Dachau to Dolomites. Tom Wall
He put one leg through the trip-wire, crossed over the neutral zone and put one foot into the barbed wire entanglement. At the same time he grabbed an insular with his left hand. Then he got out of it and grabbed the electrified fence. He stood for a moment with his right leg back and his chest pushed out and shouted at me ‘Guard, don’t be a coward, shoot me!’27
The guard fired a single shot with the bullet entering just in front of his right ear. Cushing later remarked that ‘it was the first time I felt sorry for the poor bastard’.28 Not the most worthy of tributes, although he went on to say; ‘it was one of the saddest events of my life’.29 Yet, while expressing sorrow, he avoided any suggestion of culpability.
It was a sad end for a young man whose dream of reconciliation with his father were only to be realised posthumously. The ‘murderers’ did shoot him as Stalin predicted, although he did not have confirmation of this until after the war. Keindl, the camp commandment, was potentially at risk of being disciplined, or worse, for allowing the loss of such a valuable hostage. To minimise blame, it is believed that he conspired with all concerned, including the Irish prisoners, to have the matter portrayed as a straightforward suicide; there was no mention of Stalin’s son being chased by a knife-wielding Irishman.30
A traumatised Kokorin was transferred to the prison bunker of Sachsenhausen. This was presumably to avoid any further conflict with the Irish. But things didn’t get any better for the little Russian. He was put in a cell with another Russian officer who attempted suicide by cutting his wrists one night when Kokorin was asleep. When an air raid alert sounded during the night, Kokorin got down from the top bunk and stepped into a pool of the man’s blood. Payne Best who was housed in the same prison bunker at that time was told about Kokorin and his abject state by one of the wardens he was friendly with. The Englishman claimed that he used his influence with the guards to have him moved to an adjoining cell where, although he was not permitted to have direct contact with the Russian, he was able to cheer him up somewhat by having some of his allocation of tobacco sent to him, and by turning up the volume on his radio whenever cheery music was being broadcast.31
The Irishman, Murphy, was also transferred, in this instance to another camp entirely, although it is not clear if this had anything to do with the events just described. He was one of many prisoners of war who lost their mind. He survived the war, but died soon after in Netley, a mental institution for servicemen near Southampton.32 His place in the hut was filled by an Irish-born Liverpudlian, John Spence.33 As we will discover, Spence was to prove an unpopular and suspect figure within Sonderlager ‘A’. Later arrivals included a group of British officers, survivors of the ‘Great Escape’ from Stalag Luft III, one of whom was Major Johnnie Dodge, an American who was a relative of Winston Churchill through marriage.
Soon after the end of the war, the Americans uncovered an SS report about Yakov Dzhugashvili’s death which they passed on to the British. The contents created a dilemma for the British Foreign Office. It was initially thought that they might present Stalin with a copy of the file at the upcoming Potsdam Conference in July 1945, presumably while tendering their condolences. However, when the contents were perused, the ‘unpleasant’ and embarrassing fact that Yakov Dzhugashvili’s suicidal action was preceded by an argument with a British fellow prisoner – Cushing – was discovered. The mandarins therefore advised that it would be distasteful ‘to draw attention to an Anglo-Russian quarrel’ in connection with Stalin’s son’s death. Consequently, Stalin was not told of the discovery.34 On 3 January 1951, the Daily Telegraph published an intriguing article by a ‘special correspondent’:
Quest for news of Stalin’s second son: Offer of reward
News of a curious quest by Russian agents in Germany has reached London. They are seeking information about the fate of Capt. Dzhugashvili, M. Stalin’s second [sic] son.
A reward of a million roubles for details of his whereabouts is offered. The Kremlin had hitherto accepted the general view that Capt. Dzhugashvili did not long survive his capture by the Germans in 1941.
His elder brother [a mistaken reference to his younger half-brother Vasilli] Lt.-Gen. Dzhugashvili is commanding general of an important Soviet Air Group. The sons retained their father’s family name.
Capt. Dzhugashvili was first reported in an officers’ prisoner-of-war camp in the province of Holstein. Here he showed complete unconcern about his fate and refused to submit to ordinary camp discipline.
It was reported of him that he would never address a German officer by rank, or rank and name, which is the usual custom. He would use the officer’s surname.
In Concentration Camp
Towards 1942 he was transferred to the notorious Oranienburg [Sachsenhausen] concentration camp near Berlin. It was from that camp that the German Army was informed that he had died, though the cause of death was not specified.
No reason for the sudden revival of interest in the young man has been given, but it has been stated in Russian Army circles in Europe that M. Stalin himself might have issued the order for the search. This theory is advanced to support a report that M. Stalin is ill.
Even if that were so, no Government department in Moscow could question the Marshal’s orders, however, strange.35
Major Johnnie Dodge, who had survived captivity, read this report and, shortly afterwards, arrived at the Foreign Office in London with a proposal that he and a fellow former resident of Sonderlager ‘A’, Colonel Jack Churchill, be sent to Moscow to meet Stalin to tell him what they knew about his son’s death in Sachsenhausen. Both had only arrived in the compound after Dzhugashvili’s death, so their information could only have been obtained second hand. In support of his proposal, Dodge bizarrely suggested that hearing about his son’s sad end might somehow ‘soften Stalin’s heart towards the West’. As Dodge’s version of events has Stalin’s son being pursued by a British soldier, with a knife shortly before his death, it defies reason that Dodge should think that this information would soften Stalin’s heart towards anyone, least of all the British. Perhaps Dodge’s real motivation was the reward mentioned in the newspaper article; in other words, what he may have wanted was, not so much to soften Stalin’s heart, as to lighten his pocket. Needless to say, the Foreign Office declined his offer. A Foreign Office staffer, who happened to have spent some time in the company of Dodge as a POW, advised, with compassionate understatement, that he was ‘not entirely dispassionate in judgement’.36
It seems, though, that Stalin, the ‘man of steel’, who was prepared to have millions sacrificed to maintain his hold on power, had in the end, begun to feel remorse for his ‘fool’ of a son, conceding, finally, that the boy had in fact been ‘a real man’.37
CHAPTER FOUR
TRAITORS
Sachsenhausen, March 1944
In the months following Stalin’s son’s death, a number of new prisoners arrived in Sonderlager ‘A’. They included two Polish RAF men and a group of former Red Army officers. They were joined later by an extraordinary group of British officers, a number of them survivors of The Great Escape. The first British arrival was Captain Peter Churchill, a Special Operations Executive (SOE) officer who had been captured in the company of his French fellow operative and lover, Odette Sansom, while attempting to build a resistance network in the south of France. In the hope that it would save both of them, they conspired to tell their Gestapo interrogators that he was related to Winston Churchill and that they were married. Despite initial German scepticism and repeated gruelling interrogations, the deception worked, at least for Churchill, and now considered a potential hostage, he was given the status of a special prisoner. Sansom, however, continued to be treated by the Gestapo as a French Résistant and spy. She was tortured and sentenced to be executed, although fortunately this was never carried out.
Churchill, on the basis of his assumed relationship with the British Prime Minister, was dispatched to Sachsenhausen. He must have feared what was in store for him given the reputation of that camp, but he was relieved when shown his new abode. He later described the Sonderlager he was escorted to as a ‘haven’ set within the desert of suffering