The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel 46. HAHN THE SECOND-IN-CHARGE of the prison was a reserve officer named Hahn, a German of local birth and therefore only slowly becoming thoroughly permeated with the Nazi poison. He was perhaps the most interesting study in the prison. A typical, fair, blue-eyed Teuton, he had obviously been born with decent instincts, and it was strange to watch him slowly deteriorate. In the fight between decency and beastliness, the former was slowly but thoroughly wiped out. At first he was really friendly toward me. To the end these jacks-in-office were curiously uncertain how they ought to treat me, fawning and browbeating by turns. Their attitude toward me was expressed by Hahn when, with a puzzled look in his eye, he said: "You are either a great lady or a great spy-or both." I assured him I was neither. He had a sort of boisterous affection for me. "Mitchell Ruth!" would ring out over the noise, and I had to go to the office to see what he wanted. It was always something silly: "You are an educated woman: is it true that men are descended from monkeys? Will the monkeys go to heaven too? Ha ha!" He used to go in for such absurdities as trying to see which of us could jump up the most steps. I beat him, but he blamed it on his stiff Prussian boots. He taught me a good jujitsu trick or two. Several times he did small kindnesses to the women but was furious if thanked. His behavior was so good at first that one day I said to him: "After the war is over you will be wanting a job. I will give you a job with my horses. "In America?" he asked eagerly. Among the prisoners was an old friend of his, whose charming wife and children had been allowed to visit him. Came the order that this man was to be shot for alleged complicity in sabotage. I knew that Hahn himself knew well that his friend could not possibly have been even cognizant of the affair. It was horrible to watch the struggle in that officer's soul-to see what the fiendish Nazi doctrine has done to a once self-respecting race. Hahn made his friend drink two bottles of brandy, so that he was taken out almost unconscious to execution. That night the Nazis shot 128 Serbs, not all from our prison. And for four days Hahn drank steadily and could not eat a mouthful. I knew, because I had to place and remove his meals. As conditions in the prison became steadily more frightful, Hahn drank more and more. At last, one day with icy cynicism he told Lidia, who cleaned the office (I wasn't allowed in, because they couldn't trust me not to look at the papers!), that they had decided it was a waste of time to take those to be executed out to the park. That night, he announced, they would start shooting in the cellar. When the radio went very loud she would know it was going to start. The office radio blared practically without ceasing from early morning until late at night. News (only interesting for what it did not say), military bands, and worst of all an everlasting tinkle of little dance tunes went on and on maddeningly. I tried to prevent word of the expected cellar butchering from getting round among the women-in vain. I hoped that it had been said only with the never-ending intention of cowing us. But no-this time it was true. Towards midnight the radio suddenly rose to a fearful roar. The door of our cell, the only one between the office and the steps to the cellar, was wide open because of the suffocating heat. In the dim reflection from the brightly lit corridor my women-there were twenty of us now packed tightly in the cell-sat up on the straw, their eyes wide, their faces drawn with indescribable agony and dread. You see, almost all the men in the cellar were our relatives, husbands, sons, fathers, or our friends. Then, past the lighted wide, low doorway in the three-foot-thick wall, there came an unforgettable sight: springing, crouching like a hunting beast, his fair hair hanging over his glittering eyes, came Hahn, half drunk. Swinging in his hand was a rifle with a silencer attached to it. Before the door he hesitated for a fraction of a second-as if some small, long-buried bell had struck in his brain. He threw in a wolfish glare and then sprang on. The radio did not drown the shots. Slowly we counted as if each one were exploding in our hearts. No other sound, no cry; just-dance music and thirteen muffled shots. Soon there came the trample of heavy-booted feet in the yard, and grunts as the corpses were removed. An engine started noisily and drew away. Then the endless slow stamp of the guards began again-up and down, up and down the corridors. The radio stopped. There was silence in that hellhouse. There was no sleep for us that night; only strangled, dry sobs and frantic, whispered prayers. Hahn did not return. Towards morning I climbed to the window and peered out through the crack under the wooden shutter. There, in the wan moonlight of the dimly lit yard, on a bench by the gate sat Hahn in an attitude of utter despair. Yet next morning the fellow sneeringly announced: "Oh, it was too much trouble to haul out the bodies. Easier after all to take them out on the hoof!" There were many Germans, like Hahn, in whose souls native decency fought with Nazi viciousness. Sometimes decency won; this alone can explain the great number of desertions from the German Army. The Serbian forests were said to be full of these deserters, almost all young men who arrived as Nazi idealists, to be soulsickened by the horror to which their cynical doctrine must logically and inevitably lead. At one time it was said that there was an organized unit of German soldiers fighting on the side of the Chetniks against the Nazis. Certain it is that the number of desertions was so large that printed notices were posted on lampposts throughout the country, announcing: "Anyone who supplies a German soldier or officer with civilian clothes will be shot." The Serb peasants hung coats on their fences and clotheslines. In the morning these would be gone; in their place a few pennies and a German soldier's jacket to be quickly burned. Previous Chapter | Content | Next Chapter The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel