She opened her tin box, took out Oskar’s Iron Cross and pinned it on his chest.
Then she took out the bundle of letters and read them to Oskar. She left the first one till last. “You were a teenager when you wrote that. Do you remember?”
He smiled at her, but she doubted that he remembered.
“Your words were quite forward for such a young man, but you had a lively turn of phrase.” She laughed.
“Do you remember our wedding day? You looked impressive in your uniform. Your mother wore an apricot dress, do you remember?”
Oskar showed no flicker of a memory.
“My mother wasn’t happy with my choice. She gave us six months! That was twenty-five years ago.”
She rummaged in the box, found the old banknote and showed it to Oskar. “You remember this.”
Oskar’s eyes focused on the banknote. “Your father sold his tools,” he said.
“That was your father, Oskar.”
“He should never have sold his tools,” said Oskar, dreamily.
She ran through her memories of her early life with her parents, of laughter and good food, the good times with Oskar, and the hard times during the depression.
Finally, she dipped into her sweet memories of the night she’d spent with Hans, his tender touch and her delicious release.
The throaty roar of a tank engine, two streets away, interrupted her thoughts. The squeak of its tracks stopped and the double boom of an artillery shell firing and exploding shattered the evening.
55
Berlin, June 1957
In the allotment at Westend, Hans opened the tin box. Inside he found a bundle of letters addressed to Gretchen. Needles, spools of thread and a bag of buttons. A hundred-million-mark banknote from the Weimar Republic. Three photographs: Gretchen and Oskar’s wedding, Oskar in uniform, and an older picture showing a couple he didn’t recognize. Oskar’s discharge letter was there too, and, right at the top, a letter addressed to Hans Klein.
Dear Hans,
I’m hoping that Inge, Martha and you made it out alive, that Martha was reunited with her fiancé, Paul, and that you’ll come back and find this letter someday. Oskar and I are sitting here in the sunshine in your allotment. The Russians are very close now, the city defenders hiding among the ruins, still fighting. There’s not much left of our city. The shelling has been horrible, but there are still birds flying around.
It’s hard to imagine at this moment, but I live in hope that Germany will rise again from the ashes and future generations of young Germans will put all this behind them and start afresh. Maybe the carnage of these past 6 years will turn the human race away from war in the future forever.
I have so many questions that I never got to ask you. Where were you born? Were you ever married? Did you have children? Lots of questions. If things had been different, we might have become a happy couple and lived out our lives together.
I couldn’t leave when you asked me to. You know why.
I’m sorry.
Love,
Gretchen
Berlin, April 29, 1945
Epilogue
Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker on April 30, 1945. The Gauleiter of Berlin and minister of propaganda and enlightenment, Joseph Goebbels, murdered his whole family before committing suicide a day later.
Dora survived. She and a close network of friends were responsible for evacuating an unknown number of Jewish orphans and saving at least 10 by keeping them in hiding in Berlin until it was safe.
Frau Tannhäuser, Frau Carlson, and the postwoman, Frau Niedermeyer all disappeared.
Herr Korn, the master baker, and Ludwig the Hitler Youth troop leader went down fighting in the ruins when they ran out of bullets.
The old professor, Hepple, died in a POW camp in Germany in 1947.
Martha and Paul were reunited in 1955 and now live in Austria.
Inge emigrated to the new state of Israel in 1950.
Hans Klein emigrated to the United States.
Anton Tannhäuser remained in Germany. He spent the rest of his life rebuilding the country and was present in Berlin when the wall came down in November 1989.
About the Author
JJ Toner writes short stories and thrillers. Look for his Second World War series, that starts with The Black Orchestra He lives in Ireland. Find JJ on his website:
https://www.JJToner.com/
Too Many Wolves in The Local Woods
A Novel of Love and Fate
MARINA OSIPOVA
To Kathy Powell-Wilkinson
Contents
Synopsis
1. Natashen’ka
I. Once Upon a Time in the Soviet Workers-and-Peasants Paradise
1. Ulya
2. Natasha
3. Ulya
4. Natasha
5. Ulya
6. Natasha
7. Ulya
8. Natasha
9. Ulya
10. Ulya
11. Natasha
12. Ulya
13. Natasha
14. Ulya
15. Ulya
16. Natasha
17. Ulya
18. Natasha
19. Ulya
20. Ulya
II. Everyone Has His Own War
21. Ulya
22. Natasha
23. Ulya
24. Natasha
25. Ulya
26. Natasha
27. Ulya
28. Natasha
29. Ulya
30. Natasha
31. Ulya
32. Natasha
33. Ulya
34. Natasha
35. Ulya
36. Natasha
37. Ulya
38. Natasha
39. Ulya
40. Natasha
41. Ulya
42. Natasha
43. Ulya
44. Ulya
III. Something Else in Store
45. February 1943
46. Late spring, 1943
47. Summer 1943
48. October 1943
49. End of October-November 1943
50. End of November 1943
51. December 1943
52. Winter 1944
53. End of January 1944
54. February 1944
55. End of February 1944
56. March-June 1944
IV. The Hammer and Sickle Returns
57. June 1944
58. July 1944
59. August 1944-Winter 1945
60. March 1945
61. April 1945
Epilogue
Glossary
Notes On Russian Names
A Love Letter To My Readers
Synopsis
Two unlikely women with a shared history, two different turns of fate.
