The Auslander Read online

  ‘His family had farmed there for as long as anyone could remember,’ he continued. ‘My mother’s father, he was from Bavaria and he married a Polish girl.’

  The man winced almost imperceptibly, but it was enough to give away his disapproval. Piotr wondered if he was telling too much of his story. But Doktor Fischer was listening intently and scribbling notes on a form. ‘Good, good,’ he said. ‘Tell me everything you know.’

  ‘My mother was born in Poland but the family moved back to Germany during the Great War. My mother is from farming stock too. Both her brothers were killed in the war and when her parents died she inherited the family farm. My father, well neither of my parents really, wanted to go to Poland. They had both grown up in Germany, but the farm was large and with a grand manor house. So they came. I was born a year or so after they arrived.’

  ‘And what in heaven happened to land you in the orphanage?’ said the Doktor. ‘Aren’t you registered as Volksdeutscher?’

  ‘We were,’ said Piotr. ‘As soon as the soldiers arrived, it was obvious by the way they spoke that my parents were Germans and not Poles. We were put on the “German People’s List” at once.’ He began to feel indignant. ‘I told the orphanage this and I asked them who would look after the farm, but they just waved me away.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Doktor, his face turning hard. ‘I shall speak to the wretched man who runs that place. I’m sure your records have been lost. We have processed two million Poles of German ancestry in the last two years. I’m not surprised you slipped through the net. Now tell me what happened to your mother and father.’ He was beginning to sound irritated.

  ‘My parents were both killed on the night of the Soviet invasion. They were out visiting friends. It was the first night they had decided to go out and leave me alone in the house. My father said, “You’re thirteen now, Piotr. We trust you. Besides, you’ve got Solveig – that’s our collie – to look after you.”’

  Piotr noticed the Doktor had stopped writing and was staring impatiently, straight at him. Clearly this was unnecessary information. He cut short his story. ‘They never came back. I was sent to the orphanage in Warsaw a week later.’

  The Doktor spoke frankly.

  ‘Some of the soldiers want to keep you here to act as an interpreter, but I think you deserve better than that. I am going to recommend we return you to the Reich and find you a good German family eager to adopt a fine German son. I know of one, and shall contact them at once.’

  ‘What will happen to the farm?’ Piotr asked at once.

  ‘Do you have brothers or sisters? Any relations?’

  ‘I have cousins and aunts and uncles on my mother’s side, but all in Germany,’ said Piotr.

  ‘And do you know them well?’

  ‘No. There was an awful family feud when my mother inherited the farm. The rest of the family stopped speaking to her. I’ve never met any of them.’

  ‘We shall have to establish who has responsibility for the farm while you are still a minor,’ said the Doktor. ‘Then, when you are old enough, you will have an estate to take over.’

  Piotr felt flabbergasted. All of this was too extraordinary to take in at once. Yesterday he was starving in a wretched orphanage, sleeping in a dormitory four beds deep and twenty beds long. Now he was being offered a completely new life. Piotr didn’t like the Doktor’s manner, but he did enjoy being told that he was something special. He began to think he would fit in in Germany. Suddenly, he couldn’t wait to leave.

  .

  For a couple of weeks Piotr was the star pupil at the holding centre. Right from the start he knew he would not be staying long. The rest of them would have to undergo a long process of ‘Germanisation’, learning the language and having the Slav beaten out of them. With Piotr that would not be necessary.

  From the morning of their selection the boys had been forbidden to speak Polish, and some had been whipped with a belt on the buttocks, in front of the others, for continuing to talk in their own language. It would be a difficult few months for them.

  ‘Polish is a tongue fit only for slaves,’ Doktor Fischer had announced, towards the end of that first day. ‘You are German stock – reclaimed by the National Community – and so you shall speak only German.’

  The children were divided into classes according to their ability. Eager student volunteers, fresh off the train from Berlin, began to teach them the German language. Only Piotr was considered fluent enough to require no further instruction.

