12. CITY FATHERS

AT the start there was a great deal to do in the city government. In the division of responsibilities finance, supply, and transportation were assigned to me. Krichenko was responsiblef or the economy and trade. Likhachev himself was to run the police (under direct German military police control) and the legal section.

Every morning we were supposed to appear at the kommandatura together with the three district burgomasters to discuss the problems which had arisen the day before. In addition to the Commandant we had dealings with Oberkriegsverwaltungsrat Albrecht, the specialist for civilian affairs.

There were numerous problems. The city food supply was a question which never left the agenda of our daily conferences. The situation was very serious. Malnutrition among the population threatened to become actual starvation. The German Wirtschaftskommando, which collected food from the farms, supplied only the German forces. The people had received ration cards on which they could get a pound of bad maize bread a day, and nothing more. A black market existed but the prices soared every day. Only the wealthiest could afford to buy there. These were the entrepreneurs who had appeared in such numbers: restaurant and theatre owners, shopkeepers, etc.

The Commandant sincerely tried to better the situation. He went out to the Wirtschaftskommando with us several times, although he had no control over its activities. These visits did not succeed in helping matters, however. Only when we were finally able to persuade the Germans to remove their guard details from the roads leading to the city and let traffic pass did the food supply increase and prices fall somewhat.

The city had its own transportation: a few dozen horses which had been assembled after the Soviet retreat. Some of these however had been appropriated by the new ‘entrepreneurs’. It took a month of hard work to recover them and get permission for representatives of the city government to drive out to the villages where they could buy up food at low prices to give out on the ration cards. There was never enough hay for the horses; it was confiscated for the German Army. Once I presented a written report to Oberkriegsverwaltungsrat Albrecht stating that the horses would die if they did not receive more feed. The next day he returned the report to me with the notation: Refer to the city veterinarian.

The police constituted another problem. Almost every day we received complaints from the population about outrages committed by the police. Outright plundering, occasional rape, constant drunkenness in headquarters, beating up of detained persons, blackmail, and similar activities were typical.

The chief of police set the tone. He was an ex-Soviet officer who had endeared himself through bribery and other means, it was said, to the head of the German military police, who would not’ hear of his dismissal. All our recommendations to clean up the police brought no results. The outrages continued.

Once, however, I received an unexpected visit from a friend.

‘Do you know who your chief of police is?’ he asked me.

‘Sure. Sharov. He’s said to be an ex-major in the Red Army.’

‘He’s no major. Before the war he was head of the N.K.V.D. in Taganrog.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I have two friends who were evacuated from Taganrog. One of them saw this Sharov today. He recognized him immediately because he’d been in prison there. Only the name isn’t Sharov, it’s Fokin.’

I asked my friend to bring the two people from Taganrog around to see me the next day. Then I told Burgomaster Likhachev about it. We decided to gather all the information we could on Sharov-Fokin. We requested data about refugees from Taganrog from all the district governments. Then the Burgomaster’s secretary was instructed to visit all the Taganrog people and show them Sharov’s picture, to see if anyone would recognize him.

The results were excellent. Ten out of the thirty people asked recognized the photograph as Fokin. All this was compiled into a report.

‘Let’s go to the kommandatura,’ said Likhachev.

‘That’s no use,’ Krichenko said. ‘The Commandant is wholly under the influence of his military police commander. We’ve got to go to the S.S.’

Half an hour later we arrived at the former N.K.V.D. building, now occupied by the S.S. After a long wait in the hallway we were taken to the same gloomy officer, Rauberg, who had come to inspect the building with Lüttich.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

Likhachev explained.

‘Do you have proof?’

He was handed the folder with the statements of the Taganrog people.

‘I’ll look into it. Goodbye.’

A few days later the S.S. made wholesale arrests among the police. About thirty men were gathered up along with Fokin. There were rumours that some of them were shot. The Commandant asked us to name a new candidate for the post of chief of police. It was not an easy task. Only the police had any measure of real power and it was imperative to appoint a man of unquestionable honesty and integrity to the post. Unfortunately there were not many of these.

At the same time that they purged the police the S.S. arrested the assistant to the burgomaster of the Third District and two employees of the registration section. Nothing was known about their fate for a long time. Finally the Commandant announced that they had been shot for concealing Jews in their district.

Two men came into my office one day. One was tall, very solidly built, and limped heavily, supporting himself on a cane. The other, a short man with an intelligent face, was extremely pale and emaciated.

The first introduced himself as Chernov, a former officer in the White Army, and showed me an old picture of himself in uniform. On his chest, over the St. George ribbon, was a sword and crown-of-thoms insignia, which marked him as a participant in the once famous ‘Ice Expedition’ led by General Kornilov, who was killed on the banks of the Kuban in 1919.

The second, Kalinnikov, was a well-known professor of medicine in the city. My brother had once attended his lectures.

When they were seated the tall one began to tell their story.

