The Road to Liberation: Trials and Triumphs of WWII

by Marion Kummerow

  Robert rolled over onto his side and crawled on all fours toward his mother. Toward Magda.

  Magda turned to Frau Koenig again. “I said, where is your husband?”

  Panting, Frau Koenig glared at her. “I don’t know.”

  The crowd pressed in like hyenas. Magda smelled the adrenaline, the sweat. She glanced at their faces. This was who they had become. Had she?

  “There’s a wall,” Magda called, her gaze steady on Frau Koenig’s. “In the master bedroom. It’s a double wall. You’ll find it if you look carefully. Koenig might be there.”

  The three riflemen exchanged looks of admiration, then jerked their heads at a group of men in the crowd. Those men dashed back into the house. Others followed in their wake.

  “He’s gone,” Frau Koenig said matter of factly. Saliva dribbled from her mouth. “He’s left me and Robert here. He’s gone.”

  Magda pursed her lips. Robert reached them, and rocked backward, snot running from his nose. He called to his mother. She did not seem to hear him.

  Magda clicked the safety back into place. She turned to the child. “Come here. Come to Magda.”

  He shook his head. “Mutti.”

  The boy had no idea what he wanted. Magda rose and lifted him into her arms, pressing him against her. She was something solid. Something he could cling to. He kicked his little legs, and she felt the muscles in his torso tense. He was a strong boy. Much stronger than any of the children she had encountered along the way here. Perhaps even too strong for her.

  Frau Koenig released a keening wail. “Leave my child! Leave him alone! You witch! You dirty, stinking Jew!”

  “Are you Jewish?” Dutch Cap said with surprise.

  Magda stared at him, rubbing her hand—the revolver still in it—over Robert’s back. She tried to lift him higher, tried to get him in her arms so he would stop weighing her down. “I’m the child’s godmother.”

  There were angry grumbles from the crowd. Magda pressed Robert closer to her. He finally wrapped his legs around her waist. He smelled of lemon and rosemary. She pictured the bars of soap in Frau Tauber’s bathroom.

  The second rifleman jerked his head at Magda. “Is this true?”

  “Arrest Frau Koenig if you must,” Magda said. “But you will not be murderers like the Nazis. She certainly has valuable information.”

  Robert twisted around and looked down at his mother, then whimpered and threw his arms around Magda’s neck. He was hanging on for dear life. Don’t put me down with her. That was what he was saying.

  Those who had gone to search the bedroom walked out with disappointed expressions. They had found the second wall, but they had not found Koenig or anyone else hiding there.

  Dutch Cap jabbed his muzzle into Frau Koenig’s cheek. “You’re no use, are you?” He spoke in German.

  With her left hand, Magda supported Robert. With her right, she cocked the pistol at the rifleman.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” he demanded.

  “I’m Magda. Magdalena Novák from Voštiny.”

  “And what are you going to do, Magdalena Novák from Voštiny? Invite this woman back to your village? Make her your aunt? You have no idea what’s really going on here.”

  “I’ve been underestimated all my life,” Magda said slowly. “And yet here I am.” In German, she said, “I’m taking the child with me.”

  Frau Koenig looked up in anguish. “He’s my son! Don’t you dare hurt him.”

  Magda dropped her hand. “You still don’t understand,” she said. “I’m the one who protected him. I protected him from your husband because you were too weak to. I saved him!”

  Frau Koenig dropped her head. “Kill me,” she sobbed. “You may as well kill me.”

  “What is she saying?” The second rifleman asked.

  “She wants us to kill her,” Dutch Cap said.

  The crowd jeered, surged forward.

  Magda raised her pistol into the air and shot, then swung it at the crowd, turning with Robert. Her arms were beginning to shake, and her legs were unsteady. Beyond the gate, two vehicles—Renata’s and Aleš’s group—pulled up alongside the road. Magda could not do both. She could not protect the boy and the woman. Magda tossed the pistol to the side. It bounced across the lawn and landed under a bush.

  Robert buried his face into Magda’s neck. She lifted the child higher into her arms, turned, and walked down the sloping lawn. The tops of the cedars waved in the spring breeze.

