by Nina Willner
She tucked Tutti into her high chair at the table before sitting down at her assigned place as the oldest daughter, to the left next to Opa.
As they arrived in ones and twos, she began looking everyone over and taking in as many details as she could. The other children, thinking it was an ordinary supper on an ordinary Tuesday night, gathered around the long, pinewood dinner table, squabbling and prodding one another as children do, and tending to their dinnertime tasks: Tiele and Manni arranging place settings and drinking glasses, Kai setting the cutlery, Klemens helping little Helga onto her chair, and all of them, with the exception of Hanna, chattering, giggling, and joking with one another as they always did.
Roland came bounding into the house and went into the kitchen to give Oma a peck on the cheek before sitting down. Opa ambled in, greeting everyone, his large frame making its way to his seat at the head of the table.
From the kitchen, Oma emerged with a wide smile on her face, carrying in a stoneware terrine of steaming soup. Everyone reacted with glee, inhaling the aroma of sweet bouillon, looking longingly from their places in anticipation of consuming it. While Oma ladled the soup, Roland said something that made Klemens laugh, Opa scolded Kai for coming to the table with dirty fingernails and, with Opa distracted, Manni tried to reach Tiele’s feet with his own under the table without his father noticing. This was the way Hanna wanted to remember it: the smells, the noise, the activity, the laughter, the familiar chaos, the family together.
As supper began, Hanna looked around the table from one sibling to the next, at each of them in turn, trying to imprint the details of their faces and their personalities on her mind.
Roland, tall and handsome with a broad brow and movie star good looks—he beamed when he smiled, which affected everyone who ever saw him. A man now, he was a teacher, living on his own, home only occasionally for a home-cooked meal. Strong of character, with endless stores of positive energy, he was a true idealist always searching for truth, and a dynamic leader who saw the best in everyone. Hanna knew she would miss him, her closest sibling, terribly but had to believe that he would find his way under the communists.
Klemens, lean and athletic with doleful eyes, had a gentle, haimish way about him; the quiet, introspective brother who never craved the spotlight. Klemens had grown tall like Opa, but didn’t sit as ramrod straight despite his father’s constant prodding, and was much more reserved.
Sweet, sweet, little baby-faced Kai. Now six years old, with his silky blond hair and little button nose, he constantly amused his siblings even now as he mimicked Klemens’s every action, when he put his elbows on the table, when he took them off, how he gestured with his hands when he talked.
Tiele, nearly a teenager, mother’s little helper, loved to sew and bake and take care of the babies. With a scrap-fabric homemade bow in her brown curls, she wore a butterfly appliquéd cotton sweater she had knitted mostly by herself. She could spend endless days frolicking in the fields, making things from flowers for the little ones and for Oma.
Though barely two years old, the baby, Tutti, with her large, wide-set brown eyes and wild, curly blond locks, was already a force, boisterous and sassy, and could never sit still. She lolloped in her high chair until she was given a piece of bread to keep her still. At three, Helga was quiet, observant, and sensitive. And Manni, good-natured and jovial, found humor in absolutely everything, even now as he made funny faces trying to get the others to laugh, until Opa told him to stop it.
Opa called the room to attention, saying with a smile, “So Hanna has a big day tomorrow.” From across the table, Roland chimed in, “Hanna, you certainly have a big day tomorrow. We are very proud of you. This is a big leap for you and your future.”
Oma caught Hanna’s eye and smiled. Hanna smiled back, then looked away, though Oma continued to look at her.
As the sun set on that warm August evening, Hanna kissed her parents good night, just as she always had, and retired to her bedroom.
In the darkness, she closed her eyes and tried to will herself to sleep, but sleep did not come. She popped her eyes open again. Turning on the night table lamp, she slid off the bed and pulled her little brown suitcase out from beneath, then laid it on the bed. She opened it to check to make sure, one last time, that she had everything.
Folded neatly inside was a pale blue summer cotton shift, a pair of socks, and a thick woolen sweater, hand-knitted by Oma, which she figured she might need when autumn nights got chilly. Atop her clothing lay a photograph of the family, an old ten-mark bill, and a packet of Lucky Strike cigarettes that Kallehn had given her, in case she ever found a need to “bribe someone.”
Suddenly, without warning, the door slowly opened, startling Hanna. Oma quietly entered. She stopped short and stood motionless when she saw the suitcase on the bed instead of a simple satchel, which is all that would be needed for a daylong excursion. Neither moved as they both stood there, Hanna looking at Oma, who stared at the suitcase. Then, as quickly as she had entered, Oma turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind her.
The next morning, just before sunrise, with cool easterly winds bidding farewell to what had been a long and painful year, Hanna picked up her suitcase and left the house before she thought anyone had awakened. Oma, however, had risen and stood in the upstairs window, watching her daughter walk away with a determined gait, her long, dark braids falling down her back, looking more like a schoolgirl than a woman. She wondered if she would ever see her again.