‘We didn’t know each other before,’ he said, ‘although just before the Germans got here we were both in the local N.K.V.D. jail, charged with anti-Soviet activities. We knew nothing about the situation at the front because we had been in custody for more than six months and no news got through to us.

‘Sometime toward the end of July we were wakened up and told to get dressed and leave our cells. When about thirty of us had assembled in the prison yard, a truck arrived and we were taken to the station under heavy guard. We managed to count more than twenty cars in the train standing there; they were all freight cars with small barred windows. There must have been at least five hundred prisoners loaded in later: there were more than sixty in our car.

‘Almost half of them were citizens of foreign nations, arrested just after the war began. There were Greeks, Iranians, Turks, Germans, Bessarabian and Polish Jews; they had not been sent to Siberia earlier with the others because of transportation shortages. Almost none of them had been questioned by the N.K.V.D. and they were ignorant of the charges against them.

‘The train left before dawn with a strong group of guards aboard. It made frequent stops and stood still for long periods. Day came, and then evening. At one of the stops there were shouts from several of the cars for food and water. Nobody had any rations. All we heard for answer was the cursing of the guards. People were weak from thirst in our car.

‘Finally the train stopped in the middle of the open steppe. We could hear the thunder of artillery fire in the distance. The guards surrounded the train. After a few hours we sensed movement outside. Some of the car doors were being opened and there were shouts of “Everybody out of the train!”

‘Our door was opened and we received the same orders. People began to step down on to the railroad bed. Suddenly at some signal the guards opened up with sub-machine guns and machine guns which were mounted on the car platforms. The prisoners began to rush around. Some fell and were covered with blood. Some tried to hide under the wheels; others climbed back into the cars.

‘The firing continued. When the shouts outside had subsided, the guards came to the doors of the cars and began to shoot inside. The walls were pierced with hundreds of bullet holes. Sometimes they simply threw grenades through the open doors.

‘We lay in our car; we hadn’t had time to leave it when the shooting started. The bodies of some of the prisoners served as cover for us. Both of us were wounded. I was hit in the leg by six bullets. The professor got three in his arm and shoulder.

‘Finally the shooting stopped and the guards disappeared. In spite of our pain we crawled to the car doors. Everything was quiet. So far as we could see nothing was moving in our car or around it. We managed to bind up each other’s wounds.

‘Another night passed. In the morning a few German light tanks came up to the train. The Germans inspected the entire train and found only fourteen people alive, all of them wounded. All the rest were dead.

‘We were taken to a German field hospital and later to a recently occupied city. After we were better they let us go home. It turned out that the prison train was not able to get to its destination in the east. The railroad had been cut by the rapidly advancing Germans. So, according to instructions, the guards shot everyone.

‘A few guards were caught by the Germans. They were hanged on the main square of the city where we were convalescing.’

I asked how I could be of assistance. Professor Kalinnikov said, ‘After my arrest my wife and two small children were evicted from their apartment and settled in a barn outside the town. The apartment was taken by a Communist who is working here for your city government. He took over our belongings. I request that my apartment be returned to me. And then if possible I’d like to find some sort of work; I’m entirely without means.’

‘Who is the Communist who took over your apartment?’

‘Orlov. Here are the papers to back up my statements.’

He handed me his wife’s passport where her former address was noted, together with an affidavit from the neighbours that the family had been forcibly evicted without the right to take along their furniture. I took the papers and called up the head of the district police station. I asked Kalinnikov to wait.

‘And what can I do for you?’ I asked my other visitor.

‘The only thing I want is to fight the damned Communists,’ he said, ‘but apparently it’s not time for that yet. So perhaps you could give me some sort of work here in the city government. I can settle my personal affairs myself.’

‘Have you got any kind of papers?’ I asked.

‘There’s not much that I managed to save. Here it is. And here is my autobiography. ‘

‘All right. Come and see me tomorrow if it isn’t too hard for you to walk,’ I said. ‘I’ll try to find something suitable for you.’

As they were leaving they met the head of the police station just coming in. I told the latter what was needed. I knew him quite well and was able to talk frankly. He shook the professor’s hand.

‘I’ve heard about this already,’ he said, ‘both about your shooting and the apartment. I believe you have applied to the police about it.’

‘Yes, I have,’ said the professor somewhat drily, ‘and without result.’ While he was speaking the police officer handed me a hurriedly written slip of paper: ‘Please ask the professor to leave the room.’

‘Listen, Professor,’ I said, ‘could you please come back tomorrow morning? I can promise you that we’ll do all we can.’

When he had gone the head of the police station said, ‘Don’t promise him too much. This Orlov who grabbed Kalinnikov’s apartment is now working for the S.S. And he’s not the first Communist to do so. Three-quarters of the S.S. agents I know about are former party members.’

‘Maybe the S.S. doesn’t know it.’

