Escape from Berlin

Berlin, Germany
Christmas Eve 1938

Thomas Haas struggled to stay awake as the train crawled along the maze of tracks approaching Berlin’s Ostbahnhof Railway Station. The train was three hours late due to bad weather. The carriages were crowded with Christmas travellers. The toilets were not working and smelled. The hapless buffet steward had run out of food, his face showing the strain. Thomas looked over at his colleague, Bernard Voghts, sitting opposite on a stained seat, his feet resting on the threadbare carpet. Their conversation had dried up many hours before.

‘No idle talk here, Thomas,’ Voghts had reminded him.

Thomas smiled, he put his finger to his lips. Maybe Voghts shares my views? Better to keep quiet, Thomas thought. Returning to the capital, Thomas was eager to see how recent declarations of peaceful intentions towards France and the United Kingdom had changed the atmosphere on the Berlin streets. He had witnessed a build-up of troops on Germany’s eastern and southern borders. This is where all the money is going, he thought. Nothing is being spent on the railways.

The landscape had changed as the train travelled west. The crisp white snow turned to ugly brown frozen floodwater covering the flatlands.

Thomas lost himself in his thoughts.

A few days earlier, Thomas had received a cable from his editor.

Travel back to Berlin for Christmas leave. Report back to the office, Tuesday 27th December for a New Year assignment. Herr Keller.

Thomas, an orphan, had no close family. He sent a wire through to his best friend and mentor, Mats Winter, professor of economics at the Royal Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin.

I can now take up your kind invitation. Expect me for Christmas. Love to your family. Thomas.

The engine driver applied the brakes of the train, and Thomas and his companion stepped out into the cold late-night air. Bustling up the long platform, both men searched the expectant crowd. Hymns and carols were being sung in the station foyer. A small accompanying military band was readying to finish for the night. Thomas saw Voghts rush forward to hug his wife and son. He walked on through the throng. He had hoped to glimpse a familiar face by now.

The crowd thinned as he walked, until Thomas’s eyes met the last three remaining people waiting for passengers off the 13.15 train from Eastern Prussia. The eyes of a stranger looked straight back at Thomas. Dressed in the uniform of a Brigadeführer, he was flanked by two soldiers from the SS regiment. Thomas looked at all three, from left to right and then centre. The stranger towered over the shorter, rounder, bespectacled Thomas.

‘Herr Haas, I am Brigadeführer Von Fügershof, of the Sicherheitsdienst. I am detaining you for questioning. You will accompany me back to my car.’

Two arms tightly gripped Thomas’s elbows and the quartet marched across the station forecourt, past the dispersing band members, and onto the street, where a Mercedes-Benz staff car awaited. Thomas, his fatigue gone, glimpsed his colleague and friend, Voghts, who turned to stare.

‘Herr Winter has been informed of your delay,’ Von Fügershof remarked to his captive, as the car left the city centre.

Thomas stared out through the wet glass, at the Christmas lights and cheer. Concerned but not frightened, he tried to show no emotion. He wondered why he had been detained. He had written about destitute women and children, abandoned by their menfolk. Stories of inequality and harshness. Why would that justify such a response?

Thomas amused himself by imagining caricatures of his three SS captors. Little and Large, Large struggling to fit into the uniform, not a fighting weight, and Little would pass anyone in the street unnoticed. Von Fügershof, tall, athletic, brutish and blond.

The car left the high tenement buildings of the inner suburbs, and moved into the leafy outer districts. An armed guard opened the gates of the Woltersgarten estate. The back of Von Fügershof’s neck noticeably straightened with pride as they drove up the tree-lined drive to the main house. It was half past midnight on Christmas Day.

Von Fügershof climbed out of the car and turned to Thomas. ‘Welcome to Woltersgarten, Herr Haas.’ He leaned further into the car, his face went closer, and his spittle sprayed over Thomas’s cheek. ‘The late arrival of your train has meant I could not accompany my family and estate employees to a midnight Mass at our local chapel. I must hurry now, I have to host the post-Mass reception of Glühwein and Christstollen in the main hall. I give you Christmas greetings. We shall reacquaint after the holiday.’ He smiled and slid away into the darkness.

