War Girls Complete Collection Chapter 284

Chapter 3: Ursula

“I

’m leaving for Mindelheim,” Ursula said as she slipped on a dark blue cardigan over her short light blue dress. “Will you be alright watching over Evie?”

Aunt Lydia smiled. “I have six children of my own, so I will definitely know what to do with your Evie.”

“Why do I even have to register here? I’m still officially reported as living in Berlin.”

Lydia had already gone to the new American administration in the old town house in Mindelheim to register herself and her children. “They want to know how many people are here. I guess it’s to distribute ration books – if they ever intend to feed us – and quotas for the refugees pouring in from every corner.”

“Shouldn’t I take Evie with me? I mean, I have to register her, too.” Ursula kissed her baby, reluctant to go without her.

“The Amis didn’t even want to see the young children, only the ones of school age.”

“Do you think they will open up the schools anytime soon?”

“I really don’t know. In fact, I heard they have dismissed all the teachers who were in the Party, and even declared occupational bans for some of them. They call it denazification.” Lydia took the baby from Ursula’s hands. “Now go, it’s just a formality and won’t take long.”

Ursula pressed another kiss on Evie’s chubby cheeks. Lydia was right, the baby was better off with her at the farm, rather than being dragged to stand in a queue at the town house. “I’ll see you later, sweetie. Promise you’ll be a good girl?”

“Now go.” Lydia laughed and pushed Ursula toward the door. “And while you are in Mindelheim, could you go to the hardware store and see if they have opened up again? Jörg says we urgently need spare parts.”

“I will. See you later.” Ursula left the farmhouse and walked the pathway down to the road that led to Mindelheim. Since she had no means of transport, it would take her more than an hour to reach the town.

She joined the queue in front of the town house and waited for another hour, before she reached the reception desk. The man behind the counter gave her a pencil and a five-page questionnaire in both English and German to fill out.

“And here I thought they merely wanted me to register,” she murmured under her breath. Seeing that the waiting benches were already occupied with people scribbling notes onto the questionnaire, she walked back outside and settled on the stairs leading up to the entrance.

It started with her personal information, including her occupation.

Housewife

, she wrote truthfully.

Have you ever been a member of the NSDAP?

Yes

. She had joined after Pfarrer Bernau’s death, because it had been the best way to keep herself and Evie away from suspicion.

Then followed a list of questions about positions she’d held in the NSDAP.

Reichsleiter. No. Gauleiter. No. Kreisleiter. No. Ortsgruppenleiter. No. Beamter in der Parteikanzlei. No.

And on it went.

The next question made her furrow her brow.

Do you have any close relatives who have occupied any of the positions named above?

What the heck? And here she’d thought the snitching and ratting out had ended with the fall of Hitler’s reign. She wrote a big, bold

NO

on the line, not even considering whether one of her relatives might have held such an office.

Page two of the questionnaire mentioned any and all organizations that had existed in Nazi Germany, and she put a

yes

beside the

Bund Deutscher Mädel

.

Page three demanded she list any and all publications under her name. At least here there was nothing for her to write down. Unlike her brilliant sister Anna, she’d never said or done anything worthy of being published.

“What else do they want?” Ursula mumbled as she scanned the page. Her gaze stopped at the next heading and she groaned.

Dienstverhältnis

it said and asked for all jobs she’d had since 1930. First, she mentioned the terms completed as

Arbeitsmaid

in the compulsory labor service. Then she dutifully wrote,

Prison guard at the Women’s Prison Charlottenburg 1941 to 1943, Plötzensee Penitentiary from 1943 to 1944.

The next headline asked for income, and she gave a sigh. If only she had an income. As it was, she lived at Aunt Lydia’s farm and received food and clothes in exchange for her cooperation in the house and with the children.

After skipping the questions about military service and international travel she finally came to the last page where she put in

widowed

and

one child under eighteen

.

Finished! Glancing at the clock on the church tower opposite the town house she noticed that it had taken her more than thirty minutes to fill out the questionnaire. She would need to have a word with Lydia, who’d called the process

fast and painless

.

If she wanted to visit the hardware store before returning to the farm, she had to hurry. A few of the town’s women passed and she nodded at them. Many had come to Lydia’s farm at least once bartering whatever material things they possessed for food.

After the German capitulation all public life had broken down. Shops had closed, transport ceased to exist, food supplies dwindled. People had stopped going to work – for there was no need for wartime production anymore. Even those who worked in desperately needed professions, like bakers, had stopped baking bread, because they’d run out of flour.

