Under and Up Again

by Edith Noordewier Foley

  32

  The radio, the only source of news in my aunt’s house, is being listened to with attention. I remember Vati’s map in the guest bathroom on which he followed the Russian war with a pen. At this home, we have to follow the war in our minds seeing the map of Europe. I am nervously listening. The news is not that positive any longer; although the activities are negative at the German front, the news still tries to make all positive, with plans of action that will glorify the German cause.

  The Allied planes discharge strips of aluminum to confuse the German radar, I learn later. They make a whistling sound descending to earth.

  We children gather them and weave them together for decorations. Leaflets with terrible pictures of German atrocities, also dropped by the Allied planes, frighten us. I see one of them and, if I remember correctly, they must have been pictures of tortures in German concentration camps. We do not understand. No way would anybody do such terrible things to another human being. We are told they are American propaganda and to not pay any attention to them.

  I was shot at by a fighter plane when bicycling back to Kartzow. I was able to jump into a dugout along the road.

  I hear a plane fly over, making a different sound. I can distinguish American plane engines from British planes, but this is totally different. I look up to see where the plane is in the sky but cannot spot it. This happens a few times and then I suddenly discover that the plane is way ahead of its sound. A German plane. Amazing. In this confused time, not having a father to clarify the upcoming questions, I keep quiet. Nobody mentions it. I know now that this was the first jet plane ever.

  Now the time has come when we listened carefully to the news. The German front, although retreating, is still hailed as being in good shape and not to worry about a thing—Germany cannot be defeated, it is too strong, thanks to the strength of the German people. This kind of news stays on, deep into the last days of Germany. The reality is, however, frightening. I see Ina and Horst and their families driven away in a German Army truck. My heart is sinking and I feel that what lies ahead is darkly threatening.

  We pay attention to where the Allied troops are and where the Russians are. Then we hear for the first time cannons to the west. That must be the Americans, and we breathe a sigh of relief. But then, no more advance. The cannon sounds quiet down, and there is nothing. The question comes up: should we walk to the west where the Americans are? Considering the practical aspects of food, money, and lodging is a painful process. What to do? This is the worst part of this time of the war. As civilians, we know absolutely nothing. All communications are down. Mutti chooses to stay with her sister and her husband, her family, providing some support, she hopes.

  I must escape the reality of the looming danger. I take a walk into the far end of the castle garden and discover five giant fir trees growing in a circle; their branches reach the ground forming a chamber. I push the branches aside and enter; the stillness, the pungent smell of the trees envelop me, and the softness of the pine-needle carpet make me lie down and look up into the height of the trees. The stems, so old and strong, give me the feeling of security and the continuation of time. This is my temple; I feel the strength of nature, possibly God. I go here often.

  Looking beyond this part of the park, I find bushes with purple elderberries hanging in ample fullness from their branches. I gorge myself with their sweetness, wondering about their generous gifts to me.

  I am standing outside. There is an eerie stillness. The noise of the engines of hundreds of bombers in the sky making the earth vibrate, the howling and then the explosions of their giant bombs—that has curiously stopped. The cannons in the west are not heard any longer. The radio broadcasts, our only source of information at this time, have stopped. I feel a bottomless, cold emptiness inside me.

  Behind the wall of some buildings, a few children are standing around. They know me. I suggest we play a children’s game, something sweet and happy. And that is what we do, holding hands and singing. It is as if the world has stopped. I do not want to think. I want this moment to go on forever.

  33

  Then the sound of heavy trucks. We look and see American-style trucks, but they are the Russian army. Soldiers on foot are behind them. They look very foreign, and they no longer have boots on, only rags around their feet. They have marched continuously from Frankfurt/Oder around Berlin, creating a wide circle around the city. Soldiers with rifles are knocking on our doors looking for German troops. There are none; there never were any. The soldiers are like something out of a play, so foreign and macho, with tight belts around their waists and expressions of hatred on their faces. We have the paper with the Swedish flag and a big stamp on it, which, when shown, seems to help. Not that the soldiers know how to read, I think, but the stamp does its work, and they leave, letting us alone.