Like a snake slithering or vermin scurrying away, Thomas could not decide. He smiled, reimagining the caricatures. Thomas looked around. He absorbed more details of Von Fügershof’s house and estate. He chose to wipe away the spittle from his face only after Von Fügershof had departed. The car pulled off right and down a narrow side road. Three minutes later it pulled up into a wide courtyard surrounded by whitewashed outbuildings. A small light bulb shone over a side door.

The two escorts became noticeably more aggressive as they marched Thomas into the building. Quickly and efficiently, they stripped Thomas naked. He stood barefooted on the cold stone floor.

Just for starters, Thomas thought.

Little, the smaller, younger soldier, restrained Thomas’s arms behind his back with iron handcuffs. Thomas, now frightened, stood motionless, not protesting as a rifle butt swung against his shins. Large, the burly older man, grabbed Thomas’s penis and testicles and squeezed with force. Thomas stepped back, to be met by another rifle blow to his lower back. He fell sideways to ease the pain, his only means of resistance. The two soldiers delivered a barrage of kicks to his head and body for what seemed like an age but must have been only a few minutes. Thomas screamed. He had tried to stay silent, but his blood now seeped onto the floor. He chose not to roll up in a ball and protect his head from further blows. Instead, he stretched and reclaimed his dislodged spectacles from behind his back.

Under orders, Thomas tried to rise to his feet. The guards yanked his arms upwards, and he was trooped downstairs to a small, shabby, concrete-floored room. He saw a wooden bench and a blanket folded at one end. Little and Large retired upstairs. Thomas managed to smirk as they left, reminded of some American silent movies and his favourite comedy duo, Laurel and Hardy.

With the handcuffs now released, Thomas picked up the blanket and loosely wrapped it around his body, curling his feet beneath him. Thomas spent the rest of Christmas Day in this position, except for an occasional need to urinate into a bucket in the corner of the cell. The only human contact was the sound, late on Christmas evening, of a vicious assault, by a new guard, on a woman being held prisoner along the corridor. Thomas chose to ignore the sound, unable to help or contemplate such evil.

A clever man, with a few years’ experience of journalism, Thomas slowly regained his composure. He blanked his mind from reality and the hunger and dreamed himself through the next thirty hours.

‘Now you’re a true Berliner journalist, our new Berlin correspondent,’ Herr Keller had enthused to his young protégé as he shook his hand and touched his elbow affectionately. He held a growing respect for this young reporter.

‘I feel at home already, sir. Thank you for the opportunity,’ Thomas Haas replied.

A year earlier, Haas had first been hired as a junior trainee for the Berliner Sonne daily newspaper. He was, by then, no longer an active member of any political party. He quickly gained a reputation as a liberal writer with a social conscience, only, for now, covering provincial news. He had often referenced local Nazi Party activities but had refrained from any direct criticism.

In the summer of 1938, he was encouraged by his editor to expand the scope of his coverage. His writings were descriptive and accurate, and this gave Herr Keller, his editor, plenty of good material for their eager readers.

St Stephen’s Day came and went, for Thomas to be awakened by the door of his cell being opened early the following morning. He stood up, unable to meet his visitor eye to eye. He was fresh from sleep, but was weak, cold and hungry. As Von Fügershof entered, Thomas’s mind quickly became calm and agile. He was ready to form a defence against any charge, although unsure what evidence Von Fügershof held, or what he was being accused of.

Von Fügershof walked smartly in. After a Christmas Day celebrating with his family at home, followed by a St Stephen’s Day spent eating and drinking with army colleagues, and ending with a visit to a seedy dungeon in the centre of Berlin, he was tired, guilty and irritated. Gitta, his wife, had again questioned his absence. What right has she?

