Forty Autumns

by Nina Willner

  The winter arrived, too cold a time of year to even consider escape. Hanna returned home to spend December with her family in Schwaneberg. With no church services to mark the Christmas holiday, Oma was determined to celebrate anyway and she and the girls decorated the house with red-ribbon-laced straw and wooden ornaments and bunted the mantel with fresh pine. She encouraged Opa to lead the children in singing carols just as they had done every Christmas, though this time they sang softer in case anyone might be listening. With her greatly reduced stores of flour, eggs, and sugar, she baked a modest version of her cinnamon, clove, and honey Pfeffernüsse cookies, managing to stretch her ingredients far enough for everyone to indulge.

  Despite a bitterly cold winter and shortages of nearly everything the family needed, including coal to heat the house, laughter filled the family’s wing of the schoolhouse, and after a while, no one even seemed to notice anymore that Christmas in eastern Germany was no longer welcome. As soft, crystalline snowflakes fell on the frigid environment that had become the East Zone, Oma, oblivious to the outside world, looked on with a smile, taking comfort in believing that the family would always be all right, no matter what the future might bring.

  Opa continued to appear to adapt to his role, understanding well what the authorities expected of him, adequately teaching communist theory, lecturing about the dangers of American imperialism and that communism was Soviet Germany’s true destiny and only salvation. He had worked hard to portray himself as the ideal communist, and so his Soviet and East German bosses rewarded him for his conformity and his mastery of Soviet teachings by recognizing his efforts at the village Party meeting. But at home Opa was not himself. He slept poorly and Oma began to bear the brunt of his bad moods.

  Unintentionally, Hanna only fueled the fire. One afternoon, she confronted him.

  “Papa, do you really believe in what you’re teaching?” she asked. “Do you believe that there is truth in Marxist theory and communist teachings? And what about—”

  “You’re too young to understand,” he cut her off.

  “I’m not too young to understand,” she replied. “I’m almost an adult.”

  There was no response.

  “Then please explain it to me,” she pressed.

  He sighed but didn’t answer.

  “They don’t really care about people,” she continued. “They just want to control everything.”

  He remained silent, but she saw his temples pulsating, a sure sign that he was unnerved and on the brink of boiling over. She spotted the model of the Heidelberg Castle and tried again, this time more gently, and with a different approach.

  “Papa,” she said, dropping to his feet. Looking up, she pleaded, appealing to his sensibilities. “You were the one who said we should see the Heidelberg Castle,” she said softly. “Get out into the world, you said. Explore, dream, discover.”

  “Times have changed,” he said interrupting her, his voice growing louder, and then he snapped, “The Heidelberg Castle is now in the West!”

  Hearing Opa’s raised voice, Oma came scurrying in, shooed Hanna out, and tended warmly to Opa, patting his back and trying to calm him back down.

  How much had changed, Hanna thought as she observed her father, since the Nazi days when she had her first boyfriend at the age of nine and her father had forbidden her to associate with him because he suspected the boy’s father was a communist.

  After the new year, Hanna returned to Kallehn’s farmstead in Seebenau to finish her last semester of high school. Opa had informed her that, following graduation, she would begin training in a vocation for her future. That notion jolted her and she became alarmed at the idea of being trapped for the rest of her life in the Soviet Zone.

  One afternoon as she and Kallehn shoveled snow from the walk, she stopped and said, “I’ve thought it through, Kallehn. I want to go.” Kallehn too stopped shoveling. Resting his arm on the top of the shovel, he looked at her for a long time. Then he smiled—a sweet, sad smile, she thought. He dropped his head and sighed. Then he looked up again and said, “I will help you.”

  A few days later, Kallehn’s other daughter, Oma’s sister, Hanna’s aunt Frieda, came to visit. That night, as Hanna slept, Kallehn discussed the issue with Frieda.

  “She’s young,” Frieda sighed. “She has a right to choose her own destiny. If I wasn’t so old, I’d have left long ago.” With that, Kallehn and Frieda devised a plan for Hanna’s escape.

