As I sat on the floor with my few belongings beside me and my family members around me, my thoughts went back to the Kohls. I also wondered about my friend Gretchen and the Zimmermanns in Weissbach. What was happening there? And how about our relatives in and near Berlin? Had they survived? And what about my dad? It was now May, and we had last received a letter from him in January. We had no idea where he was, and likewise, he did not know our whereabouts. I would turn sixteen in a few months provided we were still alive. Where could Mutti and I go? We had no home to return to and we had lost almost all our belongings. And then I looked at my two cousins, ten-year-old Gerhard and eight-year-old Gunther. They had not eaten any food for quite a while; how could these two children grow and stay healthy? “Well, we have made it this far,” I thought. Circumstances surely could not get worse than they were already.
The train slowly crossed the border; we had left the Sudetenland and were back in Germany. We had moved to Weissbach on the tenth of August in 1943, and we had come to consider it our home. Now, in May 1945, we had to leave our home once again.
The train stopped at a small railroad station. Russian soldiers told us to get off the train, which would return to Aussig to collect more refugees. The soldiers ordered us to get into another freight train on another track. This train was much longer than the train we just left and much longer than the platform. Thinking it would be more quiet and peaceful away from the station, we walked to the end of the train.
Evening came and the train had not moved. Lots of people had arrived and gotten on the train, but none of them came to join our car. The eight of us had the whole car to ourselves, so we used our small amount of baggage as pillows and settled down for what we hoped would be a restful night.
The night was anything but quiet and peaceful. We kept hearing screams and guns being fired. When the sliding door of our freight car was pushed open, two Russian soldiers climbed up and came walking towards us. They pointed their rifles at us and motioned for us to stand. One of them looked through our belongings, putting some into his pockets, while the other one pulled Aunt Erna a few feet away from us and raped her. After a few minutes the two Russian soldiers switched places.
When the two Russian soldiers left, we decided to get out of the isolated freight car and find a more protected spot. We walked to the small platform and sat down among hundreds of other refugees crowding the area. Through the crowds, we noticed the two soldiers, the thieves and rapists, circling around us, watching us closely. When they walked away for a few minutes, Uncle Hermann spoke to the commandant, the high-ranking Russian officer in charge of the railroad station and the trains. He told him what had happened to us, but the commandant, who spoke German, told Uncle Hermann there was nothing he could do to protect us from further harm. He suggested that we should try to get on the freight train that was filled with German soldiers being transported by the Russians to a prisoner-of-war camp. The train was parked outside the station, and Uncle Hermann went to investigate the idea. It was possible. The two soldiers had not returned when he came back to get us, so we made our move very quickly.
When we got to the prisoners’ train we had to split into three groups since the cars were already overcrowded. Among the prisoners were some officers who had served with the Red Cross and they were now trying to help us.
Mutti and I were placed in the first car, Oma and Aunt Erna in the second, and Uncle Hermann and his family in the third. Our car was so crowded, there was hardly enough room for all the prisoners to lie down, but they squeezed Mutti ·and me into one corner.
It was a long train and each car was guarded by a Russian soldier. Before the train could move, each soldier would check his car, close the huge sliding door, and climb the outside ladder at the end of the car. From there, each one of them had to fire his rifle, indicating all was under control in the car assigned to him. It was a long train, and it stopped quite often; all the shooting did rattle our nerves, as well as those of the prisoners. Sometimes the soldiers allowed us to disembark the train when it stopped, which gave us a chance to see our family members briefly and to establish that all were well.
The German Red Cross officer who was in our car spoke some Russian, and if our Russian guard had any questions, he would talk to the German officer. At one point, the Russian asked the officer who Mutti and I were and what were we doing in car. He motioned to us, and asked the officer to tell us to come near the entrance of the car.
The Red Cross officer came to our corner and walked us to the door, his arms around each of us. He told the guard we were traveling with him, hoping that the Russian would assume we were his wife and daughter. The Russian told him it was no problem, he would allow us to stay, but there was something he wanted from us in return. He wanted my ski pants! When the officer explained that they were girl’s pants with an opening on the side, the Russian said he did not mind; he would just drop them when needed. Acting as an interpreter, the German officer explained to the soldier that my pants were filthy, since I had been wearing them for weeks, and that I had nothing else to wear. Neither was a problem for the Russian. He left and brought back a soldier’s pair of pants for me to wear, and he made me change. The pants he gave me were a bit too big, so he went and got me a piece of rope to use as a belt, and then he happily walked off with my ski pants. They had been the last souvenir I had from our life in Weissbach. It hurt so much losing one more possession, an item my mom had made for me with so much love. I sat down, trying not to cry while I was folding up the bottoms of my new pants, and a thought crossed my mind; at least this time the rope was around my waist holding up my pants and not around my neck.
We were able to continue moving along for a few more miles, with lots of’ stops and firing rifles, but then our ride came to an end. The soldiers emptied the train of all the prisoners, and after many more Russian guards joined them, they ordered the prisoners to walk away from the train and away from us. Once more we were on the road, but this time we had no idea where we were or in which direction we should walk.
Since nighttime was upon us, we had to obey the curfew, so we hid in fields not very far from the train tracks. It was a clear night, and when we looked up at the stars, I saw the Big Dipper, and I remembered Opa Kanter’s way to find the North Star. Now it indicated the direction that we needed to travel; we would head north to Berlin.