Von Fügershof, eager to quickly impose himself on Haas, was still anxious about his authority to torture this man, who was nothing more than a minor provincial journalist, even if he was writing for an influential newspaper. Keller, the editor, a highly decorated veteran of the Great War, had contacts throughout the regular German Army. Von Fügershof had already received a call earlier that morning, asking why Haas had been detained. Von Fügershof had examined Haas’s writings and had become very disturbed by one story in particular. It concerned one of Von Fügershof’s discarded mistresses and her child. The articles mentioned brutal violence, but didn’t mention who the woman’s abuser was. Von Fügershof, alone, had decided to expedite the investigation. This was personal.

Von Fügershof was edgy. He barked an order for Thomas to sit. Thomas’s arms were now restrained behind his back. Von Fügershof stood over Thomas, picking up a horsewhip from nearby. He cracked the leather hard against Thomas’s cheek.

‘Are you ready to confess your crimes against the Fatherland?’

‘Sir?’ queried Thomas.

Crack went the whip.

‘Subversion, creating unrest,’ shouted Von Fügershof. ‘Left-wing infiltration of the German press. You joined the Communist Party in 1931.’

‘I left the party in 1934. The impulse of youth.’

‘The writing of unpatriotic lies, that is your crime. How do you respond to these accusations?’

‘Sir, I’m just a local correspondent with the Berliner Sonne newspaper. Factual reporting is the only writing I do. I know nothing of lies or propaganda. My writings are concerned only with the expansion of our brave armies. I try to convey the truth for the wives, mothers, fathers, sisters and children of the men who will serve for Herr Hitler and the German Fatherland.’

Von Fügershof relaxed. He liked people to show him respect. He had grown to expect it from an early age. His grip on the whip handle loosened, a bead of sweat ran down the length of the leather. A frown then appeared on his face, as he began to realise that his prisoner remained unruffled. Von Fügershof again felt uncomfortable, his grip tightening again. Crack. The whip found its target, followed by Von Fügershof’s polished toecap striking Haas’s groin.

‘You visited Cambridge University in 1931. Was it at this stage you first became a communist?’

‘I rejected communism,’ Haas replied. He wept, unable to conceal his pain and anguish. ‘I’m not a member of any political party. I’m a patriot, I believe in the peoples of Germany, their rights, their Fatherland.’

‘I do pain well. I do torture very well,’ Von Fügershof boasted. He dragged Thomas from the bench and onto the floor. He needed to indulge himself for a few minutes more, exercising his pleasure, before he would retire from the cell.

Eventually, it was time for a tactical withdrawal, a chance to review his evidence. Could Haas link that bastard child to him? Did Haas even know that he was the officer involved? Von Fügershof was sure that if the man had anything substantial, these last few days as a guest at Woltersgarten would keep him quiet.

Von Fügershof turned towards the cell door. He needed to rethink his strategy and return another day. He glanced back and saw Haas lying motionless. Had he suffered enough? Von Fügershof swivelled before aiming one last kick at his victim’s head. Blood splattered. Perfect, Von Fügershof thought.

Thomas lay in a pool of blood and sweat. The pain, the hunger and the thirst eased away as he lost blood and slipped into an unconscious state. When he regained consciousness, he was aware of a damp, cold darkness all around. His head throbbed, his tongue searched around his mouth, his jaw and teeth ached with pain. A salty taste played on his tongue, as blood seeped from his lips, cut open over his incisors.

His tongue broke the clot formed during the hours he had been motionless on the concrete floor. Thomas was confused – he had no idea why he had been arrested. He could not understand Von Fügershof’s irrational behaviour, alternating between extreme courtesy and sheer thuggery. The man is unhinged, he thought.

A numbness covered his lower body, no ache, no feeling. The overriding sensations were hunger and cold. Thomas, tired and weak, slumped back onto the wooden bench. His only escape was more sleep, so he took it.

