The History of History - By Ida Hattemer-Higgins Page 0,21

was of short stature, the foot of the right leg was in a half-twisted position (club-foot) in a charred metal prosthesis; on it lay the remains of a burnt party uniform of the NSDAP and a singed party badge; near the burnt body of the woman was discovered a singed golden cigarette etui, on the body a golden party badge of the NSDAP and a singed golden broach. Near the heads of the two bodies lay two Walther pistols Nr. 1 (damaged by fire).

On the third of May 1945 Platoon Leader of the Russian Defense Department SMERSH of the 207th Protection Division, Lieutenant Colonel Iljin, found in the bunker of the Reich Chancellery in a separate room on several beds the corpses of children (five girls and a boy) from the ages of three to fourteen. They were dressed in light nightgowns and showed signs of poisoning.

As she finished the copying, Margaret grabbed her head in her hand.

Achtung! (Margaret wrote to herself in the notebook.)

Regarding the children:

Their ages, at the time of their deaths, were between four and twelve, not three and fourteen as the Soviets say here.

They were taken by SMERSH to the prison of Plötzensee, where the bodies were viewed by more Germans, for the sake of identification. And by more Russians, for the sake of the press, and the lurid sight of the enemy’s surrender of even its children.

Regarding the photographs:

Margaret held the pictures up to the light and considered whether or not she could sketch what she saw on the page, but she felt nauseous.

Instead, she wrote,

The children look fresh in death. They can be seen in the photographs—mortuary pictures from Plötzensee—still in the clean, white cotton nightgowns they wore to bed, blond hair still in braids, color in their cheeks, the apotheosis of everything the National Socialists meant by the word Heimat. Their heads are turned toward the camera, each in turn, held erect by a young Russian coroner in a butcher’s apron, round tortoiseshell glasses, and long, black rubber gloves.

A few moments later, Margaret was still on red alert. She recalled that once, she had read a letter Magda Goebbels wrote with her own hand. It was reproduced in its entirety in a book that she knew was very likely still somewhere in the flat. It quickly became shining and irresistible. She went to the shelf and began to page through several books. She couldn’t remember exactly where she had read it, that was the trouble. She went into the hall and knocked over two piles of books and rummaged.

The passage was nowhere to be found.

Back at the desk, she grabbed her forehead in her hand again. Her mind pulsed. All at once, like a word on the tip of the tongue bubbling up after sleep, she knew after all which book it was. She plunged her hand to the shelf and withdrew a dust-covered book: The Death of Adolf Hitler. She paged through it, and there indeed was the facsimile.

She could feel hives blooming on her neck. She was so excited—it was as if someone else’s body were moving under her head. Her heart beat, and it was hardly her own heart.

My beloved son! Now we have been here in the Führerbunker for six days—Papa, your six little siblings, and I—in order to give our National Socialist lives the only possible honorable finish. Whether you will receive this letter I don’t know … You must know that against his wishes I have stayed by Papa’s side, that even last Sunday the Führer wanted to help me to get out of here. You know your mother—we have the same blood, for me there was no question of it. Our heavenly idea is going to pieces—and with it everything beautiful, awe-inspiring, noble, and good that I have known in my life. The world that will come after the Führer and National Socialism is no longer worth living in, and therefore I have brought the children here with me. They are too good for the life that will come after us, and the merciful Lord will understand me when I give them salvation myself. You will live on, and I have one request of you: Don’t forget that you’re a German, never do anything that is against your honor, and take care that through your life our death was not in vain.

The children are wonderful. Without any assistance they help each other in these more than primitive conditions. Whether they sleep on the floor, whether or