The Road to Liberation: Trials and Triumphs of WWII

by Marion Kummerow

  “The ideology virus is still alive today and all far-right parties are exactly the same as the Nazis. They never switched rules. They use horrible phrases to influence young people and say that minorities steal jobs and space. Just like the Nazis did with the Jews. They find effective and silent ways to spread their hate to others. But now they are not just talking about Jews, now the target is much bigger.” (Rainer Höss)

  Just like Tadek’s, it is my hope that we’re still better than this and can eradicate the corrosive, hateful elements from our society and coexist peacefully together. Perhaps then the next generation won’t have to resent their fathers and grandfathers and be proud of them instead.

  Thank you so much for reading!

  The End

  Thank you for reading The Aftermath! Gerlinde’s story is over, but if you were intrigued by her idol, Margot von Steinhoff, who spied for the allies, or wonder how exactly Otto Neumann became involved with the Nazi Party, my newest series Metropolis will answer all of these questions!

  All of my books – links and book club questions included – can be found here on my website. You can also subscribe to my newsletter here:

  http://elliemidwood.com

  About the Author

  Ellie Midwood is a USA Today bestselling and award-winning historical fiction author. She owes her interest in the history of the Second World War to her grandfather, Junior Sergeant in the 2nd Guards Tank Army of the First Belorussian Front, who began telling her about his experiences on the frontline when she was a young girl. Growing up, her interest in history only deepened and transformed from reading about the war to writing about it. After obtaining her BA in Linguistics, Ellie decided to make writing her full-time career and began working on her first full-length historical novel, "The Girl from Berlin." Ellie is continuously enriching her library with new research material and feeds her passion for WWII and Holocaust history by collecting rare memorabilia and documents.

  In her free time, Ellie is a health-obsessed yoga enthusiast, neat freak, adventurer, Nazi Germany history expert, polyglot, philosopher, a proud Jew, and a doggie mama. Ellie lives in New York with her fiancé and their Chihuahua named Shark Bait.

  Magda’s Mark

  Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger

  Contents

  Synopsis

  Prologue

  I. June 1941–March 1942

  II. June 1942

  III. October 1942–December 1942

  IV. April 1945–September 1945

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Synopsis

  When war changes the person you believed yourself to be…

  In the face of the enemy, can a badly scarred woman become the hero she doesn’t want to be?

  1941. The Sudetenland. Magda is employed by the Taubers, a family who loves her like their own daughter. When they are deported by the Nazis, she has no choice but to remain in the house and work for the commanding officer’s family. But one act of defiance makes her into a hunted woman. In a place where nowhere is safe, and at a time when nobody can be trusted, Magda is forced to confront how the war is changing her and to decide how far she will go to use her newfound courage.

  Prologue

  April 1942

  Magda shoved open the service door and hurried across the snow-encrusted lawn. Out of habit, she glanced at the empty deer park across the road. A gust of wind bent the tops of the cedars lined up along the way. There, they urged, pointing down the mountain, is the way out. In that very stand of trees where she had once planted kisses on a traitor, she now hid secrets for retrieval.

  At the iron gate, Magda looked back at Villa Liška. The high-curved windows of the dining room and salon were dark. The house might as well be empty inside. The yellow limestone facade had lost its cheeriness a year ago. It remained well maintained, but the spirit was so long gone that it was hard to believe she had once felt safe and loved in this mansion. Magda lifted the latch, pushed the gate open, and crossed the street to the granary. She was less likely to be seen if she took the back road. She passed the two mines and veered toward town. The gray flannel sky was blotchy and wet, and a smell like damp laundry came off the Elbe and Ohre rivers. In her wake, the wind stirred tiny, frozen pellets into whirlpools of ice. Not hail nor rain but snow. Again.

  “April, April,” Walter had chanted to her, “der weiß nicht was er will.” April, April, it knows not what it wants. He had stroked the birthmark on her left cheek, the blemish to which she had always accredited her loneliness, and switched to Czech. “Do you know what you want, Magda?”

  At the time, she had been certain the answer was Walter. She wanted Walter, with his novel attentions, but she had been too shy to utter the words. Instead she’d fled behind the service door only to peer back at him through the lead-glass window. He stood there for quite some time before turning away. Then he walked through the stand of cedars back to work, back to the deer.

  Now, she wanted anything but Walter. In the fifth year since the occupation—since the terror—Magda yearned to wrap her arms around something entirely different.

  It took her thirty minutes to get to the walls of old-town Litoměřice. She passed through the castle’s gate, where Swastika-stamped flags snapped salutes to the wind. Years ago, when she had arrived in Litoměřice to look for work, she’d had to swim against a current of fleeing Czechs and Slovaks. The dismal reminders of a displaced Bohemia now lay beneath a red-black-white sheen. Those ruby-red flags were everywhere in the main square too, draped along the entrance to the town hall, protruding beneath the clock tower, and stretched across the narrow streets. Triangular banners were stretched over passages, and in the middle was usually a portrait of the Führer or other reminders about how loyalty and obedience would get you far in this regime. The old things were still there: the gas lanterns—electric for decades—lined the cobblestoned roads or hung on a building’s turret. The pastry shop windows now featured a slice of apple strudel alongside a few traditional cylinders of cinnamon trdelnik and poppy-seed rolls. The flower-stitched aprons and bell-shaped kroje skirts in a dressmaker’s shop looked faded and unwanted.

