On December 8, 1944, Lilly received a summons bearing the round, terror-inspiring stamp of the Gestapo, ordering her to report to Jewish Section IV D1 at Französische Strasse 47 at noon on Wednesday, December 13. She decided to bring Bernd home from Thuringia, so that the children would not be separated in case she was detained after questioning. That Saturday evening Lilly set off for Meuselwitz, where she arrived at five in the morning. From there it was a forty-five minute walk to Zipsendorf.
Bernd Wust:
When she picked me up she told me the others were already at home, and that the Russians were approaching and that was why we all needed to be together. But right after that she started with the story of Felice. That’s all she talked about for the half-hour or hour it took us to walk through the village and back to the train station in Meuselwitz. There weren’t many people on the street there either, three or four maybe. It was a small village with one main road, the way villages are in Thuringia and Saxony. I remember Mutti talking about Felice in a loud voice, and suddenly I said, “Oh God, someone’s coming!” And Mutti answered, “Oh, nonsense!” Then she told me about the Jews and why Felice was taken away. Then when we got home to Schmargendorf she spent the next few days telling me everything there was to tell. Christians were no good, just look at the Nazis, that sort of thing. She suddenly had decided that we all should be Jews, if not from birth then somehow. To me, everything was happening very quickly, I was shocked, actually. We had teachers in Thuringia who were 150 percent Nazi. We—the whole class—marched to sports class to the accompaniment of Wehrmacht songs; we thought that was great, and we played army sometimes, too. But I had begun to notice certain discrepancies: The Führer was winning, yet we were being bombed. The fact that the Russians were approaching was for me, as a ten-year-old, a fluke; the Führer in his wisdom was giving them a little rope, he would be victorious in the end. Then they told us about the V-weapons. We thought that was great. But then the bombs started falling, and we were in a lignite mining area, Leuna wasn’t far. So, well, there we were, standing in the fields saying, what happened to the German defense? What happened to our secret weapon? The sky was filled with American planes, the entire horizon, with a few flak planes in between, and once in a while an American plane would crash. Well fine, we were glad about that of course, but somehow. . . . And when as a ten-year-old I would carry on about the Führer to the shopkeepers and the neighbors, well, even a child could tell they weren’t sincere in what they were saying, they had their reservations. And I felt that perhaps. So when Mutti told me the whole story I was . . . naturally I was horrified at first, but God, it was also very exciting because I knew it was dangerous. It was a game to me.
When Lilly’s friends found out about her Gestapo summons it affirmed their opinion that her trip to Theresienstadt had been sheer madness, and perhaps had even played a role in Felice’s being deported to the East. Lilly’s parents prepared to take the four children into their home. Everyone was in a state of upset except Lilly. “I don’t know how it is that at the moment of greatest danger I can keep my wits about me,” she wrote in her diary. “It is not only Felice who has nerves of steel.”
That Wednesday Lilly wore the blue ensemble that Felice had commissioned Käthe Herrmann’s father in Königs Wusterhausen to make for her. She put on Felice’s blue cloth coat with the faux pockets and proceeded to the Gestapo office on Französische Strasse, around the corner from the Deutsche Bank on Behrenstrasse where her father worked. But before she went she gave the folder with Felice’s papers and her own diary to Elenai, who, to Lilly’s surprise, had stood by her in this period as no one else had. They agreed that Elenai would wait for Lilly in the bar opposite the Gestapo building. If Lilly did not return from the interrogation Elenai was to take the documents to Inge in Lübben. But the air raid sirens went off and Elenai could not stay there any longer, so she went to her apartment near Nollendorfplatz and waited impatiently until Lilly’s call finally came. Bernd, well aware of his responsibility, stayed at home with his three younger brothers, all of whom were down with chicken pox. When Lilly returned home he was standing in the doorway, white as a sheet and armed with a child’s rake, exhausted but proud.
Lilly’s diary, December 18, 1944:
They grilled me for four long hours, tormenting me with their questions. An air raid warning sounded for a half-hour in the middle of it all, but the beasts wouldn’t let me out of their clutches, though they knew that my children were sick and at home alone. I was so afraid! Several times they said to me, “Well, that’s what you get.” Oh, my sweet thing, what is any of that compared with you. First they took down my whole life story and then went over our entire history from beginning to end. Questions, nothing but questions. Insidious, nasty, spiteful, friendly, calculatedly well-meaning and base questions, questions, questions, threats, threats and promises. I think you would have been proud of your Aimée. She stood the test well.
