Escape

by Barbie Probert-Wright

  Inside the flat we had a large living room, with double doors across one end, which closed off another room, the smoking room. This was effectively my father’s study, where he kept all his books. He would retire into it to smoke and it was his own domain, a bit forbidden to the rest of us. There were long leather settees that seemed enormous to me and they were freezing cold on my little bare legs that poked straight out of my short skirts. But after a while, they’d warm up and stick to my skin.

  At Christmas a tree would be smuggled into the smoking room, and the grown-ups would secretly decorate it and put the presents underneath. Then the doors would be firmly locked until Christmas Eve, which is the day of the great celebration in Germany. In the evening we would go to church and when we returned, the big folding doors would be opened and my father would ring a little bell. With huge excitement we would hurry in to see what was waiting inside. To my amazement, the tree was ablaze with real candles and piles of presents were heaped beneath. Then we would have dinner and the children all had to perform by singing a song, reciting a poem or reading aloud something they had chosen. Father would always read the Christmas story of the birth of Jesus, and the whole family would sing ‘Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht’ – the beautiful carol ‘Silent Night’. I was taught from the earliest age how to sing in harmony with my sisters. Even now, the fragrance of pine needles will take me right back to those Hamburg Christmases, when we were all together in our warm and comfortable home.

  Then sickness and death came to our house, and the axis of my small world shifted irreversibly.

  It was 1943 and I was five years old. I was ill with scarlet fever and, because it was infectious, my mother had put a gate across the doorway to my room to keep me inside. Eva, now seventeen, had also caught it. She had spent six weeks in hospital but the worst was over and she was back home with us, convalescing. Only Ruth had escaped the infection.

  Ruth was my beautiful, glamorous, ever-so-grown-up sister. At nineteen, she worked as a graphic designer in the city and had a busy social life. She was a member of a biking club and she loved the theatre. One night she was planning to go to the theatre with friends, but at the last minute she cried off. Her throat was sore – too sore for her to go out – and she decided to go to bed instead. Within a very short time she was extremely weak and they feared that she too had caught scarlet fever. But it wasn’t the fever – something else had taken hold of her. The apartment was hushed, and the atmosphere tense and strained. The doctor came, but this time she did not come to see me.

  Ruth was ill for only three days. Everyone was terribly concerned about her and she was about to be taken to hospital. The ambulance was on its way and had even arrived downstairs, but her throat was gradually closing until she could no longer breathe. She suddenly sat up, put her arms round our mother and in barely a whisper said, ‘Oh, meine liebe Mutti’ – oh, my darling Mummy – and died.

  I stood at the door to my room, against the gate, wondering what was happening. Then I heard a strangled cry from my mother and, although I did not realise it at the time, my beloved sister had at that moment died, just three weeks before her twentieth birthday. It would be a long time before I was old enough really to understand that I would never see her again, or that her death had shaken my secure, happy world to its foundations.

  Our father, who was working away, had a dream that something was wrong. The phone connections were all down and our mother had not been able to contact him, but because of his dream he set off for home at once, arriving the next morning. He had no idea why he had come, except for an overriding feeling that he needed to get back to us. He and Ruth were close: of all his three daughters, she was the one who took after him, while Eva and I were both more like our mother. Perhaps it was this strong bond between them that pulled him back. He arrived to find his darling eldest daughter gone.

  I know the details of Ruth’s death from a letter my mother wrote to her sister-in-law, my Aunt Else, who lived near Berlin and was married to Uncle Artur. She refers to my sister as ‘big Ruth’, because Aunt Else had a daughter, also called Ruth, who was always known as ‘little Ruth’. Little Ruth was just three weeks older than me and, like me, was a surprise unplanned baby, born after the others in the family were in their teens.

  Dear Else and family

  The first few days of this uncertain time have passed. For us, the loss of our beloved ‘big’ Ruth is still hard to believe. Her death came too quickly. Waldi had to go back to his post. He has been transferred so much further away. You can imagine how hard it was for him to return there.

  Dear Else, you have a lot of troubles too. Please let we know very soon what is happening with Günther. I can’t help thinking about you all.

  Our Bärbel is in bed with scarlet fever. She is over the worst and can hopefully get up soon. Eva contracted scarlet fever at work and was in Mecklenburg Hospital for six weeks. She had just came home far convalescence here with us in Hamburg, so she was present when Ruth died. Ruth was only ill for three days. She felt very weak on Sunday evening. On Monday I called Doctor Wagner. She tested her for scarlet fever, which was negative. In the night from Tuesday to Wednesday Ruth was very poorly, so I called the doctor again on Wednesday morning. Ruth was supposed to be admitted to hospital at 3 p.m. with ‘severe angina’.

  As the ambulance men were bringing the stretcher up to the third floor Ruth suddenly sat up in bed, put her arms around me and said, ‘My darling Mutti’ and she was dead. I am still shaking when I relive these seconds. Our so industrious, ever-ready-to-help-out and so happy Ruth! It is awful. She died of diphtheria. We bought a beautiful plot at the cemetery at Ohlsdorf, a family resting place for all of us.

