The rules are clear. You don’t touch anything. You don’t film anything without authorisation, and you wait. Lana listens and nods, then translates the recommendations detailed by Dmitri in the lift. Our contact is trying to be nice. He’s obviously trying. The men who receive us on the third floor not so much. Like Dmitri, they wear a severe uniform: black suit, black tie, white shirt. Unlike our host, their faces remain impassive. Neither aggressive nor suspicious, and certainly not benevolent. Real faces of bad guys from a fifties spy film.
Dmitri leads the way towards a corridor covered with a drab-coloured carpet that gives it an ageless patina and adds to the “hammer and sickle” atmosphere of the place. We are now surrounded by three FSB officers. No one speaks. The mediocre lighting doesn’t illuminate the whole of the endless corridor. From where we are we can’t even see the end of it. It must pass through the whole of the building, at least thirty or forty metres. The walls are punctuated at regular intervals by light wood-panelled doors. None of them is open. No names, just numbers to distinguish them from one another. On this floor alone, on this façade, there must be about twenty doors on either side. But are there any staff? The silence is total. Approaching one of the doors, I slow down and listen. Nothing. Not a murmur. Only our footsteps echo in spite of the reasonable thickness of the carpet. The Overlook Hotel in The Shining would seem almost welcoming and desirable compared with this floor on the Lubyanka.
“Here it is. Come in! Take a seat.” Our little group has joined two new members of the black-suit-black-tie-white-shirt gang. They were waiting silently outside one of the panelled doors. This one has the unusual quality of being open. The invitation to sit down and make ourselves comfortable is not rejected. And no questions are asked without a great deal of preliminary thought. The room where we have been asked to sit is an office of about ten square metres. Curtains have been carefully drawn over the window. A round table, a glass-fronted bookcase and poor-quality shelves, some Russian flags, a television, a sofa in mad leather, and even a synthetic mini-Christmas tree blinking nervously: the interiors of Russian administrative offices really do all look identical. Except that here the emblems of the FSB are proudly fixed to a wall. A sword covered with a shield emblazoned with the two-headed eagle of the Russian coat of arms reminds us that we aren’t in just any federal administrative office. Dmitri has disappeared. Time passes slowly but surely. A man, on the short and squat side, has joined us in the office. He doesn’t speak, and doesn’t answer Lana’s questions. He looks at us, observing us openly without bothering to pretend otherwise. Outside, in the corridor, the two people we just bumped into are discussing something. Some voices carry more than others. Particularly a woman’s voice. She has just arrived, and doesn’t seem happy to see us. What are they going to agree to show us? What orders have they received? To get things clear in my mind, I decide to take a look. I’ve barely headed towards the door when our invigilator is standing in my way. I improvise: “Wee-wee! Toilets?” My innocent air does nothing to soften the behemoth. I repeat my request. “Toilets? WC?” I know he understands. The man hesitates, gestures to me to wait and then leaves the room. A moment later, Dmitri appears and asks me to follow him. Here I am in the corridor again. I pass through the group I heard in heated discussion before. There are at least seven men and one woman. The woman is wearing a severe dark suit. Her blonde hair cut strictly at the back of her neck adds a little colour to this monochrome universe. Taller than most of her colleagues, and with shoulders at least as wide as theirs, she clearly shows me that our presence within these walls is an insult to her principles. Even from behind, I feel that her eyes never leave me. Another door, again without a name. Dmitri opens it. There are the toilets.
“They will bring the files at any moment.” When I get back to the office, I am welcomed by a triumphant Lana. While I was away, she was given confirmation that we would be shown the secret documents. So much the better, because I only have an hour and a half ahead of me before I have to go to the airport. All of a sudden, the whole group from the corridor bursts into the little office. The woman comes first. She carries some files in her arms in front of her as if they are holy relics. That and a big shoe box. Behind her, two men are delicately setting down a tailor’s dummy covered by a dust cover.
Now everything’s happening very quickly. The woman arranges the files and the box on the table, the two men finish setting up the dummy on our left, and the others just watch. Some of them are sitting on chairs, some are standing up. There are so many of them that they can’t all get into the room. We contemplate the scene without daring to open our mouths for fear that it’s all going to stop.
