Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [147]
She was carried with the moving river of human misery into the subway again. The melancholy that had been running days and nights together closed in on her. She put her face in her hands. The train wheels sang out ... Dachau ... Dachau ... Dachau....
The visions came to her as they came in her terrible dreams: a clear recollection of sullen silences in her law office before the war; there were questions that were not asked; a clear recollection of those long moments of searching her father’s eyes when he did not want to look at her; a faint recollection of the names of Jewish playmates; a blurred remembrance of Uncle Ulrich’s strange disappearance and of the whispers after the hanging of Uncle Wolfgang.
More than any of it, Ernestine vividly relived those moments when Dietrich Rascher was on leave from the Eastern Front and of his drunken babblings. She remembered the little music box he had given her and a rain-streaked hotel window where they loved... she remembered him blurting out the name of Blobel ... Colonel Blobel ... Kiev ... Commandos 4A Special Action Group C.
“Auschwitz station!”
She looked up horrified.
“Grenzalle station,” the trainman repeated.
It was a mile to the hospital. The surface transportation was either by ricksha bicycle or horse-drawn street car. The street car was filled beyond capacity, no rickshas around. She walked on foot down Rudower Allee. It was dangerous because it was close to the Russian Sector and oftentimes they crossed over and accosted Germans on the streets, and other Germans were powerless to stop them.
“Hey, fraulein,” an American soldier said, blocking her way.
She looked at him. He was young, like Gerd, and he was nervous about trying to pick her up. “Ich have cigaretten .. . and ... uh ... chockolade ...”
“Bitte,” she pleaded, and brushed past him quickly.
She was alone on the dead street. Walls of shorn buildings like large fingers hovered above her. With each step, Dietrich Rascher’s mumblings beat into her brain.
Then, yesterday she heard it! “This is the People’s Radio. We announce a massacre outside Kiev at the pits of Babi Yar. It is now confirmed that 33,000 Jews were gunned down in open pits. It was the work of Colonel Blobel, Special Action Group C!”
Dietrich Rascher! Ernestine struggled up the last three steps to the hospital door. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she toppled to the ground.
No one got excited. This sort of thing happened every few seconds in Berlin these days.
Chapter Six
EVEN AT THIS MOMENT of self-criticism there was an undeniable air of satisfaction as Heinrich Hirsch reviewed the accomplishments of the German People’s Liberation Committee.
Rudi Wöhlman closed his eyes, pressed his fingertips together, and nodded in rhythm to Hirsch’s monologue as though he were beating time to music.
The other two Germans present formed the inner circle. There was Adolph Schatz, appointed president of police, and Heinz Eck, appointed deputy mayor of the city.
V. V. Azov sat dull-eyed at the end of the table, in his usual posture of no commitment of pleasure or displeasure.
Heinrich flipped a page. The final tally was that 85 per cent of the Western Sectors were stripped of “war-making” potential before arrival of the British and Americans.
Before the arrival of the West:
A banking monopoly had been established in the Soviet Sector, controlling the finances of the city;
A food ration system was established in five categories. The highest ration was twenty-five hundred calories a day and the lowest twelve hundred. Control of the ration system was in Soviet hands. Use of the ration system was proving an effective way to gain converts. Top rations went to those who cooperated best with the Soviet Union.
Hirsch reviewed the positions of each of the two dozen members of the German People’s Liberation Committee, how they moved into pre-selected positions, each holding a key