Evgeniy Bereznyak: “Our informer, Abwehr officer Kurt Hartman, used to sing: “Shyroka strana moya rodnaya!” (song in Russian). He learned to sing Soviet songs in the intelligence school”
“Fakty”
A legendary intelligence operative and the main character’s prototype in the “Major Vikhr” motion picture Evgeniy Bereznyak told “Fakty” about him celebrating the Victory in the Great Patriotic War behind the barbed wire in an NKVD prison camp.
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Hero of Ukraine, Honoured pedagogue Evgeniy Bereznyak, whose biography was partially used by Julian Semenov in his novel and script to “Major Vikhr” motion picture, celebrated his ninety fifth anniversary this February. President Victor Yushchenko paid a visit to greet the Major General, ret. and award him the Order of Merit 1st grade. The famous veteran now leaves his Kyiv apartment very seldom. Recently he lost eyesight almost entirely therefore he doubts his participation in the Victory Day celebrations. Nevertheless, Evgeniy Stepanovich isn't short on good spirit and humour. He gladly speaks of his meetings with Russian ambassador Victor Chernomyrdin, who still remembers the legendary intelligence officer. He still laughs remembering that a western publication wrote how the city of Krakow was saved during the war by the Pope, who persuaded Hitler not to blow up the ancient Polish capital. Evgeniy Stepanovich clearly remembers every detail of the operation conducted by “Golos” (voice) reconnaissance group which he transformed into a reconnaissance/sabotage detachment that stayed under his command for 156 days in the enemy’s rear. |
Born in Dnipropetrovs'k, he worked as a teacher, school headmaster and the head of Lvov municipal public education board before June of 1941. During the war, Evgeniy Bereznyak became an active participant in the Dnipropetrovsk underground network, undertook a course in Moscow intelligence school to be airdropped with two colleagues onto the occupied Poland’s territory on the night of August 19, 1944. They had almost no chance to survive… But everyone returned home by miracle, while ancient and beautiful Krakow stuffed with explosives remained intact to be captured by the Soviet troops. On the eve of the 9th of May celebrations, Evgeniy Bereznyak shared his memories with “Facty”.
“Delations against me were quite often sent to the authorities: He doesn’t say where he was fighting the war, so he might be an enemy spy”
Evgeniy Stepanovich, where did the announcement of Germany’s unconditional surrender catch you?
I was in Dresden at the time, on the Elbe, where I was serving as a captain in the intelligence section of the front HQ. We used up every round then saluting the victory. And on the military parade day (24 June, 1945) I was near Moscow…behind the barbed wire, in a NKVD prison camp for officers. Radio operator Olga was in a similar institution for Soviet privates and sergeants who had been taken prisoners. Owing only to great influence of my intelligence school instructor Col. Vasyliy Evenko, we weren’t sent to penalty battalion on the Japanese front.
Do you still have hard feelings about the counter-intelligence?
The resentment was terrible at that time. Awful rudeness was flourishing inside the system towards people that fell under suspicion… I felt much worse mentally in the NKVD prison camp than I did in the Gestapo cell, where I was sure to deal with the enemy. Whereas back home they were supposed to be friendlies… But when I put myself in the shoes of the counter-intelligence officers, I see that there was nothing for them to be blamed for, since my story was unbelievable, indeed. Take my escape from Gestapo first, then Olga’s escape; German counter-intelligence worked for us, my deputy, Aleksey Shapovalov (codename Groza - thunderstorm) worked in Abwehr (German intelligence and counter-intelligence agency) –it all seemed unbelievable. The investigator kept on asserting that there were only two ways out of Gestapo: either death or treason.
I was feeling a very close attention of the KGB to my person for many years after my discharge, although the posts I was holding were quite high. I even remember them having prohibited me to go to Poland. In the foreign liaison section of the Party’s Central Committee I've been told that the situation there was tense and complicated therefore they couldn’t let me go to Krakow. I remember snarling: “As if in 1944, when they were sending me to the occupied Poland the situation was calm”. I was fully rehabilitated in 1965, when they started awarding orders and bestowing titles. The same year I was allowed to travel abroad.
That’s when operation “Golos” was de-classified?