“The rules are as follows…” In a firm voice that brooks no opposition, the blonde woman sets out, one by one, the conditions that will govern the consultation of the documents. Lana listens, concentrating hard, hands crossed behind her back like a schoolgirl facing a teacher. She whispers a simultaneous translation for me. “Photographs are allowed, but only of documents. It’s completely FORBIDDEN to take a picture of any of the members of the FSB that you see here…” The word “forbidden” is given such emphasis by the secret service official that I even understand it in Russian. “And we will check each photograph that you take. Only the pieces selected by our services will be accessible to you. You will easily recognise them by the bookmarks slipped into the files.” A quick glance allows me to estimate the number of those bookmarks, and hence the number of documents allotted to us. There must be ten or so. It’s a good start, I reassure myself. “We’ve also brought you the physical proof of the capture of Hitler’s body by our troops.” Lana just has time to translate that last phrase when, like a pair of cabaret conjurors, the two men near the tailor’s dummy remove the sheet. They get the surprise effect that they’re after. A mustard-yellow jacket appears. It looks old but perfectly preserved. On one of the outside pockets, at chest level on the left, three badges are pinned: a medallion circled with red and white, a swastika at its centre, a military medal, and one last dark badge showing a military cap over two crossed swords. “This is Hitler’s tunic,” our FSB contact informs us. The three badges are perfectly identifiable: the medallion is none other than the official badge of the Nazi Party, the military medal an Iron Cross first class, and the last decoration the badge of those wounded in the First World War. Exactly the same as the ones regularly worn by Hitler.
“Where was this jacket found?” Our question immediately irritates the young woman. Would we dare to doubt the authenticity of the jacket? Which would amount to calling them liars, no more and no less. Dmitri intervenes. “Soviet troops recovered it on the spot, in the area around the Reich Chancellery.” Did it really belong to Hitler? Or is this a piece of theatrical staging, perfectly credible, but unverifiable? In the end it doesn’t matter. We’re not here to look at bits of fabric, but to obtain irrefutable evidence of the death of Hitler on 30 April 1945, and particularly details of the discovery of his body by the Soviets. Neither Lana nor I are particularly fascinated by these Nazi objects. Quite the contrary. Our lack of enthusiasm at the sight of the clothing and the medals prompts Dmitri to speed up the schedule. He gestures to his colleague to get on with the demonstration. With a heavy sigh she asks us to approach the round table. The files are just in front of us. The little chest that looks exactly like an old shoe box, a bit like the one at GARF with the skull fragment, has been set down a little further away, out of reach of our hands. “You’ll see that one later!” My lingering glance at the box has not gone unnoticed. “Right, here are the files. They contain the confidential documents concerning Hitler’s corpse.” Open, look, photograph, quickly, as quickly as possible. I have only a few minutes before I have to leave. Am I allowed to sit down to consult them? I ask the question. Lana can’t translate, she’s busy with Dmitri. I try speaking in English. Clearly the woman understands. “Da, da,” she replies. I open the first file, careful to respect the instructions about the bookmarks, and careful to avoid making the slightest mistake.
It’s a typewritten report. Poor-quality, almost rough paper. Creases show that it has been folded in four. The edges are worn and slightly torn, as happens when you transport a document in too small a pouch. Some of the letters have only been half-printed at the outset: the typewriter ribbon must have been worn out. A lot of details to suggest that the text wasn’t typed in an office in normal conditions. Was it in the ruins of a Berlin ravaged by bombing raids?
I immediately look at the date. Even though I don’t understand Russian, I can still read it. “Year 1945, month of May, 5th day.” The report states that the corpses of a couple have been found. The information is set out concisely, precisely, without interpretation. Including the information about the identity of the bodies.
I, Guards Chief Lieutenant Alexei Alexandrovich PANASSOV and private soldiers Ivan Dmitrievich CHOURAKOV, Yevgeny Stepanovich OLEINIK and Ilya Efremovich SERUKH, in the city of Berlin, near HITLER’s Reich Chancellery, close to the spot where the corpses of GOEBBELS and his wife were discovered, beside HITLER’s personal air-raid shelter, discovered and seized two burnt corpses, one female, the second male.
The bodies discovered were seriously damaged by fire and impossible to recognise or identify without further investigation.
The corpses were in a shell crater, about 3 metres from the entrance to Hitler’s bunker, and covered with earth.
The bodies are stored in the “SMERSH” counter-espionage department of the 79th army corps.
The text concludes with four signatures, those of the four soldiers who made the discovery.