The Lost Boys by Catherine Bailey

Author:Catherine Bailey
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241257821
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2019-04-05T16:00:00+00:00

27.

At 5 a.m. on the morning of 25 January, the alarm sounded throughout the camp.

Fey opened her eyes and listened out for approaching aircraft. Above the wail of the siren, she could hear the thud of shells in the near distance; but as the minutes passed and no planes flew over, it was clear this was not an air-raid warning. Instead, from the direction of the camp, came the sounds of great commotion: revving engines, screeched orders, packs of dogs barking and snarling. It could only mean one thing: the Russians were very near.

The other women were awake too. Steeling themselves against the cold, they got out of bed and crowded around the window. It was still dark and it was snowing heavily. White, strobing lights flickered across the sky to the south, but it was impossible to tell what was going on from the angle from which they were looking. Through the curtain of snow, backlit by the perimeter lights, all they could see was the high wall that blocked their view of the camp.

‘We stood there, shivering with cold and fear,’ Fey recalled. ‘We were convinced the SS would simply abandon us to the Russians and escape themselves.’

On the other side of the wall, the lights were on in all the barracks. Usually this was the quiet hour, before the camp stirred, but the entire workforce was on the move, heading towards the parade ground. The siren was still going and the snow blurred the lines of men and women – some 25,000 in total – snaking around the perimeter fence and back along the narrow roads to the barrack. Kapos, wielding sticks, and groups of SS, each with an Alsatian on a short leash, stood at intervals of twenty paces, harrying the lines along. The temperature was minus 10 degrees Celsius and a strong wind, backing in gusts, was blowing off the sea.

A fleet of motorcycles stood parked up by the main gates, ready to escort the columns of prisoners. With the Russians at Elbing, 30 miles from Stutthof, the commandant was preparing to evacuate the camp. Over the preceding days, the guards had worked around the clock to destroy incriminating records; now, the order from Berlin was to get the prisoners out before the Russians arrived.

At 6 a.m., Commandant Hoppe addressed the assembled inmates over the PA system. ‘The icy wind cut through our bones,’ political prisoner Meta Vannas recalled, ‘but we were full of hope.1 The thunder of artillery coming from the east was getting louder and louder. We were expecting the Red Army to liberate us at any moment … The commandant called out the German prisoners and promised them freedom if they agreed to defend the Fatherland from the Bolshevik hordes. The criminals declared their support. A few German Communists managed to hide among this group and get out of the camp. Then we were given our orders.’

The remaining prisoners, and a further 20,000 from Stutthof’s satellite camps, were to march to Lauenberg in Pomerania, some 75 miles to the west.

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