Rounding the corner by the church, Hanna walked toward the train station. Once there, so as not to arouse suspicion in case her parents would check up on her, she bought a round-trip ticket to Magdeburg. She looked behind her, half-expecting to see her parents, but was relieved to see only other passengers. She boarded the commuter car and found her seat, and the train rumbled out of the station.
She settled in and looked out the window at the passing landscape, the grassy hills and patchwork of parched late-summer sage and wheat-colored farm fields. With no map and no plan for how to make it to the border, which paralleled the tracks some twenty-five miles away, she had to focus on the best place to jump off and run westward. The train picked up speed. Rocking gently, it made its way down the track, its wheels rhythmically clicking beneath her like the second hand ticking on a loud clock.
As the train made its way along the track, her mind wandered. She was terrified to fall into the same rut Opa had been in. She had watched how during Nazi times he was constantly on edge, trying to please the authorities just to keep his job so he could feed his family. Now the same cycle was repeating itself. Why then, she wondered, had he been so eager to push her toward that same fate? It was simply not her destiny, she had decided. She was young and deserving of a future. Hadn’t Opa always inspired her to have big dreams and seek adventure? And Oma had instilled in all her children a clear sense of right and wrong, taught them to be true to themselves and live up to their potential. And so, she had made up her mind. With no way of knowing what impact her escape would have on her family and believing that somehow their separation would only be temporary, like hundreds of thousands of others who were making the same decision for similar reasons, she was choosing to escape.
Snapping from her thoughts as the train started to slow in a remote rural area seemingly in the middle of nowhere, she grabbed her bag, intending to make a move for the door, when she noticed a circle of other passengers slowly standing up and starting to collect their things. Though they carried a basket with food, they also carried various valises and satchels and Hanna’s instinct told her that this group was not out for an afternoon picnic.
Hanna too stood and whispered to the woman standing closest to her, “Are you going to the West?” The woman eyed Hanna, then ignored her. When the group got off at the next stop, Hanna moved with them. Quickly and quietly they boarded a two-car train that stood on the adjacent track at the small rail junction. Used primarily for farmers to transport agricultural supplies an
d crops, on this day the group was making use of it to transport themselves to the border.
No one said a word. The farmers adjusted their sacks and bales to make way for the group. Knowing exactly what the group intended to do, they looked the strangers over, the hopeful escapees, trying not to make eye contact, looking down at the floor or out the window as the train jolted and began moving westward. From her seat on the wooden bench across the aisle from Hanna, the woman looked her over. After a few minutes, she got up, approached Hanna, and wedged herself in the seat next to her.
“What do you want?” she asked point-blank.
“I want to go with you,” Hanna whispered.
“How much money do you have?”
Hanna tried to hand her the ten reichsmarks.
“Those are completely worthless,” she scoffed. Then she came in closer, “I’m risking my life to do this. The others have paid a lot of money to get out,” she said, shaking her head.
Hanna pleaded.
“Listen,” the woman cut her short, sensing in Hanna a troublemaker who might blow their cover. To keep her from causing a scene, she whispered, “When we get off at the station, wait for me on the bench. I’ll come back for you.”
Hanna did not believe the woman would return for her and feared being left behind so close to the border, but she nodded and thanked her. The woman retreated to her seat. Other than farmers and workers greeting one another as they boarded the train and bidding one another farewell as they disembarked at various points along the way, no one else said anything else for more than an hour as they passed through various fields and small farming villages. Somewhere near Völpke, the group disembarked.
The woman silently pointed to the bench. Hanna dutifully went to sit on it and watched the group disappear into the forest. As soon as the last of the group was out of view she got up and followed, keeping her distance, hiding behind trees without letting them out of her sight.
Up ahead, they walked silently and swiftly, single-file through the dense woods and tangled underbrush, halting in the woods when their guide stopped, moving when she moved. Eventually they came upon a dirt path, which they followed to the back side of a barn. Just as they turned the corner, bypassing the barn, from a distance came loud shouts barked in Russian commanding the group to stop.
Shots rang out and someone screamed in pain. Hanna pulled herself behind a tree and froze. The exploding blast of more gunfire, another scream, chaos, pandemonium, and the smell of sulfur from the gun blasts filled the air. In the midst of it, Hanna, still out of view, ran toward the far side of the barn and frantically tried to open the heavy wooden door. The door was tightly shut, so she raced to an adjacent old barn, her heart beating furiously.
Once inside, she closed the door, then turned around to find herself face-to-face with a tiny, frail, doe-eyed woman who sat on a woodpile, alarmed at the commotion and the intrusion. Seconds later, a Soviet soldier yanked open the stable door shouting something in Russian, ready to use the butt of his rifle. Hanna stumbled back.
The woman shielded herself, preparing to take the blows, pleading in broken Russian, “Have pity on a poor old woman and her niece.”
He stopped short. Looking around the barn, he noticed the woman’s belongings strewn over straw stacks, clothing hung over wooden beams and atop a pile of straw, a man’s work jacket here, a cooking pot there, bedding, suitcases. He eyed the woman and then Hanna.
“Please,” she continued. “We mean no harm. I am sick and my niece takes such fine care of me.” He paused, looked over the hovel, then lowered his rifle. Apparently convinced of her story, he left.