  The funeral service was most beautiful. All that was dear to her we sent off with her. It she looked down she would have seen how much love and devotion everyone paid her an her last journey. The chapel could hardly contain all the mourners. So many flowers: Ruth always gave flowers to people and it seemed that people gave them all back to her in one lot.

  Two days ago, on 8 April, Ruth would have been twenty years old. Our big Ruth, and now she is covered by cold earth. I don’t think I will ever stop crying.

  Dear Else and Artur, please reply lo my letter very soon and tell me what is happening at yours - how is everyone keeping?

  your very sad sister-in-law Norma, Eva and Bärbel

  With Ruth’s death, our home was a different, much sadder place. A stranger came to the flat to look after me during the funeral, because I was still unwell and too young to go. She was a friend of my parents but I did not know her and it added to the feeling of everything being fractured in a way I did not comprehend. Then they came to fumigate the flat, to kill off any remaining infection, and I had to wear a mask while they did it.

  We had to go on as best we could after Ruth had died. After all, a great many tragedies were taking place all over the world and thousands, even millions, of people were losing loved ones in far worse circumstances. Nevertheless, a great sorrow filled our lives and I can remember the sadness of that time.

  My mother coped by throwing herself into caring for Eva and me. We were both still poorly, recovering from our own bouts of scarlet fever, and my mother was selfless in her devotion to getting us better. Perhaps she was terrified at the thought that anything could go wrong with one of her two remaining daughters, or maybe it was her way of coping with the enormity and finality of Ruth’s death. Whatever the reason, she worked tirelessly, constantly checking on us and ministering to us, and taking no account of herself or her own health. When Eva and I were both fully recovered, my mother’s poor body finally rebelled and she collapsed. She was taken to hospital, paralysed and unable to walk. The doctors could find no reason for her paralysis and initially feared she would never walk again. Home was a strange place without my beloved Mutti, but she was gone and it looked as though it would be months before she returned home to us.

  My sister Eva was doing her war work, which was compulsory fo
r girls of her age. Before then, she had been a member of the Bund Deutscher Mädel, the League of German Girls, which was the equivalent of the Hitler Youth for boys. It was compulsory for everyone from ten to eighteen to belong to one of the two organisations, the BDM or the Hitler Youth. When they were initially set up, in the early thirties, the Hitler Youth attracted lots of boys because of its sporty outdoor ‘Boy Scout’ adventures, but very few girls volunteered for the BDM. Once Hitler had abolished all other youth organisations the ranks swelled and, with the increasing Nazification of Germany in the pre-war years, it became the acceptable thing to do. It provided an ordered social life for young people and no doubt lots of fun, with hikes and sing-songs and campfires. They learned dancing, cooking and needlework. Of course, it was all overlaid with Nazi indoctrination, but in those days most parents and children were oblivious to this. In 1936 it became obligatory to be a member and this was reinforced by law in 1939.

  From 1943 onwards, girls of Eva’s age were expected to do war work. Some of them worked as secretaries in military or government establishments, some manned anti-aircraft batteries, some even became soldiers and fought and died alongside men. Luckier ones were sent to work on farms, the equivalent of Britain’s Land Army girls. Others, if they were intelligent and had some education, were assigned teaching jobs; educating the young girls of ten upwards who were evacuated to BDM homes in the countryside.

  Eva was one of these. Although she was not qualified and was too young to have been to university, she was deemed able to teach the younger girls, so she was sent away to a BDM home as a teacher.

  With Mutti ill and Eva away, there was nobody left at home in the Hamburg apartment to care for me, so I went to live with my father in Posen. I did not know it then, but I would never return to that apartment. My happy days on the Wandsbecker Chaussee were over for ever. I’m glad now that I lived in innocence and did not know that I was departing that life for good.

  Because my father’s work on the railways involved travelling about, and because he was living on his own in the flat, I was billeted with a succession of his friends. My father was a very sociable man, always good company, and he had a wide circle of friends who were happy to take me in. I was well brought up, had good manners and I don’t think it was hard for him to find people to look after me. First, I was with the Sundermanns, whom I already knew well and where there were my friends Heinz and Fritz. Then I stayed with other families with children of the same sort of age as me and, apart from missing my mother, I was well looked after and happy.

  But not always. I have one miserable memory of that time. I was staying with a couple my father knew but whom I had never met before, a childless couple who had little understanding of small children. They had two German Shepherd dogs roaming free around their house, so when the woman put me to bed she told me there was a chamber pot under the bed for me if I needed a wee-wee in the night, as the dogs would prevent me going to the bathroom. I was five, I had not used a potty since I was a baby and I was scared of using one on my own. So I decided I would not use it, no matter what. Then, in the early hours of the morning, I did want to wee. I held it and held it, determined not to use the potty, but then I dropped off to sleep again and dreamed that I had found a toilet. What a great relief! I found it and was at last able to stop holding in so hard. There was a lovely feeling of relaxation and warmth. Of course, I woke to find I had wet the bed, something I had never done before. I was very ashamed, but nevertheless the woman looking after me was cruel, because she told everybody in the village what had happened. I was very unhappy and longed to go home. Oh, I wanted my Mutti, my own mummy! I can still remember that sensation of great relief.

