Funeral in Berlin by Len Deighton

Author:Len Deighton [Deighton, Len]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2011-11-29T11:43:16+00:00

* * *

1 Obsazeno: occupied.

2 ganz: completely; meschugge (Yiddish): batty, crazy, nuts.

Chapter 32

JAN-IM-GLÜCK, 1945

It was moving-day at the camp. Everyone suspected that the Russians were getting closer but there was no way to find out. At the week-end the Germans detonated the crematoria in explosions that went on all night. Sunday was devoted to burning down half the huts, which meant that on Sunday night each remaining hut was twice as crowded as usual. Scarcely anyone slept that night; it was early summer and the windows were shuttered to make the sentries’ job easier. Inside the huts the temperature was unbelievable. Most of the huts put two or three unconscious people out of the front door the next morning before the march had even begun.

One side of the camp was a railway siding. All the sick were taken there just after dawn. Someone asked a guard what was happening and he said that the sick were being taken to Siedlce by train, but that all the others must march. The sick left before the food was distributed; it was an ominous sign.

The next group to leave were the children. They were marched away before the shutters were taken down from the huts, but everyone was listening.

The remainder of the prisoners formed up in the main compound. There was an acrid smell of burnt wood and burnt bedding. Great pieces of soot floated on the air like dandelion seeds. The guards were all carrying new automatic rifles and outside the gates there was a large group of soldiers. They wore camouflage smocks and steel helmets and were dirty and unshaven. They were front-line troops, not Waffen SS. The guards had formed up near by too, but the two sorts of soldiers didn’t speak to each other. Each prisoner was given four raw potatoes and some hard dried meat. Some of the prisoners got extra potatoes but only those in the front rank. They began to eat the food as they walked out of the gate.

Everyone knew that they were walking westwards because the shadows stretched very long and very thin in front of them as they walked. They walked for two hours, then they rested, then they walked for another two hours. The second or third time they stopped, there was the distant sound of heavy artillery. It was very faint and, when the march recommenced, the sound of moving feet made it impossible to hear.

At noon the soldiers and guards lit fires and began to cook food that came out of the carts that were being hauled by manpower. They spoke and laughed together. The soldiers didn’t speak to the prisoners at first. It was as though the very existence of the concentration-camp prisoners embarrassed them; that although they were guarding them they didn’t want to admit that the prisoners existed. The first soldier to have a conversation with any prisoner was a middle-aged Latvian who heard two prisoners speak his language. They exchanged the names of their birthplaces, then marched in an awkward silence until one of the regular guards came near to them.

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