England
1985

‘Where are my brogue shoes?’ Roger shouted up the stairs.

Sarah bridled. Nowadays any utterance from Roger annoyed her. ‘Bloody man.’ Sarah had no conflicting emotions towards her husband. ‘Where you left them,’ she replied. Then, a little louder, ‘In the garage.’

‘Okay, found them.’

‘Typical,’ Sarah said, not caring whether he had heard or not.

He had. ‘I didn’t leave them there. Why the hell did you put them in there?’

‘It’s where you left them.’ Sarah this time lowered her voice. ‘Trying to sneak in. Too pissed to remember, I expect.’

This was a repeated pattern. Sarah was used to their three teenage children asking before they looked, but now Roger was draining her energy. Her once dynamic, handsome husband, the so-called ‘love of her life’, was no more than a controlling bully. He was successful. He could be charming, and would be so tonight. She reassured herself that she had grounds for divorce if needed, because of Roger’s many flings and bullying behaviour.

Sarah never looked forward to these dinner parties with cricket club teammates. They were never the willowy teenagers, the university undergraduates, or the handsome young professionals in the village team. No, these would be the older players. Early middle-aged, pompous, just like Roger. The couple had both just turned forty. Sarah continued applying her make-up. She liked what she saw in the mirror. Sarah found her husband toxic and loathsome. These negative thoughts strangely helped her to cope.

Roger’s friends aren’t all bad, though, she supposed. One or two were now friends of hers. Matt had caught her eye. She had tried flirting with him at Christmas and wanted to take it further. Unfortunately, Matt was too much of a gentleman, and devoted to his bitch wife, Michelle. Michelle led Matt a merry dance and had been all over Roger on more occasions than Sarah could count. Sarah knew about Michelle and Roger, but she kept it to herself. There was no point revealing her secret weapon before she reached the divorce courts.

Make-up ready, she slipped into her little red number. Roger liked her to dress seductively, and what Roger wanted, he got – for now. It helped keep life almost bearable. She applied foundation to cover a bruise on her right leg. She did not want to wear tights on such a balmy evening. As Sarah walked downstairs, Roger slipped his hand through the banisters and stroked her bare thigh. She winced. Roger knew he’d touched the bruise. Bastard, she thought.

Maddie, their eldest daughter, caught sight of this from the living room, as she slumped on the sofa. She laughed aloud, calling out, ‘How nice to see my parents, still in love.’ Maddie’s sarcasm and contempt were obvious. Sarah knew Maddie’s opinions of her father. They both knew this was not love, but possession.

Roger had used Sarah’s looks to help launch his career. She was his trophy. He paraded her on his arm, coached her on how to behave, to entice his bosses, but also to keep her distance. Meanwhile, Roger played the women in the room, flirting to see where he might safely explore.

Roger wasn’t the only one to have strayed. Over almost two decades of marriage, Sarah had had two brief flings. She regretted neither. They had kept her sane, reassured her that she was still someone who could be loved and wanted, when her husband had made her feel like a commodity instead of a cherished wife.

‘Bye, Maddie. We’re off now. Make sure the twins aren’t too late.’ Sarah kissed Maddie softly. Her children, her career, they were just enough reward.

Sarah and Roger drove in silence. She glanced over to him and smiled. He smiled back. He would be very good company on evenings like tonight. Temporary truce in place, they started to talk. He can’t bully me tonight, she thought, or get too drunk. The children were always a safe subject. They agreed on everything about them. Maddie was settled at last, her anorexia behind her, and happy at Bristol University. Sarah knew that Maddie’s problems had eased since Roger had moderated his behaviour towards the family. The twins, Ruth and Richard, were in the lower sixth studying A levels, also happy. They had each other and were extremely close, sometimes to the exclusion of the rest of the household, and all their friends. Ruth looked after Richard, and Richard had his eye out for Ruth.