  While the others were in their German classes, he was allowed to sit and read in the dormitory or the garden. Engrossed in Signal magazine, Piotr learned that the German army had conquered the eastern region of Poland taken by the Soviets in 1939, and had now occupied the Ukraine. They were already halfway to Moscow. The magazine was full of photographs of cheering peasants carrying crosses and religious icons as they welcomed the smiling soldiers that swept into their villages.

  When the other children came out of classes, the younger ones would flock towards him to try out their new words. ‘Eins, Zwei, Drei . . . Vier . . . Fünf,’ they would parrot, and Piotr would correct their pronunciation.

  The boy who had hit him on the first day, Feliks, had lasted only a fortnight. He refused to accept his fate and ran away twice in as many days, only to be dragged back by soldiers to be beaten in front of them all.

  ‘Some of you are like wild dogs who refuse to be tamed,’ announced Doktor Fischer, after Feliks’s second escape. ‘Some of you do not deserve the honour of German citizenship. Feliks Janiczek has been returned to the orphanage.’

  Piotr had not liked Feliks, but he couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. There was so little to eat. All the children there would surely starve. Piotr thought Feliks stubbornly stupid. He had been offered an opportunity and rejected it. Poland was finished. Germany was the future.

  The next day Piotr was called before Doktor Fischer and told that he too would be leaving soon. ‘We are sending you home to the Reich. There’s a centre at Landsberg for boys like you. The family I have in mind for you, Piotr, is in Berlin, the very heart of things,’ he said. ‘I am prepared to recommend you personally. I trust you will not disappoint me.’

  .

  CHAPTER 3

  Between Warsaw and Landsberg

  August 24, 1941

  .

  Piotr leaned his forehead against the glass window of the train, and watched the flat fields of the North European Plain roll by. He was tired, and occasionally his heavy eyelids would close and his head drop down, waking him with a jolt. The glass steamed up with his breath and he wiped the condensation away with the sleeve of his new pullover.

  Travelling with him was Fräulein Spreckels, the pretty nurse from the holding centre. She chided him at once. ‘That is not a rag, Piotr. You must learn to take better care of your clothes.’

  By the end of the day, the Fräulein had told him, they would be in Landsberg. If all went well, he would be in a new home, a real home, within a week or two.

  On the opposite track a packed troop train thundered east, anti-aircraft guns perched on a flatbed carriage in front of the locomotive. Inside the passenger carriages and through the open doors of the cargo trucks, Piotr could see soldiers sleeping, drinking, playing cards. Some were singing, and as they flashed by he could just about hear their voices above the rattle of wheel on rail and the chuff of the steam engines. They seemed in good spirits.

  Seeing the guns at the front of the troop train made Piotr worry about whether they too might be attacked by aircraft. He had heard about the damage a plunging dive-bomber could do to a village and knew a train would be terribly vulnerable to marauding aircraft.

  ‘Fräulein Spreckels, why do we have no guns to protect us?’

  She laughed. ‘Who is going to attack us, Piotr? Our boys destroyed most of the Soviet air force in the first days of the invasion. And the Tommies can’t fly this far from England.’

  As the train rattled on, the scenery outsi
de the carriage gradually changed. The scattered farms and fields were replaced by streets and closely packed houses. ‘Where are we?’ asked Piotr.

  ‘We’re in the Wartheland,’ she answered proudly. ‘You are home in Germany now! This is all territory reclaimed from Poland.’

  As the train rounded a bend, they could see the spires and towers of the city centre. ‘I know this place,’ said Piotr. ‘I’ve been here once before. It’s Lodz.’

  Fräulein Spreckels looked stern. ‘It’s not Lodz any more, Piotr. It’s called Litzmannstadt now.’

  The train stopped briefly at the station and she got out to buy bread and ham from a platform vendor. ‘You won’t go running away from me?’ she asked, only partly in jest.

  ‘I want to go to Germany,’ said Piotr sincerely. ‘Why would I run away?’

  Piotr saw that all the signs on the station had been rewritten in German, in a heavy Gothic script. There was nothing here now that sounded Polish. Yet before the invasion, as every schoolboy knew, Lodz had been Poland’s second largest city.