The next morning, we started walking on narrow dirt roads between fields of wheat and rye. After a short time we spotted a farmhouse with barns all around it. When we came close to it, we saw a young girl sitting at the end of the path to the house, and she invited us to go inside. Her mother had cooked soup for the refugees passing by. She said we might need something to eat through it was still very early in the morning. We could hardly believe it! Something to eat? We had not eaten anything for quite a few days and we now had an offer of something to eat? We went inside and found the farmer’s wife. She had built a fire under their huge copper laundry tub and had filled it with water, potatoes, carrots and string beans. The meal was a bit watery but to us it was the best meal we could imagine. She gave each of us a bowl and filled it with soup. Before we finished eating, more refugees had entered the laundry room, and when we left, a long line was already waiting outside. Uncle Hermann talked briefly to the farmer, who told him how we could get to roads that would allow us to travel north.
We left the fields when we reached a more traveled road, where we joined a continuous stream of people heading north – some elderly men and women, but mostly younger women with children or babies. We talked with the other refugees and learned that the best route would take us to a train station not too far away. Others had been told that a coal train would make a stop there once every day. We joined that group, hoping the train might take us north for a few miles.
We found the little terminal and sat down on the platform praying that we had not missed the train. We had not. The train arrived after a few hours. The freight cars were open on top and had been loaded with coal. We looked at each other, nobody saying a word although we recognized that we would be covered with coal dust. Not having to walk for however many miles the train would take us was worth it. After all, we already were covered with dirt, not having been able to wash for what seemed like an eternity.
Sitting on top of coal was not very comfortable, but we were a bit happier after we were able to ride the train for a few hours before we had to disembark at a small railroad station. None of us were familiar with the small railroad station, and we began to doubt that we had traveled in the right direction. Some German railroad workers who were at the station assured us that we were on course, and if we waited, we could take another train on the afternoon of the next day. In the meantime, the workers suggested that we stay overnight inside a school building not too far from the station. Curfew had to be observed, so we found our way to the school and spent the night with hundreds of other refugees, finally getting some rest.
In the morning, we all headed back to the terminal and sat together in groups on the platform. When would the train arrive? And where would it take us? No one knew, but no one really cared any more either. It would save us from walking some miles.
While we were waiting for the train, we saw a Russian officer and two soldiers come walking towards us. Along the way, the officer would point at a seated refugee and would motion for them to stand. When he came to us, he told Aunt Erna, my mom, and I to follow him. The soldiers assembled all the people, mostly women, into a group and led us off the platform.
We were following the soldiers, walking down the middle of narrow streets and around corners, when we saw women on the sidewalk just a few feet from us, carrying bags in both hands. They motioned for us to join them and indicated that they would hand us their bags, which would help us look like citizens of the small town. Mutti, Aunt Erna, and I were near the end of the procession, and when the soldiers rounded the next corner, Mutti and I joined the women on the sidewalk. We noticed that Aunt Erna and two other women had made it, too. With much joy and relief, we headed back to the station. But, when we walked around the corner and onto the platform, the Russian officer spotted us. He motioned for us to come to him, and when we tried to turn away, he pointed his pistol at us. Having no other choice, we walked towards him.
Soldiers were gathering another group of people at the station and placed us among them. This time we did not try to skip away from the rest of them. We stayed with the group, and the soldiers took us to tracks on the other side of the town. We saw lots of men and women on a low incline where train tracks were located, but we could not see what the people were doing. When the soldiers led us up the hill, they handed us huge, heavy crowbars, and ordered us to loosen the lug nuts holding down the railroad tracks. These nuts had been there for a long, long time. There was no way that one person could twist the crowbar alone; even with two of us turning it, it was almost impossible to loosen the lug nuts.
A group of German men was coming towards us. They had been instructed to collect the pieces of rail and form a pile. The soldiers had also ordered them to collect all the lug nuts; both would be sent to Russia. When the German men were working beside us, we talked with them. They told us that the Russian guards usually took the women to their barracks at the end of the day, and that we should try to escape. At the bottom of the incline to the tracks was a field of tall plants and weeds where we could hide. The men advised us to roll down the hill when the Russian guards were not watching us and were not near us. We could then crawl across the field on our stomachs. Their plan would work, but we would have to watch carefully for the right moment.
Since all the women were afraid of spending the night in barracks with the Russians, no one was patient to wait for her turn to try to escape. When a group of women dropped their tools and ran down the hill to hide among the weeds, the commotion alerted the Russian guards, and they started shooting into the field. Mutti had been one of the women who ran while Aunt Erna and I were working together on one crowbar. All we could think of was my mom. Had a bullet hit her while she was hiding in the field? Was she hurt; was she dead? Aunt Erna and I did not talk about it; we just kept working. There was more pressure on us now since the Russian soldiers were suspicious and were guarding us closely. They kept pushing us to work faster and harder and telling us we would be spending the night with them in their quarters.
In the early evening, a Russian officer walked towards us and spent quite a bit of time talking to the soldiers who had been guarding us. After his talk with them, he told us in German that the train we had waited for in the morning was now at the station, and we could leave if we wanted to try to return to the station before the train left.
All the women who were still working started running to the station. We ran faster than we ever had in our lives, faster than we thought we were capable of running. When we arrived at station, we ran past the last corner to the platform, and we saw the train. The engine was running and many people were standing outside on the platform or at open compartment doors, looking for their relatives. We spotted Uncle Hermann. When he saw us, he came towards us waving for us to hurry. Oma, Aunt Dora and my two cousins were already inside, and so was my mom. The train started moving slowly and Aunt Erna and I jumped inside, and Uncle Hermann jumped inside and closed the door. I hugged my mom, and then both Aunt Erna and I fainted. We did not wake up for many hours, but when we did, the train was still moving, and we could hardly believe that we all had survived and were still together.
My Father's Legacy 