By the time they pulled up on Brian and Isabelle’s stone driveway, Roger and Sarah were chatting happily. Sarah braced herself and climbed out of the car. Brian, their host, was fifty-five. A batsman with great style, he was a Cambridge blue at cricket and rugby, and for many years was the Testbury Cricket Club first eleven captain. He was now the club chairman. A merchant banker, his elegant home was an ancestral inheritance. Isabelle, Brian’s second wife, was quiet, but Sarah took comfort that Isabelle was tonight’s hostess. Brian’s mother, Grace, still lived in situ within the ancestral home. It could be a little awkward at times, as she took over and acted as a second hostess on occasions like this.

As Roger and Sarah walked along the pathway towards the front door, Sarah’s heart skipped a beat when she saw Matt sweep onto the drive in his green Land Rover 110. Her mood dropped on seeing Michelle sitting beside him. She saw Roger’s eyes fix on Michelle, before he scurried ahead to ring the doorbell.

‘Pretend you haven’t heard or seen the bitch,’ Sarah mumbled to herself. Why should I? she thought. She had nothing to hide, unlike Roger. She would brave this evening out.

The sight that met her eyes made her chuckle. Michelle was all legs and knickers as she swung herself out of the front seat. So much for discretion. Sarah caught Matt’s eye. He smiled as she laughed. Sarah diligently trailed Roger through the front door. Matt and Michelle followed a minute later. Matt was a first team fast bowler, tall and slim. A few years younger than Sarah and Roger, he was ex-military. Sarah was not exactly sure which branch. The army, she thought. He was now a Whitehall civil servant.

Grace was there to take the coats, while Brian and Isabelle waited to greet them in the large reception room. Grace worked hard, flitting between the door, the kitchen, and coat duty.

‘Give me your coat, my darling. Oh, I do like your handbag,’ Grace gushed.

Sarah noticed Grace glare, as Isabelle hovered, then hesitated, and finally let her mother-in-law take complete control.

Matt and Michelle followed Sarah into the lounge. Sarah noticed heads turn as Michelle breezed in. The men were admiring, the women wary.

Sarah quickly recognised Stephen. She considered him genial company, and his much younger wife, Lynn, was very sociable. Stephen was always invited. He started all the party games. Brian and Roger would egg him on, all evening long. When Stephen was in full flow, they all laughed. Sarah was a little taken aback, as she did not recognise the fifth and final couple in the room.

‘Glad to meet you, I’m Klaus, and this is my wife, Jacqueline.’ A tall and very broad man reached out for Sarah’s hand and vigorously shook it.

Then Roger took his hand. ‘Nice to see you, Klaus. This is our Kraut player, Sarah, the Hun we trust.’

Sarah saw the distaste on Klaus’s face. You prick, Roger, she thought. The Second World War had been over for forty years. She noticed the disapproval on Brian’s face too. Then Roger took Jacqueline’s hand and gently kissed it.

‘Darling,’ Roger started.

Sarah hated the way he talked to her in public.

Roger continued. ‘Klaus and you have something in common: you both work in banking.’

Klaus raised an eyebrow and smiled. ‘We’d better not bore everyone over dinner.’

Roger turned to Jacqueline. ‘Your husband certainly loves his cricket.’

She smiled. ‘He was brought up on baseball. His father was a diplomat. They spent a lot of time in Japan and North America.’

A half-German, half-Yorkshire couple, Sarah thought. ‘So, where in Yorkshire, Jacqueline?’ Sarah decided to begin a conversation with the newcomers, liking the change.

Isabelle followed her mother-in-law, switching between the lounge and the kitchen. Brian might be from an old, aristocratic banking family, but they were a modern couple. No servants, but Sarah expected a couple of young girls from the village were helping in the kitchen.

Isabelle was very proud. She had previously confided in Sarah that she felt the strain of being a second wife. Marrying a widower, being a stepmother, and living in the ancestral home with her mother-in-law. She felt pressurised to maintain high standards.