As Lilly was climbing the narrow marble steps of the rust-red building in Berlin’s banking quarter, her summons clutched in her hand, she encountered a Jewish Ordner she knew from Schulstrasse as he was dragging a wooden bench out of an office on the second floor. He didn’t say a word, but turned pale and gave her a frightened look. Since March 1943 the Gestapo’s Jewish Section IV D1 had been housed behind barred doors on the third floor of the elegant, four-story, turn-of-the-century buildings, its eaves embellished with grape-bearing cherubs. The Jewish Section handled the cases of Jews who had gone underground, or of Aryans who had “aided and abetted” Jews. The brown-paneled interrogation room measured roughly thirty square meters in size. To the right of the door sat a police officer whose job it was to arrest her, she was later told with pleasure. Through the half-open sliding door leading to the next room Lilly could make out a large group of men in uniforms. Five men took part in the interrogation, and a crude blond woman with red cheeks recorded the proceedings on a typewriter. The cardigan she was wearing was fastened appropriately with iron crosses.
Now and then she stood up from the table as if so indignant that she could no longer contain herself. “God, your poor unfortunate children!” she would sigh, her eyes upcast for effect.
Lilly was forced to talk about her friendship with Felice. She had met Felice at the beginning of December 1942, at the Café Berlin, she said truthfully, leaving Inge out of the story. They had met several times after that to go out together. Felice later had visited Lilly at home; Lilly had never been to Felice’s home. She lived with acquaintances; Lilly did not know the address. No, they weren’t Jews, as far as she knew. Felice had told her that she worked in Babelsberg. What kind of work did she do? Lilly had no idea. Then Felice moved in with her, first for a few days and then on April 2 for good. Lilly had neglected to register this officially, believing it wasn’t necessary to do so with friends. Felice was not a subtenant, after all, but her friend. The Gestapo cross-examined Lilly on the registration issue for half an hour.
“You knew Schragenheim was a Jew. You did know. Talk!” they shouted at her. Lilly hadn’t known, she said.
Lilly was astounded to discover that, rather than being afraid, she was totally alert. She needed to remain vigilant to perceive the traps they were setting for her; she could not afford to be inattentive. One careless answer and she, and Felice and their friends, would be done for.
“I got to know and love my friend as a person, and only found out who she really was on August 21,” Lilly stated, repeating what she had said at Theresienstadt.
Felice worked sporadically, Lilly told them, but was seldom at home. She gave Lilly coupons for butter now and then, but not regularly. Where did Felice get the coupons, they wanted to know. “She didn’t get them from the block warden,” Lilly answered, thinking, “nebbish.” Felice also had travel coupons and money. From where? No idea. She didn’t pay rent, but when she went shopping with Lilly’s ration cards she often brought back toys for the children. Did she have friends? Jewish friends? “Listen, there’s a war on. With four children I have more than enough to do without prying into other people’s affairs.”
And then the woman with the iron crosses on her cardigan got up from her typewriter and went over to the table where the chief interrogator, who was named Burchard or something similar, was seated, and whispered to him. Then she bent down to Lilly while Burchard pretended to organize his papers.
“You didn’t have sexual relations with the Jewess, did you?” she asked in a soft, confidential voice. “No,” Lilly replied incredulously, with an uncomprehending smile.
“There was no question of lesbian love between us,” was the answer recorded in the protocol.
Then Lilly had to recount the events of August 21.
“How did you know that Schragenheim—don’t always refer to her as your friend, I will not tolerate it—was at the Schulstrasse camp?”
“From acquaintances.”
“Jews, in all probability.”
“How would I be able to tell?”
They then made threats against those acquaintances who had revealed that Felice was on Schulstrasse. Lilly told them about Titze and that she was at the Schulstrasse address five times in order to take Felice a few items of food and clothing. Her interrogators seemed to know exactly how many times Lilly had visited Felice.
“What were you thinking? By then you knew that she was a Jew. You knew it by then.”
“Who told you that Schragenheim was being sent to Theresienstadt?”
One of the police officers on duty mentioned in passing that she might have been sent there, Lilly answered.
Did she know where Felice was at the present time?
No.
So then what happened?
So then on September 28 she went to Theresienstadt.
There was a great deal of murmuring at this among Lilly’s interrogators.
“Something like this is totally outside our experience—you just up and follow a Jew, of all people, to Theresienstadt, and with a general travel ban in effect. What did you do there? Tell us!”
The Czech military guards probably assumed that she wanted to speak with the Hauptsturmführer personally, Lilly said, and that’s why they allowed her through the blockades.
“And then?”
“After five minutes of conversation with him I was back outside.”
“We’re happy to hear that.”
In the middle of the interrogation the sirens went off and everyone rushed to the cellar except Lilly, who was told to leave the room and wait on a bench outside.
Once the interrogation resumed, she was asked about the acquaintance she had traveled with. Lilly didn’t know whether or not they had been to Brünn asking questions about Lola.
She had just wanted to take a few items of clothing and some food to her friend in Theresienstadt, Lilly answered.
“Where did you actually get all this food?”