‘All those bastards know, believe me, although I haven’t asked them about it.’

‘Will you be able to prove that they belong to the party if you have to?’

‘That would be easy. But don’t get involved with Orlov, that’s my advice to you.’

‘Well, we’ll see about that. But meanwhile, you hunt up an apartment in your district for Kalinnikov, in case I don’t get anywhere. It’s easier for you than for our housing office.’

‘I’ll try but it won’t be simple.’

He left, and I called up Orlov and asked him to come over. When he came in he sat down immediately without waiting for an invitation.

‘Orlov, are you aware that Kalinnikov has returned?’

‘I am.’

‘Do you know that you are living in his apartment?’

‘I do.’

‘Don’t you think that you should find yourself another one now that the owner is back?’

‘No, I don’t. I’m quite comfortable where I am.’

‘You don’t think you can be removed from his apartment?’

‘No, I don’t.’ His tone became more and more insolent.

‘Why are you so sure?’ I asked.

‘Because—’ He hesitated for a second. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter. Here, read this.’ He thrust a piece of paper at me. It was a piece of S.S. stationery on which it was stated that Orlov was under the special protection of the local S.S. unit and it was forbidden to make trouble for him in any way. It was signed by Rauberg, the S.S. man who spoke perfect Russian.

‘Are you satisfied?’ he smirked.

‘Absolutely. You may go. But one more thing. I think you had better find yourself some work elsewhere and leave the city government.’

‘Are you discharing me?’ he asked defiantly.

‘No, just giving you advice.’

After he had gone I went to see Likhachev and told him what had happened. Likhachev got very excited.

‘I don’t believe the S.S. know who they are dealing with. We’ve got to go over and tell them right away,’ he exclaimed.

I did not think much would come of this. If we had to tell this story it would be better to do it in the kommandatura where some of the officers were well disposed toward us and our affairs. But Likhachev insisted and asked me to go with him.

We had to wait an hour before Rauberg received us.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Petrov will tell you everything.’

I repeated the whole story.

‘Well, what do you want?’ he asked.

‘In the first place I want Orlov discharged from the city government. We don’t want anything to do with Communists. And then I want to evict him from the apartment and give it back to the man the Soviets tried to shoot.’

‘You won’t do either one of those things,’ Rauberg cut me off.

‘But why?’ stammered the Burgomaster confusedly.

‘Because I forbid it.’

‘Excuse me, but I am responsible to the city Commandant and you have no right to forbid me . . .’

‘Shut up!’ Rauberg brought his fist down with a tremendous bang. ‘If you talk to me like that I’ll grind you into powder, you and your Commandant, too! Get out of here and if anything happens to Orlov I’ll throw you both out of the city government and out of your apartments, too!’

As we left the former N.K.V.D. building Likhachev’s lips were trembling. He mumbled indignantly, ‘How dare he talk like that! We’re going to the Commandant right away!’

The Commandant only shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘The S.S. is not under my command and they have a lot more rights than I do. My advice to you is to remain on good terms with them and not argue with them. They can do anything they want.’

‘But this is impossible!’ exclaimed the Burgomaster. ‘There must be some justice! To whom is this S.S. unit responsible?’

‘To S.S. Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler,’ answered the Commandant. ‘Have you any more questions?’

Lickhachev frowned but said nothing.

‘I have one,’ I said. ‘We’ve found a candidate for the post of police chief. He’s a former officer in the White Army whom the Soviets tried to shoot along with Kalinnikov.’

‘All right, send him around. I’ll talk to him.’

‘Well, are you still going to look for justice?’ I asked Likhachev on the way back to our office.

‘Please don’t joke! This is beyond endurance!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why did we trade the Bolsheviks for the Germans? What have we gained? The Communists have penetrated everywhere and keep right on making trouble for the anti-Communists and those who have suffered from the Soviet regime! What’s the difference between what we had and what we have now?’

‘Difference? There is a difference. Under the Bolsheviks you wouldn’t be burgomaster and I wouldn’t be your assistant. We’d be in jail or dying from typhus in a construction battalion at the front. There’s another difference. Now at least you dare express your indignation at injustice. Under the Bolsheviks you wouldn’t have risked it. And there wouldn’t be hundreds of shops and restaurants opening up for Russians and Germans who have money. On the other hand, hundreds of Jews would still be alive. . . . But now nobody stops you from cursing Stalin and the Soviet authorities.’

‘Don’t try to be amusing about all this,’ said Likhachev sullenly. ‘I am very dissatisfied. This isn’t what we hoped for when the Germans came.’

‘Well, what choice did you have? What do you expect?’

There was nothing else to say.

In the evening we had a conference in the office at which my suggestion to appoint Chernov chief of police, subject to the Commandant’s approval, was confirmed. It was decided to give Kalinnikov the best accommodation we could and pay him 10,000 rubles out of the city treasury in compensation.

