Stalin once said that a single death is a tragedy; a million deaths are a statistic. It is ironic that the human psyche can absorb the meaning of a tragedy but not of a statistic. Today and for the next four days I will give you a handful of tragedies.
This happened in the area where I was caught as an eight-year-old at the end of the war - in the Soviet-occupied zone. The story that follows was obviously written by a simple and literarily unsophisticated writer, but the pathos is vivid - and telling.
Herewith the Introduction:
Many years have passed, since, in 1945, World War II came to an end. At that time Soldiers of the Western Allies were ever so happy to return to their loved ones and start a new life. However, in the Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany, east of the Elbe river, subjugation of the German people really began with full force.
Here is the true account of one young boy who did not commit a crime, who did not revolt, who did nothing wrong or illegal, yet he and many of his 13- through 17?year?old friends and schoolmates found themselves wrapped up in the brutal Soviet system that almost caused his death. He calls his story ? very modestly "Erinnerungen" ?? Memories. His report is so immense, so full of brutal, inhuman behavior by the ruthless Soviet authorities that it cries out to be made known to the world, late as it may be.
Those kids did not have the faintest idea what was happening to them or why. Of course, the Soviet system was totally foreign to the German population at that time. Perhaps it is necessary to know a little of the background information to help understand the Soviet way of thinking. The world?famous Russian author, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in his Gulag Archipelago, estimates that some 60 million died there from 1918 to 1953, at which time this horrific system still held some 10 million in camps. It was run by the secret police organization known first as Chayka, then G.P.U., then N.K.W.D., M.G.B. and finally K.G.B. Its founder, Felix Dzershinski, said, "The Chayka is not a court. We stand for organized terror."
Since 1918, the guiding principle in the concentration camps was, "We have to get everything out of a prisoner in the first three months. After that, we don't need him anymore. To populate a system where the death rate was so high ? intentionally so because Stalin always feared an uprising - a constant supply of fresh victims had to be made available. Thus, millions of loyal Soviet citizens and, subsequently, German conquered citizens, were falsely accused. Accusations were especially facilitated through Andrei Vyshinski's 1937 decree that it wasn't necessary to prove a person had said or done something wrong but only that he or she may have done it. The full force of this evil Soviet system, so totally unknown and incomprehensible to the civilized world, was applied when Soviet military occupied all of the German Reich east of the Elbe River. While the Western allies and the Soviet Union accused the Germans at the 1946 War Crimes Trial in Nuremberg, the Soviets, at the very moment and for years thereafter, tortured, raped and executed thousands and thousands of totally innocent human beings.
To this day, there has not been a trial held to judge the crimes the Soviets committed. For the most part, the world has not even been told. Here is one man's story.
(Translated from German by Hans Busch)
FOREWORD
By Erwin Struss
While reviewing "Memories," the following account of the horrible destiny of 31 youngsters from Wittenberge, Germany, who, in 1946 were innocently arrested and even executed by the Soviet occupation forces, I find that my experiences of this terrible time of 50 years ago suddenly appear vividly before me.
Those young people from Wittenberge were not the only ones who had to endure such harsh fate. In those days, everywhere in the Russian occupation zone of Germany, juveniles only 14 to 17 years old were arrested, tried, and in all truthfulness one can say that they were thrown in concentration camps to die of starvation and disease.
In my home town, Putlitz (15 miles from Wittenberge), there were six of us who were caught up in the evil of the Soviet system. We too had to endure the inhumane G.P.U. (K.G.B.) hell in Brandenburg a/H and ended up in Sachsenhausen. I will never forget the emotions which overcame us when the western allies' transport aircraft flew over our camp en route to supply the city of West Berlin from the air during the Soviet Blockade ?and we sat there, helplessly resigned to our fate.
In the years 1945 to 1950, some 25,000 to 30,000 of our fellow sufferers died in Sachsenhausen. All those mass graves in the forests around Sachsenhausen which were discovered after 1989 are silent witnesses of this barbaric time.
Erwin Struss
MEMORIES
An article about the injustice committed against boys and girls from the town of, Wittenberge in Germany.
