Armageddon (55 page)

Trepovitch made one of his unmovable stands. Hazzard let the matter die. The Russian position was that the university was physically in the Russian Sector and of no interest to the West.

During 1946 Hirsch consolidated his grip. Every political, historical, and philosophical study was derived from a base of Lenin and Marx. All student clubs were under domination of young Communists on the campus. Likewise, the faculty organization was run by Communist professors.

Both the students and faculty came under heavy pressure to join Communist activities. Often students were threatened with being expelled if they did not attend special lectures, join demonstrations, donate time to the Action Squads.

After the Berlin Assembly election of the fall of 1946, a number of Communists were taken out of the educational system in the Magistrat. A ground swell started among the students and non-Communist teachers for reforms.

Heinrich Hirsch used the textbook tactics dictated by Lenin. In the light of the elections and the temper of the moment he made a temporary retreat by granting a number of small but unimportant concessions.

The stirrings grew. Heidi Fritag and Matthias Schindler emerged as the opposition leaders on a crest of unrest. The two personally petitioned Colonel Hazzard for an American license to form a Democratic Students’ Club on the campus and publish a weekly newspaper. Even though the school was in the Russian Sector, it would be keeping within the contention that the university was rightly under four-power control.

Hazzard warned the youngsters that they would be in danger and out of reach of American help, but they were adamant.

RIAS and the American newspaper announced the granting of the club license followed by an appeal from Heidi Fritag urging the students to join. What happened caught Heinrich Hirsch flat-footed. Over half the students flocked to the Democratic Club.

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 Heidi Fritag was called.

A member of the SND came into the room and whispered into Azov’s ear, “The girl died a few moments ago.” Azov stood and asked to address the court.

“Heidi Fritag has attempted suicide out of guilt. She cannot appear in court. However, we have her signed confession.”

The journalists wrote “interviews” with the defendants in which they expressed extreme remorse for their “crimes.” Tapes were edited and photographs retouched.... People’s justice had been done.

Sean O’Sullivan was brought out of his sleep by a sharp knock on the door. He turned on the lamp. It was three in the morning. Blessing stood at the door.

“Get dressed,” Bless said. “Pack a bag, quick. We’re taking a trip.”

Sean did as he was told without question.

A staff car waited at curbside. Bless got in the front seat next to the driver and Sean in the back. Neal Hazzard was waiting. They sped along the Unter Den Eichen.

“We have General Hansen’s plane standing by at Tempelhof. We’re carrying out a single VIP to London. Keep him company. Write down what he says. See that he doesn’t try to knock himself off.”

“Defector?”

“A big one. Heinrich Hirsch.”

Chapter Twenty-two

V. V. A
ZOV HAD FORCED
Hirsch to attend session after session of the questioning and torture of Heidi Fritag and Matthias Schindler to break this strange streak of resistance in him.

Hirsch watched the whole event like a witness at his father’s death. The circle was complete. He, a victim of tyranny, had now seen the same merciless destruction imposed on an enemy. He, the Communist, had killed in the same manner as his father had died at the hands of the Nazis.

Azov’s attempt to debase his spirit was the final disillusion of what was once a golden idea. He still believed in Communism, but had come to detest the men who had perverted it beyond recognition.

Yet, the last thread of defiance did not break. He would not submit to this final humiliation ... to become a Communist robot without a soul.

Months earlier he had gotten wind of certain happenings in the American Sector that planted a seed of escape in his mind.

Jews, freed from death camps in Poland, trekked west to attempt to get to Palestine, the only door open to them. They were carefully shepherded by young Palestinians who slipped them to French and Italian ports. Immigration to Palestine was deemed illegal by the ruling British mandate.

Although it meant going against his British colleague, Neal Hazzard quietly established a refugee camp for the Jews in the American Sector and saw to it they got what they needed in the way of displaced persons documents.

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

I
T 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.