Letters From Berlin: A Story of War, Survival, and the Redeeming Power of Love and Friendship

by Kerstin Lieff

  The Hanfried statue. “Until better times.”

  The station was full of people—students, professors, women with their children—and all was in chaos. Some people knew where they were headed. Some had lost their homes and had no relatives to go to. They only knew they couldn’t stay here.

  There was no true train schedule anymore. Trains were often delayed. Tracks had been destroyed, stations no longer existed, so we simply waited until a train came along that had the name of our city on it.

  Darkness arrived. With my sweater I made a pillow for myself on a bench and drifted to sleep. As each train approached, I opened my eyes to see where it was headed, and I’d see, again and again, it was not to Berlin.

  Morning came and still the same scene, only fewer would-be passengers waiting like me. Many had found transport through the night. I began to feel hopeless. So many trains had already arrived; so many people had already departed.

  I suddenly thought of Hanna and realized I had not said goodbye. It really had not occurred to me until just then. In times of such chaos, one sometimes forgets about things that are important, and remembers the silliest things, like “Did I remember my scissors?” But now, suddenly, I realized that I needed to say goodbye.

  I walked the few blocks to her house, through streets now looking so much like Berlin: rows of houses in ruin, but right next to them rows left untouched. I was happy to find Hanna’s house fully intact. Her neighborhood had been spared. But she was shaken.

  “Margarete! Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick. I thought you were dead!”

  I cried then. “Oh, Hanna. You’ve been so kind. I need to go home to Berlin, as you must know. The university is gone.”

  She told me how much she would miss me, and I was filled with regret and sorrow and a deep sense that I had no idea what would come next for me. I stepped forward and gave her a long hug goodbye.

  I went to my room and packed the few things I had brought. My books could stay, I decided, for I promised myself I’d be back one day. Then, with a light suitcase and a heavy heart, I walked back to the train station and took up residency on my bench once again.

  Another night, another day. Trains arrived sporadically. Day three, and I’d had no food. Finally a train approached, and I saw it was going to Dresden. Dresden was two hundred kilometers south of Berlin, meaning another four-hour train ride to get there. But Dresden was such a beautiful city, it had been nicknamed the Florence of the North. And because it was so beautiful, we all believed Dresden would never be bombed. I began to rationalize that I could just as easily wait there for a train to Berlin as here, and in any case I’d be waiting in a city that was safe.

  Another good reason to take this train to Dresden was that it had a food car. I had twenty Marks or so on me—plenty for train fare and even some for food. By now I was terribly hungry, so I decided to board. I picked up my bag, walked to the train, and then, for no reason at all, I stopped. My mind blanked for a moment, and as quickly as I had made the decision to board, I also decided not to.

  What’s another day without food? I asked myself. And either way, I would still have to wait for that final train to Berlin. I turned around and walked back to my bench. I’ll never know why I did this.

  The following day, when I was back in Berlin, I would read in the paper that that train full of passengers had been hit by a Volltreffer. Full on. Not a soul survived.

  That’s when I knew I had an angel.

  12

  YOU’LL NOT RECOGNIZE IT

  I.

  I stepped off the train and out into the light of Berlin. My first impression was this: All the flowers were gone. And then this: The trees were black and leafless. Buildings I used to know were gone. There and there, blackened walls silhouetted against the blue sky, a bathtub hanging in midair, a house with corrugated paper over its holes. Large puddles of water filled the streets. I was amazed by this realization: Someone still lives there, in that decay.

  A street scene in Berlin after an air raid. “Buildings I used to know were gone.” (akg-images/ullstein bild)

  The air was still. I could hear no dogs barking; there were no children laughing, no birds. Slowly I made my way around the ruins and through the piles of rubble to the S-Bahn station. There, somehow, I managed to find a train that would take me to Charlottenburg and to the Windscheidstrasse. I wondered how on earth Mutti had survived all this. There was so little left. What would Charlottenburg look like?