That’s right. In 20 years after the war, the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet issued a Decree on awarding me the Order of “The Patriotic War”, 1st grade. Even my father who had lived for 9 years after the Victory was sure that I fought somewhere as a partisan. For many years I have been writing in my autobiography: military service, unit No. so-and-so. Therefore, when I worked as Head of school administration Department in the Ministry of education, reports against me were often sent to higher authorities. “He doesn’t say where he was fighting the war, so he might be an enemy spy”. How could they know that I was an intelligence officer anyway? I was “Captain Vasiliy Mikhaylov” for everybody during the war, and before the war, during my underground work in Dnipropetrovs'k, I was known as a local German called Bam… In early 1966, “Komsomolskaya Pravda” published the article “The city must not die!” In the foreword, Marshal V. Sokolovskiy wrote: “Everything said here is true and may be corroborated by the records classified as “to be stored forever, not to be destroyed” in the General Staff Archive.” Published in the article was the truth about my group’s activities and the rescuing of Krakow. As a matter of fact, it was that article that Julian Semenov was to a certain extent referring to.
“Typhoid lice were of excess demand in Tandeta, Krakow flea market”
Still, how did you happen to fall into enemy hands right after the airdrop?
The pilot promised to drop us (Groza, radio operator Grusha, and myself) precisely.
As we learned later, he dropped us 100 – 120 kilometres away from Krakow. I landed right on a motorway and hardly managed to drag my parachute to the ditch in time. The vehicles swept by at full speed. I heard scraps of songs and German speech. I buried my parachute, used a prearranged signal – scratched a shovel with a bowie knife, but heard no sound in return. There were populated points, a railroad, and a motorway around me. Definitely not the sector we were supposed to land inI sat down on a stump, and dozed off unwittingly. The fatigue played its part – I haven’t slept for nearly two days. Somebody kicking me with boots woke me up. I rushed for my weapon but my hands were already tightly bound by steel handcuffs. That’s it, I thought: there “Golos” was and there it’s gone. The gendarmes dragged me along the road and I heard them saying: “goldfish, goldfish”. Why, fallen into the hands of Germans was my briefcase containing batteries for the radio, a significant amount of dollars, deutschmarks and Polish Zloty, as well as a TT pistol and a bowie knife. As you could’ve guessed, that was enough for the Germans to understand who they were dealing with. I spent two days in the gendarmerie without being interrogated. Whether it was a weekend or the gendarmes simply weren’t eager to split the money with Gestapo.
My mother visited me twice in my dreams. She was embracing me, calming me down, asking to hold on… Before taking the assignment I studied Krakow thoroughly by photographs. I remembered that there was a market in one of the squares. That’s when I’ve got an idea: even if I fail to escape, at least I’ll die on the square, among people, not in the death cell under tortures. On Monday I stood before Herr Superintendent who said: “you goldfish. Me old fisher. Goldfish to speak or to keep silent?” And he hit me in the face… I “confessed” after being fetched round with a bucketful of cold water. I told them that I was a march-agent (the so-called messenger), who was supposed to give the money and the batteries to our resident agents in Krakow, receive a package and return home. The meeting was to take place in Tandeta, Krakow flea market on August 24 - 27. In the guise of “Omega” pocket watch seller, dressed in dark-blue suit made of English boston with a pink handkerchief poking out of the breast pocket I had to “stroll”. A middle-aged person was supposed to approach me and ask: “When did you come from Kiev?” To which I had to reply: “On Wednesday”. The things found during my arrest proved my story. Eventually, they believed me. I was allowed to wash my face; noodles and pork were brought into my cell along with beer and a small jar of artificial honey.
And for how long were you selling watches?
For two days. There was no chance for escape. They were stepping upon my heels, the market was cordoned off. I charged such an exorbitant price for the watches that the customers were moving away from me in disappointment. The haggling in Krakow was reckless. Just about everything was being sold and bought e.g. lighters, needles, bras, pornographic postcards, antique editions of the Bible, even typhoid lice. Those were bought by marching troops, the soldiers preferring to stay in typhoid barracks rather than on the front line. Incidentally, that commodity was of excess demand. After two days I told the inspector that it was impossible to work with such a “tail” that any child could’ve guessed to be Gestapo. So, I managed to get 5 or 6 meters of free space. I was walking and looking for a favourable moment to escape when shots were suddenly fired in the very centre of the market.
