisian but the other ones that Pushkin wrote of, “And Edmond will not abandon Jenny even in the heavens…”

Two weeks later, having returned to Moscow, I told Y.I. Paletskis about the Swiss vice-consul in Vilnius. We laughed repeating to each other, “Now it will soon be over!…”

Then I drove through the destroyed Minsk. A familiar road – burned villages, the City of Borisov. The tannery where the Nazis killed people… The snow still mercifully covered the burned, scarred land, rusty wire, empty shell casings, some bones.

I suddenly wondered: here is victory, so why is sadness mixed with joy? That had not happened before. Apparently, the nearness of the end makes me reflect. I remembered the Ronsard volumes. In 1940 in Paris I wrote:

So many times in years of woeful pressure

Amid war roar and scantiness of nature

I read the poems by Ronsard again.

 

The short poem ended like that:

 

How simple it all is and at bad time!

My darling, even breathing is a crime…

In my memory, the recent five years since that spring rose up – losses, longing, hopes. It seems that the time is approaching when it will be possible to breathe, when all those I love will sleep without worry about the fragile thread of human life. Perhaps other things will become attainable too – joy, snowdrops, art? I was no longer thinking about either Rastenburg or Elbing – I was thinking about life.

1961-1965