They knew all about the packages she had sent to Felice daily. She answered that she had written to Felice approximately five times. Then Lilly spied several of her own postcards to Jaguar in the thick file on the desk, Jaguar’s green ink was unmistakable. So Felice had never gotten her cards.
“So by then you knew precisely that . . .” [“ . . . namely, that you are a totally enchanting Jewish girl,” Lilly added in her diary.]
Lilly then told them that after that, she had heard nothing further from Felice. What excuse did Lilly have to offer for herself, she was asked.
“It was terrible for me that my best friend—”
“I will not tolerate that!”
“—was taken from me like that. My children loved her very much as well.”
Then the topic of Lilly’s divorce came up, divorce from a poor unfortunate soldier fighting at the front.
“Don’t think for a minute that we believe you. Schragenheim told us something else entirely. There’s no reason for her to protect you anymore.”
Lilly stuck to her story. In the end Burchard left the room to consult with the group of men. Following a good deal of loud chatter, they all coursed into the room, and Lilly had to sign a paper stating that because she had befriended a Jew she actually belonged in a concentration camp, but that due to her four children who were dependent on her . . . and that if there were even the slightest impropriety in the future, a concentration camp was exactly where she would be sent, etc., etc. Lilly could feel that the Nazi henchmen were furious at her composure, even as they threatened to send her to a concentration camp. And then—after a great deal of being sent back and forth from one room to another—she was actually allowed to go home.
“—only out of consideration for your poor, innocent children.”
“And you’ve probably never heard of the words ‘National Socialism’ either!” one of them bellowed at her as she left.
Lilly’s parents, too, accused their daughter of lacking a sense of responsibility toward her children. This led to a huge family altercation, as a result of which the Kapplers forbade her any further contact with her friends.
Lilly was placed under police surveillance. “Fine, I consider it an honor,” she wrote in her diary. She had to report to her local police station at the Schmargendorf town hall on Berkaer Platz every other day.
“Why do you have to report here?” she was asked by the officer on duty at her first visit on December 14.
“Don’t you know?” Lilly answered, undaunted, and refused to say. Let him find out for himself if he was so interested. She wasn’t afraid of this man with the fat stomach; he lived in the building next door to her and was a painter by profession.
On her fifth visit it occurred to her to have the date and exact time of her appearances documented. Who knew what it might be good for in the future?
“It’s not customary,” the fat man said.
“The Gestapo told me to do so,” Lilly lied.
Lilly was accompanied to the police station by her eldest son, who was already grown up enough to offer her his protection.
“Heil Hitler!” Bernd would say, standing rigidly at attention as he had learned in school.
“You can say ‘Good day.’ That’s what you say at home, isn’t it?” the man behind the desk growled irritably.
When Lilly answered the phone at home the line would crackle. She advised her friends not to visit for a while.
On January 5, 1945, seven men and seven women were deported from Berlin to Auschwitz. It was on that day that Lilly finally received mail from Felice. The pale envelope with the round postmark dated January 3, 1945, bore the text: “Rawitsch—Old German City in the East—Gate to the Warthegau.” It was addressed to her parents, in a child’s neat, slanting script that Lilly was unfamiliar with, and contained two letters:
December 18, 1944
My Dearest,
A thousand Christmas greetings to you, your parents, and the children. I am well again, even despite the cold attic, and am still quite weak but “verra beesy.” Unfortunately I never received your long letter, it wasn’t in the cards. But tomorrow I’m going to T[rachenberg] for a delousing (but I don’t have any!), and I hope to be able to mail this then. Please think of me always, and pray for the brave and yearning
Jaguar
December 26, 1944
My Dear Ones,
I’m going for a delousing—without lice—a second time so that I might tell you that a Christmas package arrived on the eighteenth, which unfortunately had been sent back and forth so much that all the food had spoiled. But the green gloves and the socks are wonderful, as are the chest protector and the shawl. And everything with “AS” [Aimée Schragenheim]! So I received something for Christmas after all, otherwise there was no sign of it here. I thank you a thousand times for everything, think of me always. I can put all of it to good use because I’m always outside and it has already dropped to fifty-nine degrees here. It’s amazing what one is capable of, even without a Teddy coat and long pants. I love you very much. All my love to you, your parents, and the boys.
Kisses, kisses, kisses from
Jaguar
and Happy New Year.
On reading the passage about the delousing, Lilly sadly remembered a touching scene in the midst of her tears.
“I don’t know why I itch so much,” Felice had once complained. And in fact, to everyone’s horror, she had lice! Someone from her circle of friends had loaned Felice a pair of pants, according to Felice, and now she was paying the price. Lilly had shaved Felice with Lola’s help, and it was sweet how it embarrassed Felice.