  He looked at Fräulein Spreckels shivering on the platform as a chill early autumn wind blew down from the Baltic. Just behind her was the station waiting room. A notice on the door said:

  .

  Entrance is

  forbidden to

  Poles, Jews

  and Dogs.

  .

  The Germans had a cruel sense of humour, he thought. But he was going to be one of them now. He would have to get used to it.

  All his life he had felt out of place in Poland. Even though he had been born there and spoke Polish like a native, he had still had to put up with taunts of ‘Adolfki’ from the playground bullies. All this would wipe the smiles off their stupid faces. He was going to Germany to a better life. They were stuck in Poland. Slaves in their own country. That cheered him up, although he always felt a little guilty when he thought things like that.

  After twenty minutes the train pulled away. Piotr had never been further west than Lodz and was full of curiosity about the places they passed through. When they crossed into old Germany – the land that had been Germany before the invasion of 1939 – the change was immediate. The fields and farms that drifted by looked well kept and tidy. The villages and towns were unblemished by war. This was a land of prosperity and plenty.

  At Litzmannstadt, Fräulein Spreckels told him, twenty other boys had joined the train to travel to the Lebensborn hostel at Landsberg. ‘Would you like to meet them?’

  Piotr shrugged. He was quite happy staring out of the window. He wondered if she was getting bored. She took him to another carriage and introduced herself to the nurses travelling with the new boys and the two soldiers who were guarding them.

  ‘Guten Tag,’ Piotr said to a group of them. They all gave slow, stumbling answers. He felt awkward and instinctively began to talk to them in Polish. ‘Dzien dobry,’ he said – ‘Good day.’

  One of the soldiers immediately stood up and raised a hand to hit him. Fräulein Spreckels stood between the two of them and angrily told the man to sit down. Then she turned to Piotr. ‘Remember you are not to speak Polish,’ she said sharply.

  Piotr blushed bright red. Then he felt indignant. Of course they needed to learn to speak German if they were going to live there. But, for now, what was wrong with speaking to these boys in Polish? That was what he wanted to say. But then he thought of the dreadful orphanage he had left behind and he made himself hold his tongue.

  The threat of violence hung in the air. Some of the boys looked frightened. Some looked defiant, their lips pursed together in a rebellious pout, hard eyes challenging anyone to dare to speak to them. But most of the boys were quietly wary, like Piotr. Any hope of conversation vanished like the steam from the locomotive.

  Fräulein Spreckels steered Piotr back to their own carriage, both of them anxious to be away from the brutish soldier. ‘Do be careful,’ she whispered urgently. ‘I know you didn’t mean it, but you could get yourself, and the other boys, into a lot of trouble.’

  The incident had soured the atmosphere between them and they passed the next few hours in an uncomfortable silence.

  .

  CHAPTER 4

  As the train rattled on, Piotr thought about the country he was leaving behind. In the two years before his parents had been killed he had seen with his own eyes how life was for ordinary Poles. Because Piotr and his family had been reclassified as Germans when the Nazis seized Poland, they had been treated better than their Polish neighbours. Pan and Pani Bruck had become Herr and Frau Bruck and carried on farming their land and being paid for their produce. The Polish farmers they knew had been rounded up . . . and taken to who knew where. The farmworkers who stayed now worked for new landowners who had arrived from Germany.

  Business had boomed for the Brucks, so much so they bought a new car. The memory of it brought tears to Piotr’s eyes. His father had been very proud of that car.

  Whenever Piotr thought of his parents, a great black pool of water seemed to rush up to swallow him. He pictured his father, tall and taciturn, with a shock of thick black hair. He was a forbidding man and Piotr had feared as well as loved him. But they had never gone hungry and Piotr’s father had been a patient teacher, showing him how to milk the cows, fix a temperamental petrol engine, and tell an oak from a larch.