  Then on the road that leads along the village, German Red Cross trucks appear and drive on to the west. Then people with carts and their few belongings follow.

  There is no end in sight of this pilgrimage. They are evacuating Berlin, hoping to make it to the halted Allied front at the river Elbe. However, Russian fighter planes suddenly appear and methodically shoot the whole trek. The Red Cross sign makes no difference to them. When all is stopped and killed, they fly on. The road is piled high with corpses. The men of the village decide that they have to bury as many dead as possible. Wounded are carried into the castle. There is no medical help, and their screams are heard through the night.

  A few people from as far as East Prussia—Königsberg—are alive and find shelter in the castle. They have made it to our village and no further.

  Mutti has our suitcases in a cellar to try to protect just a few of our things. We discover that we have been robbed. All our jewelry is gone. Still, today, I look for the beautiful things I received from my Dutch relatives at my baptism. It hurts deeply. Are we not all in the same boat at this time?

  We go back to the castle where we had made our home in the servants’ quarters with things we had been able to rescue from the bombings in Berlin. We could not enter our rooms. They had been trashed and used as toilets. I feel brave, go behind the castle, and find that the valuables stored in a great room by the families who lived there are strewn all over the lawn. I rescue some small leather-bound books by Schiller. It just is not right to leave them there. For whom? There are bloodied hand-embroidered linens, just lying on the ground, forgotten. Mutti gets hold of some of them. We see our civilization trampled into the dirt.

  34

  We huddle in Tanta Frieda’s house, sleeping there too. Russian soldiers are coming through the house, probably not looking for German troops any longer, but for what they consider to be treasures, watches mostly—and women. I am now fifteen and need to be hidden from the brutal raping of women that is going on. I sit at the table in the kitchen, making myself small by shrinking as deeply as possible into a chair between a wall and the table. I still have long hair in stresses, which, when braided close to my face, make me look much younger, I hope.

  One day, new trucks roll into the village. A knock on the door, and it is explained that Tante Frieda’s living room, which has a door to the outside, is claimed and outfitted as a dispensary because the chateau is now a hospital. The pharmacist, also a high-ranking officer, introduces himself with a wide smile of gold teeth. He is from Uzbekistan, he tells us, and has Mongolian features with the fuzzy black hair typical for them. We are somewhat relieved because this means protection from roaming soldiers, although we are not familiar with Mongolian habits. The pharmacist likes to socialize. He comes into the kitchen and offers us vodka and sausages and enjoys our company, not knowing much German, but smiling broadly. The vodka is drunk out of a full water glass in one hand, and a smoked fat sausage held in the other. He tries to communicate and proudly tells us about his son. He has a pharmacy, he tells us, and wishes to buy me from my mother as a wife for his son. We are c
oncerned.

  Not long after that, the pharmacy and the hospital are closing down, and their employees leave.

  Again, the uncertainty of our existence—what comes next? More Russian troops, this time regular white soldiers, are occupying the area. The raping is starting up again. I look out of a back window of Tante Frieda’s bathroom; I have the stairs of the castle in view in the distance. There is a melee of two or three people; then a shot rings out. The daughter of the schoolmaster has been killed, refusing the advances of a soldier.

  There is a high-ranking officer part of the troops who tries to keep order. We carefully venture out again. The Russians are now working the farm part of the chateau.

  Walking through the village, I hear happy music coming from the local café. The Russians are playing their instruments and singing. That is so remarkable that I am drawn to the happy sound. The soldiers are dancing, and suddenly, a young fellow grabs me and we are dancing! The whole occurrence is unbelievable, a hole in the world of horror. It was a realization that this person, too, was away from his home and his normal life—a moment of understanding and joy, each of us dancing wildly a Russian folk dance.