  Aleš jumped out of the first vehicle and threw open the back door. Renata bent forward inside.

  “Magda, let us take you to where you need to go,” he said.

  Magda walked past him and stepped onto the road. To her right, the white clock tower of Litoměřice. To her left, the road that would take her back to Voštiny. She pulled Robert away from her, his legs wrapped around her waist. She brushed the snot and the tears away from his face with her hand. She kissed his cheeks and spoke soothingly in Czech.

  She faced Aleš. Renata was getting out of the car.

  “Do something about this,” Magda ordered. “Nobody wins like this.”

  At the top of the road, Magda lowered Robert to the ground. She heaved once more, the nausea causing sweat to break across her brow. At the look of fright on Robert’s face, she clutched the poor boy’s hand. She pointed. Below, the Ohre and Elbe rivers entwined into one another, the lake glimmered in the afternoon sun. A cuckoo sang in the field behind them. The red-tiled roof and the highest yellow limestone tower of the villa peeked above the tree line. She waited with him.

  Not a minute later, a shot rang from the yard below. Magda turned her back on Litoměřice and Villa Liška.

  18

  September 1945

  At the sight of the truck kicking up dust clouds and her side of the Elbe, Magda dropped the damp white coverlet back into the laundry basket and walked to the front of the cottage. She looked to the horizon. The truck was heading north toward the border. Or so she thought. It slowed at the crossing, then turned east, heading for Voštiny.

  Robert squealed behind Magda, chasing after the geese. The dog ran on its chain, barking playfully. Against the glare of the morning sun, Magda raised her hand and waited as the truck neared the farm. She cursed beneath her breath.

  It was probably another deportation truck filled with Germans who had been turned away at the border. It was madness. Utter chaos. There was no system in place, but the deportations had begun immediately. German families were rounded up, or—irony of all ironies!—sent a letter to pack a maximum of fifty kilograms of their belongings, to report to immigration headquarters, and to hand over a list of their personal items and the keys to the properties once requisitioned from Czech families. But Germany did not want the families, either, and all the border towns got in return were fleeing, stateless refugees pilfering, stealing, and even murdering along the way for food and shelter.

  The families that had returned to Voštiny had been sometimes forced to take the law into their own hands. It was not pretty. It was the reason Magda had requisitioned the German family’s dog before they were thrown off her property. Still, she wished she had not tossed that revolver back at Villa Liška.

  The dog’s bark changed as soon as the truck veered into their long drive. Robert ran over to her, sober now, and reached for her hand. Magda held it.

  The policing units were rubbing the wounds of this country raw. The scars were already deep. As black and deep as the branding of the Hackenkreuz on their souls. Magda braced herself for an altercation. The prisoners could pick some apples from her tree, but that was it. Maybe it would teach the country a lesson, make the politicians collect themselves enough to finally put a system into place.

  The truck pulled into the yard and stopped a few feet from Magda and Robert. Magda dropped Robert’s hand. She knew those silhouettes. She knew those figures, that odd pair.

  “Go into the house,” Magda ordered Robert. He did not budge. Neither did she.
/>   The truck doors opened. Magda pedaled back. She wanted her revolver. She should release the dog from his leash. Anything to prevent these unwanted intruders.

  Aleš stepped down. He was dressed in a police uniform. Magda waited until Renata came to the front of the truck. Magda wanted to see her face, just one more time. Face her just one more time.

  “You can both get back in and go to where you came from,” Magda said.

  Aleš and Renata exchanged a look.

  “Did you hear me?” Magda demanded. “Get back in the truck and go.”

  “Magda,” Aleš started. “We’re not here to cause any trouble.”

  “Then why did you come?”

  Renata, at least, had the sense to stay put. She leaned against the hood and crossed her arms. Her mouth twisted.

  The dog barked anew near the back of the truck.

  Aleš looked over his shoulder. He fished something out of his shirt pocket. A packet of cigarettes. “You want one?”

  Magda looked at him as if he were crazy.

  “Because I hear you were quite the smoker during the war.”