By this time about 5,000,000 rubles had accumulated in the treasury from various sources, mainly from taxes collected from the new merchants and manufacturers. In addition to this there was a fund of 3,000,000 which the Germans had ‘contributed’. All payments made by the treasury had to be approved by Oberkriegsverwaltungsrat Albrecht. But we decided to pay out this 10,000 rubles at our own risk even if it were not approved. This was not an excessive sum. At that time a small family needed a minimum of 3,000 rubles a month to live.

Chernov was the first to appear at my office in the morning. I offered him the post of chief of police. He accepted and went off to see the Commandant. His appointment was confirmed on the same day and he began to act in his new capacity. He appointed several of his friends to various posts in the police, and a measure of order was restored.

Kalinnikov was offered the post of director of public health. With the help of the police, an apartment was found for him.

Time went by. The city was slowly being restored to normal.

Power and water were available everywhere. There were vegetables at the market, and some meat even made its appearance. Prices, however, kept rising. It seemed that the Germans had an interest in this. Some of them made a great deal of money selling supplies earmarked for the army from the warehouses.

Not until the autumn, four months after the coming of the Germans, was the city government able to issue food regularly to the population, on ration cards. The ration was not satisfactory: a pound and a half of low-grade bread daily per person and ten pounds of various grains per month. However, it was cheap and available to all.

The first day of the ration was one of Celebration in our office. It had taken untold effort to squeeze a month’s ration for the city from the Germans and the surrounding countryside. There was no knowing what it would take to keep it at that level.

Residents often came to the city government with their troubles. They complained about evictions and resettlements; about fuel, of which there was a shortage. The Germans were cutting down trees in the woods outside the city, as well as in the park, for their own use but were allowing almost none for the population. Coal was delivered only for the power plant.

We did all we could to help. It was not nearly enough, but the situation was not much worse in this respect than it had been before the Germans came. The thought that it was undoubtedly harder on the other side of the front seemed to console people.

It was quiet in the city. Robberies had stopped completely. There had been no partisans anywhere near since the beginning of the occupation. There still were none. The town was almost entirely isolated from the outside world. The daily paper, run by a professor of our Industrial Institute, discussed only local happenings. All outside news came through the kommandatura. Later, however, the Commandant presented the editors with a good radio set of Soviet make as a sign of his special approval and permitted them to listen to Soviet radio stations.

I acquired a personal enemy in the kommandatura in Lieutenant Lüttich. It happened in the following way.

One of the restaurant owners came to me and said: ‘Please help me. My restaurant has the lowest prices in town. They are so low that even city government employees – who get the lowest salaries going – can eat there. I buy my food in the villages outside of town. Every time I make a buying trip I have to pay 2,000 or 3,000 rubles to Lüttich for a kommandatura pass. Yesterday he demanded 50,000. I just can’t pay anything like that.’

‘Try and bargain with him.’

‘I tried but it’s no use.’

‘Well, then, close up the restaurant.’

‘That’s impossible. I’ve put all my own money into it and a lot I collected among my friends. Lüttich is ruining me.’

I promised that I would try to do something about it. Since this was far from being the first complaint of this sort, I assembled all the material and presented it to the Commandant the next time I saw him.

‘Of course we could make trouble for Lüttich,’ said the Commandant, ‘but would all these people be willing to present their complaints in written form? And bear in mind that I can’t promise that Lüttich would be transferred from here or lose his influence in city affairs.’

I thought about it. Of course no one would be willing to submit a written complaint.

‘You’d better pay no attention to this,’ continued the Commandant. ‘After all Lüttich is a German. Lüttich is the victor; you are the vanquished. I think that everything is in order.’

The discussion ended on this note. However, the Commandant warned Lüttich about his conduct. The warning had little result except to make Lüttich furious at me. Later on this attitude of his had it consequences.

I developed another enemy in the person of Oberkriegsverwaltungsrat Albrecht. This was my fault. I was celebrating my birthday with a group of city government people. There was a knock at the door and the Commandant, the Oberkriegsverwaltungsrat, and Lüttich walked in, all somewhat drunk.

‘You should have invited us,’ said the Commandant. ‘We may be Germans but we like to have a good time, too.’

There was nothing to do but find a place for them at the table. All of them drank more than they ate, with the exception of Lüttich. At the end of the evening they could hardly stand up. We began to dancé and sing. The Commandant sat at the table downing glass after glass of sour claret and saying, ‘Why is there a war? Who needs a war? In Dresden I was an artist, I have a wife and children.’ He took out some photographs. T like it in Russia. There are nice people in Russia. Better than in Germany now. When the war is over I’m going to live in Russia. I don’t need Lebensraum. I’m an artist. I’m going to live in the Caucasus and paint pictures.’ Drunken tears rolled down his fat cheeks.

