Gebele’s second letter is dated March 26, 1945, the day that Amstetten was bombed for the third time in ten days by the Americans. Gebele was still in the Revier waiting for an operation on his wounded leg. Sabine had been moved to another Revier barrack by now.
In this letter, he thanked Sabine for her reaction to his previous letter in which she apologized for her poorly written German, but Gebele assured her:
My goodness, liebe Sabine, as far as your mistakes in German are concerned, they are not a problem and even I, as an experienced native German and an academic, make more mistakes than you do and besides, I must tell you, your mistakes are a source of real pleasure, for they have an attractive, childlike naivety for me and therefore there is not the slightest need for apologies.
Gebele begged his “liebe kleine Sabine” to accept his help and reassured her he would do anything he possibly could to lighten her misery. He was convinced of her strength and was sure she would recover. He was confident that the hostilities would end and that she would soon be free.
He seemed to genuinely care for her and promised not to be too overbearing, although, reading this letter, it is difficult to avoid this impression:
If I may ask a favor, meine liebe Sabine, it would be that you should, for God’s sake, avoid all contact with all others in your environment, but for the minimum comradeship of those other women whom fate has destined to be in your situation. [...]
Above all, however, I want to warn you of the danger posed by the male prisoners in the camp, whose craving for sexual favors on a regular basis is too great and quickly leads to disaster.
Sabine should stay strong and pure, he advised. Gebele assured her that he had never had friendships with other prisoners, although he always tried to help wherever he could. Although a little further in the letter, he complained about women in general and the ones in the camp in particular. Time and time again, his kindness was taken advantage of. Most women saw him as a way to leading a life of luxury and damaged his trust. Even in the camp, he had been cheated on and pushed aside by women. Women were disloyal and shameless—he had seen it all in the camp. They even pursued the SS guards in their search for love, “like cows in a meadow constantly searching for fresh grass.” According to him, women had inborn bad character traits. But fortunately, he deduced from Sabine’s firm and pleasant handwriting a complete absence of these bad traits. In his own words, he himself had only one character fault: jealousy. Although this could also be considered a virtue, because he who is jealous protects his possession and fights for everything that is precious: his beloved.
In this second letter, Gebele already expressed his feelings for her: “Just get better for my sake please and then we shall see what fate will prepare for us. Perhaps love and a future together, perhaps farewell. That I like and love you, liebe Sabine, needs no further mention, though whether you feel the same for me, we shall have to see.”
He also asked her to visit him as soon as she was well again: “It would do me good to see you again.”
He promised to write to her mother and assured her he would be very discreet. They both knew the punishment would be severe if this were discovered. Almost certainly death.
In order to win her confidence, he told her about his own life.
I am the fourth son of a factory owning married couple, Georg and Franziska Gebele from Munich, where I was born on 12th March 1906.
I studied engineering and despite my considerable youth I made swift progress thanks to my ability. In 1929 I joined Lufthansa as a copilot, but was involved in a serious crash in 1932.
I have been married before and the marriage ended, due to the miserable scheming of my wife, with her death. The marriage produced one child (a girl), who, at the age of fourteen was killed in an air raid on Munich in June 1944.
On Friday, June 9, the Americans had indeed bombed the railway lines around Munich. Five thousand people lost their homes, the roads around the railway station were destroyed, and the hospital was badly damaged. Around 147 people died, including Gebele’s daughter. He told Sabine that as a result of shooting his wife for adultery, he was given a three-month suspended sentence. An amazingly light sentence considering. But that was not the reason he was in Mauthausen.
“I also had fourteen previous convictions unfortunately, but thank God, none involved prison or other detentions. They were all fines for traffic offenses and misdemeanors in a car or on a motorcycle. My financial fortunes may not be very important, though I am very well funded and invested in Switzerland, for which I was sentenced to six years in prison on the grounds of currency border offenses, falsification of state documents and similar crimes.” Obviously considered more serious than murder by the Nazis.
Looking back on his life as a prisoner, he wondered if he should have done things differently, and on balance thought he should have done so. Perhaps they could discuss it when there was an opportunity to do so in private, he suggested.
Before ending the letter with another declaration of love, he told her he was planning a life abroad after the war and to build a house there, a sort of metaphor for starting a new life.
Sabine must have been pretty shocked at his confessions. To think a man who murdered his wife was now in love with her.
Gebele’s state of mind was confused. Sometimes he was formal. Other times he told her his secrets. He tried to win Sabine’s confidence by assuring her of his solid financial position and at the same time presented himself as the ideal man. “I don’t gamble, I don’t drink and I am keen on sports. I also love music and visit the opera often. I am a nature lover. I am also very easygoing and my inclination is to avoid conflicts.”
The following day, on Tuesday, March 27, 1945, another letter arrived, starting with “Sabinchen”:
Have you received the clothes? Do they fit or should I find different ones for you? The skirt and four blouses I chose according to my taste and best suited to you. Please, Sabine, keep them for your own use. For the moment I have been able only to find underwear for emergency use. Should you desire something different, Sabinchen, then your wish is my command and I will see to it.
As a Funktionshäftling (a job as part of the authorities in the camp), he received a daily extra food ration, which he would happily send on to Sabine.
Furthermore, have you received the bread, sugar and margarine on Sunday evening? I should like to send you my everyday garrison special food allowance: something of substance and nourishing, such as soup, meat and vegetables. I don’t want to take anyone else into our confidence or bother them with something which will require negotiation on both sides and create jealousy in others.
He was obviously very keen that she should eat well so that she would be recovered by the time she left the camp, “hopefully in about four weeks’ time, when the war will be over and we will be able to leave the camp together. If things take a turn for the worse, don’t be alarmed, I’ll keep watch over you like a mother over her child or a treasure hunter over the most precious jewel he has just unearthed.”
Gebele’s prediction is eerily prescient. Two days short of four weeks later, she was indeed liberated.
Sabine was still in the Revier, although it might have been a different one from the one where she met Gebele. He had made sure that as soon as her ankle improved, she could come and visit him in his staff quarters. He arranged for her to be collected and returned to him, so that they could talk undisturbed about important decisions for the future that might concern them both.
But apart from worrying about Sabine, he had meanwhile also written to Moeder Bien via the Red Cross. He did not mention anything about Sabine’s condition in this letter, so as not to worry her mother, other than that she was safe and well.
While reading Gebele’s letters, I am torn between feeling grateful that he saved my mother’s life, but also fear and oppression when his tone becomes authoritative and demanding. He gets very upset when she does not immediately reply to his letters. “Don’t torture me unnecessarily. I feel like a teenager with his first love.”
He wanted to know who did her washing and offered to have it done for her. What size shoes did she wear? “I don’t want you to be dressed in rags when you leave the camp.”
One of his recurring themes is his obsession with her washing. This puzzled me for some time, until I discovered that he was in charge of the laundry as well as being a hospital orderly and working in an office dealing with administration. He was therefore able to provide Sabine with clean clothes (even ironed) and writing paper and pens. The “post” was delivered by the Russian stretcher-bearers who had the freedom of the camp and whom he no doubt had to bribe in some form or other.
The end of the war was now really near. According to news bulletins on the German radio, two-thirds of the country was by now under American occupation.