  Magda glared at him. Renata smirked.

  “And a drinker.” He pointed over his shoulder. “I’ve got a bottle of Becherovka in the back. We could celebrate.”

  “What the hell have we got to celebrate?” How would he know she had smoked? She’d only done that when with the Soviet division, with Natalia and Ula.

  Somebody jumped out of the back of the truck—she could only see the boots—and turned to face the rear again. There was a shuffling sound from within. She watched. Renata pushed herself away and now joined Aleš. She took out a cigarette from his pack and he lit it for her.

  Around the back of the truck, the figure of a man appeared, a boy in his arms. The man wore a black shirt and khaki trousers over those boots. The ends of his mouth curved up but his lips quivered with uncertainty.

  Her eyes darted to the boy. Wavy brown hair and ruddy cheeks. Johan Tauber’s eyes.

  Magda clutched at her throat. Her chest constricted. She willed her legs to move, but they would not. She had to wait until they reached her. She did not know on whose face she should focus first, make sure she was seeing correctly.

  When he stood before her, Magda could finally say his name. “Karol…Karol…” And then she could not stop saying his name, the tears springing and spilling over her cheeks.

  Karol shined. “Magda, this is—”

  “Samuel.” Magda reached for him. The little boy went to her but leaned back, as if to keep her in his sights.

  “Samuel,” Karol said. “This is Magda, the one I was telling you about. Another person who saved you.”

  Samuel’s big brown eyes stayed on her. He then took his tiny hands and placed them on either side of her face. He turned her head left, then turned her head right. He kissed her on the left cheek. “Karol,” he said softly, “says you’re my godmother. Hello, Godmother.”

  Magda burst out laughing through the tears. She hugged the boy to her, squeezed him, her heart breaking. She gazed at Karol, the things that she could not utter.

  He nodded. Yes, he’s the only one.

  “I would say,” Renata called, “it’s time for a drink.”

  Magda handed Samuel back to Karol. She strode over to Renata. They gazed at one another. The marks of this war—their scars—were deep. But it was also what made them who they were now.

  Magda took in a deep breath and opened her arms, welcomed the strong embraces, first from Renata, then from Aleš. She wiped her tears and only then noticed Robert standing off to the side.

  “Robert, come here.” He came slowly. She reached for his hand.

  Karol lowered Samuel to the ground, and she led Robert to them. Robert assessed Samuel, his bottom lip jutting out.

  “Robert,” she said, “go and pick some apples with Samuel, and I’ll make some fried apple rings for the two of you.”

  Robert looked up and grinned. He reached across and offered Samuel his hand. Magda spotted the birthmark on Samuel’s right wrist bone.

  “Come on, Samuel,” Robert said, “Let’s go pick some apples. Magda makes the best apple rings in the world!”

  The boys trotted off to the apple tree at the back of the house.

  Magda and Karol followed them. They watched as the children examined the apples on the ground for a little while, then Magda turned to him, the question on her face.

  “Taras betrayed me,” Karol said. “He pistol-whipped me when we were searching a barn, and locked me in. And when I awoke, I heard vehicles approaching. He’d turned me over to the Polish Home Army for money, who would have certainly handed me over to the Germans in return for money and favors.”

  Magda stared at him. She’d known something about Taras’s story had not added up.

  Karol rubbed a hand over his head. “It took a lot of talking, a lot of convincing, but they let me go in the end. I headed into the Carpathians. I knew I would never catch up to all of you. I went on a different mission.”

  Magda reached for his hand.

  He took it in his. “How is my warrior queen?” he asked.

  She was no warrior queen. She was no hero. But she had survived. One of the few. Those who had returned—like Radek Jelínek—were shells of themselves. Robert had prevented that for her. Robert was the reason that she was still managing, why she accepted who she was and the life she held within her.

  Magda gazed to where the boys were picking apples. She nodded. “I’m going to be all right.” She reached for Karol’s hand and squeezed it. “Especially now.”

  Aleš and Renata appeared with four glasses they must have rummaged out of her kitchen and a bottle of Becherovka.