As I learned later, the shots were coming from gendarmes firing at currency speculators. The panic broke, and the crowd dragged me along. I stole somebody’s hat on my way, put it on and proceeded through alleys and courtyards to the Vistula, and then further on to the reserve safe house in Rybna. Krakow was no longer a place for me to go, since my photos and fingerprints were filed in the local Gestapo. Grusha already was in Rybna. She landed onto somebody’s garden far from the planned landing area, too. She quickly buried her radio, so now there was no way to recover it. Grusha has been given a job of a maid at madam Goff's. She was the spouse of vice-prosecutor of Krakow, a man often visited by high German officials and Wehrmacht officers. Olga Komar (Elizaveta Vologodskaya) became our radio operator. She worked with the preceding group (“Lvov”), whose leader turned out to be a traitor.
“Comrades, when I worked in Abwehr, I was earning more than I do now working in the Party’s regional committee.”
Your deputy, Aleksey Shapovalov, also seemed to have an unfortunate landing?
Groza reached the safe house few days after I did. Immediately he laid out on a table a whole bunch of authentic papers: a worker's identity card of “Ostkhutte” military factory, German pass (Ausweis), and food cards. He landed 128 km from Krakow, right into a pond in Upper Silesia. Towns adjoin over there, and streetcars circulate between them. Without thinking twice, Aleksey took one of the streetcars, got off in some market square, had lunch in a restaurant that had a huge sign: “Nur für Deutsche” (Germans only), paid with Deutschemarks. He then wandered about the town and set up a scandal in “Ukrainian Aid Committee”. “While you pencil pushers sit here, we the victims of the Soviets, are helpless!” - he said. In short, Aleksey managed to recover damages caused by the “scuttle”, get food cards and an assignment to a factory. In three weeks Groza established connections both with local Polish patriots and smugglers, who delivered scarce commodities from Reich to the Polish governorship. It was them who helped him reach Krakow.
Do you like “Major Vikhr” motion picture which was made in the late 1960’s?
I have no complaint for the script-writer, Julian Semenov. The writer had not desired to meet me, but he called and explained that he was making an art work and so he wouldn’t want the plot to be heavily influenced by the documents. Julian Semenov had access to archives. So the picture in general was quite nice and very interesting to watch, although some mismatches do exist. I didn’t blow up the cable, and I survived unlike the picture’s main character. The reality was somewhat different. We provided the Centre with the reference points, the diagram and the plan of the mining. Our forces entered Krakow exactly from the side where the explosion control centre was situated. On the night of 18 January 1945, having cut the cable the Soviet assault group stormed the fort where, installed in the basement, was the control panel. Krakow has been saved and “Golos” left with the swiftly advancing First Ukrainian Front. By the way, we captured engineer Kurt Pekkel three weeks before our troops started the offensive, not on the day Krakow was librated, as it has been shown in the film. Pekkel was in charge of fortification construction sector near Krakow. What the hell would we need him for at the moment the offensive began? His information would’ve been useless.
Tell us please how your guys captured him?
For several days Eusey Bliznyakov, Semen Rostopshin and Mitya the Gipsy, dressed in policemen’s overcoats, carrying a bottle of home-made vodka and an accordion have been playing the part of revellers in the neighbourhood where Polish widow Ms. Zosya lived. Major Kurt Pekkel used to visit her at regular hours. The guys intentionally became familiar in the neighbourhood, so the German didn’t suspect anything when they approached and offered him a drink. Kurt refused. Mitya pointed a gun at him while Eusey poured into the German half a liter of first-class schnapps. They took off his uniform, fastened the accordion to him, and put him in the cart. All that they did in broad daylight, 200 meters from German garrison! They brought him to me looking that way. When we searched Pekkel, we found a Nazi party membership card No. 10340 issued in 1925. By the way, party members whose cards had numbers up to the 20th thousand had the right to enter Fuhrer’s Reich chancellery freely. After sobering up, Kurt honestly and very particularly drew the fortification plan of Krakow. As an engineer he designed a way to undermine the city. His story was fully confirmed. Noteworthy, Krakow is very convenient to mine: narrow streets and timeworn sewers make it possible to plant explosives and cause total collapse of all the buildings.