  In early spring, Hanna pulled Sabine into the plan. Then, one warm, moonless night in May, only days before Hanna’s high school graduation, when no one would suspect graduating students would be attempting to flee, Kallehn whisked Hanna off into the darkness. In his horse-drawn wagon, they traveled to Frieda’s farmhouse in Hestedt, on the edge of Seebenau, near a stretch of border usually guarded only by roving patrols. There, in a dimly lit room in the middle of the night, a young man came into the house through the back door. Frieda paid him, Kallehn and Frieda hastened their farewells, holding back tears, and the young man took her off into the woods.

  Silently, under the cover of complete darkness, they ran, swiftly slinking through the border and on into the West. Once safely on the other side, the young man deposited Hanna at Sabine’s house, where the entire family was waiting for her with open arms.

  The next day Kallehn, bracing for an angry reaction, sent word to Oma and Opa to tell them that Hanna had fled, though he made no mention of his and Frieda’s roles in helping her to flee. Opa was livid and worried about the impact he believed her escape would have on his job and his ability to take care of the family. Oma just worried about what might have happened to Hanna.

  In the West, Hanna, felt sheer relief. Thrilled to have made it out unscathed, she hailed Kallehn and Frieda for their assistance in facilitating her escape.

  Several weeks into Hanna’s freedom, in the West, there was a knock at the door. Sabine’s mother opened it and was startled to find a messenger from the East Zone with a letter.

  He asked for Hanna and told her, “You must come back immediately. Your father is ill.”

  Sabine’s mother came forward and yanked the letter from the young man, muttering that it was a ploy to coax Hanna back. She cursed, then shooed him away like a fly and started to shut the door. The messenger pleaded, asking Hanna to read the letter he said was from her mother.

  In Oma’s handwriting, Hanna read, “My dear Hanna. You have committed a crime by depriving the new free Germany of much-needed labor. If you come home voluntarily, there will be nothing to fear.” Uncharacteristic of Oma’s speech, Hanna detected a deception and shook her head in disbelief. The young man stood there until Sabine’s mother pushed him off the stoop and slammed the door.

  That evening, the West German police came to call. The police in the Soviet Zone had an arrest warrant for Hanna. In those early years, and surprisingly, given their vast differences in ideologies, a newly enacted agreement required the police forces of both zones to work together, assisting one another to enforce the laws of their respective territories. At twenty years old, Hanna was still underage, a minor, and therefore, in fact, in the West illegally. Though it was not a task they particularly enjoyed, it seemed the West German police were obligated by law to arrest her and return her to her parents in the East. Hanna refused to go. Sabine’s father, a well-respected local West Zone government official, pushed his way to the door.

  “Boys,” he said smiling, “this has all been a big misunderstanding. I’ll take care of it from here.” With that, he ushered the policemen out the door. Though the police knew that Sabine’s father had no legal authority in the matter, everyone just hoped the issue would simply fade away.

  But with the Soviet police threatening Opa with the loss of his headmaster position as a first course of retribution, the issue did not fade away. A few nights later there was another knock at Sabine’s door. Sabine opened the door.

  “Mutti?” (Mama?) Hanna said, in disbelief, as she slowly rose from the sofa
.

  Speaking barely above a whisper, Oma told Hanna to get her things and come home. “Papa is very angry,” she said. He had warned her not to come home without Hanna. Oma thanked Sabine’s parents for caring for her daughter and declined an offer of a cup of tea. Dazed and conflicted but unable to deny her mother, and feeling ashamed at having put her in such a precarious position, Hanna packed her things and they went on their way.

  Up the road, the two met up with Frieda, who had admitted her role in the escape and was now aiding in Hanna’s retrieval to try to set things right with her sister and her infuriated brother-in-law. Oma and Frieda had sneaked out of the East without alerting border security and now the three had to make their way back in undetected.

  With Frieda leading the way, Hanna, still stunned, in the middle, and Oma trailing, they set out for the border. Stumbling in the darkness, eventually they reached the barbed-wire perimeter. Hanna found an opening and stretched it wide for the two women to crawl through. They squeezed through, the barbs pinching and scraping, ripping Oma’s dress. Once on the east side of the wire, Frieda then held it open for Hanna to cross through. With the two older women now firmly in the East and Hanna still standing in the West, all three stood looking at one another. Then, to Oma’s great relief, Hanna climbed through.