It was late in fall 1945 when life in the' City of Wittenberge gradually moved forward - again as ordered by the Soviet military' authority and its cultural and economic officers.
In October, school classes started again after they had been suspended for several months. The political new formation of the "Antifaschistisch?Demokratischer Einheitsblock" (Antifascist Democratic Unity Group) was established by forming new parties. Concurrently, the Antifascist Youth group was added. They solicited in sports groups, schools and in different ways, including coercion: "Without membership in the Antifascist Youth, no membership in sports groups." On the other hand, a large number of boys and girls from the high school and middle school and also some apprentices had talked about their reservations, especially because this Werner Boost, who was given the order to establish the Antifascist' Youth Group, was known to have been a former Hitler Youth leader. He displayed on the wall in his office the famous epigram, "Those, who changed their thinking overnight, who pledged their allegiance to any state, those are the practical men in this world." One could also call them scoundrels.
Some of the juveniles who were later arrested had met at impromptu meetings (for example, at dances) and had heard, from a Gunther Schultz, descriptions of the establishment of a democratic organization or parties in the Western Occupation Zones of Germany. His talks were exiting and made them curious.
Another group which had some girls among them had heard about that from Dieter Bolde from Wittenberge, who suggested for them to come to a meeting in which he was actively involved. Two or three meetings (one held in the apartment of a boy, so we did not have to get together in a bar) were enough to make us curious and convince us. And following Dieter Bolde's request, our signatures signifying our interest were on paper.
Never did we youngsters have any intention to conspire or had military or other reactionary plans. Never were there stockpiles of weapons and never were Nazi symbols used or displayed. Nevertheless, destiny took its course.
In December 1945, arrests started which were executed by the German Police on order from the Soviets. For the occupation forces, it apparently was a case of exemplary significance of the submission of the people which they demanded.
One day, Dieter Bolde, who had to report regularly at the Commander's office, did not return. Then we too were picked up at our parents' home, each time in groups of three to five youngsters and usually early in the morning when it was still dark. The last of us was rounded up on the 5th of January 1946. With a blanket under an arm, some of us without, we began our march into uncertainty. What did they want from us? What had we done? Why should we run away? Those were the questions we asked ourselves again and again.
Those who were not the very first thought that they probably would send us to a reeducation camp for six months. Those who were not the very first thought that they probably would send us to a reeducation camp for six months. Apparently, due to our youthful inexperience, we were too unconcerned and were sure that the truth would prevail. It wasn't until we were interrogated in the basement of the K.G.B. building when it became frightfully clear to us what trap we had fallen into and that the Soviets wanted to set an example and we were to be the victims.
Interrogations were conducted almost exclusively at night, mostly at the Wiglow Strasse. They differed in intensity but were almost all the time accompanied by terrible beatings while we had to lie on the floor.
Their translators were not sufficiently familiar with the German language. We had to sign protocols written in Russian, the content of which we did not understand. Again and again we tried to clarify misunderstandings caused by translation error, but the standard reply was only "You lie!"
When Horst Neuendorf was arrested shortly after New Year, the translator read in a notebook that had been confiscated, "get crackers, table fireworks," et cetera. That resulted in a four?hour interrogation which was conducted extremely brutal. The words "cracker" and "fireworks" aroused suspicion. No one thought about the New Year's celebration.
Furthermore, the translator discovered a simple alphabet code which was meant for coded messages to girls at school. Immediately, the officers declared this to be a secret code of an illegal organization. No objections were permitted.
Gisela Dormann had the same experience shortly after the end of the war. A girlfriend of hers moved with her parents to Bernau. The two had devised a secret code which they wanted to use in their correspondence. After she was arrested, her home was searched and letters were found. Naturally, these letters, too, were proof of an existing "underground party" as the Soviets called it.
Gisela was ordered to read the letters. She complied, but it was not what the officers wanted to hear. Again, she was asked to tell the truth. When she replied that nothing else was contained in the letters, the interrogation officer, in a fit of rage, brutally beat Gisela so that her back and legs were bleeding. The translator left this interrogation screaming, "I can't watch that." The K.G.B. officers, however, had established their baseline for a general accusation. The framework was set.
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