Escape

by Barbie Probert-Wright

  They were going to throw all my torn and dirty clothes away, but I made a dive for my trousers and produced from my pocket the little train, wrapped in a tiny child’s hankie: my souvenir, which I felt so guilty about. When I confessed to Eva about the train, she laughed and laughed. ‘You could have told me, it didn’t matter. I would have let you bring it,’ she said.

  So all my careful secrecy had not been necessary. But if I had been carrying the train and hankie in my little pink rucksack, they would have gone with the plunderers too, as my Charlotte did. So it was just as well I kept them to myself. I have them now, among my dearest possessions.

  On that first day safe in Hamburg, reunited with our mother, Eva wrote in her diary:

  From 7 April to 1 May, many beautiful but also horrifying hours lie behind us. We have to thank God that we got out of it alive and that we are still in one piece.

  For both of us, there was a tremendous sense of achievement. Eva showed me a map of what we had done and I ran my finger along the route. I have looked at it again many times, especially recently, as I have been writing this book. And I am filled now with the same amazement and pride I felt then.

  WE HAD DONE IT!

  18

  Hammer Park

  We lived with Aunt Käte’s family for a month. It was a tight squeeze, but we managed well enough. Every house had to have a piece of paper pinned to the door stating how many people lived there, I think so that the British troops could identify places that were under-occupied. Aunt Käte didn’t have that problem and now she had two more.

  Power and water supplies for the city were erratic, but we were lucky because Aunt Käte lived near the two high schools (which I would later attend) currently being used as military hospitals, so every effort was made to keep on the supplies in that area. When there was no water we had to walk to standpipes, clanking our big metal buckets and hauling them back twice as heavy with the load – it would have been much easier with lightweight plastic ones, but unfortunately in those days there weren’t any. I had to concentrate very hard so that I didn’t spill much on the way home.

  Then we had some great good fortune. Father had worked for the railways before he was called up and Mutti heard of a number of prefabricated houses (prefabs) that were being erected especially for the families of railway workers in Hammer Park, a beautiful place that was being used as a camp for British soldiers. She applied for a house and, probably because Father had a senior position, we were allocated one straight away. She rang and was told she could have number 43 Fahrenkamp, and we could move in immediately, although it was not finished.

  There were several rows of these little cottages in the park, made somewhere in Scandinavia and assembled on site. There were similar emergency housing schemes in England, also put up in big cities to accommodate all the people who had lost their homes through bombing, or who were returning from the war and starting new families. Our new prefab was at the end of the row, so it was semidetached, which gave us more garden than the others. When we moved in there were no windows, it was undecorated, the floor was concrete and, of course, we had no furniture. Even so, it felt wonderful to be able to close our own front door and be together again, just our little family of Mutti, Eva and me.

  There had been no word from my father and we had no idea where he was, or even if he was still alive. Prisoners of war were beginning to arrive back, and we knew a few families who held celebrations when fathers and sons had been reunited with their loved ones. We clung to our prayers that we would be as fortunate, but as time went on our hopes diminished. We had to be realistic. Many families would never see their fathers and sons again, or even know what had happened to them, and there was every chance that we would be one of them. I was probably the least affected: I missed my father, but I had not seen him for so long, and I was so young when he left, that my life seemed complete as long as I had Mutti and Eva.

  Within days of our moving in, the workmen on the site put in windows for us. Then we collected furniture from relatives who had escaped the bombing. Mutti had cousins who lived on the outskirts of Hamburg and whose houses had survived intact, and they all rallied round to give us things. One cousin of hers ran a well-established plant nursery and he presented us with fruit trees and bushes. We had a ceremonial planting to celebrate our new home: quince, cherry, apple, plum and pear trees, and redcurrant, blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes all had a place in our garden.

  Sometimes I dream I am back in Germany, and I am usually in that garden, tending to the fruit bushes.

  We loved that little house and we lived there for many years. It was on one floor and it had two bedrooms, a living room with a dining corner, a kitchenette and a cloakroom. There was no bath or shower, but we all grew used to having strip washes, and there were always friends and family who would let us have baths at their homes. We were so grateful to have a roof over our heads and a door we could close on the world that we didn’t mind living without the kind of luxury we had once known on the Wandsbecker Chaussee. Hamburg was full of people living in cellars and shacks, so we certainly were not going to be upset about not having a bath or shower.

  Some people called the row of prefabs ‘stables’ because that is what they looked like. We built a shed in the back garden and I kept my pet rabbit, Hansi, in a hutch there. I had a fenced-in run for him on the grass, and every day I would go around the park collecting dandelions, feeding him every leaf by hand. Sometimes I would pull up a carrot from our vegetable plot and give it to him as a treat. Food was always tight and everything was on ration, so Mutti had to work hard to keep us fed and nourished. One Sunday we had rabbit for our meal and I realised, with horror, that they had killed Hansi. I ran from the table in tears and was so upset I didn’t eat for a week. I understood how precious food was, but I thought I would never forgive my mother for Hansi’s death. Even though I was given another pet rabbit, it did not feel the same.