Slumping back onto the woodpile, the woman sighed. She was a refugee who had lost her husband in the war and was living in the barn with her son. For the time being, he had been able to keep his job at a sugar factory just across the border in the West and, therefore, had a special permit to travel back and forth. As the woman explained, Hanna nervously peered through a crack in the wooden door, watching the soldiers haul away the survivors of the group.
The woman’s son, a young man in his twenties, arrived home later that afternoon with a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk, which he handed to his mother. He agreed to help Hanna flee through the border point he crossed every day. He asked Hanna how much money she had. She gave him her reichsmarks and the package of Lucky Strike cigarettes. He gave her ten West marks in return and said, “Remember: you are my cousin and I am allowed to cross. So don’t be nervous. I know these guys. Stay calm, act natural. Let’s go.” The woman wished her well, and the two set out for the crossing.
As they approached, two Soviet guards, both with self-rolled cigarettes dangling from their mouths, greeted the young man like an old friend.
“Vanja, my little brother!” one Russian guard exclaimed in broken German, smiling broadly and slapping him on the back. “Hey, who’s your pretty girlfriend?” He told the guard that Hanna was his cousin and that she wanted to go and visit their grandmother in the West for a few days. As he talked, he produced the cigarettes, which delighted the guards, who cheered as one grabbed the pack and swiped it under his nose, comically inhaling its aroma. The two “cousins” bid the guards farewell and, with a friendly wave, slipped off into the forest.
Once on the dirt forest path, he pushed her off, telling her to walk straight down the path and eventually she would reach the West, and then he left her to return to chat with the guards. She walked off slowly at first, nervously, wanting to run, but determined not to stir up attention. Once she came into denser woods, though, fear and adrenaline took over and she took off, sprinting deeper and deeper into the forest. She only stopped running when she saw the back of a white sign up ahead. When she reached it, she walked around to see what was written on it.
With her back momentarily to the West, she looked one last time into the East and at the sign, which read: “Warning: You are now entering the Soviet Occupied Zone.” Turning back toward the West, she walked into her new world.
In Schwaneberg, when Hanna failed to show up on the last train home, Opa exploded. Oma grew quiet. In Seebenau, when Kallehn got the news, he grinned.
PART TWO
5
TWO CASTLES
OUT OF THE WHIRLWIND
(1948–1949)
The soul has illusions as the bird has wings.
—Victor Hugo
Hanna emerged from the pine forest in the West Zone weary and shaken. With no sign of life in either direction on the deserted country road that lay before her, she chose a path and, suitcase in hand, started walking.
After a distance, she spotted a horse-drawn wagon. As it neared, she flagged it down, then asked for a ride with a farmer, who recognized her as a Flüchtling, a refugee. She climbed up and sat beside him and only then felt relieved. She took in a long-awaited deep breath of fresh air. He smiled and patted her on the back in gentle congratulations. Then he turned back to the road and shook the reins.
As she rode atop the farm wagon, she vowed to never look back. But then, unexpectedly, visions of Oma and the rest of her family popped into her head and suddenly she felt light-headed. She began to sweat, her heart hammering as the first prickles of panic crept up her neck. The farmer noticed none of it. Then, as if in a nightmare, she could sense her family, her childhood, and everything she had ever known being swallowed up and finally disappearing into a black hole.
She tried to shake off the suffocating feeling, a survival instinct took over and she willed herself to focus on her next move. She had to find a place where she could lie low and remain anonymous until she turned twenty-one in a few months’ time. Then she would be able to register as a legal citizen of the West, and finally shake the long arm of the law. Until then, she had to hide.
Before the farmer turned off the main road, she thanked him, climbed down, and continued on her way, intermittently hitchhiking and walking for the next several hours. By nightfall, with only the sliver of light of a quarter moon to guide her, she came
upon the sleepy little village of Dettum, where she slept overnight on the floor in the corner of a vacant building.
The next day, a plump, aproned village matron spotted her walking into the village. When she learned Hanna was from the East, she took her under her wing, leading her first to the Gasthaus, where she fed her a bowl of vegetable beef soup and asked about her plans. After learning Hanna was on her own, and needed to earn money, she took her by the arm and led her to the edge of the village to meet the Schneiders, a young farmer’s family who needed a housekeeper and nanny, and were willing to look the other way at Hanna’s illegal status.
Back in Schwaneberg, it wasn’t long before members of the newly minted East German police, the VoPo, paid Opa a visit.
“If she is not dead,” the police told him, “she will contact you. And when she does, you will contact us.”
Opa understood. His job and the well-being of his family were in jeopardy because his daughter had committed the worst of all crimes against the state by depriving the Soviet Zone of a healthy, able-bodied citizen it needed to help rebuild the country.
But Hanna did not contact her family, and, in fact, hoped to disappear into complete obscurity. With each passing day, Oma and Opa wondered what had happened to their daughter. Had she been shot at the border? Had she made it out? Was she dead? Was she languishing in a prison somewhere?