  Renata jutted her chin at the boys. “Now you have two. ”Magda glanced sideways at Karol. “I told you, there is bad luck in even numbers.”

  Karol laughed a little. “Yes. I remember you telling me that.”

  “We can’t risk that, can we?” She led his hand to beneath the apron she wore. She made sure he felt the life she carried.

  “L’chaim,” she whispered. To life.

  THE END

  Author’s Note

  Magda’s Mark was inspired by a friend’s anecdote. Her Austrian husband was born in Czechoslovakia. Her father-in-law was the commanding officer of the district and married to quite an imperious woman. On the day of their son’s birth, the boy was returned to his mother, circumcised.

  When my friend shared this story with me, I was flabbergasted. The first thing I wanted to know was what kind of person and what sorts of events would lead someone to take that great of a risk?

  It could very well be that the parents did it on purpose to perhaps save their own hides toward the end of the war. However, I had not even considered that aspect until much later when I was already in the process of writing Magda’s story.

  This story is completely fictional, except where it’s based on the following situations:

  The Concentration Camps and the Ghetto: Litoměřice and Theresienstadt (Terezín)

  It is first important to understand this: Theresienstadt was a centuries-old military base that housed a regiment of Czechoslovakian military personnel in 1938. After the Germans annexed Moravia and Bohemia (the German Sudetenland) in the fall of that year, the Czechoslovakian guards were dissolved and the Wehrmacht took over.

  The Gestapo set up its prison and headquarters in the Small Fort. Political prisoners and criminals were held there. The Wehrmacht was housed in the various barracks in the town outside of the Small Fort.

  In the fall of 1941, that Wehrmacht was replaced by male prisoners from German camps, who were then given the task to fortify the barracks and to reconstruct the spaces and the town to accommodate what would later become the Theresienstadt Jewish ghetto. In the spring of 1942, women and children were included in the deportations and sent to Theresienstadt. The crackdown and the initial subjugation of the Jews in the ghetto was harsh and unmerciful. However, when
word got out about the treatment of the Jews there, Christians and Jews alike protested across the Third Reich. By the end of summer 1942, the Nazis allowed letters and parcels and eased up on the inmates. They quickly learned to use that to their advantage as a propaganda tool.

  In 1942 and in 1944, two films were produced in Theresienstadt for the purposes of propaganda. In 1942 the Nazi administration held a contest for best screenplay. In 1944 the famous film director and Jew, Kurt Gerron, was ordered to produce a film. The Nazis built a swimming pool, renovated the facades, provided food and clothing, a park, and entertainment to make it all look so very…appealing. As one friend said, “It sounds worse than a Stephen King story.” It was.

  At first the ghetto was used as a transit depot for sending Jews and prisoners from the west on to other camps established in the newly won territories of the Reich, mostly Poland. At the end of the war, as the Nazis became trapped between the Soviet and American fronts, the inmates from camps in both the east and west were transferred to Theresienstadt in a final effort to “save” labor resources. However, many of the railroads were sabotaged by resistance fighters, and many of those prisoners were forced on long death marches before—and if—reaching Theresienstadt.

  Litoměřice—across the river from Theresienstadt—is a real town in the former Sudetenland, with two mining tunnels nearby. These tunnels were fortified in 1944 by some five hundred prisoners brought in from Dachau. The inmates were ordered to prepare the tunnels to house two factories: a tank motor manufactory and an electrical components factory (today Audi and Osram—although Audi did send their tank motors to the Richard I tunnel, Osram never made the relocation to the Bohemian district). More prisoners were brought to the camp to work.

  These prisoners were placed in a concentration camp not far away. TB and typhus killed thousands between 1944 and 1945. In the chaos, the Litoměřice concentration camp commander released the prisoners by bringing them to the bridge and letting them go. The majority had only one destination available to them: Theresienstadt. Doctors from Prague rushed to the camp to help and faced one of the worst horrors many had witnessed in the war. Widespread disease and epidemics were killing hundreds of people daily. Crime rates in the district escalated, the squalor contributed to the diseases, and there was utter chaos in a multitude of languages for quite some time.