  The bus puttered to a stop near the baroque water fountain next to the oak tree, but military vehicles and trucks peppered the square. The signs on the buildings still had Czech names, but the government offices did not.

  Magda ducked into the bakery and stood in line behind a policeman, her heart hammering. She automatically pressed the edge of her headscarf over the ruby map on her left cheek. It was the oldest of her disfigurements, one of three that made her not only identifiable but immediately suspicious. The two scars on her face were the marks of defiance.

  As the policeman added his purchase to a bag, the woman behind the counter gave Magda a quick look. The less you try to hide yourself, the less they’ll notice you.

  Magda forced her hand to drop. The woman waited until the policeman had left before taking Magda’s ration card, handing her the two extra loaves of rye bread in return.

  “Will you be lighting a candle today?” she asked.

  Magda nodded.

  The woman put an extra roll into Magda’s bag.

  Magda stepped out of the bakery, the bag of bread clutched in her fist. When she reached St. Stephen’s, she checked once more to make sure she had not been followed. She slipped her hand into her pocket and touched her talisman. Certain that nobody paid any attention to her in the streets, she made the sign of the cross and entered the church through the side. An older woman sobbed and prayed. A man Magda did not recognize lit a candle. She stepped into a pew, kneeled, and made the sign of the cross, her mind far too distracted to form the simplest of prayers beyond, “Dear God, save us.”

  It was a long time before Magda went to the door leading to the back of the crypts below. She rapped in two quick successions, paused, and tapped three more times. On the other side, the iron bolt scraped across the heavy wooden door. As soon as it was
opened wide enough, Magda slipped through.

  I

  June 1941–March 1942

  1

  June 1941

  As she entered the Taubers’ dining room, Magda was met with laughter—the kind tinged by guilty pleasure or nervous dissent. Magda balanced the tray of soup bowls, then took a step back, hoping to blend into the jacquard wallpaper. She waited for instructions, but none of the six people took any notice of her.

  Dr. Tauber had his back to Magda as he held his wire-rimmed spectacles in the air, pinching his nose. His shoulders shook. Frau Tauber, opposite her husband, grinned widely at Mayor Brauer to her left. She gazed at him in anticipation as she absentmindedly stroked the diamond pendant around her neck, her wavy ginger hair done half-up, half-down. Frau Brauer, meanwhile, peered over at a small book the mayor held. Across from the Brauers, the Dvoráks, who had arrived from Prague earlier that day, glowed from their afternoon at the Taubers’ pool. Their smiles had been plastered on since their arrival.

  Magda had not seen the Taubers—or their friends—enjoying themselves like this in months. She found herself grinning as well.

  “Just a moment.” Mayor Brauer lifted the book in his hand and raised a finger in the air. “I’m not finished yet. I’ve got at least ten more to go.”

  The next wave of tittering did not deter the mayor.

  “In Danish,” he read loudly, “it’s lort. In Swedish, it’s Skit—”

  “And in Yiddish?” the mayor’s wife called.

  “Drek.” Frau Tauber beamed.

  “That is the word for dirt in German,” the mayor said, looking over his glasses.

  “Such prudes,” Mrs. Dvorákova said. “Do the Nazis even realize they speak Yiddish?”

  “Gabriel,” Frau Tauber called to Mr. Dvorák, “can you imagine if we wrote music for a cabaret?”

  “Straight to the piano with you.” He flung an arm toward the piano. “Excellent idea. Crappy music for crappy words.”

  There was another round of delighted laughter.

  The tray in Magda’s hands tipped dangerously.

  “My goodness!” Frau Tauber clapped a hand over her mouth, but the next moment she uncovered it, still smiling. “Our soup is here. Look at us. This is what happens when your friends mix cocktails for you all afternoon. Magdalena, I’m so sorry for our behavior. Please do excuse us.”

  She waved Magda in, and the people around the table settled down, whether sobered by the soup or Magda’s presence, Magda did not know.

  She began with Frau Tauber and kept the left side of her face tilted down even if it looked as if she had a crick in her neck. How else was she to hide the enormous birthmark on her cheek? As she reached the mayor’s bowl, she glanced down at the small book he had set aside. It was a pamphlet really, innocent looking enough, until she read the title: How to Say Shit in 20 Different Languages and Other Obscenities Likely Unfamiliar to Members of the NSDAP.

  Magda choked back her surprise.

  Frau Tauber’s eyes were bright with mischief. “I’m sorry, Magdalena. It’s truly inappropriate of us, and at the dinner table—”

  “That may be,” Dr. Tauber said, “but in comparison to other improprieties these days, utterly harmless.”