Dinner was served. Roger and Michelle sat beside each other, while opposite them, Sarah was happy to be sitting next to Matt. Sarah tried not to glare across the table. Their hostesses, Grace and Isabelle, sat at one end of the large dining table with Brian at the other end, when not on his feet serving wine. The dinner party proceeded along a familiar pattern, and Sarah was thankful the new couple, Klaus and Jacqueline, were there.

Michelle and Roger were behaving. Maybe they did not need an excuse to paw at each other. Maybe they were already past that stage in their relationship. Sarah scorned herself for these thoughts, but was still enjoying the evening.

‘Call me Jackie,’ Jacqueline said after the first course. She, like Sarah, looked more relaxed.

Roger spent most of his energy trying to get Stephen started with his anecdotes. He and Brian needed Stephen as a foil for their own tales. Stephen appeared dumb for a while, but eventually, after another glass of Chablis, there was no stopping him, and the meal passed quickly. Stephen was more than a man’s man, so Sarah and all the ladies also enjoyed his repartee.

After the port, Michelle went outside for a cigarette, and Roger hurried after her, much to Sarah’s and, she felt, Matt’s amusement too. They were not long, and Stephen wanted to start his party games. No, please, Sarah thought. She could see that Jackie shared her unease.

Klaus cut in quickly. ‘In my time in Japan, at dinner, everyone would be encouraged to tell a story about themselves, a story nobody – nobody in the room, maybe not even their spouse – would know.’

Sarah felt awkward again, wondering what she could say that Roger did not know about her, that wouldn’t expose her to more of his ridicule. That would be tricky.

Klaus seemed to have prepared an amusing story from his time at Heidelberg University. He had lived all his childhood in Japan and the United States, so as an undergraduate in Heidelberg, he did not understand the culture and got all the German traditions wrong.

Michelle volunteered to go next, telling them about her early childhood. A story from her time switching from a children’s home to foster parents and back again. It was a story of both harshness and kindness towards her.

Maybe I misjudged Michelle, Sarah thought. You have to be hardened to survive a children’s home.

Brian, always a captain, started to call this his batting order. The openers had selected themselves, but Brian put in Stephen as number three. ‘Man, lady, now a man,’ he commanded. ‘Mother can go last.’

Stephen was amusing, but Sarah was certain she had heard the story before. Isabelle gave an account of her time as a nanny looking after children with dysfunctional parents.

Then Roger was next. What would he say? Sarah was amused by Roger’s climbing out of the boys’ dormitory to spend the night in the girls’ boarding house. Typical bragging, Sarah thought, but she suspected there was some truth in the story.

Jackie was next. Sarah was seeing a pattern now: she would be last but one, a sort of tenth batsman. Jackie’s story was very amusing. Had she prepared something as well? She told how, before she met Klaus, she’d had a dating disaster with an over-amorous flatmate who misread all the signals.

Matt next. There was no boasting from him as he spoke about the Falklands conflict a few years earlier. He told a simple and amusing tale of miscommunication between a broad-accented Welsh guardsman and a senior plum-in-the-mouth officer. It had resulted in some Argentinian prisoners of war being unchecked all night, but with no escapees as everyone was blissfully unaware that the door was unguarded.

Lynn then shocked Stephen with a story about the Isle of Wight Festival in 1969. Sharing a tent with several of her young girlfriends, she’d had her first experiences of soft drugs and young men. Stephen sat listening open-mouthed. ‘And so, Stephen, maybe you didn’t take your PA’s virginity, as you had thought,’ Lynn said with delight.

Well, they’ve had a row before coming out, Sarah thought. They’re usually so together.

Brian quickly put himself up as the second-to-penultimate batsman. He told a Cambridge University story of an initiation ritual that left Sarah feeling upset for the poor fresher victims, but she had read of far worse.

And now Sarah. She had been racking her brains for the last hour. She kept coming back to one story. It had to be this, Roger had never heard it. It was not funny, but it was a mystery. She began. She remembered it as if it were yesterday.