We sat down at the kitchen table, but were not offered anything to eat or drink.
‘May we have a glass of water, please?’ Eva asked politely.
The woman nodded, fetched it for us silently and went back to her work. She was peeling a pan of potatoes and leeks, which she put on the large range to boil. We tried to chat to her, but she replied monosyllabically. She did not appear to share the general feeling of excitement that the war was finally over and she certainly did not want to engage in any discussion of it.
Barbie’s parents, Norma & Waldemar on their wedding day, 5th October 1922.
Left to right: Eva, Barbie, Mutti & Ruth, 1942.
Barbie (left) & her best friend from Kindergarten, Inge, celebrating Mother’s Day. Hamburg, 1942.
Barbie and Lumpie, her beloved puppy given to her by her father as a parting gift before he left to fight on the Russian front. Wartegau, 1944.
Barbie aged 4, topping and tailing gosseberies on the balcony of their apartment in Hamburg, 1942.
The brick factory house at Wartegau, 1944. Left to right back row: Mutti, Eva, Aunt Irma, Aunt Hilda. Left to right front row: Barbie, Henning, Volker.
Barbie in her red cardigan with the mother-of-pearl buttons and the red and white head scarf that just months later she was to wear on the trek with Eva. Lissa, Poland, 1944.
Eve wearing the ski clothes that she would later wear on the trek with Barbie. Tabarz, 1944.
The diary Eva wrote in throughout their trek and the little train given to Barbie by Miss Ramelow in Tabarz.
Inside pages of Eva’s diary showing her entry for what she called their ‘war Christmas, 1944’ and Barbie’s Christmas card to Eva: Luttens erster brief – ‘the little one’s first letter’.
Eva & Kurt on their wedding day, 29th November 1947.
Barbie in the sandals made for her by Kurt, outside Caspar Voght High School, Hamburg, 1948.
Father lighting the candles on the tree, Hamburg, Christmas, 1960.
Barbie at university in Geneva, 1961.
Barbie with baby Meiki, 1964.
Left to right: Eva, Mutti and Barbie celebrating Mutti’s 70th birthday, 22nd April 1974.
Barbie in the national German costume & her husband Ray in the uniform of Her Majesty’s Band of the Welsh Guards, August 1981.
Meiki in his Springfield police uniform outside his home, The Firehouse, late 1997.
Left to right: Amy-Lou, Graham, AJ, Ray, Babs & Barbie, Christmas Eve, 2005.
After half an hour or so of this stilted attempt at conversation, Eva was about to ask if we could be shown to where we would be sleeping, as it did not seem as if we were going to be given any food and we were both very tired. It had been a very long day, and we were physically and emotionally exhausted. Fortunately – and unusually – we were not terribly hungry, because we had eaten the American chocolate and biscuits.
At that moment the back door was flung open and a large red-faced man came in. We recognised him because he had been one of the people at the town hall, allocating the rooms.
‘Ah, my two pretty girls,’ he said when he saw us. ‘You found the house all right? Is my wife looking after you? Has she prepared a meal for you?’ He shot a glance at the woman, who scuttled around finding plates and knives and forks, and setting them down in front of us.
‘Come, I shall sit between you and you can tell me the story of your lives,’ the man said.
His wife put a bottle of beer down in front of him without speaking.
‘Beer for the young lady. Don’t you know how to treat guests?’ he barked at his wife, who went to the larder and produced another bottle.
‘No, thank you,’ said Eva rather stiffly. I glanced at her and could tell she was not comfortable. The man leaned over me and touched my cheek.
‘You’re going to be a real beauty one day, just like your sister,’ he said, turning to Eva. He rested his beefy arm along the back of her chair. ‘So, where are you two going?’
We normally shared our story with any strangers we met, but I stayed silent, sensing Eva’s concerns.
‘Halle,’ she replied and gave no further explanation.
