THE
SPANDAU
CITADEL —

30th ANN!:

By ZELMIRA KRATOCHVILOVA fought its
: Great events in the life of nations never raine ng
: : OPE 4 A : happen alone. They always mean the end slova on
se : of one-era and the beginning of another; The
BOTH) ANNIVERSARY just as they are always connected with the vance was T
DE TUE VICTORY past and with the future. In fact they are ‘of the resi
OVER FASCISM simply historic milestones. This, too, is ing part

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undoubtedly the case with the liberation of
our country by the Soviet Army, the 30th
anniversary of which we are celebrating
this year. This event had truly far-reaching
consequences; the expulsion of the occu-

distrust. Such was the setting of
our final talks. It was extremely
difficult. The nazis simply re-
fused to listen to reason, and

falling in in the huge yard, and
our tommy gunners marched the
prisoners from the fortress off
to assembly points.

By VLADIMIR GALL
Captain (Ret.)

,

The following is a story of € made counterproposals which = There were large-crowds of ity the pos
war veteran, former Soviet truce while seemingly a compromise, women with childten and old sa ee pee cathe stor ; ne stret
envoy, presently senior instruc- were in fact a camouflaged re- folk — relatives of citadel offic- ation of Czechoslovakia’s State indepen- All: ofa
tort the Maurice Thorez Mos: " fusal to surrender. ers and Spandau residents. They dence but it also foretold the beginning of tions found
eee, ats Peiancpical dnatitute Three Hours to Think were terrified and confused. the end of an entire historic epoch — that anti-fascist °
a The: tension —continued to. What was: going to happen. to of capitalist rule — and prepared the soil inevitable 54)

i : ‘mount until we decided to end them? for socialist development. more profoly,

This happened 30 years ago.

Almost the whole of Berlin was.

in’ our. hands, and the victory
flag flew over the Reichstag.
There were only a few pockets
of resistance left, and one of
them was the Spandau citadel
on the western outskirts of the
city. Our advancing troops out-
flanked the citadel and moved
- on to Brandenburg. The fortress,
_ well behind our lines, still com-
manded the Havel River and the
bridge used by our west-bound
‘troops and supplies. Spandau
had to be taken.

There was one snag, however
—inside the fortress were many
women, children and old people,

besides the soldiers. The Soviet
~ Command decided not to storm
the fortress, but to try to con-
vince the garrison to surrender.
Early on May 1, 1945, carry-
ing a white flag, Major Vasily
Grishin and I went to the fort-
ress to negotiate. The huge gates
were barricaded, and we could
not go in, but two German of-
ficers climbed down a rope lad-
der from a balcony. They were
Colonel Jung, the commandant,
and Lieutenant-Colonel Koch,
his deputy. We gave them the
_ text of the terms of surrender.
: Hitler’s Order :
The Colonel said that person-
ally he agreed to the terms, but
most of the officers would re-

fuse categorically. Hitler had
_ just given the order that if the

commandant of a besieged for-

tress or the commander of an
encircled unit surrendered of his
own accord, any officer under
his command had the right and
duty to shoot him on the spot

and take over command.

“So,” Jung summed up, gloo-
mily, “even if I decide to sur-
render, it won’t help either you
Orme.” 2; :

We were aware of this mons-
trous order. Hitler had issued it
right after the surrender of the
_ Konigsberg fortress, vainly hop-
ing to tie his officers’ hands with
_ mutual fear. :

In other words, what the Colo-
nel said meant that our mission
\ did not succeed.

‘The desire to prevent horrible

and pointless bloodshed was so

_, great that we decided to go up

into the fortress and talk to the
officers. The commandant was
surprised—he thought our deci-
sion reckless. He exchanged
glances with his deputy and
shrugged his shoulders as if to

tell us that he could not guaran- °

tee our safety.

We climbed the rope ladder
to the balcony and entered a
dimly lit room where all the of-
. ficers were assembled. They
looked at us darkly and with

the parley and said:
“We will give you three hours

to think. If in that time you fail ~

to understand your real duty to
the new. Germany, the Germany

of the future, and do not take

the only right decision and sur-
render, we shall storm the fort-
ress. The entire responsibility
for the senseless death of your
men, for the blood of innocent
old people, women and children,
will rest with you.”

This last warning sounded
like a threat. There was dead
silénce as we turned our backs
and walked to the balcony,
aware of the SS-men’s eyes fill-
ed with hatred. But nobody
moved. We climbed down the.
Same rope ladder, and walked
to the grove of trees near our
advance line. Believe me, we
felt it was a very -long walk!

Then followed three long
hours of waiting. We were all
hoping against hope when Lieu-
tenant - General Perkhorovich,
our Army Commander, ordered
me to go to the appointed meet-
ing place, just in case. At exact-
ly the appointed time, the fort-
ress commandant and his depu-
ty walked up.

“Herr Capain, we have come
to inform you of our decision.”

“I am listening, Herren Offi-
ziere: = :

“The citadel . . . ” the Colo-
nel’s voice wavered, “surrend-
ers.” : a
‘Vielen Dank’

Several hours later Major

Grishin and I entered the citadel
again, this time not by way of
the balcony but through open
gates. Officers and soldiers were _

Geiman (left in the forefront).

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, MAY 9, 1975—Page 6

*

A still from the film “I Was 19”. 1
- quthor of the article, was the prototype of the chief character, Vadim

Using a loudspeaker, we an-
nounced: “Civilians may leave
the fortress and go home.”

As the noisy crowd passed
through the gates, a young
woman with a child came up to
us. Her eyes swam with tears,
her voice quavered.

“You risked your life to go
and persuade our officers to sur-
render. You saved their lives,
our lives and the lives of our
children. Vielen, vielen. Dank!”

That was the end of the Span-
dau citadel operation.

As Soviet People

Many years later, in August
1973, I was a guest of honor at
the 10th World Festival of
Youth and Students in Berlin.

At the end of a rally, I was
surrounded by young men from
West Berlin. They shook my
hand and one of them said: ‘‘We
were born after the war, but the
film ‘I was 19” told us that at the
very end of the war you were
a negotiator in the Spandau
citadel. What made you risk
your life and walk into the
wounded nazi beasts’s den to
save the lives of your enemies?”

I replied: “We Soviet people
have been brought up in the
spirit of proletarian internation-
alism and socialist humanism.
Never, not even in the most try-
ing days of the war,- did we
identify the German people with
fascism. When we heard that
there were old people, women
and children in the fortress,
Major Grishin and I went from
cur lines as negotiators to pre-
vent useless bloodshed. We only
did our duty as Soviet people

“and internationalists.”

Soviet truce envoy Viadimir Gall,

The glorious past is inseparably re-.
flected in our plans for the future and in
our endeavors for their realization.

In 1944 Soviet troops liberated nearly all
of the USSR, including White Russia and
the Ukraine, it chased the occupants out of
Poland, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria,
and was relentlessly advancing towards
the very borders of Germany itself. It

towards 4

and in ©0
internatio

The’ population of Prague welcoming Soviet army tank

ABOUT
OUR |
VICTORY

Soviet Marshal
Georgi Zhukov
CT a ee

World War Two

In one of his last interviews, given to the YCL news-
paper, ‘Komsomolskaya Pravda’, Soviet Marshal Georgi

Zhukov recalls the grim days of the Soviet military contri- 4