A Stranger in My Own Country

And then she was not allowed to visit him for long weeks on end; she learned that an epidemic of typhus had swept through the prison, carrying off victims in their hundreds. All the better - it saved a lot of work, a process leading quickly to death, all the better! And in this time of fear and trembling, of deep faith and fondest love, she got a phone call from a completely unknown lawyer: could she come and see him at once, it's about her friend!

She hurried to the lawyer's office, from the sign on the door she saw that the lawyer belonged to the National Socialist 'League of Guardians of the Law', and the man standing before her a few minutes later was wearing a Party membership badge. The lawyer informed her in a few brief words that her friend could be released the following Friday if she paid him 5000 marks within 48 hours. She was not allowed to ask any questions. With that she was dismissed and out on the street again, her heart pounding with emotion. She did not trouble herself about the morality of such an arrangement. She had after all been living in the German Reich for many years now, and she had heard too much and seen too much to be surprised or outraged by any dirty dealings. But what was she to do now, from a purely practical point of view? What was she to do? She earned a living by giving lessons, she was not wealthy, and she could never hope to scrape together 5000 marks from her own resources. But she had friends, and Sas had friends; it was possible to come up with that sum of money. But should she do it? Wouldn't they just take her money and keep him in prison anyway? How could she place any trust in the honesty of a lawyer who made such a proposal? What was she to do? Would she not blame herself bitterly one day if she did not hand over the money, and her friend remained in prison for years on end? Would she not always be saying to herself: perhaps they would have let him out? And that 'perhaps' decided her. She approached us too, and I must confess that I was hardnosed enough to say 'No'. I didn't want to give my money to these criminals. I was convinced that it was all lies, a con trick designed to take advantage of a woman in distress. She managed to get the money together without me, and took it to the lawyer's office. The Friday came, by early morning she was already waiting outside the gates of the building on Alexanderplatz, doubt giving way to despair and then again to hope, a crazy little spark of hope in her heart that the enemy might, just this once, do the decent thing. And the gate opened and her friend came out. Her joy knew no bounds, she was ready to bless her enemies. She spent just one day with him in Berlin, so that he could freshen himself up a bit, and then she travelled with him to his little home village in the Sudetenland, to stay with his baker relatives, where the half-starved man could feed himself up again. But when they arrived in the village Sas was re-arrested by the SS. They were men of honour: for 5000 marks they had kept their word. He had been released on the Friday - for how long, that was never said. She never saw him again. He was taken straight back to Berlin, in a cramped prison van, and then shipped on to the Oranienburg concentration camp. There he was put to work. Month after month he worked as a bricklayer, his musician's hands were ruined for good. But she was allowed to write to him once a month, and from time to time she was allowed to send him a food parcel, saved from her own meagre rations. But at least she was allowed to hope . . . The day must come . . . And then she heard that he was back in Berlin. He had been removed from the custody of the SS and was now to stand trial in a court of law, despite the fact that the examining magistrate had previously refused to issue a warrant for his arrest. Now he was to appear before the notorious 'People's Court'. The Communist whom Sas had met in the street that time was being put on trial, along with 35 co-defendants, including Sas. The defence lawyer was expecting a relatively short prison sentence. So her hopes rose again. This was better than the concentration camp; here he would be sentenced for a specific period of time, which would come to an end, whereas the concentration camp was indeterminate, open-ended; it could be a life sentence, or he could be let out after three months - the worst part was the agonizing uncertainty! No, the People's Court was better. And it really was very good, this instrument of Himmler's functioned beautifully, and all the accused were sentenced to death! In the name of the German people! Found guilty of carrying a suitcase and keeping it in his house . . . sentenced to death by hanging . . . in the name of the German people! So not over yet? Not yet finished, this litany of torment and suffering, this everyday story of German life during the glorious days of the Third Reich, under the aegis of our beloved Führer, who is so fond of children, and so sensitive that he has passed a law for the protection of animals containing dozens of provisions for the humane slaughter of animals, but who in the process has quite forgotten to observe just a smidgen of humanity when it comes to slaughtering human beings? No, not over yet - not by a long chalk! In the 'Plötze', the prison by the Plötzensee lake, there are dozens, perhaps hundreds, who have been sentenced to death, and who are now privileged to await their death. Sometimes the jangle of keys is heard at a certain hour in the morning, and then all the prisoners in their cells know that one more of their number is being led to the hangman - and to freedom. But there are many days when the jangle of keys is not heard. There's no hurry, for these men sentenced to die; they should be pleased that they have been granted another day, another week, even another month, and then another after that. Meanwhile their relatives are running back and forth with petitions and appeals, demeaning themselves before Party bigwigs, having abuse heaped upon them because only persons of degenerate character could possibly care about the fate of a convicted traitor. They run back and forth, they plead and implore, and yet in their heart of hearts they know that these Party high-ups do not hear them, do not want to hear them, that every last spark of humanity died in them a long time ago: and yet they dare not cease from running and pleading! Perhaps there is still a chance . . .! There must be a reason, after all, why the death sentence has not been carried out yet? Surely they will pardon him, even if it is commuted to life imprisonment! Better that than death! And sure enough, a doctor discovers that Sas suffered a head wound in the First World War. It must have caused him problems ever since, he must have been mad when he took the suitcase and kept it in his house - they can't hang him, they'll have to put him in a mental asylum! Cue more petitions, more running around, more begging and pleading!

And then the deed is done - and one last letter from him is all she gets. Her heart is filled with a solemn stillness. So peace comes to her at last, as it has come to him. Here is the letter that he wrote, in the fourth year of the war, under threat of death, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. It reads as follows:106 . . . But that's not all. This is just one of the few, there are others whose stories I could tell. We have witnessed all this, been through it all together, and we have had to fear every hour for the lives of our loved ones and our own lives - for eleven long years now. Eleven years without respite or peace! And meanwhile these fools are sitting comfortably abroad,107 not in any kind of danger, denouncing us as opportunists, as Nazi hirelings - blaming us for being weak, for doing nothing, for failing to resist! But we have stuck it out, and they have not; we have lived with fear every single day, and they have not; we have done our work, tilled our acre of land, brought up our children, our lives constantly under threat, and we have spoken a word here, a word there, giving each other strength and support, we have endured, even though we were often afraid - and they have not!

And something else. Here is a man whom everyone has heard of, the illustrator E.O. Plauen,108 real name Ohser, who came from the Saxon town of Plauen, renowned for its many weaving looms. He was a man like a child, an elephant who could walk a tightrope, who was perhaps best known for his savage cartoons in the weekly Das Reich, but who remains unforgettable for children and parents alike for his 'Father and Son' comic strip stories. Here we see the man himself, big and heavily built, but with such a wonderfully childlike laugh, and his son, his only son, a wily, weasel-faced creature full of laughter. (When writing about Plauen one is constantly using the word 'laughter'; laughter was his natural element, laughter was as natural to him as breathing, and I don't believe there was a single day in his life when he didn't laugh.) A wonderful man, because he was like a child, still holding on to the paradise world of childhood. I got to know him relatively late. My publisher wanted to put a cartoon of me on the cover of my book of memoirs, Our Home Today, and Plauen was given the commission. I went to see him in his studio on Budapesterstrasse, with a...