  35

  Mutti is not feeling well. A truck arrives, and she is loaded on the truck bed. Tante Frieda’s house gets a one-foot-wide white stripe painted around it—the international sign of quarantine. Cholera is ransacking the population. We are not allowed out of the house, nor is anyone allowed in. We have no idea where Mutti was taken nor whether she is still alive. Some relatives are trying to find their kin by walking to the nearest hospitals. Some are raped and killed. All we can do is wait. As soon as the quarantine is lifted, we hear that Mutti is in Potsdam, in a hospital. Of course, there is no food, no care there. So I decide to take food to Mutti. A backpack is prepared with foodstuffs. I try to disguise myself, putting on leather shoes much too big for me, old nonconforming clothes, do the thing again with my hair and shuffle off to Potsdam. This means that I have to defend myself to the death if accosted. I arrive at the hospital. Mutti is unapproachable because of the cholera. I sit awhile on a stoop and acquaint myself with the situation. When the right moment arrives with nobody around, I run into Mutti’s room and hide the food under her blanket, then run out as fast as I can. I have no idea of the distance from the village where we live to Potsdam; remember, this distance when going to school was covered by bicycle and then by bus. I do this once a week, round-trip in a day. This put something in my life that never left me: the resolve not to die, the hatred of the thought of what could happen to me. Much later, when connected with Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Dr. Livingstone was researching whether once this steeliness has been tapped, would it ever go back to normal? He thought not; once the rubber band has been stretched to its utmost, it will never return to its resting form, he concluded. I know.

  Life in the village takes on a sort of normalcy under the occupation of the Russian troops who have taken over the running of the estate, something not easily done because they do not speak German, and of course, there are many misunderstandings. The trick is to get food. Working for the Russians at the farm is one way of getting grain, this as payment for working at the farm. Mutti survived, is back, and gets the job of shearing sheep. For years she had the impression of an angry sheep’s hoof on her leg.

  36

  It had been decided that I should return to Berlin, not to our house, but to the apartment of Hilde and her mother.

  Hilde—well, how long do I know her? It seems forever. She was in the same class in the Volksschhule when we started at age six, and slipped with me into the lyceum. We hung out together and had great fun together, enjoying the same activities. We ran much, especially up the stairs in our respective apartments with which we had trouble because we found everything so funny that we doubled up with laughter. A definite handicap, we tried to beat the elevator.

  Hilde had a friendly family, Tante Elfriede and Onkel Walter. They visited often. They were seated around the dining table in the afternoon, for the traditional coffee and cakes with the rest of the family. They were pleasant, and they seemed to enjoy themselves with a lighthearted way of talking. Hilde’s mother was somewhat fragile and more reserved. Hilde’s grandmother was usually seated near their balcony door with a view of the park and its lake. She knitted much, and Hilde had the prettiest outfits. One was a red skirt with a multicolored attached vest, which I especially admired.

  And then back to the lyceum. Our school building was still standing and we had the same teachers.

  Hilde had a clear intelligence. I was so grateful for her helping me with algebra—a hopeless undertaking for me because I tried to approach algebra with mystical reasoning.

  The day after the war ended, Hilde’s father was shot and killed by a Russian soldier. A professor at a boy’s college, he had decided to go and have a look at the college.

  To survive, we ate weeds and boiled acorns for protein. Mutti supplied grains in which worms had started their lives, but cooked; after the first-time gagging, we ate all.

  We attended school again. Charlottenburg. This area of Berlin was under the British occupation. We felt fortunate. The city felt safe, and we walked to our school without fear. I do not remember where I slept in Hilde’s apartment, only that her grandmother had died and there were no services for funerals. She definitely stayed too long with us.

  Later in 1946, when I had left Berlin and was in boarding school in the Netherlands, Mutti and Hilde and her mother stayed close. That was good to know. Hilde was totally reliable.