‘Trying to find your boyfriend, no doubt. A pretty girl like you has lots of boyfriends, I’m sure. I bet there are lots of men after you.’
Eva did not say anything, and just then the thin woman placed dishes of leeks and potatoes in front of us. There was also sausages, streaky bacon and bread on the table. The food silenced the man, as he fell upon it hungrily. The woman sat silently at her end of the table. Eva and I picked at our food; it was unappetising and we were both unnerved by the beery advances of the man.
As soon as he had mopped his plate with a thick slice of bread, he turned his attention back to Eva. His arm went along the back of her chair again. ‘Now, you were telling me about your love life …’ As he said this, his arm slipped down on to her shoulder.
Eva jumped up, pushing her chair back. ‘Don’t you touch me,’ she said angrily. ‘Puppe, get your things, we are leaving.’
‘Don’t do that. I was only being friendly. Just thought we could celebrate the end of the war, relax and have a drink together.’ The man was wheedling, but Eva was busy collecting our bags. I picked up Charlotte and we headed for the door.
‘You won’t find anywhere else to stay tonight. The accommodation office is closed. It’s too late. You’ve got to stay here.’ This time the man sounded surly.
‘We’ll manage,’ said Eva shortly.
The man got up and put his arm across the doorway. Eva turned to him, her eyes blazing. I had never seen her as angry as this before. ‘Let us out,’ she said in a voice of quiet fury and great power.
He leered at her, then reluctantly lowered his arm. He said something abusive, which I did not understand and Eva never explained to me. But as we left Eva turned to the woman and said, ‘I feel sorry for you. Thank you for the meal and good luck.’
We walked out into an entirely dark, moonless night. After we had gone a few yards Eva stopped and bent down, facing me. ‘I’m sorry, Puppe, but we just could not stay there. That is a very nasty man. Don’t worry, we’ll find somewhere to sleep.’
I didn’t mind. I hadn’t liked it in that house one bit. There was an atmosphere of fear and menace that I picked up on at once, even if I didn’t understand it. I was just glad that Eva and I were out of there safely. It seemed that for every happy, wholesome experience we had, there was some darkness as well.
Even the events of this evening could not dim our overall happiness at the end of the war, though. The Americans were here – what we had dreaded had happened and it was actually the best thing we could have hoped for. We got out the torch, no longer frightened that its light would draw fire on to us, and continued along the road.
‘We should keep going in the right direction, not go backwards,’ said Eva.
Before long we came to a farm track and we could see a house about 200 yards down it. There were lights on, so we decided to take a chance and knock. The door opened a crack, a face peered out at us and the door was flung wide. ‘Have to be careful,’ said a cheerful voice. ‘Come on in, you look like two lost orphans.’
This woman was also small and thin, but could not have been more different from her neighbour. She was cheerful and open, and welcomed us into the warm farmhouse. She and her husband shared their meal with us, and they produced a bottle of brandy so that they and Eva could toast the end of the war that would now surely come quickly, and peace. We told them all about our journey and Eva showed them her map.
‘Here,’ said the farmer. ‘I’ve got a much better one than that.’ He got it out and we all bent over it, to make out the route. ‘You still have another seventy kilometres to get to Halle. Then a little bit further still to reach Wiedersdorf, where your mother is.’
Another forty-two miles at least to walk. We had gone out of our way so many times that we had already travelled over 100 miles, sometimes in the opposite direction to
where we wanted to go, but we hadn’t been able to take a direct path because of the fighting. At least the way would be clearer now and there was more behind us than there was in front.
The farmer’s wife kept looking at me and clucking, ‘Poor little thing!’ She seemed to think it was far too far for me to have to walk.
We told her how we had lost our little cart, which at least had helped us carry our bags. At that, the farmer jumped up and went outside, declaring, ‘I’ve got it!’
His wife laughed affectionately. ‘Let’s see what brilliant plan he has now,’ she said.