Albrecht, on the other hand, was having a great time. He hugged every girl in sight and waltzed with them. Then suddenly he felt tired, sat down in a chair, and went to sleep. Everyone thought this was annoying. People were having a good time, but in the middle of the room there snored a fat German. Someone suggested putting him in the closet. I agreed immediately. We carefully picked up the Oberkriegsverwaltungsrat and carried him into the closet, where we set him down on some pillows and closed the door. The fun went on.

At last, when the guests began to leave, we had the problem of getting the Germans home. They had no car. Of the three only Lüttich was on his feet. He agreed to undertake the task of assisting the others home, since he considered it unseemly for civilians to escort drunken Germans. Albrecht was carried out of the closet. He had stayed asleep and was feeling considerably better. We put his overcoat on him, fastened his pistol belt around him, thrust his cap on his head, and led him outside.

The Commandant did not want to put on his coat.

‘I like it here. I don’t want to go to Germany,’ he muttered.

Lüttich tried to persuade him to go. We promised to get together for another party later. Finally we managed to put his coat on and get him outside. The Commandant saw the moon and the moonlit snow-covered street and refused to leave.

‘I don’t want to go,’ he kept mumbling. T like it here.’

He was pushed out with difficulty, and Lüttich led his two colleagues off toward the kommandatura.

The next day he told Albrecht that he had been put in the closet when he was asleep. Albrecht was incensed and said to me the next time we met, ‘This is an outrage. You had no right to do that. I am a German, I’m an officer, I’m your commander, and you put me in a closet in front of everybody. It shows a lack of respect. You are trying to destroy the authority of the German Army.’

I tried to justify myself to him, but Albrecht remained hostile to me.

Some time later I was almost shot.

During one of our conferences the district burgomasters complained that more and more people kept appearing with notes from Rauberg on S.S. stationery demanding that they be given jobs in the city government. Some happened to be young girls.

I said indiscreetly that the girls might have earned Rauberg’s protection by performing some service for him.

The next day I was summoned to the S.S. Rauberg received me with a deep frown, pointed to a chair, and was silent for half a minute. Then he narrowed his eyes and began to speak.

‘How do you feel? Are you bored with life?’

‘I don’t understand.’

He leapt to his feet and shouted, ‘You don’t understand, God damn you! I’ll explain so you’ll understand. Admit that you said things about me!’

‘Who, me? I’ve said absolutely nothing . . .’

‘Silence!’ he thundered. ‘I know everything that goes on in your office and the intrigues that you are spreading against the victorious German armies. I’ll throw you all out, you Russian pigs! Do you think we stand on ceremony here? Admit what you said!’

‘I don’t understand, honestly I don’t,’ I said, feeling that things were going badly for me. Rauberg banged the desk with his fist, sat sat down, and hissed. ‘Tell me what you said yesterday: that I fix my mistresses up with soft jobs in the city government.’

‘I didn’t say that. I said that the girls that you send to us have probably done some service for you.’

‘O-o-oh, you bastard!’ he yelled, biting his lower lip. His jerking hand unbuttoned the holster at his side and he pulled out his pistol. ‘Don’t lie to me! My information is from people that I trust absolutely! Admit it, you son of a bitch, or I’ll kill you on the spot! Do you think that just because you are the assistant burgomaster nothing can happen to you? Don’t you know that I shot the burgomaster of Taganrog with my own hand? Field Marshal Kleist himself came down to plead for him but I shot him anyway. Don’t you all understand yet who we Germans are and what you are – Russian filth? How dare you talk about us? If I wish it all your girls will sleep with our soldiers and I’ll send them all to work in your city government to replace the chatterers you have there now!’

It was obvious that Rauberg was beside himself and was perfectly capable of putting a bullet into my head at any moment. I had no illusions about my ‘legal’ position and I knew that he could kill me with no fear of punishment. Rauberg was shouting, ‘. . . do you think that it’s the beginning of the end just because the German Army has had some bad luck at Stalingrad? You’re wrong! Stalingrad will be taken and all its defenders will be hanged on the trees that are still standing! And I’ll rub all of you here into dust!’

The telephone had been ringing for several minutes. Finally Rauberg noticed it and picked up the receiver.

‘Who’s speaking? . . . What? . . . Let them wait . . . I said let them wait! How many times do I have to tell you, damn you! . . . Yes . . . Oh, excuse me Herr Sturmbahnfuhrer . . . All right . . . immediately.’

‘Get out of here and remember what I told you,’ he said, turning to me. ‘One more little remark and I’ll hang you on the market square.’

I stood up.

‘I presume you will have no more cause for complaint because I am leaving the city government as from today. Appoint anyone you want in my place.’

‘You’ll stay in your job as long as you’re ordered to! Get out.’

I left his office. Several S.S. men were standing in the corridor near the door. They had evidently been listening. One noncommissioned officer whispered to me as I was leaving the building, ‘We called up on purpose. Rauberg goes off his head sometimes. We thought he was going to shoot you right there in his office.’