  On my visit from the States to Mutti and Micaela in Berlin in 1985, I visited Hilde, who by now had become a nurse at a religious order. She was dressed in a starched white uniform. The Johannesstift. Later, Hilde started to travel, and we visited with each other in Washington. Then she married Mr. Schulze, who unfortunately did not live for long. I did not understand, but shortly after Hilde married, her mother hanged herself. Now Hilde and I talk on the telephone. She still feels close to my family, calling my sister once in a while. Two years ago, when traveling in Europe extensively, I included a visit with Hilde. She looked at my travel plans and decided we should meet in Stuttgart. That would mean midway between my Amsterdam to Bad Salzuflen train trip. All I had to do was to get off my train and stay a few hours with her in Stuttgart and board later in the day to go on to Bad Salzuflen. She was coming from the north of Germany to meet me. Well, wouldn’t you know, she had arrived a few hours earlier and had arranged a sightseeing trip and then some time in a Konditorei where we took up the thread and comfortably enjoyed each other’s company just as when we were back in the old days. This kind of warm togetherness can only be enjoyed when one has been through a rough time together. For this kind of togetherness, I am very grateful.

  37

  Mutti and Micaela left the village and the aunt and uncle, and we moved back into our home, the apartment in Berlin. It had survived the fighting, except a grenade from a Russian tank had hit the children’s room and produced a gaping hole. We closed all the doors to that room, and since central heat was of course not functioning since nothing was functioning, Mutti obtained an iron stove. The pipe led through a window where the glass had been removed and replaced by a metal plate to let the pipe go through. Where to find fuel? We found out that the famous Grunewald, a forest by the lakes near Berlin, was providing wood. But you had to cut down your own tree and bring it home. I have no idea where Mutti got the tools and the cart, but off we went walking, probably at least seven miles to get to the woods. The tree was sawed and felled and sawed into pieces again. Yes, Mutti and I did that and then we loaded the cart and wheeled it back. We had wood, and at night, the featherbeds and hot-water bottles kept us warm. Mutti went back to the village where Aunt Frieda was supplying us with vegetables and eggs. Since asparagus was a luxury, we sold it at a high price just knocking on doors of our city-dweller neighbors, who were very grateful. Th
e black market was the only source of edible and inedible things. Mutti was able to exchange a beautiful Persian rug for a pound of butter. We existed from one day to the next. People were desperate, living in and on a pile of rubble and nothing to eat. I went to school and noticed women in the streets picking up stone rubble and trying to put it aside in some kind of order. Life in the streets was dangerous. We children were told to walk in groups and not to use the underpasses.

  One of my schoolmates disappeared.

  The word was that human flesh was sold on the black market.

  38

  Vati’s son, Hein, and his family had come back to the Netherlands after he and his family had been incarcerated in the Dutch East Indies by the Japanese. He had been forced to work on the infamous Burma railroad, later made known by the movie A Bridge on the River Kwai. He contacted Mutti and offered to make arrangements for me to come to the Netherlands. It is 1945, and I am fifteen years old. The decision was difficult for us. But it meant help for Mutti and a possible future for me in my homeland. There was no public transportation. The Dutch consul, Mr. Millenaar, again pulled strings.

  I remember a difficult farewell from Mutti and Micaela. I stepped into a Red Cross ambulance with a few others. We were told not to talk and be totally still when reaching the Russian border outside Berlin since this transport of civilians was, of course, illegal to the Russians. At the last moment, a child not much older than two years was pressed into my arms. When the time came about an hour and a half later, at the Russian border, we were dead silent; our lives depended on it. Suddenly, the child began to cry. I had to hold its mouth shut. We made it through. When I arrived in the Netherlands, I was dropped off at the house of Vati’s friends near Hengelo. They owned a resort called the “Waarbeek.” They were the friends who had helped to smuggle Jewish artworks out of Berlin to the Netherlands. I knew them; it was an extensive family, everyone working at the different aspect of the place. Mutti, Micaela and I had visited there in 1941 after Vati had died, and we needed to be in touch with the family. I was making myself useful then; it was summer and I sold ice cream from a small white booth. Now I helped out by polishing all their brass objects, and there were many. I was taught that once the polish is removed, one has to continue rubbing until no more black is found on the polishing cloth. Dutch homes treasure their many brass objects. They are large and are mostly found around the fireplace, buckets for wood and kettles on stands to boil water for tea.