Breadcrumbs and Bombs

by Susan Finlay

  When they all dressed, Christa felt new again, almost like a new foal being born. She wore a flowered dress, long socks, a pair of black shoes, and a coat. They were directed to leave the area, and they returned to the main lobby, where they waited for the boys. Ernst had taken the baby with him, while Fritz had agreed to care for Andreas.

  It took them a while, but finally Christa spotted the four boys, heading toward Christa and Mutti.

  “You look human again,” Ernst said to Christa, poking her in the side, a smile appearing on his face.

  “You do, too,” she said.

  They waited, soon noticing others with new clothes beginning to leave the building. Mutti led them outside into the cool night air, then suddenly screamed.

  “What is wrong?” Christa asked.

  “Our clothes. Our coats. They have our money and jewels sewn inside.” Mutti hurried back into the building to where they’d started earlier, the kids all following her as if they were tied together by a rope. Christa didn’t dare get separated from her in this huge crowd.

  Mutti tried to go back through the line to get to the shower area, with all the kids tagging along, but a guard stopped her. She tried to tell him she needed her old clothes, but he told her that wasn’t possible.

  “But we have no money now,” Mutti said. “How are we to live?”

  “Each person will get a small stipend and fresh identity cards,” the man said. “Over there, you must finish your registration before you leave. Someone will also help you with resettlement.”

  Mutti’s tension, visible in the tight creases on her forehead, seemed to disappear suddenly. “Oh, danke. Danke. I thought we were finished already. I guess we missed that section.” She turned around and looked in the direction the man had pointed. “I do not see where we are to go, do you?”

  “Over there,” Christa said. “See that sign and the long line of people?”

  “Ja. Danke.”

  They hurried over to the line and secured their spots, waiting for their turns. Finally, they stood in front of a table with boxes of papers and a woman wearing a suit and eyeglasses.

  “Names.”

  Mutti gave her their names.”

  “It’ll be a few minutes,” the woman said. She reached over to the boxes and began looking through the papers, until she pulled out seven papers. She folded each paper and handed them to Mutti.

  Mutti thanked her, and waited.

  “Can I help you with something else?”

  “Ja. The man at the first station told us we would each get fresh identity cards and money, and that someone would help us with resettlement.”

  “You have the identity cards. I just gave them to you. Oh, wait, you are right, I forgot the money. Just a moment.” She got up and went to a desk behind her and talked to another woman. The other woman gave her some envelopes, and the woman in the suit returned.

  “Here you are,” she said, handing the envelopes to Mutti. “A small amount per person to help get you started.

  Mutti opened each of the envelopes and counted the cash and the number of envelopes. “Danke. We are very grateful.”

  The woman nodded.

  Christa said, “What about someone to help us with resettlement?”

  “I’m sorry, but we are overwhelmed by the number of refugees coming in. We don’t have enough people to help everyone at this time. Perhaps if you can come back in a week or two . . . .”

  She didn’t finish, but looked at the next people in line, clearly dismissing Christa’s family.

  They walked outside, Christa wondering where they would go. Mutti led them back over the bridge toward the train station. On the train platform, Christa spied the train schedule. That’s when Christa saw the name of the city they were in: Fürth im Wald.

  She told Mutti the name. “Do you know the city?” Christa asked.

  Mutti shook her head.

  “Where should we go? And do we have enough money to take a train?”

  “I do not know what we should do.”

  Someone lurched into Mutti and yanked off her coat, running away with it and with their money and identity cards. Mutti screamed and tried to run after the thief but tripped and fell.

  Christa rushed over to help her mother. By the time she reached her, Mutti was getting up, motioning for Christa to catch the thief. She rushed up the stairs, her breath coming in ragged waves, but kept going. The man was elderly, she was sure. She’d caught a brief look at him.

  At the top of the stairs, she stopped a moment to assess which way he’d gone. There—he was trying to cross a bridge, but a string of trucks and cars and people blocked the route.