  Only now can I appreciate how desperate the times were. In some areas of the big cities, people were living rough, existing like troglodytes under the ruins of their homes. Food was so scarce that pet dogs were killed for meat, and stray cats were caught and cooked. We had a garden to grow things in and a proper shelter. We were very lucky.

  The general shortage meant that treats were very rare and especially prized. One day, when we were staying with Aunt Käte, she asked me to help her bake a cake for her birthday. It was the first time in what seemed like a whole lifetime that I had done anything like that, although in fact it was less than six months earlier that I had baked Christmas biscuits with Volker and little Henning at the brick factory house. I loved helping Aunt Käte and I was allowed to lick the bowl. Then I had to go to bed, but I woke up the next morning, tremendously excited when I remembered the cake, and looked forward to my slice of it. To my great disappointment, the grown-ups had eaten the lot the night before. I think they had had a bottle of wine and were enjoying the occasion, and they simply forgot about me. I was so upset. It’s funny how these grievances stay with you over the years, though I’m sure the grown-ups forgot it at once.

  Now that our walk was over and we were home at last, my childhood was restored to me and I remember being very happy. Just as the brickworks had provided a marvellous playground for children, so did Hammer Park. Imagine living in the middle of a park, safe from traffic apart from a few lumbering army trucks, and with a huge expanse to explore and play in – it was bliss. There were other children living in the prefabs, and we soon knew every nook and cranny of the park, and the British soldiers’ camp.

  The soldiers loved us and we became great friends with them. I learned English talking to them and surprised my teachers by how good I was when I got to high school. I think some of the phrases I learned were not the ones in. the school textbooks, but they never taught me any bad language. They were too kind. Instead, I learned questions like ‘How do you do?’ and ‘What is your name?’ and ‘Are you hungry or thirsty?’. We always laughed when they sai
d ‘How nice to meet you’ because we knew that if it had not been for the terrible war we would never have met. But it was nice to meet them – it was one of the good things that came from the war.

  In return, I taught one or two of them German. They all wanted to know a few phrases, but a couple of the more serious ones learned to speak the language well and liked to practise with us.

  Like all the soldiers we met on our travels, they grew nostalgic for their own children when they saw me and the other little ones. They produced photographs and told me about children who looked very like us, but who had strange-sounding names. I loved playing games with my friends, but I was also happy to sit and chat with the soldiers for long spells, so I became one of their favourites, their mascot. And their endless generosity continued as still they gave me food from their rations, which I always took home to the family. Food in general – especially luxuries – was scarce: we had tea bags from the soldiers, which we used so often that the water eventually ran clear. Mutti always dried them out, because she said that made them strong again. When, occasionally, Mutti had the ingredients to bake cakes, I would always take some to the soldiers, who really appreciated it as it was such a change from their standard-issue food.

  There is one story I feel very guilty about and it still makes the colour rise in my cheeks to this day. One hot summer’s day a small gang of us, boys and girls, came across a British soldier lying in the grass. He was fast asleep, snoring away, and he had taken off his belt and boots. The boots were so shiny and sturdy, and it was impossible to get hold of shoes at that time, so it was too much of a temptation and some of the boys stole them. I have worried about the soldier ever since: he would have had to go back to camp and explain that he had lost his boots and I’m sure he would have been in trouble. I would like to apologise to him, because although I didn’t steal them, I know who did. My skin prickles with shame, even sixty years on. If he is still alive and reads this, I would like to make it up to him.

  There was no school for us to go to. The schools that had not been razed to the ground had been taken over as military hospitals and, besides, it took many months to organise teaching staff and rewrite all the textbooks so that they were free of Nazi propaganda. I think we roamed around as if on one long holiday for about twelve months, perhaps longer. Of course, Mutti made sure that I kept up my education, but I think I was the exception rather than the rule. And I still had endless hours to explore the park, climbing trees, building dens, playing imaginary games with my friends. It was a beautiful time.

  My best friend from those days was Karla. Her father worked for the Post Office. Now that he had returned from the army, he was given permission by the park authorities to convert what had once been a public toilet into a home for his family. It may sound bizarre, but in Hamburg every building left standing was being used to house people and he was a very good handyman who built it into a proper house, about 500 yards away from where we were living. The family paid an annual fee, like ground rent, to the park authorities.