  Surrounded now by small clusters of trees, they would have to cross a large open field some distance from the Soviet guard post to reach the woods on the far side of the field before finally reaching Frieda’s farmhouse. Frieda waited for a large cloud to move in front of the crescent moon and then moved, the others following closely behind. When the cloud passed, casting some light on the field, they fell cumbersomely into a flattened, prone position on the ground. Again they waited for a cloud and once again they rose and ran. Apart from the crunching of the brush beneath their feet, the pine forest was silent.

  Suddenly, from across the field, they heard men’s voices: Russians talking, laughing, as they walked along the border path. Then shouts: “Stoi!” (Stop!) The women scrambled, throwing their arms up. The guards approached, one noting that they were zhenshini, women, and lowered their guns.

  In broken Russian, Frieda explained that they were returning from visiting a sick relative. One of the guards looked them over and told Oma and Frieda to continue on their way eastward, but said that Hanna would have to go with the soldiers. Oma linked her arm into Hanna’s, declaring, “I go where my daughter goes.”

  The soldier moved to separate them, but Oma fought him off. He drove the butt of his rifle into her back and she fell to the ground with a thud, but didn’t let go. He kicked her, trying to pry her loose, but she had grabbed Hanna’s leg and was holding on tightly. Then Oma let out a bloodcurdling scream. The soldiers stopped short, looked at one another, finally cursing and waving all the women off to go home.

  In Schwaneberg, Opa received Hanna with stony silence. Several hours later he called her to him, branding her a black sheep who had brought shame and embarrassment to the entire family and had endangered them all as well. He forbade her to have any communication with Kallehn and Frieda, whom he now completely distrusted. He ordered Hanna’s brothers and sisters to keep their distance from her, in part to punish her but also to keep her from infecting them with her dangerous ideas. Their eldest sister of eight siblings, whom they had looked up to like a second mother, suddenly became an outcast in her own family.

  Opa refused to let Hanna go anywhere alone. He organized things so she would be watched round the clock. It infuriated him no end that her reckless escapade just days before graduation had left her without a high school diploma. Oma and Opa now had to think about how to salvage her future. Perhaps Opa could pull some strings, he said, and she could still become a teacher. In the meantime, he set her to work in the fields for a local farmer, who was tasked, along with other villagers, to watch her every move and report to him if she did anything out of line.

  At home, Hanna helped Oma with the chores and with the younger children. Oma found it hard to stay angry at her, but Opa remained cold. Not wanting to trigger his ever-growing anxiety, the children did not speak to Hanna in his presence, not even at suppertime. Hanna stewed, disappointed that Opa had not even tried to understand things from her perspective, as Kallehn so easily had.

  After several months under his ever-watchful gaze, Opa allowed Hanna to resume her relationship with her siblings. She quickly reengaged with her brothers and sisters—running races in the grassy schoolyard’s long fields with Klemens and Manni; having endless, sisterly talks with Tiele about books, and about boys, while they made daisy and cornflower crowns in the meadow. She tried to teach little Kai how to play the piano and took him for piggyback rides to the pond, where she taught him how to skip pebbles across the surface of the water. She helped Oma with the babies, giving them baths, dressing them, and putting bows in their hair. They had all missed their oldest sister terribly and were happy to finally have her back.

  It took nearly a year for Opa’s anger to finally subside, during which time Hanna remained under virtual house arrest. By spring, he thought it best to get Hanna back on track, and so called her into his study to discuss her future.

  He told her she would make an outstanding teacher. She listened as he talked compellingly about his life’s work, his gratifying profession, how he enjoyed the intellectual challenges of being an educator and also the elevated status in the community that went along with the profession. Roland joined in, gushing about how proud he was to be an educator in a new era for Germany, helping to raise a new generation of postwar German citizens.

  As he spoke, Hanna realized that so much had changed. Roland was adapting well to the new system whereas she was not. During the war years, they had been the closest of friends, daring to dream big when their future seemed so uncertain. He wanted to become a veterinarian. She wanted to be a lawyer. Somehow, they had decided, they were going to find a way to live and work together. They had made a pact then to stick together, no matter what may come, believing that, as a team, they could take on the world.