  She rushed forward and crashed into him, both of them tumbling onto the ground.

  Someone came up behind her and bent down. “Are you all right, Christa?”

  She looked over her shoulder. “Petr. I am happy to see you. This man stole Mutti’s coat and our money and papers.”

  Petr reached down and grabbed the man, motioning for Christa to stand. He turned the man over, and Christa grabbed the coat and checked the pockets. She pulled out the papers and the envelopes, making sure the money was inside, and nodded to Petr.

  Petr yanked the man up and shoved him into the crowd.

  “Where is your family?” he asked, rubbing his hands together, blowing on them to warm them up. That’s when she realized how chilly it was getting outside.

  “Back at the train station,” she said. “We have no idea where to go or what to do.”

  “Take me to them and then we can talk, ja?”

  She nodded and led him back down the stairs to the train platform.

  Petr Jaroslav, July 1945, Germany—

  “WHERE DID YOU live before you moved to the Sudetenland,” Petr asked Hanna. They were seated on a bench on the train platform. The children were all standing with hands in their coat pockets, trying to stay warm.

  “Nein, we always lived in the Sudetenland,” Hanna said. “I was born there. My husband was, too. And my parents and grandparents, and his. I came from another small town near Altstadt, where we lived before the expulsion.”

  “You mean you have never lived in Germany?”

  “That is right.”

  “I thought . . . never mind. Your whole family is ethnic German, but lived in my country.”

  “Actually, my mother’s family was not German at all. They were Czech.”

  “Really? Then that makes you half Czech. Why did you get expelled?”

  “I am married to a German. Was it not that way when the Jews were rounded up? If an Aryan person was married to a Jew, that person was taken away, too, isn’t that right?”

  “I believe so,” Petr said, his brain trying to make sense of it all. “Have you ever even been to Germany before?”

  “Nein.”

  “You do not have any relatives here?”

  She didn’t answer right away.

  He glanced at her, wondering what was going on.

  “I may have family here,” she said. “My parents and my sister and her family moved to Bavaria twelve or thirteen years ago. I have lost count. It has been years since I have heard from them.” She shrugged her shoulders, continuing, “They may have been killed during the war, for all I know.”

  “That is good, Hanna. That you may have family here, I mean. They could be the answer. Where do they live? Do you have an address?”

  She shrugged again. “I have nothing, because the soldiers took everything from us. All I have is what is in my head, and I have been trying to remember where my relatives went. I know it was somewhere near Augsburg.”

  “All right, that is a start. I will check the train schedule and find out when the next train to Augsburg leaves.” He strode over to the ticket counter and made inquiries. After obtaining the train schedule he said, “Do you have a map I can buy? A map of Bavaria?”

  The man pulled one out from behind him and handed it to Petr, who then paid him.

  Petr returned to the bench.
“The next passenger train to Augsburg leaves in the morning. We should go someplace warm where we can rest until then.”

  “Where can we go?” Fritz asked, his teeth chattering.

  “Perhaps the building where you got registered,” Petr said. “We should check there first, ja?”

  Hanna nodded.

  They had to fight their way through throngs of immigrants departing the government building, but they finally made it. Inside, they found many people sitting on the floor, or lying down, apparently all with the same idea.

  Petr, Hanna, and the kids assumed places near one another and soon were fast asleep.

  In the morning, Petr opened his map, studying it. The train journey would take a while, but it seemed like Augsburg was a much larger city than Fürth. It made sense to go in that direction.

  Hanna glanced over his shoulder.

  “Do you think you might recognize the name of the city where you have relatives, if you saw it on the map?”

  “Possibly.”

  He placed the map on her lap. “We are here,” he said, pointing to Fürth im Wald, “and here is Augsburg. Look around and see if any names jump out at you.”

  After several minutes, she said, “Here, this one. Memmingen.”

  Petr grinned. “That is very good. We will try there, first. It is a bit further, but could save us some time, if we find them there.”

