Upset voices were heard from below and a crack behind me told me that the rest of the kitchen collapsed from the power of the overthrown glowing beams. But with shaky knees and a resolute will I continued down the stairs where worried SA men reached out to grab me and liberate me from my burden while tenderly telling me about my rashness. The woman was very grateful for being reunited with her precious belongings from her china cabinet.
After this escapade I went to a friend on the neighbouring street for a calming talk. Ilse Salm and her family came from Koblenz, a city in the Rheinland. At the time they did not have the Berlin heartiness. They loudly complained in a passive way that made me feel down. The house they lived in was newly built from the later part of the 1930s. It was airy, light, and modern. From their kitchen window I had a good view of the lower part of my street and I could see my mother carrying household paraphernalia. She was a little taller than the Berlin women, slender, and had an aristocratic bearing about her. I saw my former principal from elementary school come riding to see if any of his students had been bombed.
Out came my father, carrying a sewing machine, when suddenly a figure of a woman came loose from the turn-of-the-century facade and covered him in a cloud of plaster. Worried, encouraging people broke out in hearty laughter when Father, unharmed and still carrying the sewing machine, dusted himself off and laconically said, “I have always wanted to be attacked by naked women, but this doesn’t feel very good at all”.
I left the complaining Koblenzers and went back to the active Berliners. After awhile Ilse came to help us. When our arms were too tired to work more she suggested that we take a look at the destruction in the area and I do not regret that I went along with her suggestion because it gave me an experience well above all the events of the day.
The area around Breitenbach Square, a modern center situated between Friedenau and Steglitz, was totally destroyed. High-explosive bombs that had cracked my wall had turned this residential area into a pile of ruins. The people there were carrying clay bricks after bricks to free the bomb shelters from the weight and to get the people out. There were several men there in well-pressed neighbourhood uniforms who were contemptuously called “uniform keepers” by the SA. These “uniform keepers” did not have much of an idea about the ideology but they gladly paraded around in their grand uniforms, directed and gave orders conceitedly and totally unnecessarily to the intensively working civilians. Suddenly and unexpectedly a car caravan came quickly to the place where Ilse and I were standing. It stopped, and out of one of the cars came a little man in overalls and joined the intensively working citizens … And now the “neighbourhood men” would get going because the man in overalls was none other than the national minister Dr. Goebbels! It is easy to recognize his comforting voice with its beautiful sound. He made it a habit to travel from place to place where the terror bombings in Berlin had taken place and was, in that way, an inspiration to new efforts. He was a noticeable moral support who also made an impression on me and Ilse.
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The bomb shelters were opened and the relieved people staggered out into the open, except for in one place where tens of people died of a gas leak.
When I got home, Mother asked me to go to my maternal grandparents, and of course to my paternal grandparents, to let them know about the situation. Half way there I met up with Aunt Hedvig, my father’s aunt and my paternal grandfather’s housekeeper, who was sent off on the same errand regarding our situation.
Calm, but quite tired after the exciting day, I fell asleep that evening with the knowledge that no one in our family or their homes were hurt or damaged, something that not all Berliners were granted.
The portrait of Adolf Hitler that Vera, in her excitement, believed held the wall together.
The Flying Dutchman
The auditorium on the top floor of the brick building of the School of Commerce was full of students with high expectations. Despite the intensive bombings, this building, to my regret, was left unharmed. Awards were to be given to the good students. These were called diligence awards. I did not expect any. Instead, I stood there totally uninterested amongst my classmates and my thoughts revolved around completely different things, as usual, than this bloody school.
After all the endless award-giving, the ceremonies came to an end with the giving out of the thank-you presents from the state to those who had contributed with diverse efforts in different campaigns. I did not hope for anything here either, even if I enthusiastically took part in the different collection campaigns. Many others like me thought it was a hundred times more stimulating to go around with the stick wagon from house to house, from building to building, and see the wagon be filled with all sorts of “junk”, than the monotonous cramming studying at school.
The wagon was filled with copper items, iron waste, optical products, rubber, and other things that were important to the war industry, and our youthful enthusiasm could do nothing more than rub off on the givers in the total mustering of strength.
Vera Schimanski was called out. A nudge from a classmate got me to wake up and amazed I made my way up the aisle to the podium. An envelope containing a box seat ticket to the Volksopera and Richard Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman” was handed over to me. Blushing and dazed with joy, I rejoined my class.
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That opera is one that I have always loved, even to this very day. There is nothing as wonderfully powerfully masculine in the honour of music as the steersman’s choir and nothing as sweetly feminine as the spinning song. The overture pours out in foaming stormy sea waves with calmer breezes in between. One gets captured and taken in a grip of esthetic beauty in this existence of struggle, work, and faithful love. That is just the kind of artistic experience that should be conveyed in all art!
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I was dressed in a shiny light blue taffeta gown that I had gotten from my cousins whose father owned a fine jewelry store in Kurfürstendamm. My mother’s sister had passed away from kidney disease at a young age and left behind two girls hardly in school-age, whose solvent relatives in Sweden amongst other places showered them, with the best of intentions, with all sorts of presents.
