But later, dating the entry ‘late March 1945’, when I had taken in many more impressions, I wrote in the diary again, ‘Poznań, misery here in archaeological layers: first, five years ago, Polish; now German.’
A bulky, reinforced coffer was brought from the bank and dragged up to my ‘attic’ bedroom on the first floor. This no longer boasted the SS uniform or Hitler’s helpful framed advice on the need for strong nerves but only a table and a sofa bed, and the funny little plastic puppy which, after all, could hardly be blamed for the Hitler salute imputed to it.
The top of the sofa was raised, the lower compartment where the bedding was stored was cleared, and sundry gold items emptied into it. Inventories were stacked on top of them. The mattress was lowered, entombing the contents beneath it. The reinforced coffer was removed from the premises in order not to attract attention. This was all done with great excitement, in the certain belief that precious possessions of the Soviet state had been recovered, which the Germans had stolen and exported to their Reich.
To mount a 24-hour guard with changes of sentries would have tied up too many resources, and we were short of armed soldiers. It was thought that the gold would in any case be safest in my sofa bed. I was trusted. So in Poznań I slept on a hoard of gold. Nothing special about that, eh? It was only later, after the war, when I graduated and could not get a job because of ‘Point Five’, as people said at the time (Point Five in a personnel questionnaire enquired after your ‘nationality’, which I gave as ‘Jewish’), and as I spent years in straitened personal circumstances, that I sometimes smiled wryly at myself and the twists and turns of destiny as I recalled that sofa.
One or two days later, maybe three, encrypted instructions came back from Moscow. The gold, along with the inventories, was scooped out from under me and despatched in sealed bags to the address of the government department indicated in the secret message.
‘Right, let’s go!’ said Colonel Latyshev. A wounded lieutenant general had been captured in the Frankfurt-on-Oder area. Our saloon car roared off at full speed, as it usually did when the colonel was being taken anywhere. Out in the country, indistinguishable villages flashed by, some of their dwellings destroyed, others intact. Polish men and women were pushing wheelbarrows and prams with whatever of their possessions had survived.
I glimpsed the threatening German notices with whose colour and design I was so familiar. Pasted up on ruined walls and posts, whole or in tatters, they flew by: ‘Show light – you die!’ Or ‘Light means death!’ Or ‘Pssst! Shhh! The enemy is listening! Keep quiet or die!’ Death, death, death… But everything became a blur and was left behind as the car sped on at reckless speed, as if in search of the risk and danger without which life would now have seemed bland to us.
A Polish soldier rushed to open the camp gates. The depressing, numbingly regular rows of huts stretched far inside. They had been built by Russian prisoners of war herded here to do German forced labour. They themselves had surrounded the camp with six rows of barbed wire, and then lived behind it.
The colonel disappeared through the door of the Polish commandant’s office. The prisoners of war in the camp were now Germans. A miserable, straggly tree still retained frozen leaves here and there. On the inside of the gate a German warning in Russian had not yet been torn down: ‘If passing the barbed-wire perimeter of the camp unescorted by German guards, you will be shot.’
In the nearest hut, in a partitioned-off compartment, the general was lying face upwards on an iron bed. He was covered to his neck by an army blanket and had a young adjutant attending him. They had been captured on a stretch of the railway line, in the track inspector’s lodge. As the German troops were scrambling to get away, the general had suffered a serious wound and had to be left behind. His field tunic, as if crucified on a piece of wood, hung from a nail on the wall. His toiletries – shaving kit, hairbrush, soap – were laid out on a stool.
Our colonel, stocky, burly, wearing a high grey astrakhan hat, took up a considerable proportion of the available space. The adjutant gave him a chair and quickly cleared the stool for me, sweeping everything into a field case. He looked at me in puzzlement, wondering who I was. A representative of the Red Cross, perhaps?
From the other side of the partition came the subdued buzz of conversation of the other German officers. In here was relatively quieter, and the general’s pale face was similarly at peace. Looking at him, you might have imagined the two sides in the war had been engaged in chivalrous combat and that there were no grounds for anxiety that that would not continue.
‘How do you assess Germany’s military position?’ the colonel asked. ‘The situation is extremely serious.’ He did not move: his head remained motionless, and only the bags under his eyes seemed to tense. ‘Your forecast for the immediate future?’ ‘I cannot say it is optimistic, but while the war continues anything remains possible.’
I translated and made notes, but something was troubling me. The colonel hesitated for a moment, and I suddenly asked, ‘I believe you were at Vyazma.’ Our colonel gave me a disapproving look. ‘I asked if he was at Vyazma,’ I explained. ‘I have one other question. May I ask it?’ ‘Go ahead.’ ‘Was the track inspector not anxious about you staying in his lodge?’ ‘He was German. And there are circumstances in which fear has no place,’ he said almost didactically and slightly more animatedly. He brought his white-sleeved arm out of the blanket and smoothed his hair. ‘Although I do not think I brought any additional sanctions down on him.’
I remembered the orders pasted up in the villages around Vyazma: ‘Anyone who conceals or provides lodging or food to a Soviet soldier or commander… will be hanged.’ There he was, lying in his underwear with a blanket up to his chin, and now was not the time to start enquiring whether he had been at Vyazma and whether that order was over his signature Should I continue? I let it drop.
The colonel asked if the general knew about the predicament of the garrison in Poznań citadel. He did. The colonel told him – and this was the whole point of his visit – that the general should send them a message, calling on them to lay down their arms.
The wounded man stirred. His adjutant bent forward to assist him, but was frozen with a look. He laboriously shifted his shoulder and head, turning his pale, puffy face to the colonel. He found it a considerable strain, and sweat trickled from his scalp. ‘Are you proposing to force me to do this as a prisoner?’ ‘It is your duty in the present situation. People are starving to death there now. Your compatriots. Why create needless losses on both sides when it is clear what the only outcome can be?’
‘Call on them to surrender?’ he said. ‘Impossible. That is impossible,’ he repeated after a moment’s reflection. ‘In my place would you really behave differently?’ Now it was the colonel’s turn to reflect. Getting up from his seat, he asked whether the general had any requests to the Soviet command. He had not.
‘Let’s go!’ the colonel said.