All my experiences in the past, both good and bad, were now null and void, since the starry hours that began since my meeting with Brigitte. That was the name of this twenty-year old. I was underway to fulfilling the intimations of the Laska family, that I should take a ‘momento’ home with me. It was a ‘momento’ from Breslau, from the war, from Germany. It was a ‘bounty-packet’ in the shape and form of a bride.
We met every day thereafter, when Brigitte’s work allowed. For like all other Germans, she had to work for the Poles. Her employees were just like Elzbieta’s parents. Mr and Mrs Markowitz, Congress Poles, were a very friendly pair, owners of a colonial-ware shop and waiting to go to America. They wanted to take Brigitte with them as an adopted daughter.
I always picked her up from the shop in Feldstrasse, and with every day I knew that I had found my partner for life, beyond any doubt. We sauntered for hours on end, from one corner of her birthplace to another, and in all the surrounding areas.
Those warm June days spent with Brigitte, were the most wonderful of my life, spiced only with a kiss or two, although we became so close that after only a short time, we knew what the other was thinking. There was no need for our love for one another to be put into words. It appeared to me that our souls were totally bound together. Soon, I started to talk about marrying. Later, although under different circumstances, that was to be utopia.
Brigitte’s skin was as brown as her eyes, but this did not come from a beauty spa. It came from forced labour in the fields around Liegnitz, under the Russians. It was some 50 kilometres west of Breslau, where she had been evacuated with her mother, in January 1945. She too had experienced the exodus in the snow, ice and 20° below freezing. She had seen uncountable people die, including her mother who died from dysentery shortly after their arrival. Now as a total orphan, Brigitte stood there totally alone and under the ‘victors’ wrath. The drunken Russian soldiers, frustrated at the long and tough defence of Breslau, often vented their spleen on those defenceless German citizens. Those whom they did not transport away, were put to work in the fields under the old Russian motto “no work, no food”.
Brigitte could not forget the plight of the horses when following the plough, for all had wounds, from bullets or shrapnel and their wounds had never been attended to. When horses failed then the Germans were saddled with their work and they had to pull the ploughs and farrows, like Volga boat-people, pulling their barges. She was one of the lucky ones, for she could in the first few weeks of the occupation avoid the raping that was customary, together with other young girls. They could hide themselves, quite successfully, in a hole in a mountain of coke that they made, in the grounds of a nursery. Not only at nights, but also by day they fled to this haven of safety, where they stayed, freezing and still as mice, and were fed at nights by the older women. Only those who had experienced Bolshevism, such as I, with the motivation of leaving my home to fight against it, can understand its system.
In July of 1945, Brigitte returned to Breslau to find her parents’ home in ruins. In October she was ill with typhus, which she survived in spite of the fact that medical attention for Germans was a catastrophe. Many died of typhus. One could say that we were both orphaned, for I did not know if my family had survived or not. My last communication from them was at the end of 1944. This ethnic-cleansing programme of the Poles was now to rob her of her homeland.
Far quicker than we wanted, she and all the Germans had to leave their district on 22 June. It broke our hearts and made us happy at the same time, that one of us could turn our backs on that Polish commercial and economic management. Our happiness was however tinged with worry, for the expelled could decide nothing for themselves, including where they wanted to go. They were forced to go where they were sent, be it to the West, or to the Communist Eastern zones of Germany. It had been a journey that decided life or death in many cases. Thousands had already died, in the middle of December, in conditions that could be compared to cattle transport. It was important that the Silesians were sent on their way. 1,600 had been given a loaf of bread and a herring as provision for the journey, which had taken a week. In temperatures of 20—25° below, they were herded into cattle-wagons, which were unheated and with no toilet facilities. They arrived in Potsdam, in Bruckenburg, in the Western zones with 35 dead. After being delivered into hospital, a further 141 died from the results of pneumonia, heart attacks or the results of freezing.
They found happiness in a city hostile to Germans (and their former soldiers): Brigitte and Hendrik.
My hopes for her well-being were realised when receiving a letter from Brigitte from Detmold, which was in the British zone. The journey in goods and cattle-wagons had taken eight days, but she had survived the stress. In Görlitz and on German soil, but under Communist direction, the wagons were directed on to other tracks, so that the expelled could be plundered once more, of the last that they possessed. My medals, which Brigitte had hidden in balls of wool, had not been found.
In Breslau, things were moving on for the Laskas and myself, for we had registered with the German charitable Organisation ‘Caritas’. At the same time, I presented my Russian discharge papers and was accepted as any other German soldier, although I was Dutch. My BVB paper was not shown because of the danger of a DP classification, and deportation to Holland.
For some inexplicable reason, our deportation was delayed and I was already thinking about deporting myself out of Breslau and undertaking a one-man journey to the Western zones. My friends talked me out of the idea, telling me that it was a very dangerous mission and could cost me my life. So I waited. We waited throughout July, August and September, and it was on the 30th that we were ordered to leave. We could take 25 kilos of possessions with us.