These, my spoiled cousins, were quite injured during the Russian Bolshevik’s conquest of Berlin in 1945. But now it was 1943 and the presents from their well-filled closets with quality-wise new clothes were a real gift. Thanks to them I never felt that I had a lack of clothes during the war and I was even one of the best-dressed students in my class at the School of Commerce. Consequently well-dressed, I enjoyed Wagner’s work in my box and felt like a chosen one.
The tasteful set pieces, which are always a characteristic of National Socialism’s guidelines, in the undamaged opera house gave a feeling of unbelievable beauty.
I went home. A long, long walk through the streets where many of the blocks stared blankly, scorched and burned, in the moonlight. Whole facades with completely collapsed roofs. Empty and deserted, black and burnt-smelling blocks as monuments of the enemy’s hatred and malevolence. The main street in Steglitz, which used to be full of traffic, still had a yellow street car or two with nearly extinguished lanterns on them. They made their familiar sound on the otherwise silent business stretch, where still-functioning cinemas were cramped between nailed up display windows and boarded up store windows.
The facades at Titania Palace were decorated with pictures of Zarah Leander, Kristina Söderbaum, Willy Birgel, Heinz Rühman, and whatever other movie stars there were. Titania Palace, a giant cinema with a huge organ, was government-owned by UFA, Universum Film AG, while the smaller cinemas in the area were privately owned. There was therefore always lots of movies in this environment of government dominance and private initiative. Amongst these movies were those of Greta Garbo and the much-loved-by-children Shirley Temple.
During the war many farces and cartoons were shown. It was always relaxing and an escape from reality to sn
eak into a movie theatre, away from the daily problems of school and the stress of war. Afterwards it was common to visit a café for a cup of hot chocolate and a cookie. A day like that felt like a success. But this late evening I just wanted to gradate the music in me, get some distance to the drama at the opera I had just experienced, and the meeting with the home on Markelstraße. It turned out to be a farewell walk through Berlin, for soon after, the Allies started their terror bombing that would lay Berlin in total destruction.
Clear Water in the Baltic Sea
This memorandum section is perhaps totally uninteresting from a political point of view, but nonetheless favourable for reflection.
Swedish worries that Poland pollutes the Baltic Sea often come up in discussions. Not that long ago there was a TV program that showed the horrible destruction of the coast at the old Swedish occupation at Wollin, where we could see how the pipelines from the city of Stettin empty straight into the sea without any filtering whatsoever. Feces floated around along with other disgusting things. I do not often cry with anger and resentment in our so chastened existence, but when I saw this and remembered that once clear, sparkling water with its wonderful coast and nice sandy beaches, I felt an inner hate towards the Polish thieves, and it took a fair bit of self-control not to scream a curse at the reporter, who was artificially trying to wrap his tongue around all the Polish names.
With an artificial solidarity and infernal stubbornness, the mass media pronounced the former German cities in the thieves’ language, which seemed almost ridiculous since Polish never sits well on Swedish tongues. The powers of the victors were quick to incorporate German territories without reminders of the regime and the people who fled from the beautiful, fertile Pomerania.
July, 1943
The boat foamed up the water with its propeller and rudder by the stern and was on its way with German tourists to the island of Wollin. Wollin was surrounded by several known and well-liked beaches in its sea scenery, free from the noise and crowds of the cities. We were on our way to Heidebrink where we were going to stay in a little cabin with self-catering. Complete harmony shone around the four of us in our family, Mother, Father, my little brother, and me. Perhaps we sensed the definite split that was on its way after our holiday, given the situation with the war, and therefore all differences were to be put aside for the duration of our holiday. It was in no way destined, but more the case of fate wanting to give our family one last happy but short time together.
As if there was an unspoken agreement, we all treated our togetherness with great care these few weeks. When I was older, I wondered why a marriage was not always treated with consideration and why the happy moments were not captured, given that they could at any time be brutally broken by acts of folly, vanity, and misunderstandings. And in the worst case, death. As a parent it is unnecessary to create an unhappy atmosphere by egoistic self-interest and opinions that one forces onto one’s offspring.
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This little fishing cabin was situated on a hill surrounded by a pine forest. It had a few small rooms and a small veranda plus a tiny kitchen with a wood-burning stove. Yes, everything was small, but comfortable. The work to gather wood for the stove was not the easiest since many other tourists were out on the same errand: gathering wood for coffee. A pine forest does not leave much after it and we were only allowed to pick fallen branches!
The sea with its wonderful sandy beach invited us to many nice swims. Father made a bow from an old umbrella. He tied the metal rods together to make a strong bow, and put together a few arrows with cork tips to both protect sensitive targets but also so they would float on the waves when they ended up in the water.
Forgotten was corporal punishment for school and homework. Now we just enjoyed ourselves. For Mother it was a relief not to have to think about running a home. She just had to bake a cake every now and then if she felt like it because we ate all our meals at the different restaurants in the area. Forgotten were the ruins of Berlin and the worrisome nights with the bombings.