My mood was not a happy one. I cursed the Germans and the day I had gone to work for the city government. It would have been better to start a restaurant or just get a job as a waiter. And then I remembered: Stalingrad. What had happened in Stalingrad? There was nothing about it in our newspaper. I went to the newspaper office but they knew nothing there. The S.S. had confiscated their radio set a few days before.

I went to see an officer who had treated me well in the past, and told him what had happened in Rauberg’s office.

‘You were very careless,’ he said. ‘You don’t understand the A B C’s of our organization. Don’t you realize that the S.S. can do absolutely anything? The commanding general of an army or a front can’t give orders to Rauberg. Everybody hates the S.S. and everybody’s afraid of them. They do what they like. Do you know who Rauberg is?’

‘No.’

‘He’s a Volksdeutscher from Odessa. He had relatives in Germany in the Ministry of the Interior. He’s made a career already, although he was a Communist for ten years before the war.’

‘And do you consider this a normal state of affairs?’

‘Normal?’ he repeated with a shrug. ‘No. But nothing can be done about it. The High Command of this front has written to Berlin about him and several others like him. The only answer they got was that it was none of their business.’

‘Incidentally, what was it that Rauberg was saying about Stalingrad? What’s happened there?’

‘Things aren’t good there. One army has been captured and a retreat has begun on that section of the front.’

‘What’s the situation on this part of the front?’

‘So far we’re standing firm, but it’s possible we may have to pull back to the west somewhat here, too, in order to shorten the lines of communication.’

Back at the office I told Likhachev about everything. Then I handed him a written resignation and asked him to tell the Commandant.

‘I’m going to quit, too,’ Likhachev said unexpectedly. ‘I’ve wanted to for a long time. Let’s go to the Commandant.’

The Commandant did not give us an answer that day. Later he agreed in principle to our resignations but we were ordered to stay in our jobs until replacements could be found for us.

One day I happened to run into the girl whose father was a Jew and had been forced to flee at the beginning of the occupation. From her husband who was working in our office I knew that she had suffered some unpleasantnesses. We had dinner at my house and afterward I asked how things were going with her. She began to cry.

‘Do you know what happened to me?’ she sobbed.

‘I’ve heard something about it. But I think that everything is settled now and you won’t be bothered any more.’ She raised her head and looked at me angrily.

‘Settled? Do you know what it cost to settle it? Do you know that my husband has moved to another apartment?’

‘No, I hadn’t heard that; but please don’t tell me if you don’t want to. Don’t get wrought up.’

‘No, I want to tell you. A little while, after the liquidation of the Jews I was ordered to report to the S.S. Someone had told them that I was half Jewish. First I was interrogated there. They made all sorts of measurements of my profile and decided that I was Jewish. They kept me for a day in one of the cells. Then they called me up for more questioning. There were two of them, both S.S. officers. They asked me more questions, took more measurements. Then – they ordered me to strip completely – do you understand? There were two of them . . .

‘After that they gave me a certificate that I wasn’t Jewish, but I had to go on meeting them. Once they didn’t let me go home for three days. I couldn’t conceal it any longer. My family has simply fallen apart. I can’t take my child in my arms any more.

‘Later I was given to some others. There were a lot of them, almost all S.S. men. One of them infected me, I don’t know which one. I infected others. Syphilis, but so far, in concealed form. I think they are beginning to guess now. Do you know what can happen to me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes, there was an order: for infecting the heroic soldiers and officers of the Führer’s army, death by firing squad. Right?’

‘That’s right.’

T don’t care now. My life is ruined; it’s all over. I want to get revenge, but how? What can I do to those loathsome beasts? Infect them with venereal disease?’

‘You’ve got to hide out for a while. The front is moving back. It’s possible that this city will be retaken. Then you can find revenge any way you know how.’

We were silent, thinking of the same thing. Then she said, ‘No, I can’t stay here. Too many people know that I have lived with S.S. men. When the Reds come they’ll shoot me anyway. There’s no way out. I want to end it myself. And it’s time; I’m too tired of life to want to go on. Look at me!’

It was true, it was hard to recognize her. She was only twenty-six but she looked thirty-five or more. Once she had been the best student in our school.

‘Good-bye, Vladimir. If you get the chance, tell my husband that I’m not as much to blame as he thinks. Oh, I wanted to live so much! To go to Europe, to look at the world! And what happened? From the very beginning I had no choice. Either they would kill me or I would kill myself. I took a third path, a slippery one, but I can end it any time. I’ve got some poison with me. They’ll never shoot me. But meanwhile—’ her laugh was entirely without mirth, ‘meanwhile I’ll go out with my little officers and leave them a souvenir from me. Goodbye.’

I embraced her but she pushed me away.

‘Don’t kiss me. It’s in a dangerous stage.’

I sat alone in the darkening room for a long time after she had left.