The end of the 1930s. The specter of twisted paranoia of Stalin’s unrelenting dictatorship continues to tighten over the Soviet Union. NKVD, the country's secret police, coerces University graduate Ursula Kriegshammer, a Soviet Volga German with special skills, into serving this regime.
Natasha Ivanova, a worker at a metal plant in Vitebsk, a city at the western border of the Soviet Union, still can’t recover from the betrayal of the man she loves.
When in 1941 the German Army occupied Byelorussia, both women seem to be helping the cause to fight the ruthless invaders. But when their paths cross, tragedy strikes and one must carry the burden of guilt. Will she ever find peace with herself and the way out of the trap fate prepared for her?
Years later, the daughter of one of them launches on a quest to uncover the heroic nature of her mother’s role in WWII, only to discover a heart-shattering revelation of her own parentage.
1
Natashen’ka
May 14, 1971
Moscow
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.
Natashen’ka enjoys the rhythmic beat and the sensation of lightness in her chest—by now, all the parts of the puzzle have come t
ogether.
When the clock strikes six, she opens her eyes. The first gray light flows unsure through the narrow, guipure curtained window. Moscow wakes up—trucks rumble, wooden boxes are dropped on the pavement, some low-key cursing filters in through the open vent. Above this noise, she hears the birds singing their tiny hearts out.
Her own heart beats in excitement. And a bit of sadness. Now she knows the truth.
Natashen’ka gets up from the bed and tiptoes to her desk over the cool parquet floor. Above it, on the three-tiered shelf, typed, copied documents, arranged into orderly piles, remind her of hundreds of hours spent in the moldy-smelling, low-ceilinged drab rooms of archives in Moscow, Vitebsk, Minsk, and in Lipetsk. On the desk, atop the cover of her thesis for the Candidate’s Degree, there is a black-and-white picture of four young people, yellowed with age and torn in two. The tear, like a scar, separates a girl and a dark-haired young man from another young man and a girl—her mother at the age of seventeen. It’s time to put these ragged parts back together.
I
Once Upon a Time in the Soviet Workers-and-Peasants Paradise
1
Ulya
September 3, 1938
Saratov, a city on the Volga River, about 800 km from Moscow
Engels, the capital of the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic from 1918 to 1941, across from Saratov
“Kriegshammer?” There was more of a statement than a question in a male voice behind Ulya’s back.
She turned to confront a young man, his steel-gray eyes hard, passionless.
“Follow me.” He took her by the elbow.
“Where to?” She shook his hand off.
“To the Komsomol committee room.”
She moved along the corridor crammed by chatting students on their way to the canteen, her escort a half-step behind her.
In front of the familiar door, blocking the way, stood a young man in civilian clothes. His eyes swept over her. “Please, you are expected.”
She stepped into the room she knew so well. A long table, the rows of simple chairs facing it, a shelf crammed with the books of Lenin and Stalin, and a bunch of propaganda brochures. Even Stalin’s portrait, in a pretentious gold-colored wood frame, did nothing to make it a bit cheerful.
A man in his late thirties got to his feet from the chair behind the table. He was slim and tall and, since their eyes were on the same level, most likely Ulya’s height of 1m 74cm. “Senior Lieutenant Vyacheslav Konstantinovich Godyastchev, Saratov NKVD branch. Please, take a seat.”
NKVD. The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs. What did she have to do with the secret police? Had she done something wrong? Said something wrong? She checked her memory. No, she could think of nothing.
While lowering herself on the chair, she ran through all her contacts. Her inner circle consisted of her father, her best and only friend Rita. Her interactions included her classmates. Yes, the students at the OSOAVIAKHIM too, but with them, there was very little conversation.
Assessing brown eyes behind oval metal-rimmed glasses surveyed her. Of his long lashes any girl would be jealous.