  “We? You are going with us?” she asked.

  He hesitated, unsure of when he’d made his decision and whether it was the right one.

  “I will unless you would rather I did not.”

  “Why? Why would you go with us? What about your job back in the Sudetenland?”

  “I have no family left in the CSR.” He ran his hand through his hair, trying to stall while he searched for the right words. “I was a Resistance fighter during the war. I thought I knew who the enemy was and who the allies were. Now, I am confused and I am appalled at what my own countrymen have done to the ethnic Germans. I may be the only Czech person who feels that way, or at least one of the few, and that makes me an outsider. There is no reason for me to go back.”

  “What do you want from us?” Hanna said, wringing her hands together. “Some kind of payment for your help?”

  “Certainly not,” Petr said, feeling a bit hurt. Again he hesitated as he tried to put his thoughts together. “I never expected to say this. I do not believe revenge against a whole race or religion or nation because of what some in that nation did, is good. People should be judged on what they themselves do, and not on what their countrymen have done. Does that make sense?”

  “Ja. I feel the same.”

  Petr took a deep breath, and let it out. “None of this is easy for me. I am a bit of a loner, I guess. But I have come to know your family and see a lot of my family in yours. That makes me feel responsible. I just want to help you.”

  Hanna looked at him, tears forming, then looked away and wept, burying her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking.

  “What is wrong, Mutti?” Christa asked, leaning forward to touch her mother’s shoulder.

  “Nothing, little one,” she said, lifting her head. “I am just grateful that someone is showing us such overwhelming kindness, is all. It has been far too long since anyone has been this good to us.”

  Ilse Seidel, July 1945, Memmingen, Germany—

  SOMEONE KNOCKED ON the front door. Mutter said, “Will you get that, Ilse? I cannot imagine who it could be, coming at dinnertime.” Ilse left the kitchen and shook her head, smiling, remembering the day Mutter had arrived, unannounced and at dinnertime, in Biberach. She wiped her hands on her apron and opened the door. “Uh, hello, how can I help you?”

  “Is . . . is this the Seidel household?” a woman asked. Something about her seemed vaguely familiar, though Ilse had no idea why.

  “Ja.” Ilse glanced behind the woman and took in a group of waifs and a teenage boy, all standing on the steps or on the sidewalk at the bottom of the stairs.

  “I am Hanna Nagel, Maria Seidel’s sister. Is . . . is she here, or our parents, Klauss and Anna Fischer?”

  Relatives? It couldn’t be, could it, after all this time? Ilse put her hand on her neck, feeling her muscle throb under her thumb. “Uh, a moment, I will get them.” She closed the door without thinking, turned, and rushed into the kitchen, then braced her back against a wall.

  “What is wrong, Ilse? You look like you have seen a ghost.”

  “The knock at the door. She says she is your sister. From the Sudetenland.”

  Mutter dropped the rolling pin onto the floor and grabbed hold of the counter top’s edge for support. “Are you sure?”

  “I thought she looked vaguely familiar but did not know why. But I think it is her. The brown eyes. She looks like you and Oma.”

  Mutter took off running to the front door, pulled it open, looked, then pulled her sister into a tight hug. “I thought you were dead. How did you get here?”

  “It is a long, horrible story. I will tell you about it, if you really want to know, but it will churn your stomach.”

  “Is that … Hanna?” Oma said, pushing her way past Ilse. “Oh, mein Gott. Oh, mein Gott it is you. Oh …my darling girl, I have … been so worried,” Oma began sobbing, tears streaming down her face.

  “Mutter,” Hanna said, flinging herself into Oma’s arms.

  Opa, Robert, and Ursula came bounding down the stairs. “What’s going on?” Ursula asked, getting to the door first.

  Mutter made the introductions. Then she stuck her head outside and gasped. “Who are all these people?”

  “My family, and the young man who helped us while we were in the internment camp and later, when we arrived in Germany. He’s our friend.”