  Magda served him last. He jerked his chin upward and winked at her. She straightened her head. He was always doing that—always encouraging her to hold her head high.

  Back in the kitchen, she thought of the four guests in the dining room, sharing the day with the Taubers. The mayor of the town. The film producer. The singer. It was because of them that the family was still here, still safe. And if the Taubers were safe, she might be as well.

  She stopped and looked out the lead panes of the service door and out to the gate, remembering how she had come here—the circumstances.

  When the German military rolled past Voštiny, on the road opposite the Elbe River, Magda and her mother were singing “Meadows Green” and threshing the wheat. Their song dissipated like smoke into the air. Magda’s mother straightened, one hand on her headscarf, like a gesture of disbelief. No tanks. No marching soldiers. Only those gray-green trucks and black automobiles on the horizon.

  They moved on south, growing smaller in size but larger in meaning. When she looked toward the fields, Magda saw her father and her two brothers also pausing, one at a time, to witness the Germans chalking off the Sudetenland boundary with their exhaust fumes. The Nováks’ farm lay within it.

  Magda’s father had faced the cottage, and an entire exchange silently took place between her parents.

  Then the rumors are true, her father said with a simple lift of his head.

  What now? her mother asked via a glance toward the river and the pursing of lips.

  Her father lowered his head. We finish the wheat.

  And with that, Magda, her two brothers, and her parents stuck their heads in the sand and went back to work.

  Later, at midday, urgent knocking rattled their door. Everyone froze except Magda. She looked around the room, as if this was to be the last scene she should remember. Her father held the edge of the table. Her mother stood. She was straight and proud and beautiful with an open face, the kindest light-brown eyes, and full lips. Magda’s brothers sat rigid in their chairs. Each of their wives held a child. And her grandparents sat so close to each other on the bench against the oven that they might as well have been in each other’s laps.

  The knocking came more insistently, and this time they stirred into action. Magda’s father pushed himself from the table and left the room. The rest were in various stages of trying to look normal. A moment later, her father returned with the village heads. With baffling lightness, he offered them Becherovka, as if it were Christmas, and shared a joke about a cow and a farmer—Magda could never remember the story or the punch line that had made them laugh so.

  The Sudetenland, the village wisemen announced, was now part of the Third Reich. Hitler was protecting his people. And that was why none of the other countries called foul on breaching the treaty.

  “But we will not go to war,” one village elder had said, “as we may have feared.”

  “Imagine that,” Magda’s father had said abruptly, in the tone he used when angry.

  Her brothers, however, had visibly relaxed. They should not have.

  That night, before she went to bed, and while her brothers and father were making their rounds in the village, Magda had hugged her mother tightly. Her mother clutched at her as if Magda were floating away. Upstairs, the grandparents’ bed creaked, and the house settled around them.

  “You remember,” her mother said, releasing her, “how you once asked me why you are the youngest?”

  “Because you finally had a girl, you said.”

  “Yes, and because there is bad luck in even numbers. I needed a third child so that nothing bad would ever happen to any of you.”

  Except bad things did happen, many bad things, and all before Christmas. The first was the loss of the farm. The second was having to relocate to Lidice, to Magda’s great-aunt’s village, a village—as one neighbor said—was hardly a blip on the Nazi’s radars. Then Grandfather fell ill, and soon after Magda’s brothers were conscripted.

  In December, with so many mouths to feed and too few resources, Magda walked all the way to Litoměřice, leaving her loved ones behind.

  “Go to town,” her great-aunt had said. “There are no Czechs left. No Slovaks. They’ve all fled eastwards. You’ll find work in service to someone.”

  Magda first took the narrow road to the cathedral of St. Stephen, where she lit a candle, went to confession, and prayed for her soul. Afterwards, she stopped at the bench near the fountain in the square and stared at the flags hanging on each side of the town hall. A Christmas tree was lit up in the center. A troop of teenaged boys and girls, with brown or white blouses beneath their coats, came out of a school building, with clipboards and sheets. Magda remembered the youth who had come to their farm, a list of her family’s items
on such clipboards. They had come to conduct inventory of the necessities Hitler required for those moving into his Lebensraum.

  Magda rose from the bench then, an idea in her mind. There was a woman at a bakery she remembered from the days she and her parents had come to market, a woman many people respected. When Magda found the bakery, she was relieved. The woman remembered her from the market days and gave her instructions to a villa on the town’s outskirts.

  “A respectable family,” the baker assured.

  Magda thanked her and headed for the door, when a second woman tugged on Magda’s coat sleeve.

  “I wouldn’t bother if I were you,” she hissed into Magda’s ear. “The Taubers are—”

  “Uršula!” The baker’s voice was sharp and shrill. “They’re Sudeten Germans, just like you. You let the girl go now.” To Magda, the baker nodded. “Go to the villa I told you, and ask for Renata. Tell her I sent you.”