With stamps and cardboard stickers on our chests, we left to form a queue under Polish control, and marched to the Freiburger railway station. Before we left, Mrs Laska had run her soft hands over every piece of her furniture in her home. In tears she caressed each piece that had given years of service to her and her family. I, in my happiness at leaving, did not at that time understand her deep feelings at the loss of her treasures. Only later, after slowly collecting my own possessions laboriously together, did I understand. The keys were then taken from the inside of the locks, placed on the outside, and we left.
The Poles did not have enough intelligence to realise that they were expelling the best of their ‘milk-cows’ and ‘cutting their noses off to spite their faces!’ They did not comprehend that the industrious hands of the Germans and their knowledge of the economy of their land was something that they did not possess, and perhaps never would.
The militia, armed with German rifles, screamed their orders at the throngs of people, with gestures that drove the column through the streets to the station. They showed no sympathy. The pram of Mrs Laska’s daughter was snatched away from her, shortly before she climbed into the train. Most were in tears having sunk to the depths of depression, because of that act, the worst act of man against his fellow man. The Poles drove the people into the wagons laid with straw, but which were now overflowing, then into the goods and cattle wagons. Toil et arrangements were left for them to arrange from inside.
One’s wits were a valuable asset in those moments, for we were by now well acquainted with the greed of those non-capitalists. The Laska family and I had the joy of outwitting them, at the last minute, with my plan, ‘Operation Janka’. My own baggage consisted of a rucksack and a cardboard box which I gave to the Laska family just before reaching the station. Surreptitiously I removed myself from the throng, unnoticed by the militia. I made my way to one of the exit points at Lutzowstrasse, to where another fully laden cart was parked, which I took. I rejoined the last third of the column and reached the first control point, which I passed through without any problem. I rejoined my waiting friends with the additional freight. They were overjoyed at the ‘trick of war’ against the Poles. It was a grotesque comedy. It was the joy of the ‘little’ man, that h
e could rob a kilo or two from the robbers themselves.
Just before the wagons started to move, a young blonde girl ran along the platform, calling someone’s name. To my great surprise it was Elzbieta Markowitz, who was looking for me. Being Polish, she had been allowed to enter the station briefly and she looked so happy at finding me. She had found out somehow that I was among the deportees on that day. “Till we meet again, Hendrik”, she said, giving me packets in which I found pork-dripping sandwiches and cigarettes. It was all so hurried. Rather choked by her gesture, all I could say was “farewell little Elzbieta”, as the over-long train gave a jerk and started to steam out of the station.
The train puffed its way through the suburbs, spraying sparks into the air as evening started to fall. We chugged past masses of green-covered ruins, in the direction of the West. We had fought so bitterly, not so long ago, in those streets. We passed churches in whose graveyards the past generations of my fellow passengers slept under centuries-old stone crosses.
Our wagon was full to overflowing. There was very little room to sit. In the past I was accustomed to the usual military phrase ‘the wagons must roll to victory’ when we used them as our military transport. But we had it far better then, for we could and did open the door, dangle our legs over the side, and move around freely. We could not do it on that journey, which could take perhaps a week, because the Poles had sealed the wagons from the outside.
CHAPTER 20
In the Eastern Zone
The sound of the wheels was a monotone taking the exiles with every turn of those wheels, further and further away from their homeland. From a small ventilator in the roof our wagon, I could see the flat fields, green woods and the decorative farmhouses, now threatened with dereliction. I could understand only too well, the bitterness of my fellow passengers, for this land had found its way into my heart too. The fate of Silesia had been a turning point in my life, particularly in Breslau. There I had fought my last battle against Bolshevism, been wounded, taken prisoner and became a civilian once more. The 24 hours’ respite had grown into a year, one with falsified papers, and an adventurous one at that. Above all I had met a young woman whom I could not wait to see once more, and who, with luck, would become my wife.
We made a stop in Sagan, another in Forst, where we were deloused, and then again Görlitz. After another two days, we reached Zittau, but we were not in the Western zone. Our train rolled over the railway bridge spanning the river Neisse, into the farthest most easterly corner and the Soviet zone in Zittau, in Saxony. Lorries, one after the other then drove us to a regimental barracks, a transit camp. Not even rested from the stress of the journey, we had to assemble on the square the next morning. There we were forced to hear a welcoming speech from the representative of the Socialist Party of Germany, the SED. Worn out, cold and apathetic nearly 2,000 of us stood, huddled together and surrounded by Communist red flags. Degradation was on the agenda that day. After all that we had been through, we were forced to hear that we should be grateful, grateful that we had been freed from the yoke of Fascism, and by the peace-loving Communist Josef ‘Uncle Joe’ Stalin. This Saxon had perhaps more to say but his insulting comment had met questions of disbelief from the brave as they asked “Freed from WHAT? our house and home!” So he cut his speech short, but not before he turned the knife and welcomed the future German/Soviet friendship, before he disappeared and we were put into quarantine. We were therefore not allowed to leave the camp for the next fourteen days.
