Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [184]
In the Kommandatura Nikolai Trepovitch raged at the “illegal” organization and promised to break it up. Neal Hazzard did not budge.
In a few days the first issue of the Democratic Students’ Club newspaper paper, Justice, was printed and distributed. The two-page tabloid carried a front-page editorial by Matthias Schindler.
WE DEMAND!
Academic Freedom!
An end to Marxist indoctrination!
Democratic student power!
Texts of Western philosophy!
Courses in religion!
Heinrich Hirsch stood with eyes cast down, figuring out the pattern on the Persian rug. V. V. Azov flung a copy of Justice at his feet.
“The blood of the Soviet Union drenches every millimeter of German soil! Do you think we have spilled it to stand by idly and allow the rebirth of Nazism!”
Hirsch’s voice trembled. “It would be difficult to consider Matthias Schindler or Heidi Fritag as Fascists.”
“All Germans are Nazis at heart!”
My father was not a Fascist, Heinrich said to himself.
“You will learn once and for all, Comrade Hirsch, that no German nationalism is tolerated and the German people will learn that their only salvation is through the Soviet Union!”
The abduction of Heidi Fritag and Matthias Schindler by unmarked cars of the SND was swift and efficient. Schatz’s political police bound and gagged them and whisked them out of Berlin. The kidnap was followed by an Action Squad from the university breaking into the print shop of Justice and destroying it.
The kidnap cars sped south and were swallowed up in the darkness of the Russian Zone of Germany. They halted at a castle on a former Prussian Junker estate near Jüterbog. The captives were hustled into dungeon cells where V. V. Azov, himself, had come to supervise the confessions. They had to be carefully staged, recorded, and photographed.
In the old days Azov was able to estimate within minutes how long a person could hold out. Most of those who had been brought to him during the purges had already appraised their predicament and confessed without resistance, but during the purges they only wanted to keep alive and continue as partners in the crime.
Matthias Schindler and Heidi Fritag held on to something a purged Russian never knew; the usual promise of sleep, food, water, cigarettes did not work.
The commissar could not understand their stubbornness. Five nights and days of round-the-clock questioning failed to break them. Matthias Schindler, with the glistening marks of other beatings from the Nazis, smiled and spit at them.
Heidi Fritag, the damned Jewess, merely sat erect, tight-lipped, defiant.
Azov sweated. He ordered the use of drugs, for he was getting the worst of the questionings. His stomach had turned to fire. The drugs produced blurted ramblings unsuitable as evidence to the world. As a last ditch, he decided upon torture. It had to be done with care so that no visible mutilations would show.
Schindler got it first. He broke and signed a confession.
Heidi Fritag continued to hold out.
She was stripped naked and lashed to a table. Mirrors were rigged up before her eyes so she was able to see the entire length of her body. Candles were placed on both breasts and lit. As they burned lower and lower the hot wax dripped on her. Lower ... lower ... she convulsed with pain. One of Azov’s commissars sat close by, drumming questions into her ear, promising relief.
On the eleventh day after the kidnap a “trial” was held. Heinrich Hirsch was forced to observe everything.
Present in the castle were members of Adolph Schatz’s Special Nazi Detachment, NKVD, and two carefully selected journalists. V. V. Azov sat at the end of the room as an “interested” observer.
Matthias Schindler had been cleaned up so that he might be photographed, and was dragged into the room under heavy sedation.
A prosecutor read his confession. “I admit to undercover activities dedicated to the rebirth of fascism at the university ...”
A sentence of twenty-five years was passed.
Schindler was dragged away and