“Your name?” A quiet, pleasant voice.
“Ulya.”
“Ulya?” He gave her a quizzical look.
“Ursula Franzevna Kriegshammer.”
“Your family name sounds so . . .” A smile touched the corners of his lips. “Peculiar. Kind of militaristic.”
“A common German last name.”
“Why do you name yourself Ulya?”
She shrugged with one shoulder. “That’s how I remember being called since I was a child. I presume the youngest of the boys in our yard was the first to call me Ulya. Perhaps, he couldn’t pronounce the ‘r’ back then.”
The man shook his head in agreement. “Date of birth?”
“November 7, 1917.”
Again, a smile appeared on his face. “A most significant day for our country. You are the first person I have met who was born on the day of the Bolshevik Revolution.”
Ulya returned his smile.
“Born in?”
“Pokrovsk, now Engels.”
“Your nationality?”
“German.”
“Mother’s name, date of birth, place of birth?”
“I have no mother.”
“Wrong answer, Comrade Kriegshammer. Your mother, Natalia Ivanovna Polyakova, was born in 1900 in Saratov, deceased November 7, 1917. So, you are half-Russian.”
Ulya cringed at the reminder. A feeling of abandonment and bitter resentment, rooted in her from an age when she couldn’t explain to herself why other children had mothers, but she had not, had developed into full denial. “I am German, Comrade Godyastchev. Am I arrested?”
“No. Why?” he said, after a moment’s consideration. “We just have to talk.”
“If you already know everything about me and my family, why are you asking me all these questions?”
“Protocol demands that I should. And yes, you are right, we know everything. Interrupt me if I’m wrong.” He looked at her, not unkindly, and continued as if talking to a friend, his voice almost approving. “You were the best pupil at your elementary school, and you are now among the top students at the university. You proved yourself faithful and active first as a Pioneer and then as a Komsomol member and one of the best activists of the University’s Agitprop Brigade.” His gaze stopped for a fleeting moment on the Komsomol badge, which sat next to another, the GTO High Achiever, on her blouse.
“Your performance in athletics is astonishing. Sixty-meter sprint in nine seconds. One hundred meters in thirteen seconds. Long jump four meters ninety-five centimeters. Grenade throwing twenty meters. Well, that’s not great, but you can improve it with more practice. You are well-trained in speed skating, cross-cycle crossing, skiing, swimming.”
He has a good memory, or he prepared himself well.
“You are the best shooter in your OSOAVIAKHIM group in Engels, both with the small-bore rifle and the handgun, and from both hands at that.” He glanced at his hands and shook his head. “Astounding. I don’t know how anyone can do it.” He moved his eyes back to her.
Was there genuine admiration in them? He seemed to enjoy enumerating her successes as though they were his own. “You have made twelve parachute jumps.”
“Fourteen. Your information is not up to date.”
“Your last two jumps were not qualified.” As if she hadn’t interrupted him, he continued matter-of-factly, “And besides, I can’t help but commend you for applying for a pilot program.”
Aware that the last five minutes or so he spoke in perfect German with a slight accent she could not place—not the Volga German though—she had switched to the language too.
“I have to compliment you.”
“What for?” She arched her eyebrows, signaling her humorous surprise.
“You are quite a good actor. I liked you as the Commissar in the Optimistic Tragedy. How long were you with the school drama group?”
Had she been on their radar for six years? She calculated in her mind. “Since the fourth grade. Till I graduated. But why ask? You must have it in my dossier.”
Ignoring her sarcasm, he went on. “I have to praise your command of German. Most of your compatriots speak with such terrible accents. Do you speak German in your family?”
“Yes, with my father.”
“Franz Fridrikhovich Kriegshammer.” He shook his head as if bemused. “By now, most of the Soviet Germans have adopted Russian names.”
“People call him Franz Fyedorovich.”
“And his friends and colleagues, while visiting him, do they speak German?”
“Some do.”
“And what do they confer about?”
“I don’t eavesdrop.” Her mind turned to the image of her father’s colleagues and friends who, after a cup of tea, would proceed into his study where they continued their discussions in subdued tones, of which she could hear little.
“I don’t pay attention to who visits my father. I’m too busy.” The image of an aging man in an expensive, perfectly cut suit who showed up two weeks ago emerged in her memory. After an energetic handshake with her, he had disappeared with her father into the study. “Please close the door. It’s a confidential talk.” His voice was authoritative, in intelligent Russian. Replaying the scene in her head—was she suspected of snooping?—she felt annoyed now as she was then.
The Road to Liberation: Trials and Triumphs of WWII Page 63