It was January and the news from the front became more alarming for the Germans every day. Their retreat was proceeding without panic but steadily. Restaurants and shops closed one after the other. People were streaming to the Ukraine with German passes.

My work at the city government ended, but not in the way I had expected. A restaurant keeper came to see me one day accompanied by his friend Kondakov, the secretary of the First District.

‘We have come to contribute a small sum. Business is good.’

‘How much and for whom?’

‘Ten thousand rubles, in your discretion. You know whom to give it to.’

‘All right, leave the money.’

They left the office. I took the money and went to Likhachev’s office to tell him what had happened. He was just transferring his affairs to the new burgomaster.

‘Submit a written report and put the money in the safe,’ said the new burgomaster. ‘I’ll report it to the Commandant.’ I followed his instructions.

Two days later I learned that the restaurant owner had filed a complaint to Lüttich about me saying that I extorted a 10,000 ruble bribe from him and had ruined him completely. Kondakov signed as a witness. Lüttich told the new Commandant (the old one had returned to Germany). The Commandant called the new burgomaster and ordered him to discharge me for bribery. The burgomaster, a friend of Lüttich, for diplomatic reasons did not consider it necessary to mention that the money was in his safe. Lüttich had told him that both the kommandatura and the S.S. were interested in getting rid of me with some sort of scandal. The only witness to my innocence, Likhachev, had already gone to the Ukraine and it was impossible for me to prove anything.

However, I did not try very hard. Under the circumstances it did not make much difference.

My discharge from the city government had only one harmful social effect, and this was impossible to correct. I had one function which I kept secret from absolutely everybody and which I could not hand over to my successor without calling down the most unfortunate consequences on my own head.

Shortly after the city was occupied by the Germans a camp for captured Red Army men was set up on the outskirts. There were several thousand prisoners there and the conditions in which they were kept were frightful. They lived in a barbed-wire stockade without shelter of any kind and they were literally tortured with hunger. The death rate was extremely high. I believe that three months after the camp was established several dozen men died every day. Throughout the summer and fall more prisoners continued to be brought to the camp from the front.

The stockade was always under heavy guard. The local people made many attempts to slip food through the wire to the prisoners but they were always chased away by the German soldiers on guard. Some on both sides of the wire were shot down for such attempts.

A few of the townspeople found relatives in the camp and kept coming to the city government office to ask us to intercede for these prisoners with the Germans and request their release. Likhachev made many trips to various German offices, pleading in every possible way, but it was useless. He always received a flat refusal.

One day one of my old schoolteachers came to me and told me that her son, one of my childhood friends, was a prisoner in the camp. She had come to ask my help in getting him released. After some thought I wrote a memorandum as follows: ‘To the Prisoner-of-War Camp Commandant. Request immediate release of prisoner-of-war Red Army lieutenant Alexei Alexeev.’

I typed out the memorandum on the burgomaster’s stationery, stamped it with the official seal of the office, and signed as illegibly as possible. Then I explained to my friend’s mother that there was very little hope of success, gave her the memorandum, and told her how to find the camp commandant.

To my astonishment she appeared the next day, radiant and excited, and told me that her son had been released on my note. I asked her to keep quiet about it and hide him somewhere as well as she could.

But apparently she could not keep the secret, because soon I began to receive similar requests. I knew that I risked being sent to the camp myself and I was very careful to whom I gave such letters, which had absolutely no legal basis. Several dozen people left the camp in this manner. The only explanation I could think of was that the camp commandant was somewhat feeble minded and was so impressed by documents and seals in the German language that it never occurred to him that they could be written by someone who had no right to do so. Even the smallest hint to the S.S. from some informer in our office would have been enough to get me into deep trouble.

On leaving the city government I regretted that I had not made wider use of my powers in this respect. I did not dare to tell anyone on the new burgomaster’s staff about my method. It would have been reported to the Commandant immediately.

As my activities as a ‘civil servant’ ended, I decided that I would not get myself another job. I stopped going to the government offices. Only occasionally, in the evening, a few of my friends would gather at my place to discuss what was happening. Once in a while I would visit two German officers I knew in order to learn what was going on.

There was plenty to talk about. After the German defeat at Stalingrad the Caucasian front became unsteady and moved farther west. The retreat was slow but continuous. Refugees passed through our city in long lines. They were in a hurry to get away as far as possible. All night I could hear the creaking of wagon wheels and the shouts of the drivers under my window. People rode on horseback, on bulls, on cows, or just walked, having loaded their travelling bag on someone’s cart.

All the German road blocks had been removed long before, and townspeople who had been out to the villages spread the word that practically no one was staying behind there. In some villages almost all the houses were deserted.

One day a peasant came in to see me. He had formerly delivered potatoes to city government employees, and now he had come to ask permission to spend the night in his wagon in the yard of the house I was staying in.