Lilly’s diary, January 5, 1945:
Your letter, you poor caged one, you. Now I can live again until your next letter. You shall return. I must believe that, otherwise I’ll lose my mind. My longing for you makes my blood race through my veins all the faster. I can almost touch you. Felice, I love you. And you? My beautiful, clever girl. Unfortunately, the war is making our situation wretched once again. It just won’t come to an end, and on top of that I’m in financial straits. I don’t want to touch the thousand marks, you might suddenly need the money. Let’s wait and see. I want to finish this volume of my diary and take it to Inge in Lübben; I want to be sure it’s somewhere safe. Inge will pick me up at the train station. She works there at a factory, and has to stand at a machine all day. She was terribly unhappy at first. Hopefully Elenai won’t come with me. She recently behaved quite badly to Frau Wolf.
Reports were circulating that the camps in the East were being closed down. Her head pounding, Lilly stuck pins in her map of Europe denoting that the front was drawing ever nearer.
On January 25 at 2:45 p.m. she reported to the police for the last time.
Lilly’s diary, January 25, 1945:
To think that you might already be safe. My God, what hope. When will I hear from you again? Last week I sent you a package, which you’ll probably never get. Warm stockings, warm underwear and woolen gloves. Never mind. We’re used to it, after all. I don’t dare imagine how the snow is heaped up where you are, and the cold. They must not have had much time to think things over, their own people barely had time to make their getaway. Every day we hear the most horrible stories. Only yesterday they unloaded thirty-two people in Lübben who had frozen to death, and there were so many children among them. The children of the Führer. Unloading bodies has become part of the daily routine of every town of any size at all. Every single road to Frankfurt/Oder is blocked with people who are fleeing, with horses and wagons. Do you know what they say when they see the transports? “The Jews are coming.” They come in freight cars, in open lorries. The Russian breakthrough has been going on for a week now, and everyone in Berlin is in a panic. The gas has been shut off completely. We’re all supposed to share the stove for cooking, but what are we to cook with when there’s so little coal to be bad? I haven’t received my ration for a long time now. And the lights are turned off with no warning beforehand. For hours. We can no longer write letters, only cards are permitted. Travel is out of the question, they won’t let you go farther than seventy-five kilometers. Thank God I can get to Lübben. But express and local trains don’t exist anymore, so I’ll have to figure out how to get the things from Lübben. Better that the Russians pick me up with my things than pick up my things without me. Travel time on the S-Bahn, subway and streetcars is held to a minimum, so now the wait at the Schmargendorf station is truly enjoyable, my dearest! Between ten in the morning and two in the afternoon practically nothing at all is moving. Each day the papers bring new joys. My God, if only you were somewhere safe and allowed to be a human being again.
Lilly’s diary, February 4, 1945:
I was going to continue writing yesterday, but there was a major bombing. The inner city got the rest of it. The Potsdamer and Anhalter train stations, Alexanderplatz, the Jannowitz Bridge, Witzleben, the Tempelhof airport. There’s nothing moving at all between Tempelhof and Hermannplatz, and barricades have been set up everywhere. Nothing but piles of rubble. Nothing in our immediate vicinity was destroyed, thank God. My parents and Nora and Elenai are fine, but I’ve heard not a peep from the others. The telephone is out so we can’t keep in touch with each other. I haven’t heard from Gregor for a week; he’s been bothered by a bad tooth. I’ve survived for you, my beloved. Today the wireless informed us that due to the repatriation of Volksgenossen from the Eastern territories, and the loss of these territories, it will be necessary to introduce restrictions for the upcoming ration periods 72 and 73. We are supposed to stretch eight weeks’ rations over nine weeks. As of tomorrow we’ll have only dried potatoes. When they start talking on the radio about economizing . . .
Berlin resembles a frantic ant colony. Newspapers and the radio report on the people’s unshakable determination to defend themselves, and say that the Volk is standing behind its Führer. Yesterday Goebbels delivered a speech to Berliners, saying that it is the citizenry’s first duty to stay calm, that there was absolutely no danger, and so forth. We get a new Gauleiter every day. Everything is quaking and creaking, our situation truly is serious. I want to save the canned goods I’ve put aside—you’re not back yet—for an emergency. They’re in the basement, where it’s still cold. And finally, finally, peace seems nigh.
“I’m deeply shaken,” Lilly wrote in her diary on February 9. Since the end of October she had been going to the Mecklenburger Restaurant on evenings when she couldn’t bear to stay at home, and there she had met the three mysterious and educated women who fascinated her in the same way Felice had at the Café Berlin. Only the eldest of them wore dresses, the other two were always attired in discreetly elegant outfits of English wool, their hair combed straight back from the face in the masculine style. Lilly particularly was drawn to the youngest of the three, who despite her severe features radiated softness.