I, who so often travelled to Sweden for the summer when I was on holidays from school, was happy to be able to experience a German summer together with my family. Life felt so far away from the war, so it surprises me to this very day that the regime was in this way able to organize such peaceful lives for the working people in affected cities during the nightly terror bombings.
Everything was free from politics. It did not exist. Just families, sun, and the roar of the sea. My mother, who occasionally visited the shops, could enjoy listening to the dialect of the locals. Few tourists could understand this Swedish-German. That is what we called this local language and we understood it well. There were clearly Swedish expressions like ”köpen”, ”gåen”, ”stängen”, ”soven”, and so on. Swedish words with the ending –en on the end.
As young people do, I soon got to know a girl of my age who was from the town. She had a whole bundle with 25 cent novels that I secretly borrowed. My parents would of course not know about this as it would certainly be seen as harmful to “absorb the romantic nonsense”. I hid these novels under my mattress and read them when I thought I was alone.
But one day my father surprised me by looking into my room while I was reading. Fear of getting punished came over me, but he just calmly asked “What are you reading?”, and with a glance at the pamphlet he said with an amused look, “Don’t let your mother see you reading that stuff” and stroked my hair and left. I stared dumbfounded. “Good Lord, why isn’t he always like that?”
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The weeks went by all too quickly and the trip home to Berlin was done in the sign of good-bye. We knew that the evacuation was coming. Berlin was to be emptied of as many civilians as possible. On the train home, Father told me that my future was now in my own hands.
The first days in Berlin entailed a good-bye visit to my maternal grandparents, who had decided to return to Sweden. Their Swedish passports with the three crowns on the cover lay on the dining room table. Packed bags and my grandparents’ travel fever made me a little foreign with them. “When we’ve won, you’re coming back of course” were my last words. Grandpa nodded, but Grandma started to cry and said, “The poor little naïve girl”, whatever she meant with that.
My paternal grandparents across the street were also in the process of leaving. Their destination was eastwards to Gnesen in the liberated corridor, where they had their relatives. Everything was in break-up mode, even at our place.
A Definite Farewell to Family Life
Even us others, Mother, brother, and I, now left Berlin. The train chugged away. A long journey eastward to East Prussia was our goal. It was still summer and the landscape displayed itself in the fairest of colours. We passed by fields that had recently been harvested, through Brandenburg, Mecklenburg, Pommerania, West Prussia, and our destination station East Prussia, which is the province where my paternal grandmother was born. All these places showed themselves with sunshine and warmth. They reminded me a lot of the Swedish landscape.
I do not remember much about East Prussia during those two weeks during which we stayed with a school teacher who was also a bee keeper. His passion for sitting in the garden at mealtime made these into a nightmare for me. The bees were everywhere and I got stung many a time. But our stay there was, as I said, short because Friede Keller in Kruschdorf by Bromberg invited us to rent half of her house.
We of course took her up on her offer, for there we could live more like a family and we were closer to Berlin, to which Mother returned every so often to pick up household items. I went with her once. While working on this book I found a letter amongst my archived things that I had written to my maternal grandparents during one such visit to Berlin. I got the letter back as inherited goods from my maternal grandparents. I quote: “This week in Whitsun (May, 1944) I went with Mother to Berlin.”
When I saw Berlin again I felt a powerless rage. These bloody
English and American marauders! Residential area after residential area were their targets. Not even hospitals were spared their bombings. I wondered why we did not do the same to the enemies’ cities. We Germans are way too respectable. Fight terror with terror, because respectability is nothing that will bring about the fall of the English and Americans.
Some of the National Socialist honesty and respectfulness can be seen on an envelope I have saved. It was clearly stated that our letters were opened. No “democratic secrecy” here, which is the SÄPO1 method à la Sweden, that about a year or two ago made the mistake of forgetting to put back a checked page of a letter to my husband. But that is another story.
11 SÄPO, Säkerhetspolisen, is the secret police of Sweden.
Late summer, 1943. Departure fot East Prussia. In the window of the door to the train, in the back row, one can see from the left Vera, Folke, and their mother Greta Shimanski.
Easter Lilies
In Germany, Christmas is a little calmer than the extravagance of the Christmas holiday in Sweden. On the other hand, Easter is a much bigger holiday. Germans look forward to Easter like Swedes look forward to Christmas. In Germany, Easter is called Ostern. At Ostern the Germanic goddess Ostara comes and drives away the winter. On Easter morning presents are hidden and Easter eggs are filled with candy that the “Easter bunny” has come with.
In the apartment buildings in the city one looked for these treats behind bookcases and cabinets, while out in the country one looked for these in the garden. Older siblings found the most imaginative hiding places and parents hid gifts to one another. Easter eggs were painted (during the war one gladly took the brittle shells and filled them with flowers to decorate the Easter table). In schools, before Easter break, drawings and paintings were made with Easter motifs.
When the Flagpoles Bloomed Page 9