AS THE WAR CONTINUED, life in Berlin became ever more difficult to endure. By 1944, it had become clear that the Luftwaffe was not going to be able to effectively protect Berlin, especially since the Allies had added fighter escorts to protect their bombers. The Allied strategy of making the war unendurable for the ordinary citizen was working well.
In fact, it worked so well that some people became desperate to leave, and Günther was one of them. In our next meeting after the public relief fiasco, Günther told me that he wanted to escape to Switzerland.
After the initial surprise wore off, I listened to what he had to say. His plan dictated that we steal a car, buy appropriate IDs on the black market, and simply drive to Switzerland. I was also finding Berlin to be an increasingly difficult place to survive and after a little thought, I agreed with his plan.
A few days later, we positioned ourselves near the entrance to the Anhalter Bahnhof station, where we had a commanding view of the parking lot. There were crowds of people entering and leaving the station, most of them SA (brown shirts), SS, and a sprinkling of civilians. All arrived in their automobiles and parked in the lot.
As we watched, we saw one man, clad in a black leather coat and a soft brimmed hat, rush into the station, leaving his car unlocked. By his dress, the man was almost certainly Gestapo and probably assumed that no one would dare steal his car. It was an assumption that he would be forced to reevaluate when he returned to the parking lot and found his space empty. Günther hot-wired the car and we drove off.
We now had a car but little in the way of fuel. Gasoline was very difficult to get because it was an absolute top priority for the military. Much of Hitler’s success was based on the ability of his tanks to move quickly. The Reich was having a great deal of difficulty supplying the tanks with enough gas to keep going, and without ration cards, gasoline was next to impossible to obtain.
After a few minutes of driving, Günther pulled into another parking lot, driving up next to another car that was parked behind some trees. From his jacket pocket, Günther removed a hose. He quickly got out of the car, looked around to make sure no one could see him, and stuck the hose into the gas tank of the parked car. He bent down and started sucking the end of the hose as if it were a straw. After siphoning off some gas, he jumped back in and we rapidly departed the area. We planned on repeating this performance all the way to Switzerland.
We headed for Lübars, to show the car to Anni and explain our plan to Ilse. We also had discovered a case of pistols in the trunk of the car and we wanted to hide them there. Ilse was less than pleased with our plan, thinking that we would certainly be caught. She became extremely upset, but as it turned out, she had nothing to worry about.
Günther and I returned to Berlin and went our separate ways. We were to meet in several days to leave for Switzerland. By that time, Günther would have the appropriate IDs for us as well as tags for the car, road maps, etc.
As fate would have it, the British chose one of the next few nights to conduct the largest air raid ever made on Berlin. They chained several of their largest bombs together, which exploded with devastating impact. Many of these chained bombs were dropped on Berlin and in nearly every case, they destroyed an entire city block.
While waiting for our day of departure, I had been spending as much time as possible riding back and forth on the subway. This not only helped me to avoid Gestapo, it also afforded some measure of protection from the bombing raids. It was much safer than walking around aboveground, and I was joined on my rides by other Berliners who felt the same way.
The problem with being underground was that when the bombs dropped anywhere near the subway line, sound and pressure waves traveled along the underground tunnels, dimming the lights and causing the ground to shake and the cars to sway violently. We worried that the bombs would penetrate the ground above the tunnels and cause the subway cars to crash. From among quite a few dangerous situations, this was the most terrifying experience I had yet endured.
During this bombing raid, the electric power in large sections of Berlin was interrupted and the car I was riding in must have been in one of these sections, because power failed and the lights went out. After more than two hours of sitting in total darkness, the conductor informed us that there would be no power for an indefinite period, perhaps days. He offered to walk us along the tracks to the nearest subway station. Most of the passengers, including myself, took him up on his offer. Sitting in the dark was demoralizing, and because power had been cut to the ventilation system, the air was becoming stale and foul-smelling.
We finally arrived at the next station and walked up the stairs to the street. As we went through the exit, we were greeted by a scene out of Dante’s Inferno. As far as the eye could see there was nothing but chaos and ruin. Fires engulfed the wreckage of entire city blocks. Six- and seven-story buildings had been pounded until there was nothing left but huge piles of debris.
People ran about, some carrying the wounded, some simply overwhelmed by confusion. Many of the victims were buried alive in the cellars of collapsed buildings. Ambulances and fire engines, lights flashing and horns blaring, mixed with the screams of the wounded, adding to the turmoil. Unexploded phosphorous bombs had penetrated the asphalt in the streets and stood upright, looking like plants in some horrid garden of desolation. Thousands of these had been dropped from Allied planes.
It seemed that, once again, chance had favored me when it really mattered. My life had been preserved where others had died.
Another piece of good fortune was the raid itself. Although the raid and the resulting chaos was a disaster for most, it was, in a certain sense, a godsend for me. The large number of bombed-out buildings gave me a huge new selection of hiding places. I much preferred to sleep in a warm bed like everyone else, but if need be, I was now skilled at surviving in the ruins of former apartments.
All this is not to imply that I should have changed my name to Lucky Lewin. I got my own share of bad news the next day. Günther and I had chosen this day to meet, with the intention of wrapping up our affairs and departing for Switzerland. By the time I reached our meeting place at the Alexanderplatz, I was almost dancing in excitement. At last, an end to the fear, the hiding, and the never-ending struggle to survive!