“I’d like to get to know her,” Lilly said to Gregor sometime during October 1944 over a bowl of soup at the Mecklenburger. Under the pretense of having left a glove behind, Lilly returned to the restaurant with Gregor and spoke to Petel.
Evening after evening they met there to discuss world literature, proceeding to the restaurant’s air raid shelter when the sirens went off. On February 7, as they were all sitting in the shelter, Lilly invited the three ladies to visit her at home. Their reaction was more than subdued, which Lilly attributed to the fact that the youngest and eldest of the women didn’t seem to get along. But the next day Katja, the small, third member of the group, who wore a pair of thick-lensed glasses, invited Lilly to a café on Heydenstrasse. The two women chatted about this and that until Katja put a direct question to Lilly.
“Tell me, little Pythia, you wouldn’t be a spy by any chance, would you?”
This came as a total surprise to Lilly. Only a few days before she had talked more openly with the three women than was prudent. She had related an argument she had on the telephone with Christine Friedrichs’s mother, who had accused Lilly of wanting to get rich on Jewish possessions when it was forbidden to own property belonging to Jews. And this because Lilly had wanted to pick up her own and Felice’s clothing from the Friedrichs’s house in Brandenburg. At which point in the story Lilly blurted out, “You will have figured out by now that my friend is Jewish.”
The three women had exchanged knowing glances, and Lucie, the eldest, had said softly, “Either you don’t know people very well, or you’re still too young to comprehend such viciousness.”
Lilly succeeded in allaying the suspicion her red hair had aroused: The three women had taken her for Stella Goldschlag—the Jewish “catcher” whose path Lilly had crossed on Schulstrasse. And Lilly finally discovered who Katja, Lucie and Petel were: Dr. Katja Laserstein, forty-five; Dr. Rose Ollendorf, known as Petel von Petrus, forty; and Lucie Friedlaender, fifty-one.
Lilly’s diary, February 9, 1945:
The poor things. They’re in the same situation as you, my sweet, only they’ve been in it longer. My God, there’s someone I can help again. So you can see that I’m in the best of company. Something like this could only happen to me, to me of all people! With Berlin such a big city and so full of people. But I must get to know them! My God, the way these women survive. You were in heaven compared to them, despite everything. They live in a summerhouse and can only go in and out after dark. They wash in restaurants and discreetly dry their things on the chairs they’re sitting on. All that is over now. They shall sleep in real beds again, and no longer have to wander from train station to café to restaurant and back again just in order to have some place to rest. Nor shall they have to sit on some cold park bench to pass the time somehow. I’ll figure it out. Luckily, the war is almost over. The murderers are being forced to think of their own safety now. It will work out. I don’t think they’ll credit me with being that bold. I’ve been talking to everyone in the building about my cousins from Frankfurt who were bombed out and whom I now, unfortunately, have to take in. It must work.
The neighbors took no particular notice of Lilly’s new guests. They had become accustomed to unusual behavior from her and, on top of this, they had other things to worry about. Preparations were being made for the final battle. All men who were still at home had to have a doctor attest to their fitness for the Volkssturm, a territorial militia of older men and young boys unsuited for regular military service. The city was teeming with refugees, Berliners were not mincing words about their true situation, and the police had ceased to interfere. Nevertheless, Katja, Petel, and Lucie avoided the air raid shelter in Lilly’s building, returning now and then to their summerhouse on Wiesbadener Strasse to spend the night.
Lilly’s diary, February 24, 1945:
The air raid alarm goes off twice a night, and there’s always a lot going on. There’s a considerable amount of shooting. I love you so much, Felice. I’m so lonely, though now I have people around me who are worthy of my love and care. I love you all the more through them. I’m so busy with them and never at home, as my friends justifiably complain. And yet I’m lonely. I yearn for you terribly. They understand my suffering best of all, for they are like us. You understand. They love one another and it makes me long for you more and more. You, my only beloved.
Lilly’s diary, February 28, 1945:
Gregor calls them “the witches.” Though God knows, they’re dear witches. Our life gets more and more difficult, there’s no such thing as comfort anymore. The lights go off three times a day, and even in the evenings. Sometimes the alarms sound when the lights are off and we then have to rush down to the basement in total darkness. Everyone is secretly grumbling. Even Frau Mory, Frau Eichmann’s daughter, said, “Oh, it’s not courage we lack, but the urge.” Funny, isn’t it?
My provisions are running out, see witches above. I have plenty of dried potatoes, but bread is in short supply. There are now eight of us living on five ration cards. I don’t know what the next weeks will bring or what we will have to eat by then. I cook with gas despite the ban on it. Bernd and our guests need to eat, after all. I use the coal I have for the oven, and not for the communal stove as ordered. I have no intention of sitting around with the children in the cold of April.