  But everything had changed. Inasmuch as she loved and respected Roland, she simply could not understand how he could give in to the Soviets, how he could find pleasure in teaching communism and skewed theory, brainwashing unsuspecting children into believing lies and promoting a repressive society that functioned on fear and intimidation. But of course, Opa and Roland didn’t see it that way. Like so many others in the East, they were hopeful, believing the system could work and that, with the family together, everything would be all right. She listened but said nothing.

  “Hanna,” said Roland, his eyes alight with dreamy enthusiasm. “This is a new beginning for Germany, don’t you see it? We have a chance to really make our country great again. This is how I’m going to make a difference. You should do it, too.” Hanna listened to it all and nodded, but when the discussion was over, she left the room, leaving Opa and Oma looking at each other and wondering.

  From the start, the United States and the Soviets had radically different plans for Germany. To help Germany get back on her feet, the Western Allies, led by the United States, began to introduce reforms. The United States initiated the Marshall Plan, pouring billions of dollars into Western Europe to aid in recovery. To get the economy moving, the Allies helped Germany issue a new postwar currency. The Soviets were furious. They wanted to keep Germany fractured and weak and saw the U.S.-led plan as a threat. They ordered the Soviet Zone to continue using the prewar currency, which had become virtually worthless.

  As a result, an economic wall descended between East and West. Though collaborators against a mutual enemy in war, the Soviets now made it clear that they had no intention of any further cooperation with the United States or its Allies.

  Then in June 1948, in the first major crisis of the Cold War, the Soviets tested the Allies’ resolve by severing all supply routes into the island city of West Berlin. Believing it critical to keep sovereign territory defined by a Western democra
cy situated deep inside communist territory, the Allies stood up to the Soviets by launching a massive aerial resupply effort.

  Over the course of almost a year, in a near-impossible feat, some 200,000 flights provided food, fuel, medicine, and basic necessities to the two million citizens of West Berlin. In the end, the Berlin Airlift would prove a victory for democracy, putting a critical landmark at center stage in a showdown that would pit Soviet authoritarianism against Western freedom for the next forty years and, in no uncertain terms, define Berlin as the definitive front line of East–West tensions in the Cold War.

  To Hanna, the Berlin Blockade, the currency division, and the cutting of the rail lines were major signs that the Soviets were committed to permanently distancing themselves from the West and severing the East Zone from the rest of Europe. This development meant only one thing: Hanna had to escape for good, or she could be trapped in the East for the rest of her life.

  So in early July 1948, Hanna approached Opa and told him that she indeed wished to become a teacher and asked to begin training as soon as possible. Opa was ecstatic. He smiled, patting her on the back, and told her she had made the right decision and would not regret it. She looked back up at Opa, envisioning Kallehn in his place, hearing his foretelling words: In less than a year, this place will be one big prison.

  4

  FLIGHT

  A SMALL SUITCASE AND THE FINAL ESCAPE

  (August 11, 1948)

  None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.

  —Pearl S. Buck

  Opa arranged for Hanna to attend a daylong summer registration session in Magdeburg, some twelve miles to the north, before beginning teachers’ college that fall. That day she was scheduled to leave in the morning and return later that evening.

  The night before she left for Magdeburg, as she did every night, she helped Oma prepare the evening meal, on this evening paring and cutting up carrots and potatoes and sliding them into the boiling water. Unlike other evenings, however, she did not engage in the usual conversation about the day’s events. Instead, she studied Oma as she moved about the kitchen: her small but robust form wrapped in her favorite faded blue-posy apron; her rosy, ruddy farmer’s daughter’s cheeks that gave her a perpetual glow; her ever-practical, matronly bun pinned on the top of her head. She moved purposefully about the kitchen, throwing herbs in the pot, making her way around the little ones who clamored to taste what she was cooking. Suddenly she looked up, catching Hanna’s lingering gaze, and told her it was dinnertime. Hanna took off her apron, picked up the baby, and called out to the family, who came bounding to the dining room.