  Mutter held the door open, and said, “Come inside. All of you.” She motioned with her hand for her own family to move aside and let the newcomers inside. “Please sit.”

  “Ilse, please run to the shops and see if you can get more food for your aunt’s family,” Mutter said. “We do not have enough dinner for all of us.” She pulled out some money from her skirt pocket and handed it to Ilse.

  “That is not necessary,” Aunt Hanna said. “We ate on the train on our way here. Please, don’t go to any trouble.”

  It felt strange thinking of Hanna as an aunt. Ilse had never met her before, at least not that she remembered.

  “Nonsense. That was probably hours ago,” Mutter said. “Besides, you all look like skin and bones. We will get more food. It is not so hard these days. New shipments of food come in regularly now.”

  “Danke,” Aunt Hanna said. She introduced her family to everyone before Ilse left. “And this is Petr Jaroslav. He is a Czech Resistance fighter who rescued us many times when we were prisoners at Theresienstadt.”

  “That is a concentration camp,” Opa said. “What were you doing there?”

  “They turned it into an internment camp for refugees—us ethnic Germans who were being expelled after the war.”

  “Mein Gott,” Opa said. “I have heard terrible things about that place.”

  Oma walked over to Petr and took hold of his hands, looking into his eyes. She said something to him in her native Czech, and he smiled and answered her in Czech. She patted him on the cheek, smiled, and walked back over to stand next to Opa.

  “Go now, Ilse,” Mutter said. “See if you can find something that we can make quickly.”

  “All right.” She headed for the door, and reached out to open it.

  “Do you mind if I go with you?”

  She turned toward the voice. It was Petr. She gave him a half smile and nodded. Together, they strolled down the street and into the Markplatz.

  “This is a beautiful city,” Petr said. “Much destruction, but amazingly, many of the buildings look unscathed.”

  “It is the loveliest part of town, and the most popular, too. I still remember how it looked before the war, back before the bombs. You might not know it, but this—what you are seeing now
—is after months of clean-up. Workers are now starting to rebuild the crumbled buildings,” Ilse said.

  “You would not believe the devastation in Prague. This,” he said, waving his arms, “is bad, but nothing compared to there. There is nothing left to rebuild in some places. My family’s former home, our whole neighborhood—gone.”

  “I am sorry. I didn’t realize your land was bombed heavily, too.”

  Some of Memmingen’s old town had been destroyed during the bombing raids. Ilse had read in the newspaper that Memmingen’s air raid alarm had gone off more than four hundred time in the last year of a half of the war. The last major bombing on April 9th, 1945, had levelled most of the southern part of town, even though the German air base in that area was no longer operable.

  Even after the Americans had arrived, it had taken time to begin repairs. Looting and chaos ensued for weeks.

  “Do you think I did the right thing, bringing your aunt and her children to Memmingen?” Petr asked. “I worry that it will be a hardship for your family.”

  “They have no other place to go, do they?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then you did the right thing.” How they would ever fit all those people into their house, she didn’t know, but she was happy to have their family here. It also helped, Ilse confessed to herself, that they’d brought this fine looking man, one who didn’t wear either a German or American uniform to remind her of all she’d lost.

  Petr stayed in the family’s cellar for a few days. He kept insisting that he didn’t want to be a burden, but everyone shushed him and said that he was welcome. They owed him a great debt.

  Over the next few weeks, Christa, Ernst, Fritz, and Julia began going to school with Robert and Ursula, and seemed to be settling in well. Ilse rarely got to see them, because she worked full time in an office in a newspaper company.

  Within the first couple of days of their arrival, Ilse had advised Petr, who had decided he wanted to stay in Memmingen, about a help wanted ad that had recently gone into the newspaper. The factory desperately needed workers.

  Petr had interviewed and got the job, a good job, according to him. She also found him a small apartment down the street from the factory, because he said he couldn’t stay at her family’s house much longer. The house, including the cellar, he laughed, was ready to burst at the seams.