When he returned, he told us to go to the door and parked outside was a large old-fashioned wooden wheelbarrow. ‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘You can carry all your things in here and the little one can have a ride when she is too tired to walk!’
‘What a wonderful idea!’ cried Eva, delighted. ‘Thank you so much, it will be so useful.’
Then he added, ‘But there’s a price to pay. Wheelbarrows don’t come cheap.’
For a second Eva looked flustered. She still had some of Mutti’s money, because most of the people we met along the way refused payment. Then she realised that the farmer was grinning.
‘You’ve told us about how you sing to keep your spirits up. Now you can sing for us. Sing to earn yourselves a wheelbarrow.’
We all laughed, then Eva looked at me and whispered, ‘Stille Nacht’. It was a tune we had been taught to sing in harmony.
So there we were, in the middle of April, in the last few days of the Second World War, singing the Christmas carol ‘Silent Night’ to a farmer and his wife, who had helped two young ones on their journey home. The kind couple had tears running down their cheeks. It was a very special, beautiful moment.
They only had a small spare bedroom with a single bed in it, but Eva and I were more than happy to share. We cuddled up together and went to sleep, glad to have escaped another nasty encounter and to have had our faith in human nature restored so quickly. Later, we wondered if the ‘nasty man’ (which was how we always referred to him) had deliberately selected us to be billeted in his house because he fancied Eva. We felt very sorry for his wife, as well as angry with her for not helping us. But perhaps she had had every ounce of resistance beaten out of her. She certainly seemed cowed, like an animal who has been harshly treated for a long time and has given up.
That night, before she dropped off to sleep, Eva wrote in her diary a quotation she remembered from the German poet Christian Morgenstern:
Go on God’s path,
Don’t let anyone else guide you away from it.
That way, you will go true and straight,
Even though you are on your own.
11
In Sight of Wiedersdorf at Last
We set off again the next morning, Eva pushing our new wheelbarrow. It was terribly heavy, but it did mean that we could keep going, even when my short legs needed a break. Once I told Eva to sit in it so I could push her. She climbed in, but of course I couldn’t even lift it, which made Eva laugh.
The farmer and his wife had given us provisions: bread, cheese, a bottle with water in it. They also gave us a large Metwurst, which is a German sausage, like salami. We were delighted with it.
‘You know what, Puppe?’ asked Eva. ‘We could keep the Metwurst as a birthday present for Mutti. Her birthday is on 22 April and that is only five days away. We are sure to be with her by then. The farmer said we have only forty-two miles to go and I’m certain we can do that. What do you think?’
I thought it was a splendid idea. Not only would Mutti be delighted to see us, but we would have a lovely present for her too. I couldn’t wait for that day to come. Just looking at the Metwurst and imagining Mutti’s joy made me want to start running.
We must have looked a strange sight as we trundled on with our heavy barrow. It was a great bonus that we could now travel again in the daylight. Since the invasion, there was no fear that we would be fired at, and we could walk easily along the most direct route and the biggest roads that we’d had to avoid before. From now on our path would be straightforward and that alone put a spring in our steps.
We went on towards the city of Jena. As we approached, I became tired and for the last quarter of a mile or so Eva pushed me in the barrow. As usual, she made a game of it, telling me I was a princess in my carriage. It must have been back-breaking for her, but she never showed the strain to me.
Jena is a long-established city, dating back to before the founding of the world-renowned university there in the sixteenth century. It is built in the valley that the River Saale has been eating out of the limestone hills for thousands of centuries, and is famous today, as it was then, for its Zeiss optical factory. As we walked in, we had our first experience of how devastating the bombing had been in major cities. We knew about the bombing of Hamburg, but we had not seen it first hand. It seemed impossible to believe that anyone could have survived among these derelict buildings, but we soon realised that people were living in the debris of the shattered city.