Lilly’s diary, March 9, 1945:
The alarm sounded at eight forty-five tonight. My three ladies had to disappear quickly. They really have to hurry because we don’t want anyone in the building to run into them and subject them to any particular scrutiny. So at the first warning they duck into the nearest public basement. In a bunker they can ask you for papers. Usually I go with them, but sometimes I have to keep up pretenses and stay here and complain about my burdensome relatives. Everyone believes they truly are my relatives. The alarm goes off every evening, and sometimes at night. This is the seventeenth one today, just as we were preparing to drink our coffee. I baked a pudding cake in your honor [for Felice’s birthday], and a nice potato salad, secretly at night, because the gas is on then. My witches are worthy stand-ins for my noble and oh so wild Jaguar. They’re so nice to me, and all of their best wishes are with us.
Good Lord, they just laid down a bomb carpet somewhere nearby. What a racket! Boy, oh boy. Everyone turned pale at that one. Say, was that a greeting from you? A little loud. And the ground wobbled and shook. The day before yesterday a card arrived from Emmi-Luise Kummer, as charming as ever. She wrote: God lives and will help. Will he, my sweet? The outlook for Berlin is less than rosy. If Berlin becomes a battlefield—and that it will be for certain, in the truest sense of the word—then we’ll be in for something frightful.
On March 15, 1945, Irene Cahn believed her sister still to be in Theresienstadt. “I don’t know if I mentioned that my parents-in-law, Paul and Eva Cahn, are in the same place as ’Lice, they even live at Bahnhofstrasse 25,” she wrote to Emmi-Luise Kummer in Switzerland. “Is it possible that ’Lice knows them, and that my grandmother, who was also there, was able to see ’Lice?”
Lilly’s diary, March 18, 1945:
Where? In the basement, of course. It’s shortly after eight-thirty at night. Today we had a terrible attack, three thousand bombers over Berlin. It truly was the worst day of bombing yet. But thank God there was little sign of it where we are. We stood on the stone square that belongs to our building and saw the whole mess of them fly over. Almost like being at the theater. Flying silverfish. When they looked like they were getting too close we hurried back down to the basement. The distance is always deceptive, but unfortunately I saw two planes shot down. Herr and Frau Rauche and Herr Wendt wanted to kill the parachutists with their bare hands. Nice people, they are. God spare those poor men. Will Germans be received the same way in England? Perhaps no one here will think of that. Hopefully there are good people there.
I’m in bed with a light flu. I look like I’ve been crying, and now and then when no one’s looking I do cry. I feel so miserable, and there’s no Felice to fight over pills with. Thirty weeks ago today we were forced apart. It will be March 29 soon, the day two years ago on which I wrote to you, blushing. “When shall be our wedding day?” And then April 2 will arrive. I so had hoped that Berlin would be showing another face by now. God knows why the Russians suddenly are taking their time in conquering Berlin. The war continues. The signs are mounting that the Thousand Year Reich is coming to an end, it’s true. Rations have been curtailed greatly. We’re often given lard instead of butter, and there have been no special rations despite the constant bombings. Every evening on the radio there’s yet someone new championing Berlin. Every bridge in the city is barricaded and thousands of streets as well, to hamper an enemy breakthrough. Since the offensive began in the East, and particularly in the West, the Allies systematically have destroyed all of Germany’s transportation routes, all the industrial storage and warehouses. A constant stream of bombs of every caliber falls continually on cities that are already terribly damaged. And now the war is coming so damned near. But it is lasting too long, much too long for those of us waiting for it to stop. All the men in Berlin have been called up for the so-called Volkssturm. Last Sunday they were armed with antitank rocket launchers and had to swear an oath to the Führer. Bread supplies often run out by five in the afternoon, and an astounding number of people line up for rolls. Pastries are few and far between.
Lilly’s diary, April 4, 1945:
My God, it can’t last much longer. It could be over any day now. One night recently the radio suddenly went off the air and we thought peace finally had arrived. We can barely rein in our impatience.
Dearest, for the last few days I can’t get—you know—out of my head. Two years ago I was in urgent need of rest. And what did you do, you beast? Poor, ailing and weak Aimée hardly got any rest at all. How little sleep we got then; my heart races at the memory. Oh, Felice, you don’t have any idea how you changed. A very self-confident, yet inwardly lonely girl turned into a person who finally knew where she belonged, who had a home and a family. We grew, both of us together, drawn to each other like magnets. On April 2, 1943, when we decided that we wanted to stay together forever, neither of us knew we couldn’t escape our fate. We were in love, I shy and afraid of the unknown, and you passionately resolute, but secretly afraid that I would be shocked by my own behavior. At that point you didn’t want to trust how happy you were. Oh, my beloved black-haired girl with your big ears.