  Piotr remembered his mother more tenderly. She had taught him a lot more than the village school. She always took an interest in his stories, his ideas. They would go on long walks through the fields, talking together for hours. Like him, she was tall and blonde. He definitely took after his mother. They would tell him that every time he went into the village shop.

  .

  Mesmerised by the endless vista of fields and villages, Piotr’s mind continued to wander. For as long as he had been aware of the world beyond his village, everything had seemed to be tottering on the brink of catastrophe. Then that catastrophe had happened.

  He got his first inkling of its approach when he was ten and his parents were sitting around the big wireless in the kitchen, huddled next to the oven in the late winter, listening to news of the Nazi seizure of Austria. His mother looked uneasy. ‘He’s on the warpath now,’ she said. ‘Who’ll get gobbled up next?’

  ‘Who’s “he”?’ asked Piotr.

  ‘Hitler,’ said his mother tersely. ‘The Chancellor of Germany. He’s a nasty little man. You only have to hear him speak a couple of words to know how full of hate he is.’

  This started a dreadful row between his parents. They rarely argued, and Piotr was so upset he fled to his bedroom. It ended in a stand-up shouting match where he could still hear every word. Piotr’s father screaming that Hitler, the one they called der Führer – the leader – would make Germany a great nation again. His mother, exasperated to the point of tears, replied that the Nazis were malicious bullies. ‘Just look what they’ve done to the Jews in their country,’ she said. ‘All the beatings out in the streets, those spiteful boycotts of the Jewish shops . . . and they don’t stop there. Sometimes there’s cold-blooded murder.’

  The shouting stopped. Piotr moved to the landing. Now he wanted to know what they were going to say. Herr Bruck began to speak again. ‘The Führer’s supporters have sometimes been overzealous,’ he said slowly. ‘But the Jews in Germany were too greedy. They took too many of the best jobs, and they stabbed the country in the back at the end of the last war.’

  ‘Axel, you know that is rubbish,’ spat Frau Bruck. She was incensed. ‘You talk like a Nazi – as if there’s some great Jewish conspiracy – all of them plotting together!’

  Herr Bruck stayed silent. The argument was over for now.

  This talk about the Jews puzzled Piotr. He knew Jewish children in the village. Some of them played with him, and if they hadn’t told him they were Jews when he asked why he never saw them in church, he would never have known. Others, much poorer children, recently arrived from the east, kept themselves to themselves. They wore their sidel
ocks long, and the men had big bushy beards and long dark coats. Piotr didn’t think they looked very threatening. Were they really controlling everything behind the scenes, like some people said, and taking everyone’s money? They seemed the poorest people he had ever met.

  Over the summer, the newspapers and radio brought more ominous news. The border regions of Czechoslovakia were seized by the Nazis. Six months later they took the whole country. ‘We shall be next,’ said Frau Bruck.

  Piotr’s father kept his temper. Over dinner that day they discussed the likely fate of their own country. Piotr listened, all ears. He was used to grown-up conversations, being an only child living an isolated life with his parents. He didn’t understand everything they said, but he sensed unsettling times ahead.

  ‘They’re coming. I know they’re coming,’ said Frau Bruck. Herr Bruck nodded and took his wife’s hand.

  ‘Maybe it’s for the best, my dear,’ he said. ‘Forgive me, but this is a backward little country, and the communists here are always trying to betray us to the Soviets. We’d be safer with the Germans here to protect us. If someone is going to swallow us up, from east or west, I’d rather it were our own kin. I don’t want the Polish communists linking up with those madmen across the border in Russia. If the communists take over, people like us will be put up against a wall and shot. All the landowners will. The farms will be taken over by the government and collectivised. Then half the population will starve. Just like in the Ukraine.’

  Frau Bruck could see some sense in that argument. She feared the Russians even more than the Nazis.

  In the summer of 1939, Piotr had started to shoot up, growing six inches in as many months. He begged his mother to buy him some long trousers as he felt so silly in shorts with his long spindly legs. She promised to make him a pair, but she could never settle to the job. The news they heard of the world outside their farm was too disturbing. Everything, it seemed, was building to a terrible crescendo.