  My mother was ill for five or six months and after a while she was transferred from her hospital to a nursing home near to where I was living with my father. Although she was improving, she was still suffering from the paralysis that had come upon her so strangely. The only medical reason we were ever given for her condition was that it was to do with her nervous system: the acute psychological distress she was in had caused her body to refuse to obey. We visited her often and would take her into the grounds in her wheelchair, and our father would lift her on to a blanket on the grass and we would have a picnic. Gradually, she improved and at last she was able to move into the flat with my father and me, and we were reunited.

  It seemed so terrible at the time, but actually my mother’s illness and my evacuation to the Wartegau saved our lives.

  2

  A Peaceful Polish Interlude

  On 25 July 1943, British and American bombs started to fall heavily on Hamburg. There had been bombing raids before, but nothing as intensive as this. Hamburg was a natural target because it was the second biggest German city, with a population of one and three-quarter million, and the biggest port in the country. It was an important industrial target for the Allies, as the city’s shipyards were busy producing the U-boat submarines, averaging more than one a week for the two years before the raids. The city also had factories producing aircraft parts, lots of different engineering factories and vital oil refineries.

  Even before we left, Hamburg had been attacked and, while I was too young to know why it was such a prime target, I certainly understood the words ‘air raid’. The approach of the bombers would be announced by the howling of the air attack alarms and we would hurry down from our flat to the underground shelter beneath the apartment block. Almost every block had its own shelter and all the residents would huddle there together, waiting for the end of the raid before we ventured above to see what had happened. It seemed that we were lucky – our building always escaped serious damage.

  But that July, two months before my sixth birthday while we were far away in Posen, the heavy raids began. In a few short days over 10,000 tons of bombs were dropped on the city. More than 500 British and Allied airmen died in the battle for Hamburg and approximately 44,600 German civilians died. Some were killed directly by the bombs but many more by the fires that raged through the buildings. Over half of all homes in the city were destroyed and 900,000 people were homeless. Many of them fled from the city. Remarkably, some train services were still running and fares were waived so that refugees travelled free. Others escaped as best they could, in horse-drawn carts or on foot.

  The news came that the apartment block on the Wandsbecker Chaussee had suffered a direct hit and was destroyed. There was at first relief that we were safe – my father and mother, Eva and I – so we were very lucky indeed. But we had lost all our possessions except those we had with us. Perhaps the most difficult loss was of everything that had belonged to Ruth: that hit my mother much harder than the destruction of her other, more valuable, belongings.

  It was an anxious time as we waited for news of what had happened to the rest of our family. Soon, we learned that my grandparents and my mother’s two sisters, Aunt Hilda and Aunt Irma, and their children had also survived in underground shelters, but all three families had been bombed out of their homes. The husbands of both my aunts were away fighting and there had been no news of them for some time. Now they were all homeless and initially they stayed with other relatives who had homes in the suburbs that had escaped the raids. Then my father took charge and they all made their way to the Wartegau to join us. Through some good friends, a German family called Boetels who ran another large estate, my father knew of an empty house in the nearby tiny hamlet of Eulau, near the town of Punitz (Poniec). It was a large, one-storey building which had previously been the home of the manager of a brickworks. The brickworks had closed down and the house stood empty. It was set back from the road and behind it a track ran the 500 yards to the brick factory. My father set about taking it over and the whole family moved in.

  It was a splendid and roomy house with four large bedrooms, which we called wings, all leading on to spacious communal rooms. My grandparents had one bedroom and each of the three sisters had her own room with her children. I don’t know how they got there, but I can remem
ber we all arrived at the same time and my father led my mother into the bedroom he had chosen for us. I have a vivid picture of each little family group sitting on the beds in their chosen room: there was no squabbling about who went where. Everyone was relieved and happy to have a solid roof over their heads, safely reunited.

  We were all so glad to be together again, but it was not to last. One day a telegram arrived and after my mother had read it I heard her crying. It ordered my father to report to a certain depot at a certain time. She knew what it meant. His age, his injury and his important job could no longer save him. Germany was running short of conscripts for the army and men who had previously been excluded from service were now being called up. Soon, even the young boys would start to receive their papers to do their bit in the last struggles. My father was drafted to fight on the Russian Front. It was the worst possible news.

  The grown-ups tried to keep their fears from me and told me that my father would be going away for a little while but that I was not to worry. To cheer me up and take my mind off his imminent departure, my parents took me to visit some friends whose dog, a dachshund, had just had a litter of puppies. I was thrilled with them and even more thrilled when, as we left, I was given a present of one of them. I called him Lumpie and he was adorable. As he got bigger he used to follow me everywhere.