On April 10 Irene Cahn wrote a letter thanking Madame Kummer for her efforts to get Felice to Switzerland, so that Käte Schragenheim could then book her passage to Palestine. Lilly, in one of her letters to Irene sent through Emmi-Luise Kummer, apparently had told Irene about the difficulty she was having getting Mutti to return Hulda Karewski’s fur coat. “The affair with the fur coat is a mystery to me,” Irene wrote, “but it’s not really important. The person who has it should just keep it.”
Lilly’s diary, April 10, 1945:
Since April 9 we’ve had a new ration card system. Butter has practically disappeared, now it’s lard. We get 2,000 grams of bread a week, 250 grams of meat, 225 grams of grain, 65.2 grams of cheese, 800 grams of marmalade or 335 grams of sugar—but there is no sugar in period 74—100 grams of ersatz coffee, 375 grams of lard. It has been stated explicitly that distributors are to weigh foodstuffs fairly, so that sometimes the rations we are due are not available. They’re making marmalade out of all kinds of things now. My mother told me how to make it from beets, so we would have something to spread on bread. The bread ration of 500 grams per week for children under six is hardest. What can I do? I also have to consider my three ladies. I get queasy just thinking about it. My store of potatoes has been greatly reduced, and there’s no more cereal at all. I’ve still got two pounds of flour and three cans of milk. I used up too much when my witches first arrived, and now I’m feeling it. I don’t regret a minute of it, of course. Nevertheless, I get discouraged thinking about the immediate future. How am I to steer my little multitude into the promised peacetime if there’s not enough to eat? The children say “Mutti, I’m hungry,” often enough as it is. This wretched war, in addition to everything else we’ve got it to deal with. Who knows if we’ll make it out of the war. And if we do, who knows if they will be able to tell the difference between us and the Volksgenossen. My God, we’ve had it up to here with all of it, nor do we believe that people here will change. Heroic battles and anti-Semitism. Revolting. I no longer want to have anything to do with this Germany, thank you very much. Not with this one.
On April 9 all public transportation ceased operation. On April 11 the Buchenwald concentration camp was turned over to U.S. troops. On April 13 the Red Army marched into Vienna.
Lilly’s diary, April 13, 1945:
The Western Powers have reached Magdeburg. Hurrah. Who knows when they will get to Berlin. We have been told that Berlin, like all other cities, is to be defended down to the last stone, the last person. The Russians stopped at Küstrin and Frankfurt on the Oder. The Americans are right outside Leipzig, and according to reports yesterday, sixty kilometers from the Czech border. My God, what a snail’s pace! Now I must abandon any hope of mail getting through. We truly are cut off from the outside world, surrounded by the enemy. I’m so anxious. If only it would go faster, come to an end. Perhaps you’ll find us half-starved amid the ashes and ruins. Oh, my dearest, come for me. I’m so impatient, as are my witches. When Albrecht sees my crying he always says, “Mutti, Aunt Felice is coming back.” He’s learned how to say “Felice.” You live in the hearts of my/our children. My dearest girl, I have your picture before me. I’m waiting for you. I cannot be without you.
Lilly’s diary, April 15, 1945:
Will you ever read this diary? Who knows what will become of us. We have reached the decisive moment. The Russians are approaching from the East, the Anglo-Americans are at the Elbe. Both are roughly the same distance from Berlin. Will Berlin become a battlefield? The Americans have already marched through Thuringia; it’s fortunate that I got Bernd out of there. Now they’re marching on Dresden. Germany has been divided into two parts. Hamburg and Bremen will be taken in the next few days. The Americans are also approaching Berlin from the direction of Celle. We’re caught in a trap, it can’t last much longer now. Even the worst Nazis are afraid. Let them be, I grant them that happily. Not one of those bigwigs should believe that he is safe from punishment. If there is any justice.
Today we were without electricity for a total of twelve hours, we were just now in the basement. We’ll live in the basement like rats for the next few days until freedom comes. I’ve made a place for Bernd’s cot down there, and that is where he and I sleep. The three little ones sleep together on one small children’s bed, and my three ladies sleep in armchairs—Lucie, unfortunately, right in front of the cellar door. There simply was nowhere else to put her. Our suitcases and boxes are all piled up on top of each other. The air raid sirens go off almost constantly, and we are happy not to have to run out of the house schlepping suitcases back and forth. We’re protected here only from bomb splinters, of course. But what does it matter, at least we’re among ourselves, and don’t have to listen to our neighbors’ asinine talk. And thank God no one is interested in the eight of us, eagerly awaiting freedom as we are. But you must hurry if you wish to still find us.