  While Eva and I were waiting at the bridges to cross into Hamburg, Karla’s family were enduring their own terrible times. In April her mother gave birth to a baby boy, a brother for Karla. Tragically, on 10 May, the day we finally made it to the city, the little boy died. Her father put his body in a cardboard box and set out on the long walk to the cemetery at Ohlsdorf, but unfortunately he didn’t make it before the 6 p.m. curfew. Anyone found on the streets after the curfew was rounded up by the British soldiers and shepherded into halls and air raid shelters until the next morning. Karla’s father spoke no English, but he knew the word for ‘baby’ was much the same in both languages – he had picked this up when two soldiers came to his house to check the number of people living there and heard them say ‘little baby about his son. So he approached the sentries and told them he had his baby in the box, but they didn’t understand him and probably thought he was a bit crazy. He sat through that terrible night, clutching a box containing his dead son, and although he was with a crowd of people, he spent those hours bitterly alone in his overwhelming grief. The next morning, he walked on to the cemetery and handed the baby in to the mortuary. At home, his wife and daughter Karla stayed up all night, anxiously waiting for news of him and mourning the death of the baby boy.

  Karla and I often played together, in our gardens and sometimes exploring the park, which was like an enormous garden that we shared. She was a very good friend to me.

  In the autumn in Hamburg we have a traditional celebration of the end of summer and beginning of winter, called the Lantern Festival. It is, I suppose, a little bit like Hallowe’en, although we didn’t go around asking for treats. Children with paper lanterns with candles inside would roam around their neighbourhoods at dusk, singing the lantern song:

  Laterne, Laterne,

  die Sonne, Mond und Sterne,

  Meine Laterne die ist so schön,

  Da kann man mit ihr spazieren geh’n,

  In dem grünen Walde, wo die Büchsen knallen,

  Brenne aus mein Licht, brenne aus mein Licht,

  Aber nur meine liebe Laterne nicht.

  (Lantern, lantern,

  the sun, the moon, the stars,

  My lantern is so beautiful,

  That I can go for a walk with it,

  Through the green wood where the hunters shoot.

  Burn to the end, my candle, burn to the end, my candle,

  But don’t set my lantern alight.)

  Even in that first autumn after the war, a supply of paper lanterns and candles were somehow found for all of us children. Perhaps the lanterns had been hoarded from before the war, perhaps they were so easy to make that they were quickly available. I don’t know where mine came from, but I was delighted to have one, and Karla and I joined all the other park children in our procession around the area, with grown-ups hovering behind us.

  The British soldiers were entranced. They had never seen anything like it.

  I heard later of prisoners of war finally returning home by train that night. The first sight of Hamburg, their home city, was of ruins, but dotted among them were the lights from all the lantern processions, a tradition they had enjoyed when they themselves were children. It made some of them cry to see how quickly the children of the ravaged city were getting back to normal, and the little beacons of hope flickering there.

  Karla’s father, as I said, was very good with his hands, and he made his daughter a pram and a beautiful wooden bed for her dolls; and because we always shared everything, we took it in turns to have one each: if she had the pram at her house, I had the bed and vice versa.

  That first Christmas in Hammer Park, six months after we moved there, I was given a proper doll as my present. She was made of celluloid and had eyes that closed, and there were coils of plaits moulded round her head. I immediately christened her Charlotte, after my beloved lost doll, and I loved her and played with her endlessly. We were inseparable and she helped take my mind off her lost namesake.

  Around Karla’s house there were some lovely pear trees, but they belonged to the park authorities, not to her family. We would pinch the ones that fell on the floor, even if they were bruised, but always felt very naughty and guilty for doing it, although we relished every mouthful. A large portion of the park had been given up to make allotments for people who had no gardens, and we respected their property and never took any of their produce.

  There were air raid shelters underneath the park, but the gates to them were locked and we were never tempted to play in them; after my experience in the mine I didn’t want to go below ground ever again. More fun was the little bandstand, which had survived the bombing intact, where we used to invent plays and perform them to imaginary audiences. There was a fountain, too, which only worked again when the water shortages were over; in the winter it would freeze into a spectacular ice castle. On the sports fields, which would later be used by my school, we organised impromptu games of rounders, football and handball. There was a
lways a little band of children playing somewhere in the park and compared with those who had to live on the ruined streets it was a blissful place to be.

  Just a few years ago, my cousin Henning sent me a book about the history of Hammer Park. He said in his note, ‘Read page 126.’

  There, among the other contributions to the book, was an article written by Karla about the park during those immediate post-war years. She wrote, ‘My best friend was Bärbel. She lived in a house in the park with her mother and sister. They had beautiful gardens and in the back was a vegetable plot.’

  I phoned the publisher of the book and they put me in touch with Karla. It was amazing to speak again after all this time and we have seen each other twice since, when I was visiting Germany, and we still write and phone. Karla has inherited her father’s practical skills and only recently sent me a tiny pram, which she had made herself, with a tiny doll in it to remind me of our childhood games. It brings back the happy days all those years ago.

  19

  A Family Restored

  For the first few months after the war, Eva was terribly unhappy.

  In August 1945 she worked briefly in a children’s hospital in Hamburg, but had to leave after four weeks because the asthma, which plagued her for the rest of her life, became too severe. She had developed asthma after Ruth’s death but, remarkably, she was well for the whole duration of our long march. Now it returned with a vengeance and stopped her from working. She became very low and wrote in her diary, ‘I don’t know why the world does not love me any more.’