Cellars were occupied and some buildings had been crudely restored on the ground floor only. There was row upon row of blackened shells that were once houses, shops and factories, tottering against each other, like drunkards holding one another up.
We were looking for the place that would give us a billet for the night, so we headed towards a large park in the centre of the city, which in peacetime must have been a beautiful spot. American soldiers were setting up camp there and it was bustling with life, as men in the still unfamiliar US uniform rushed about.
Exhausted, Eva was struggling to push me in the wheelbarrow when a large American GI came over to us. He was very tall, a giant to me, but even more astonishing was the colour of his skin. I had never seen a black person before in my life and I didn’t know whether to be frightened or fascinated. Then I remembered Eva telling me that I must never let my reactions show on my face, whatever people looked like, as it might hurt their feelings, so I tried to look and stay calm. ‘Always be nice and kind to every creature there is,’ Eva said, but I was so astonished I literally held my breath. The only black people I had ever seen were piccaninnies in a fairy tale book and I was awestruck by the smooth, shiny handsomeness of this stranger.
With gestures and speaking in English, the soldier told us to sit down on a bench. Eva could understand enough of what he was saying, so we obeyed. I clambered out of the wheelbarrow, clutching Charlotte, and he took our bags out and put them on the ground near us.
He said, ‘Stay there. I’ll be back.’ Then he grabbed the handles of our heavy wheelbarrow and pushed it effortlessly away. Eva and I looked at each other, not knowing what to think. Perhaps he had taken our wheelbarrow because he needed it for something. We had no idea, but we felt we had no choice in the matter. Although every American we had encountered so far had been friendly, we were still acutely aware that they were now our bosses.
I cannot say how long we sat there. It could have been twenty minutes, maybe half an hour. We were tired, so the chance to sit down was appreciated. Then we saw the big man approaching again with his long, loping stride. In front of him, instead of our wheelbarrow, he was pushing a large pram, one of the old-fashioned coachworked prams that people had in those days. It was a big, well-sprung, expensive one. As he brought it up to us, the soldier gestured that we should look inside. Peering over the edge, we saw that it was full of goodies for us–sweets, chocolate, army rations, tea bags. As our eyes grew wide with amazement, he held his arms out to me, picked me up, swung me up into the air and down into the pram. His face was split by the most enormous smile, showing two rows of immaculately white teeth. Impulsively, I stretched up my arms and hugged him. He chuckled, ruffled my hair, saluted us, then turned away and went back to the camp.
We were thrilled. From starting out in fear of our GI, we had come to see him as one of the kindest people we had ever met. We will never know whether he exchanged the wheelbarrow for the pram, or how he
acquired it, but it made such a difference to us. Now Eva could push me so easily, without really feeling my weight unless she was pushing up a steep hill. (It is a tribute to the craftsmanship of those days that a pram designed for a baby could support the weight of a seven-year-old girl, even if I was very skinny and underweight at the time. I don’t think many of today’s pushchairs would be up to it.)
We found the refugee point and were allocated our billet on a farm just outside the city, so we set off towards it, with me in my luxurious pram stuffed with lovely things. Among the treasure we found were a banana and an orange. I had never seen a banana before and at first I tried to eat it with the skin on. Eva laughed and showed me how to peel it. I could only vaguely remember ever having an orange and we hadn’t seen any of those for the past three years or so. We peeled it carefully and had half each, and felt we were enjoying a real feast.
We arrived at our billet, which was a farm run by a woman on her own. She didn’t seem to have a husband, or perhaps he was away at the war, and she took us into the Räucherkammer, the smoke room, where all the bacon and sausages were preserved. The smell of smoked meat always evokes memories of this room, although there were many other intermingled scents. In a smoke room the fire is left to smoulder on, fed with juniper berries, bay leaves and other herbs to flavour the huge sides of bacon and rings of sausages hanging above from the rafters. Naturally, we ate sausage that evening and enjoyed a comfortable night’s sleep.
Escape Page 12