It was like the entire area had come to a standstill, awaiting new orders. And while the Americans had taken possession of the administration and started registering people, they had not been able to re-start the economic life.

Every day for the past weeks Ursula had thanked God for Aunt Lydia’s farm. In contrast to everyone else, they still worked from dawn to dusk. Tending the fields, milking the cows, feeding the chickens, and thus they possessed the most coveted commodity in Germany right now: food.

She returned inside and the receptionist told her to wait for her turn in front of one of the offices. There was only one woman waiting and she went in and out of the office in a matter of minutes, her newly stamped identification card in her hands.

With a slight trepidation, Ursula clasped the warm door handle and stepped inside the office, where a young GI sat behind the desk that had previously belonged to the registrar. He had short brown hair and not even the tiniest bit of stubble darkened his boyish jaw.

He motioned for her to take a seat and Ursula handed him her questionnaire as she sat down.

The American soldier looked her form over and grabbed for his stamp, when suddenly his brows went up and he peered at her with darkened eyes. “You are a Nazi!”

Ursula shook her head in shock. “No.”

“Eh… you were a party member.”

“Everyone was. I joined only in 1944, because I needed to keep my daughter safe.” Most everyone had been a party member, so she was confident that he couldn’t really hold it against her.

“And you belonged to the BDM,” he spat out the words as if they were toxic.

“It was obligatory. I joined because I had to.” Ursula cursed Lydia for not having warned her about the pitfalls of this questionnaire.

“And… was it obligatory, too, to work for the SS in the camps?” He glowered at her and Ursula instinctively recoiled from him, afraid. The man’s entire body tightened as if he wanted to jump across the desk to strangle her.

“I… didn’t. I never worked in the camps. I wouldn’t…” She stammered.

He sneered at her. “You are a liar, Frau Hermann. Here it says, written in your own handwriting,

Prison guard

.”

Alternating hot and cold shockwaves traversed her body. The way he’d just pronounced the words

prison guard

, they sounded like a death sentence.

“Both Charlottenburg and Plötzensee were regular prisons, not camps,” she insisted.

“Regular prisons? And who were the unfortunate prisoners?” His voice became so agitated that the connecting door to the next office opened and another uniformed soldier appeared. He was older, maybe in his thirties, and wore several stripes on his uniform. “Something wrong?”

“Captain, no. I mean, yes.” The young GI jumped up and pointed at Ursula. “This woman, she is SS.”

The older man jerked his head, giving her a once-over. Ursula felt her skin burning in the wake of his disapproving glare and she swallowed.

“I’m not SS—”

“Shut up. You only open your mouth to answer my questions, understood?”

Ursula nodded mutely, while the younger man explained that she had worked as a prison guard in the camps and thus belonged to the SS.

His conclusion was riddled with factual errors, but she didn’t dare contradict him. She simply perked up her ears to understand their rapid English, while her heart thudded against her ribs.

“We should shoot her, I swear,” the young soldier said and she felt a dizzy spell attacking her. What would happen to Evie if she were murdered in cold blood?

“Do you have to say anything in your defense?” the captain addressed her.

She wasn’t sure it would make a difference, but she tried anyway. “I never worked in a camp and definitely not for the SS. I was simply a prison guard in a regular prison, where convicted criminal women were held during their sentence.”

“During their sentence, you mean until they were murdered by your government?” He sneered at her.

As much as she detested his conclusion, he was right. The so-called trials at the

Volksgerichtshof

had been nothing but a farce. Everyone tried there had been found guilty before the first word of defense. So it was only a matter of issuing the sentence. More often than not the verdict had been the death penalty. She shuddered at the memory of the many courageous women who’d defied the regime, only to end up on death row in Plötzensee.

But contrary to what this American captain believed, the women prisoners had been treated comparatively well. Ursula herself had done everything in her power to alleviate their desperation with the tacit consent of her superior. She’d left the women alone in the room when relatives visited. Other times she had looked away when the thirty minutes’ visiting time ended, pretending to be incredibly busy with some important task.

“No answer to this?” the captain reminded her of his presence.

“There was nothing I could do,” she said.

“Oh, were you just following orders?”

She sighed. “I was.”

“So did you beat, kick or punch the prisoners?”

“Never.”

“That’s a lie. We know everything about your camps. And we know how the prisoners were treated. Are you going to tell me you were the only SS guard to never use violence?”