It was on the second day that I found the hole in the fence and took my-selfoffon a one-man recce into the city. Once upon a time Zittau had been a beautiful city, with its Renaissance and Baroque architecture and buildings and their decorated portals. Now it could only be described as something similar to ‘a worker’s paradise’. The shops were empty, and I mean of goods. They did have window decoration, made up of empty boxes, offering the thick layers of dust for free. The Zittauer went on their way, when they were to be seen, in streets that had not seen a street cleaner in many a month. The women did not appear to be any different to the Russian women except that they were not so stout and round. In fact, when you took a glance at their faces under the headscarf that they all wore, you could see sad and empty eyes, small mouths and hollow cheeks. They were quite haggard. I bought and wrote a postcard to Brigitta, and then made my way back to the camp, using the hole in the fence once more.
All of the deportees wanted to leave this camp as quickly as possible, for here in Saxony it was situated far too near the Czechoslovakian and Polish borders, but they had no say in the matter. The occupying forces were responsible for our distribution. Just as the ‘little soldier’ was never informed of military strategy, we for instance didn’t even know the destinations of the transport, when leaving that transit point.
In 1946, on 29 October, a National Census took place, and alone in the western zones, 1,622,907 Silesians were to be found, mostly in Lower Saxony (626,087) and Bavaria (434,281). In the Eastern zones there were 1.3 mil lion.
The results of deportation, evacuation, and illegal trans portation of east Germans, were even beyond the imagination of the occupying forces. So much so, that Sir Orme Sargent, State Secretary of the Foreign Office in London declared that “it is unbelievable that the Germany of today can solve the resettlement problem of 14 million of their starving people. For me, it is beyond my imagination”.
A Commission, the ‘Papal Protectors for Refugees’, declared that “the Germans have to master a problem, the like of which has never ever before existed in world history. Such an exodus robbing such a mass of people of house, home and existence has never ever taken place, and at such short notice”.
When one assesses that 8,000 people can occupy a small town, then one can imagine that a small town arrived every single day, somewhere in Bavaria. In Hesse alone, 67,000 were counted in one month as ‘new citizens’. The transport brought the dead too. The Councillor of Control, attached to the German Evangelist Church, and the Allies, described the situation as of “half-starved, exhausted to the point of death, they arrive, having been robbed on the way of everything that they possessed”. And it happened in peacetime!
Germany performed the impossible, however, due to the discipline and will to work of the war generation. Germany absorbed all of the refugees from the east, not in a day, but in a few years. Their industriousness also produced a boom. It was an economic and industrial wonder.
This massive absorption was not without its problems. There were many who were irritated, overworked, and tearing their hair at the organisation belonging to this enormous overwhelming problem. It was particularly serious in the Western zones, where four million houses had disappeared. There were so many refugees who had to be given a home in amongst those who already existed. This was not very diplomatic, particularly when you did not have a ‘say in the matter’. In his book Die Vertriebenen, Siegfried Kogelfranz reports that particularly in Bavaria, a wave of ‘religious pilgrimages’ started. That meant that without the owners at home, their houses could not be inspected for spare rooms, or space for refugees or house-mates. When the dear Lord did not ‘help’ those unfortunates, those stout believers in Jesus Christ, then they ‘helped themselves’ out of their plight and bricked-up spare rooms or excess space, wallpapered over, and were therefore not encumbered with ‘guests’.
The situation had to be resolved by force from the local mayor or the police, so Brigitte reported to me. Such was the situation in the village where she was evacuated, near Detmold. The very sorry truth of the matter was that upon arrival, and as fellow-Germans, in Germany, they found that they were not wanted by their own people. “What is mine, is mine!” was the attitude, and those who possessed nothing were ostracised by those others who had plenty. The Westphalian farmers were well nourished. They had survived the war without drastic bombing raids in the region. They viewed the eastern deportees as ‘lousy gypsies from the East’, interlopers, who should have stayed where they were. Suc
h behaviour was however, not the rule. When there was a hard case of resistance, Allied Regulation No.18 came into force. It allowed the refugees to occupy a place to stay in the absence of the house-owner.
Our quarantine period was coming to an end and immediately the Laska family was transported to Taucha, near Leipzig. That was not where I wanted to go, in an area for the masses. I myself had no ties at that moment, so I decided that perhaps I had to give my fate a helping hand. The farewell to the Laska family was very hard for me, for they had become my beloved family.
The experiences of the last few years washed over me. I had met brave and frightened people. Friendliness, faithfulness and the dark side of human nature, all had been mixed with suffering, destruction and death. In the middle of it all, I had found love, founding the very strong will to survive. This will, in the striving for a little luck in life, could not be broken.
Before I had left Breslau, Inge Rudolph, the wife of the company commander that I had had in Pomerania had offered me a home, in her birthplace Finsterwald. That was in case we lost the War and I could not return home to Holland. I had written to her as soon as I had arrived in Zittau, and by 13 October, her husband, Hermann, brought me the necessary settlement permit for the area of Finsterwald. At that time, this permit was the most treasured and necessary that a man could possess, for without it you did not receive a ration-card.
In the Fire of the Eastern Front Page 31