General Hansen unofficially encouraged his officers all over Germany to help the transit of the Jews to embarkation ports for Palestine.
The Russians learned of this and watched the American-protected camps with suspicion.
Heinrich Hirsch alone stumbled onto the information that one of the leaders in the Jewish underground in Berlin was the American chaplain. On closer scrutiny Hirsch discovered that many Russian Jewish soldiers visited the chaplain’s house to attend services forbidden in the Russian Army. The rabbi’s place was a social center for Jewish soldiers of all four occupation powers. Here they met Jewish girls from the camp, or others who had been hidden and were trying to get to Palestine.
The NKVD was baffled by the disappearance of some forty Russian Jewish soldiers. Hirsch figured that they would rendezvous with the chaplain in civilian dress, he would issue them displaced persons papers, and they would disappear into the American camp.
He never reported his findings to his own authorities. After the fate of Matthias Schindler and Heidi Fritag was sealed, Hirsch made his own rendezvous with the chaplain.
His confession and the revelation of Heidi Fritag’s brutal death hit Berlin as hard as the first rages of winter. The classes at the university emptied and refused to reconvene despite the threats of Communist students’ Action Squads.
Hostile bands of students circled aimlessly looking for a voice as the pitch boiled to a fever; and then a half-dozen new leaders stepped forward from both the student body and the faculty.
They announced defiantly that a memorial service would be held for Heidi Fritag on the steps of the main building.
The People’s Radio reacted quickly to denounce Heinrich Hirsch as a traitor and his confession as a lie. The threat was made that a demonstration would be broken up by force and all participants expelled.
Neal Hazzard had taken Heidi Fritag’s death very hard. As a combat commander he had sent men into battle with a reasonable chance of defending themselves. Heidi Fritag died helpless ... as helpless as the students would be if they tried a demonstration.
The British and French commandants entered the Kommandatura conference room without greeting Nikolai Trepovitch. The Russian, stripped of flamboyance, stared emptily at the papers before him.
Colonel Neal Hazzard arrived last. He looked at the Russian for the first time with absolute hatred.
Nikolai Trepovitch had just finished a merciless session with Marshal Popov. As chairman, he called the meeting to order.
“I have requested this emergency meeting to discuss illegal activities planned at the university. Heinrich Hirsch is a traitor, a liar, and a provocateur. We have signed confessions of the accused. Unless this demonstration is called off we will resort to necessary measures.”
“I take it then,” T. E. Blatty said, “you propose to massacre students in the streets.”
“I propose to stop a demonstration of Fascist militarism.”
“But sir, you established the university, you screened these students, you chose their studies and their teachers.”
Trepovitch fell back to the second line of defense. The plan was to hold out bait of a promise of four-power control of the university in exchange for stopping the demonstration. Once the West agreed, Trepovitch could haggle over the control mechanism until the incident died down.
“We are a peace-loving people,” Trepovitch said. “The Soviet Union wishes to avoid bloodshed. For the sake of Allied unity we would consider the possibility of four-power control.”
“No,” Neal Hazzard said. “No four-power control, no one-power control. The school belongs to the people of Berlin. They have shown now they are ready to run it.”
The Russian could not buy it. It would mean the end of their domination completely. “You want this school to foster German militarism and rebuild the Nazis! We will not tolerate it!”
Neal Hazzard appealed to the cooler heads among the new leaders of the university and convinced them to hold their demonstration in the American Sector.
Twenty-five hundred students walked the Stresemann Strasse spanning from curb to curb, and behind them walked 25,000 Berliners. At a place where Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry once stood they came to a halt, looking across the street into the Soviet Sector, a leveled field that once held
Hitler’s Reich Chancellory. It was filled with Soviet tanks and guns.
The students wore black arm bands, carried black-bordered photographs of the first martyr of a new age, Heidi Fritag. Other placards demanded the freedom of Matthias Schindler.
At the head of their number walked Colonel Neal Hazzard.
Chapter Twenty-three Winter, 1946–47
IT WAS THE COLDEST in the history of Europe.
In Berlin blustery north winds and snow dropped the temperature to twenty and thirty below zero. People froze to death by the dozens, helplessly covered with rags. The infant mortality rate skyrocketed; the water supply froze; filth bred epidemic; rampages of pneumonia and TB swept the city along with a diphtheria epidemic. Gonorrhea and syphilis had long ago found a home in the orgy-filled town.
Berlin was an icebox with bare shelves. Emergency soup kitchens attempted to stave off starvation. People were driven from the heatless shells of buildings down into the underground railroad and to bomb shelters.
In one of the desperation measures, the Kommandatura gave permission for Berliners to cut down their forests for use as firewood. This became the most terrible symbol of the defeat. They trudged in the face of a frigid death from their hovels to gather armloads of kindling.
In the Western Sectors the Grunewald and Tegel forest heard the ring of the ax as did the woods bordering the medieval section of the city at Spandau. In the Russian Sector the great State Forest on the Müggel toppled to the same fate.
When the Falkensteins were not at work they huddled around a single unit of warmth, a wood-kindled kitchen stove from turn of the century vintage, or they lay bundled beneath stacks of covering.
Ernestine was able to use her former legal training in obtaining a position in the Magistrat in the reorganization of the laws and courts. She worked for American jurists in the military government, which also kept her out of the physical cold a part of the day.
At home she tried in vain to bring her family back together. Hildegaard preyed on her mind always. She remained a regular at the Paris Cabaret, taking that sordid life as against the risks of the bitter weather and life outside. Hilde had a third case of gonorrhea and an abortion. Ernestine saw the arrogance fade from her sister. Hilde was the chattel of Stumpf, the mistress of Elke Handfest. Yet, despite it, the girl went into her twenty-first birthday with much of her early beauty.
Ernestine was unable to bear it any longer. Talks with Hilde had no effect. She went to her mother.
“I have suspected Hilde’s activities for a long time,” Herta said.
“Why in the name of God haven’t you done something?” Ernestine demanded.
“I tried to speak to her, but she will admit to nothing. She passes me off. Besides, in these times who is to say she is wrong? It will all pass in a few years.”
“Mother, we must do something for Hilde now. We can’t wait. She must be sent out of Berlin.”
“That is not possible without your father knowing why.”
“Of course, he will be told.”
Herta stood fast. “Your father must not know. He has enough troubles.”
Gerd Falkenstein proved to be energetic, industrious, and ingenious. These were the traits, he boasted, that had made the German people superior and God’s chosen.
With an old comrade and money from his father’s savings, Gerd was able to buy up several thousand surplus gas masks and convert the metal casings into pans and ladles. As his parents worked to support his enterprise, he received a license to reclaim rubble and with his partner rigged a device to resurface bricks and stone into standard sizes. Their operation was carried on in a patched-up shell of a small, bombed-out factory in Schöneberg Borough in the Ami Sector. He boasted openly that the family would stop working one day and return to the old standard of living.