Source:
SS Leitheft, Year 1944, Issue 1, Version S
The
path back - that is what we called the path of the mothers and fathers, the
parents, who had lost the son, often the only one; that path that was supposed
to lead them back from despair and loneliness to life. Frau Marianne Hamitz
from Stettin portrays to us the encounter with a front soldier that reports of
such a return by a mother:
It
was in a train. Among the travellers sat a young soldier, his hair turned grey,
scarred wounds on face and lines that can only be chiselled by great shock. He
was on leave for six weeks, as he said, and since one asked how such a long
leave was possible, he gradually got to talking.
From
Stalingrad, where he had experienced the difficult fighting almost to the
bitter end, he came severely wounded by airplane to the homeland and a Viennese
hospital. A reception that brought tears to the eyes of us hardened men.
Incredible love, care, flowers, sympathy. My friend and comrade in the next
bed. At his side, heroically silent and without complaint, a mother who watches
her only child set off along the path to the vast, unknown land. Across from me
comrade H., who had lost an arm and both feet.
He
is alone in life. Never does one see a relative at his bed. Laboriously and
with silent sympathy, his eyes rest on the mother’s face. She feels it, and an
invisible bond of understanding embraces their hearts.
“Who
is this young man?” she suddenly asks me.
“A
flawless man and comrade”, I reply.
“Single?”
“Unfortunately,
yes, and poor.”
She
is silent. 1 ponder what these questions at this hour have to mean. I know that
she owns a large farm, that the husband is dead, and there, next to her, the
son, the heir, the bearer of the family name is about to pass away. His life
ebbs more and more. She holds his hand, which gets heavier and heavier; one
feels that for her, the mother, the heart’s blood drains, feels that her life
wanes with that of the son, who was her life’s content and her first and final fulfilment.
Silently, she still holds the hand when it is already cold. All of us lie quietly
and do not dare to breathe.
Then
she gets up and goes to our comrade, who looks at her with wide eyes. They
extend their hands. She feels what the warm pressure means: his devout
sympathy.
“Now
I have a request of you, dear fellow. You were the friend of my son; may 1 now
take you to me to be my son? Everything should belong to you, everything...!”
It is like a sob.
Clumsily,
he tries to kiss her hand. And mutters his thanks. “That”, so ends the
soldier’s report, “is what I have experienced, and I know for what I go out
again, when my leave is over.”
He
had seen Germany’s eternal heart: the German mother. He saw her overcome death
at her greatest moment.
At a SHELL oil refinery I met such a Stalingrad survivor in good health. His story turned my life around from a chosenite believer to a holocaust truther. It took a few years later with the help of Ernst Zundel and Bradley Smith. It is sad that one small ethnic group is responsible for most of the suffering of others in the world, while they make the world believe they suffered.
ReplyDeleteUnknown, what an amazing testimony! Thank you. Diane
ReplyDeleteBradley Smith was a very dear friend since Theran, Dec 2006. Thank you for having mentioned him. He was a genuine "Mehr sein als scheinen" man: unassuming, very active and productive and courageous to the very end: precisely what we need the most.
ReplyDelete