Where did the very first report about the mining of Krakow come from?
Polish friends of ours informed us of their suspicion in that respect. The Germans were bringing dynamite in closed trucks during night-time and planting it under ancient houses. Krakow and its outskirts were later discovered to be literally stuffed with all kinds of explosives. A large amount of reliable and important information was collected by our informer, Head of the 3rd section of military counter-intelligence (Abwehr) Kurt Hartman. He was an informer with enormous capabilities. It was him who helped in the escape of our group’s radio operator, Olga. He asked her to report that Kurt Hartman offers his services to the Soviet intelligence. We were astonished. He was dubbed Pravdivyi (truthful) after being checked. Hartman was coming from the Baltic Germans, his mother was a Russian therefore he spoke excellent Russian. Kurt was collecting information on agents sent to the Soviet rear, and he had saved several of our reconnaissance groups from failure: he would warn that a radio signal has been spotted in a certain sector, so the groups had time to disappear. In addition, the clever Kurt managed to get a job in Abwehr for my deputy, Aleksey Shapovalov by introducing him to his boss as a former policeman. Groza has been issued a pass which permitted him to travel through every sector of the Krakow fortification area, and given a 500-deutschemarks salary.
Eventually, our group completely “deciphered” Hitler’s 17th army. Transmitted to the Centre was information on the disposition of its every division, HQ’s locations, fortification areas, and minefields. We even knew how many weapons the divisions had, how many old soldiers, how many young ones… That information made it possible to save tens of thousands of Soviet soldiers’ lives. What Hitler's HQ planned to do was foisting street fighting on the advancing units of the First Ukrainian Front, closing the trap, and blowing up the city. But those plans were ruined. The importance of Krakow operation was tremendous. But it would’ve been impossible to achieve without Hartman, Aleksey Shapovalov, Marshal Konev’s soldiers, and Polish patriots.
What happened to Kurt Hartman next?
He was in a POW camp after the war, sometime later he became our resident agent in FRG, then in Istanbul. I keep his letters. Kurt Hartman died in 1983.
Is Alexei Shapovalov still living?
Unfortunately, he died in 1998. Alexey was a lively, active and sociable fellow. And by the way, it was Alexey who went to meet Hartman for the very first time. The meeting took place in the forest, and the prudent Shapovalov had brought sausage, lard and vodka. Hartman confessed, that in German intelligence school he was taught to drink in the Russian way, i.e. in one gulp. The instructor said, that inability to drink in such a way had caused failure of a very valuable agent in Stalingrad or in Gorkiy. Alexey said later that Hartman was rather resistant to alcohol and rarely drunk. The only thing he allowed himself to do was giving small recitals. He was a good singer, normally he would sing “Katyusha”, and he sang “Shyroka strana moya rodnaya!” more often than any other song. He would start: “The morning lights up gently the walls of the ancient Kremlin. At dawn wakes up the entire Soviet country!” And Shapovalov would say: “Kurt, what are you doing? Don’t trouble trouble.” To which Kurt would reply: “the hell with them all!” Kurt learned those songs in German intelligence school.
Many years later we were invited to a reception at the Polish embassy in Kiev. Gathered there were the republic’s top party officials, the KGB, Commander of Kiev military district… Aleksey blurted out: “Comrades, when I worked in Abwehr, I was earning more than I do now working in the Party’s regional committee.” At the time, the joke was obviously inappropriate. But no problems arose. By the way, should I have informed the Centre immediately about my escape from Gestapo, it is possible that Aleksey would have been given an order to eliminate me and take command of the group.
Nobody knew you’ve been to Gestapo?
Nobody. The only thing I worried about was the operation, and my confession could have raised suspicion. After our return from the enemy rear, the group was met by top authorities and was about to be highly decorated. And here I was submitting my report about being captured by Gestapo and escaping. The commanders were shocked. They asked me who was forcing me to speak if I didn't say anything before? The conscience. After the escape I was determined to tell the truth when we return home.
Alexander HALUKH
