Wolves & Women

TOKEN OF A COVENANT by Hans Graf von Lehndorff. 328 pages. Regnery. $5.95.

Early in 1945, the conquering Russian army surged into East Prussia and besieged the fortress city of Konigsberg. Some of the panicky citizens committed suicide. Others began learning welcoming phrases in Russian. Count von Lehndorff, a civilian surgeon, awaited the end with Christian resignation and continued operating on wounded soldiers and civilians until a shell dismantled his surgery. A woman told him, "Our Fuehrer will never permit the Russians to get us; he'd rather gas us first."

When the Russians finally broke through the city's defenses, Von Lehndorff needed all his piety and faith during six days of rape, arson and looting. He was stunned by "these maddened youngsters, fifteen, sixteen-years-old, flinging themselves like wolves on the women without really knowing what it's all about. All this has nothing to do with Russia, nothing to do with any particular nation or race--it is man kind without God, the caricature of man." Very soon "none of the women had any strength left to resist. In a few hours a change came over them; their spirit died, you heard hysterical laughter which made the Russians even more excited. Is it really possible to write about these things? . . . Isn't every word of this an accusation of myself? Hadn't I many opportunities of flinging myself between them and finding a decent death?"

Count von Lehndorff is currently the house surgeon at a West German hospital in Bad Godesberg, and this new book is based on his diary of the two years he spent under Communism. First published in 1961, it has sold over 200,000 copies in West Germany--a success attributed to the author's obvious integrity and credibility. A devout Protestant, Von Lehndorff loved his God, his family and his native land. He hated Hitler, Communism and self-seeking men. His mother and brother were imprisoned by the Nazis and later murdered by the Russians, and he himself was involved in the plot against Hitler.

This book is filled with vivid and Kafkaesque vignettes. In one convoy of prisoners was a Lithuanian who had deserted from the Red army. At a screening point, "the Lithuanian was to stay where he was--to be shot, he thought. When we were led away, he started playing furiously on a piano which had been left standing by the road." Each morning, at a prison camp where Von Lehndorff worked, the dead --stripped naked by the living--were stacked outside the barracks. One man was brought into the camp hospital "so covered with lice that you could compare him only with an ant hill." But Von Lehndorffs diary is far from just a catalogue of horrors. He encountered kindness as well as cruelty, and was often treated more humanely by the Russians than by treacherous fellow Germans who tried to ingratiate themselves with their new masters by turning informer.

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