Lawyer Behling, 38, could hardly be expected to affect the court outcome, but he was useful. Accompanied by a doctor he smuggled in bread. He bought news too that their trial was on 8 February. A greater impact was to come from another lawyer, New Yorker Rosie Rosenthal, 27. His was another role, that of a pilot of a B-17 Flying Fortress.
On Saturday 3 February 1945 Rosenthal and hundreds of other men of the United States Army Air Force’s 8th Air Force assembled in ready rooms across air bases in East Anglia, England. Rosenthal was to lead the 100th Bomb Group. A thousand bombers would carry 3000 tons of bombs. Berlin had been bombed over four years. Its people recognized this Saturday morning raid was bigger. Ursula von Kardorff, wondered in her diary why they did not go mad: ‘Today the city centre had its heaviest raid yet. I would not have believed it possible for them to be worse. Luckily I was in the deep shelter, but even their people began to panic. Women started to scream when the lights finally went out for good…. Why does nobody go crazy? Why does nobody go out in the street and shout, “I’ve had enough! “Why is there not a revolution? “Stick it out!” What a stupid motto. So we shall stick it out until we are all dead.’ Lagi was in a cell: ‘The huge old prison building with its thick stone walls shook to its foundations. We sat in our cells – I darning a bottomless pile of military socks – when the bombs fell all around and the air was filled with the noise of modern aerial warfare.’
The bombers killed 2,894 people, 20,000 were injured and 120,000 people were made homeless. The Air Ministry, the Reich Chancellery, the Ministry of Propaganda and Gestapo headquarters were hit, as were five railroad stations and the Tempelhof marshalling yards. The nearby airport was damaged.
Amidst the bombing Freisler carried on at his Volksgerichtshof desk. Heading to see him was the family of Rudiger Schleicher, 50, married to Ursula Bonhoeffer, sister of the anti-Nazi theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. On Friday Freisler had sentenced another brother, Karl Bonhoeffer, 44, to death. The delegation from his family were nearing the court, to ask for a stay of execution. Among the group crossing the city by train was his brother Rolf Schleicher, a military doctor. They reached the central Berlin Potsdamer Platz as the bombers came over. Freisler and an accused man were still in the court. They made for an air raid shelter when Freisler realised he had left files on his desk. He turned back as a bomb exploded close by. Freisler was hit. As the bombing stopped Rolf Schleicher and the family left the station and headed to the court to appeal for their brother’s life. Emmi Bonhoeffer told of how Rolf Schleicher was near the scene.
‘His uniform showed that he was a military doctor and he was called to a seriously injured person without knowing it was Freisler. He could only certify that the man was dead,’ Bonhoeffer said. ‘Then he learned that this was the judge of the People’s Court whom everyone was so afraid of. He pointed to the corpse and said to the bystanders: “This is the man who illegally condemned my brother to death yesterday”.’
German newspaper editor Guido Knopp has told a version of the story, saying that as Rolf arrived there was an urgent call for a doctor.
‘They spoke of a “highly placed person” having been hit by a piece of shrapnel as he fled across the forecourt. But the doctor could do no more than pronounce the man dead.’
Luise Jodl, wife of army chief General Alfred Jodl, recounted years later that she had been working in a hospital when Freisler’s body came in: ‘…nobody regretted his death.’ A worker said ‘it is God’s verdict’ and, Jodl said, ‘not one person said a word in reply’. Kardorff heard rumours that his neck was broken.
‘There is no further news about the people in prison. Since Freisler’s death no further trials have taken place. Many of those sentenced to death have not yet been executed.’ Himmler was keeping them, including Goedeler, alive ‘in order to create a good impression’, she speculated.
Word reached Lagi the next day: ‘Fellow prisoners whispered, “Freisler is dead!” I could hardly believe it. It meant life for us – time gained, and the elimination of our most dangerous enemy. He had delayed going to the air-raid cellar and was killed by a bomb which hit the court building. Many records were burnt in the raid, among them our own.’ A fever gripped Lagi: ‘Even the most apathetic developed a wild desire to live. We knew that the war could not last much longer but that there was still danger of being killed, at the end, by the SS.’
Some criminals and lesser political prisoners were freed, female guards stopped coming to the camp, fearing that liberation might mean their rape and deaths. The trees in the prison yard were turning green. Birds sung. The chill was easing in the cells.
‘All these seemed promises of early freedom.’
Volksgerichtshof trials resumed on 16 March 1945, under new president Harry Haffner. Before him was Wilhelm Staehle for his connections to the Solf Circle. The Gestapo showed their ineptness by not connecting him to the Wolf’s Lair plot which he had indisputably been involved in. Staehle was given two years’ imprisonment for aiding and abetting a political prisoner through the Solf Circle. Johanna and Lagi were scheduled for a late April trial.
On 23 April, the door to Lagi’s cell was thrown open.
‘Get ready for discharge,’ the guard said.
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