In the evening, over a glass of tea, he said, ‘The whole population is on the move. Nobody wants to stay behind. A man who came through the front lines went through our village with his wife and child. He told us that as soon as the Soviets take over anywhere they grab all the men from fifteen to sixty-five for the army and confiscate all the livestock and food. And if a burgomaster or a policeman or anyone who worked during the German occupation happens to fall into their hands, they hang him on a tree or a lamp-post, right in the street.’

‘Where do you intend to go now?’ I asked.

‘It doesn’t matter where. Right now I’m headed for the Ukraine; they say the Germans will hold on there. It’s best not to think too far ahead.’

‘Do you think the Germans are going to win the war?’

‘Who can tell? There was a German noncom down our way who said they would make a deal with the Americans soon and both would fight the Soviets together. Maybe they’ll win.’

‘Have you got anyone on the other side?’

‘Yes, I have two sons in the army. Well, with God’s help they’ll come out all right and I’ll see them after the war.’

‘Maybe you’d better stay. You must be fifty years old, at least.’

‘Fifty-eight. That doesn’t matter. The Soviets take people like me. They have special punishment battalions for us. They send them out ahead over the minefields that the Germans leave behind, and the army follows. The ones that get through without blowing up are sent out again and again. They don’t arm them; they give them orders to take guns from the Germans.’

Among the German officers the mood was also pessimistic. One was quite definite about it.

‘It was clear to those of us who had the capacity to think,’ he said, ‘that this war was lost in 1941 when we failed to take Moscow. And then the Führer made a fatal mistake when he appointed Rosenberg, a well-known Russian hater, to run the occupied territories. Around here you haven’t met our civilian occupation authorities. When you get to the Ukraine you’ll see for yourself.

‘The wisest thing for us would be to end the war now; but we’ve cut off the path to an armistice ourselves. The French, the Poles, and the Serbs will never make peace with us, although things are still quiet inside those countries. Peace with America is impossible because of the Führer’s point of view on the Jewish question – that’s probably their most serious quarrel with us. You know, in the army a lot of us don’t approve of the Jewish policy. That leaves England and Russia. But in England there are a bunch of Germanophobes in power, although they should be more interested than anyone else in keeping a strong Reich. And as for the U.S.S.R., it would be easiest of all to make peace with it, but we know that Stalin can’t be trusted. He’ll make peace and then attack us in the rear as soon as he can.’

‘What do you think is going t0 happen to our city?’ I asked. The officer shrugged his shoulders.

‘It will probably be given up soon. I’ve heard that the front is going to be stabilized quite a way to the west of here, on the lower Kuban. There’s no serious defence being planned for this area, although the Soviet Army on our part of the front is not very powerful. The retreat here is being planned for reasons of general strategy. I advise you to leave as soon as possible.’

‘But where? You say you’ve lost the war . . .’

‘Where? To the west, to the Ukraine, and later, to Germany. There you can get lost in a mass of people in the same plight as yourself. After the war is over, you can figure out for yourself what to do.’

‘I think you are being too pessimistic.’

‘Perhaps I am, but I’m not the only one who thinks this way, although it’s better not to say so openly. I hope you understand that what has been said is between us.’

I was deep in thought as I left him. It was time to make some decision: the front was only fifty miles to the east. Of course there was just one thing to do and that was to go west. But my mother stubbornly refused to go with me and I could not find the strength to leave her.

‘You must understand, Vladimir,’ she kept saying, ‘I’m more than fifty years old and very sick. I’ve lived here all my life. Everything I know is here. All my relatives are here. Where should I go?’

‘But Mother,’ I tried to convince her, ‘the Bolsheviks won’t forgive you for the fact that I worked for the Germans. They’ll persecute you, they’ll send you to Siberia.’

‘That doesn’t matter. It will happen if it’s my fate. If I have to die I won’t regret it. To live as I’ve lived all this time, the last twenty years, just isn’t worth it, Vladimir. I have only one little hope left, that maybe your brother George is still alive somewhere, that the news of his death was a mistake. Maybe he’ll come back when the war is over. But you go ahead. You have no choice. You haven’t had a choice for a long time, my dear son.’

Tears were running down her cheeks.

She was right. There was no choice for me. It would be, to say the. least, stupid to let myself fall into the hands of the returning ‘liberators’. I began to plan my departure.

It was time I left. The city government had gone already, almost to the last man. The government building had burned down one night under suspicious circumstances. The story was repeated everywhere that it had been done to cover up all traces of the burgomasters’ division of the treasury among themselves. I don’t know how much truth there was in this.

The restaurants, the stores, and the workshops were closing one after the other. The city was becoming more and more deserted every hour. Sometimes at night the sound of artillery fire could be heard in the distance.

Though my mother remained for the time being in our old apartment, I found a deserted house in a near-by village and transferred her belongings to it. Of course this transfer of residence did not make things entirely safe, but it was generally considered to be especially important to be in hiding during the first days.