Die rote Kapelle Page #5

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May the God of old protect you.

Much love from your Cato.

When I went to Berlin

and saw Cato in prison.

She was brought to us. She had

a bracelet with TK it.

Then I said

Cato, are you coming back with us very soon.

No, no, she said. Here.

A band around her arm with TK

Todeskandidat (Death candidate)

Cato, of course, cried, and I had a lump in my throat.

I could not say anything.

What could you say...

to someone who was near death

Especially for members of the Red Orchestra

in December 1942...

... in Pletzensee they suspended a beam

with eight meat hooks it

So they were not guillotined, but hung

The noblest execution was the bullet, then came the axe...

... and the most degrading form was

the noose

In her farewell letter Libertas writes:.

Tell everyone about us

In reality, the family had been under strict orders...

. . to say nothing about it, otherwise

they would go to the concentration camp.

With regard to the Red Orchestra

... it was important to Hitler,

that no one came to know anything

he could not accept and he probably

could not even understand ...

... that there were decent people

who were ready to thwart him

A day after Himpel

was given the death penalty...

... my husband was released.

Himpel gave him his will on a smuggled note

and he took it.

This was ignored in the outside world

The door flew open and there stood Helmut.

He looked like a ghost,

he was so skinny. Terrible.

I took Himpel's will to

Seesenerstrasse.

I rang the bell,

but no one answered.

I walked down the stairs where I saw

Herr Terwiel, doctor Terwiel.

He asked in a shocked voice

Had his mother opened the door?

I said:
No, no one came.

I told him everything

and he was very nice.

He said:
How could I tell my mother that my sister was executed?

Therefore we said that she went to Switzerland.

And Herr Himpel too.

After the war I found it interesting

to see that prison again.

What struck me was the ordinary

sounds that you could hear

I heard someone shouting at

prisoners

I recognised the man,

as he came nearer ...

... and there I saw that it was one of the worst

guards there.

My father sent me from Berlin a v-mail

... a letter that was put on film...

... he told that me of his sadness at learning

... that Arvid and Mildred were killed.

Sorry, what year was that?

- In 1945.

When the Allies were allowed in Berlin, he immediately went looking for everybody.

It stunned him, I could tell by the

way he was writing

it was such a shame to lose people

I used to put the pictures

of my parents on the table.

I found it so hard to imagine ...

... how they were when they were alive.

The images did not move, there was no film.

A few years ago I received a document

... that my father had completed just before his execution.

That said how tall he was.

He was 1.86 metres tall.

My grandparents had told

that he was 1.96 metres tall

I had always felt that I had that to look forward to.

When I saw that document

and found...

that we're practically the

same height.

I was shocked when I heard that the families of the resistance...

... ... even those of the 20 July resistance,

did not get pensions for many years.

Their husbands were treated as traitors...

... and although they had fought against Hitler

they got nothing.

But SS widows and people like that

did get a pension...

when they came due

I remember my sister Annemarie

told me...

... that the German government

paid reperations, and as I recall

It was about $ 25 per month

for what they had been through...

as a non-Aryan

living underground in Berlin.

.. the $25 dollars were also

intended to compensate...

... for the death of my parents

It was called Wiedergutmachung (reperation),

but this was not good..

I got 5 marks for each day that I had been detained

I say thats appallingl: If I had been

there ten years, I did what I had to.

Then I would have had more beer

The officer was obviously

de nazified, but that did not help.

I filled in a form form him

and to a question about my father I said ...

... he was executed.

He replied, full of hatred:

Your father's death is nothing.

That touched me greatly.

That's why I left.

I could not have

In West Berlin, it was such

that we were all afraid to say ....

... we had been part of the Red Orchestra because we felt...

... that the Nazis were everywhere

and still firmly in the saddle.

I have not lost

the fear of Nazis

They were still supporters of Hitler, only you did not see it anymore.

On the day of the capitulation

they did not suddenly become democrats.

In the late 40s, my parents and their friends were in the West ...

... again seen as traitors and spies ...

... ... because she had tried to fight Hitler with the wrong party

The war ended in 1945,

the Cold War began in 1947...

... and from that moment

former Nazis and Gestapo agents were...

... contesting the work of the Red Orchestra

Horst Kopkow had been a leading

investigator of the Red Orchestra.

He gave a statement to

the Allies...

... in return, the British secret service

gave him a new identity.

Kopkow became Horst Horst Kordes.

He soon made a new

career and no one stopped him.

Mr. Roeder, judge advocate

at the trial of the Orchestra...

... wanted to save his own skin and

he tried to convince the Americans that

... the Red Orchestra was still a dangerous and

active espionage group.

espionage-phobia was repeatedly

fueled by the Cold War.

The Gestapo described

the Red Orchestra as a ...

... symbol of Soviet espionage.

This was after 1945 when there was hostility on

both sides...

... both the West and the East

Heinz Hiihne, a journalist

for Der Spiegel...

Described an espionage group ...

which had signaled to Moscow.

How did you find out that

500 radio messages were sent?

The 500 radio messages

spoken of...

... I would add:

unfortunately for me...

... was only an assertion by

some people...

... who were aware of certain things...

... but who obviously did not

have radio communications.

If the Red Army had received that type of information from the Red Orchestra

... which the more sensational reports spoke of ...

... they could have responded much

more efficiently to the Nazis.

In the West, they saw it as a

espionage group for the Soviet Union...

... and in the East as a group of scouts

Not spies, but scouts,

which had a positive tone.

Minister Mielke and the Stasi posthumously awarded

medals to members of the Red Orchestra...

.. as a kind of predecessor of the Stasi

I was shocked at

events in East Germany...

... portraits of members

of the Red Orchestra...

... sat beside portraits of DDR policemen...

...who were killed in firefights

between East and West.

The members of the Red Orchestra

were, therefore, used for propaganda.

Communism is not a political party,

but a way of life.

.. an evil way of life...

... related to a disease,

that spreads like an epidemic.

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