Yesterday, in three waves of bombings, they totally destroyed beautiful Potsdam, which miraculously had been spared until then. I just heard Frau Mory and Frau Eichmann whispering: “I never would have believed it. That it has come to this. How awful.” They were talking with worried expressions about the approach of the Russians and the anticipated major offensive against Berlin. My God, how these people deserve it! At every convenient, and inconvenient, opportunity they were always yapping, “It’s all the fault of the Jews!” They think they know everything, and believe steadfastly in the Führer. And a fine Führer it is who allows all of Germany to go up in smoke because of his crackbrained schemes. His top party officials are bolting as far and as fast as they can. The German Volk can die, for all they care, and it is dying.
On April 16 the Red Army launched its major offensive against Berlin. In the Jewish collection camp on Schulstrasse, Walter Dobberke came to blows with two particularly fanatic members of the Gestapo, who were trying to carry out an order from the Reich Security Main Office calling for the execution of all patients remaining in the Jewish Hospital, some eight hundred in all. Dobberke managed to prevent this.
Lilly’s diary, April 20, 1945:
My dear, is the hour of our reunion near? Since this morning all hell has broken loose. The Volkssturm and all soldiers are to report to the Spandau district. As of tomorrow all traffic will come to a total standstill. For two weeks now as it is, commuter traffic was allowed only between 5:30 and 9 a.m., and between 4 and 6 p.m. All bicycles have been expropriated, but not ours. I simply pretended I wasn’t home. I stood right inside the door for fifteen minutes, shaking something awful. I have no intention of surrendering your beloved bicycle, the one we battled so fiercely for on August 23, 1944, the day of the interrogation at Schulstrasse. I’ll throw my own bicycle in their faces first. But not before I’ve smashed it half to bits.
Lilly’s diary, April 25, 1945:
We’re in a fine mess now, my sweet. So much has happened in the last few days I couldn’t fit it all into this diary for you. Last Friday I wrote that things were finally coming to a head. But it was only the Russians who stormed Berlin. Where are the Americans? They had to distribute emergency rations on Sunday. I stood in line at each shop for roughly six hours. Everything was available but bread and lard. And the things you could hear standing on line! The wildest slogans, and a great deal of panic that it was the Russians who are overrunning Berlin. Where are the Western Powers? All of the children have been with me since Monday. The children’s bunker is closed, the nurses have fled. I forced my way into the deserted bunker with Bernd and Eberhard and stomped on the lovely portrait of Hitler.
As I’m writing this, umpteen enemy planes are buzzing overhead, throwing grenades, and our own antiaircraft are firing from Dahlem, and endless bombs are falling. Our nerves are completely shot. Out on the street everyone presses himself against a wall or ducks into a corridor at the whistle of the artillery guns. How quickly it has become routine to take cover. It makes it seem like we were living in peaceful times just eight days ago, in comparison.
I’m sitting in the kitchen, where I’ve moved the table over to the balcony door and am cooking on the stove. There’s no gas and almost no electricity. And anyway, turning on the electricity is punishable by death. We’re only permitted to listen to the radio, to the rousing speeches of higher-up criminals. I can see nothing but clouds of smoke on the horizon, and can hear only the constant rat-a-tat of machine guns. There is heavy fighting in Dahlem-Dorf, from there they’re firing multiple rocket launchers right into the middle of the city. Soldiers and members of the Volkssturm, armed with rocket launchers, are marching through Schmargendorf. We are not happy to see them. What do they intend to do, defend us until there’s not a stone left standing? Every hour we reckon with: Bang, a bomb, Hurrah, we’re still alive. Our conquest! The streets are barricaded, a machine gun nest has been set up on the balcony of every corner building. Who knows what will be in store for us should our protectors decide to defend us to the bitter end.
I’ve had no word from my parents. They’re far behind the Russian line of fighting, safe from Hitler’s insanity. Hopefully, dear God, they survived without being harmed. I now wear our rings on a string around my neck to keep them safe, my beloved you. I couldn’t bear to lose them. Everyone is suddenly burying his valuables, now that there’s a rumor going around that the conquerors are confiscating everything of value. My lord, the explosions and the shooting! The front moves closer and closer. Bernd, pale as his other basement-brothers, just ran up, all excited. “Mutti, they’re advancing from Schumacherplatz.” That’s very close, and we’re all sitting here cool as cucumbers! From here we watch our proud soldiers of the Wehrmacht, who have dug themselves in next to the streetcar shelter. We feel sorry for the poor fellows after all. Did you know that the words “Jews are prohibited from sitting on the benches” were painted on a wall of the shelter? I never noticed it when we were sitting there. All places of work are shut down, the streetcars and subways aren’t running, all streets are closed off. Almost all the shops are closed. Just splendid, this war. Heaven help us. And in two weeks there will be nothing at all left to eat, unless some fantastic miracle should occur. Will we survive conquest and hunger? Pray for us, my one and only. Perhaps this diary will be all that is left of my great love for you. Dear God, let us find one another again. Let us forget, together, what we have suffered. Dear God. I will love you, Felice Schragenheim, until I die.