I saw Günther at the other end of the square and rushed to meet him. As I approached, I noticed that he looked depressed and before I could even open my mouth, he fairly screamed at me, “Dagobert, you’re not going to like this! I hid our car between two tall buildings downtown, where I thought it most likely to be hidden from sight. This morning, I went to retrieve it. Both of the buildings were hit in the raid, and they collapsed on our car!”
My heart sunk as I worked out the ramifications. Just to make sure, I asked him, “Was it badly damaged?”
“Damaged? Dagobert, it was completely demolished! There is no more car!”
We briefly discussed stealing another one but abandoned the idea. Security, in the aftermath of the air raid, was bound to be much tighter. There would be too much concern with spies and saboteurs. My dream of a new life in Switzerland had vanished like smoke in the wind.
The disappointment of not being able to leave Berlin hit me hard. I was on the edge of giving up, of wanting to bury myself in a hole somewhere and never come out. I had come so close to leaving the nightmare that Nazi Germany had become behind me forever, only to find success snatched from my grasp at the last instant. All of the pain and horror that I had experienced in the last couple of years came rushing back, as if something had battered down a door I had constructed in my mind, a door that had been locked and double-bolted to protect me from experiences too painful to bear.
Trying desperately to pull myself together, I walked slowly up the garden path to the Kusitzky house. Ilse was there. She looked at my face and knew immediately that something was very wrong. I told her what had happened to our plans for Switzerland and then collapsed on the bed.
The next morning, I arose and greeted Anni, as usual. I said nothing of the day before. Anni put me to work repairing a cabinet door. Around noon, the air raid sirens went off, warning us of the imminent arrival of American warplanes.
“Dago! Come on! We have to get into the cellar!” Anni yelled. I called Ilse and Klaus to come and climbed down the rickety ladder. The cellar had been prepared for this situation in advance. Alex had stocked it with candles, matches, a water tank, and a quantity of canned goods. There were cots, chairs, and a table.
Ilse and Klaus finally arrived and we sat on the chairs and listened to the bombs exploding in the distance. Without warning, there was a sudden whistling sound, followed by a tremendous concussion that literally shook the walls of the house. Ilse screamed. I was sure that the end had come. The explosion knocked us off our chairs and onto the floor.
“Oh my God!” Anni screamed, over and over again. Klaus was screaming in fright as the lights went out. I sat there quietly, trying to brace myself.
After a moment or two, all was still. We managed to get up and crawl out of the cellar, into the open air. There was a tremendous cloud of dust hanging over the garden, accompanied by a disgusting odor.
“Have you ever smelled anything like this before?” Anni asked.
“No, never.”
Once the sirens sounded, we walked around in the garden. There, in the front yard, the source of the dust cloud and the foul odor was revealed. A tremendous crater had been blasted into the soil of the garden. It was about ten feet deep and forty feet in diameter.
“My God! We’ve been hit!” Anni cried. “I can’t believe it!”
“We are lucky to be alive,” Ilse said, trying to calm Anni down. She was despondent over the destruction of her property.
“Anni, look at how lucky we are,” I interjected. “I think that the house, though damaged, was saved from more destruction by slope of the ground in your garden. “
Anni didn’t seem to be listening to me. She dropped to her knees and said, “Thank God, Danke Gott, I thank you for preserving our lives.”
When Alex came home a few hours later, he said to both Anni and myself, “Just think if the bombs had fallen a few feet more to one side or the other, you could have been dead and the house would have been utterly destroyed. That is something we can all be thankful for.” He then clasped his hands together in prayer.
As was so typical of Alex, he got up and immediately went to work repairing the damage that had been done to the house, starting with the roof shingles that had been blown off. The front windows had all been shattered and I began cleaning up the broken glass, boarding up the windows with heavy cardboard.
The next day, Alex began to inquire where he could find glass and shingles to make the necessary repairs. He also enlisted some of his coworkers from the meat plant to help him. It would take weeks to fill in most of the bomb crater with soil Alex would eventually obtain from a nearby property.
I spent the next few days at the Kusitzkys, helping with the repairs. Alex told me how he had built the house himself, brick by brick. The only help he had was from his father, who was a partial invalid and rather old.
That night, whether by coincidence or because he had heard about the bomb damage, Heinz showed up. Heinz was Alex and Anni’s son. He had classic Aryan looks, with blond hair, a stocky build, and even less to say than his father. He wore a regular Wehrmacht uniform, seemingly with pride, though his father didn’t appear to share in it.
Heinz was a constant disappointment to his parents. While Alex and Anni were extremely hard workers and as independent as possible, Heinz tended to be lazy, satisfied with the most menial positions. He was enlisted in the Wehrmacht but worked at an inconsequential job in the kitchen or served as a barracks cleaner. The Kusitzkys would complain about him frequently, and I was sure that Heinz’s behavior had been a lifelong problem. They would occasionally make comments like, “Why can’t Heinz be more like you? Why can’t he have your initiative?” While this was flattering, it created an uncomfortable situation and potentially a dangerous one. All it would take to have me arrested would be for Heinz to say the wrong thing to the wrong person.
The next morning, I decided it was time I left. Without his specifically saying anything, I got the feeling that Alex was uncomfortable with me being around at the same time as Heinz. Before dawn, I left my customary good-bye note and departed for Berlin.