“I wasn’t SS and I wasn’t in the camps.”

“More lying. Do you admit that you had a baton?”

She nodded. “I had one, but I never once used it.”

“So you were, in fact, the guardian angel ensuring that nothing happened to your charges?” The captain’s fist slammed down on the desk and she jumped.

Should she admit that the women prisoners had actually given her the nickname

Blonde Angel

, for the very reason that she’d always treated them like human beings? And should she explain that she’d worked hand in hand with the prison priest Pfarrer Bernau to smuggle people – including Tom – out of Germany?

“Take her to one of the cells,” the captain ordered the younger soldier.

Cold horror threatened to strangulate her, but she managed to speak with a trembling voice. “Please. You don’t understand. It was nothing like that.”

“I’m sure our interrogators will dig up the truth,” he said, turning on his heels.

“Please, don’t! I have an infant daughter waiting for me,” she cried, tears running down her cheeks.

“You should have thought about that before you helped the SS do their atrocious work.”

Ursula dragged her feet, even as the young GI took her elbow and shoved her out of the room. “Please, you have to believe me. I even helped the Jews.”

The American soldier didn’t slow down but dragged her behind him across the hallway and down into the basement where there were two cells. He sneered at her. “Every German I’ve met so far says they’re not a Nazi and have helped the Jews. Do you think we’re all stupid? Did we fight this war for nothing?”

Ursula tried again, panic rising in her chest. “No, you’re not stupid and there were more than enough Nazis in Germany, but I’m telling the truth.”

He opened one of the cells and shoved her inside.

Desperate, she cried out, “It’s the truth. I worked for a resistance organization, helping Jews escape from Berlin. I even smuggled a RAF pilot, Flying Officer Tom Westlake, out of the country. Ask the English about this, they can verify my story.”

“I’m not talking to the Brits about anything. Give your bullshit sob story to the interrogators.” He locked the cell door and left her alone in the basement of the town hall that doubled up as police station.

Ursula settled on the cot, her mind frantic with worry about her daughter. She’d never been away from Evie for more than a few hours and the thought of her little baby alone and screaming for her mommy tore her heart apart.

Although, if she were honest with herself, Evie probably wouldn’t be crying but chortling with delight, playing with her cousins. She was in good hands with Aunt Lydia. In the best hands. Ursula had nothing to worry about… yet she worried. How could a mother not worry?

The hours ticked by and Ursula counted the passing minutes. By now Lydia would wonder about her whereabouts. She might even send Jörg to Mindelheim, to look for her. Or, she might not have noticed yet. Days at the farm were filled with work and nobody had time to question what the others were doing. Lydia might only notice when she returned to the house and nobody had prepared dinner, the hens hadn’t been fed and the dirty dishes from breakfast were still sitting in the sink.

She would ask someone to give a phone call to her aunt – if the Americans even remembered her and came down into the bleak hole of the basement. The thought of letting Lydia know her current fate filled her with relief. Then she remembered that the telephone had stopped working weeks ago, probably as a result of cut cables in the last days of battle.

With a loud sigh, she sank onto her back on the hard cot. What irony! To be arrested for working in the job she’d been assigned to against her wishes. Although she’d come to terms with it, because she could actually make a difference in the lives of those accursed women.

Some, very few indeed, had been actual criminals, while the vast majority’s only crime had been to oppose Hitler’s regime. She remembered Hilde, a gentle brunette, who’d been sentenced to death for typing leaflets for her husband. Ursula’s heart broke some more at the memory of Hilde’s little son, the cutest boy, who resembled an angel, with his white-blond curls and blue eyes.

Tears pricked at the back of her eyes. She knew her aunt would take care of Evie, but she was shattered at the thought of not being there to see her grow up. To hold her. To console her. To see her take her first steps…

The door opened and the same young GI who’d dragged her down the stairs came inside with a tray of food. He put it on the cot beside her, without even a word. The revulsion for her alleged crimes was evident in his movements, his gaze and his posture.

“Please, you have to believe me. I was never a Nazi. I don’t belong in here.”

He scoffed. “Like I’ve never heard that before. Quiet down or else.”

A lump formed in her throat, making it impossible to speak, for which she was actually thankful, because she might have cursed the soldier for his unwillingness to listen. When he left the cell and locked the door again, she started screaming with desperation.

The last thing she’d thought might happen when the war ended was to end up in a prison.