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been wounded in the street fighting in Berlin the
spring before, and he complained of pains in the
stomach. Lying there on his wooden bench, he did
not leok as if he had much chance of reaching his
son. He represented a fate shared by tens of
thousands of Berliners.
The oppressive gloom of the bomb shelters in
Lehrter Bahnhof was exceeded by that of the refugee
depot, which we shortly thereafter visited in
Kuppstrasse, in northeastern Berlin not far from Stettiner
Bahnhof. Between twelve and thirteen thousand
people had been crowded together in this depot, which
was located in an old army garrison. Probably this
building had seen its best days in the time of
Emperor Wilhelm II, when there still was a romantic
veneer on German militarism, romantic because
nobody realized the frightful consequences of that
militarism when supported by modern techniques. Later
on, probably during the Hitler regime, the building
in Kuppstrasse had been used as a police station. Now
it was a refuge for the people driven from the east.
A rancid atmosphere filled the stairways and
corridors as we made our way among a contingent of
refugees which had arrived in Berlin the night
before. Here we encountered the very blackest aspects
of the life lived by so many during the last few years
in Germany: people who had been uprooted and
swept away, people who had been separated from
their dearest ones and who desperately tried in every
possible way to get in touch with them, to find them
again in the ocean of individuals drifting westward;
destitute people for whom existence had become
meaningless; starved, haggard people who, twelve
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