  I got off at my stop, the same one Dieter and I used to get off at when we came home from school, the same one Hilde and Ilse and I used to get off at after our Tanzschule. Here too, nearly everything was gone. Empty. “You’ll not recognize it, Grete,” my Mutti had said. As I stumbled over piles of rubble and looked around, I wondered if I would even find my house.

  I walked by a church I had passed a million times before and saw that its ancient Gothic stained glass of blues and reds was missing, and plain windows were in its place. When I arrived at the Windscheidstrasse, it was no exception: more puddles and piles of rubble.

  But up ahead, my house still stood, just as Mutti had said.

  And, as she had said, it had shrunk in half. The window Dieter and I had looked out of when we witnessed the SA men smash the leather shop with their sacks of rocks, the same one I always worried Papa Spaeth would be looking out of, was now on the top floor. The upper levels of the house, the homes of the Schulzes and the Ahlbecks were gone. For a brief moment I wondered where they might be living now, and then I spotted Mutti. Standing like an angel in the doorway. Her arms were raised, her head was tilted to the side, and she looked, to me, as she must have looked at twenty. Her face gleamed with tears of joy. I dropped my bag, ran to her, and we held each other for a very long time.

  “Mutti, Mutti …”

  “Grete …”

  There were no other words. How are you? How have you been? would have had no meaning. And to talk about what had happened … well, so much had happened. Where was one to begin? And so we just stood in the doorway and held each other. We knew, in that moment, that we were two of the lucky ones.

  II.

  I had nothing to do now that I was back in Berlin. My student days were over, and I was back home, so I did what I was supposed to do. I registered, once again, for the Kriegsdienst. I reasoned that, since I had been a medical student, I could certainly help the war effort by tending to wounded soldiers.

  So, I went to the German Red Cross station on the Berlinerstrasse, not far from our house. Here I received a temporary Red Cross certificate and a Red Cross uniform. I was to work as a medical assistant in whatever capacity was deemed necessary. My new certificate read: “All military personnel and public servants are hereby required to honor the Red Cross uniform and, upon request, shall provide all necessary assistance.” I felt proud, useful, and even hopeful that I now could make a difference.

  With this certificate and my new uniform, I was to report to a small train station in the southeast corner of Berlin, where my job would be to change the dressings of the wounded and bring them tea—and cakes, if we had any.

  I rode my bicycle to work, as it was much easier and quicker than trying to find an S-Bahn that might still be functioning. Mutti came with me, riding her bike as well. She too, in the past months, had been working as a train station nurse and told me the trains were always packed full these days. There were the men being shipped off to fight on the Eastern Front, and soldiers were returning to their homes on leave. Sometimes there would be wounded men who would need to have their bandages changed, but mostly, Mutti said, they only wanted a cup of hot tea and some conversation.

  When it comes to the wounds? “You just do what you have to do,” she said. “You’ll know what to do.” It was the only instruction I was given.

  The train station was a small one. Just two sets of tracks and a narrow platform. There was a little hut to the side with a
small potbellied stove where we could boil water for the tea, and there we were able to warm our hands, too, as it was spring and the weather could still be cold. I grew to enjoy my work. I enjoyed meeting these men. So many of them looked so young—no older than Dieter—and talking to them made me miss him terribly.

  When the trains came through, we looked first to see if there were women or children on them. Sometimes there were. They always looked frightened and helpless, often no more than a solitary bag to their name. They were traveling because they had been bombed out, and we knew this, so we took particular care of them. We gave them extra cakes, extra tea, and I’d take my handkerchief and wipe a child’s face, which was nearly always dirty and tear-stained.

  My days went like this: Up early in the morning, after not much sleep. Hurry, hurry. Dress in my Red Cross uniform, take what I could for food, some Muckefuck, some bread with the “IG Farben” jam. Then I’d jump on my bicycle and pedal to the train station. On my morning ride, I’d see what had disappeared during a night raid. Houses that now had sky visible through the holes that had been windows only a day earlier. Walls that now appeared like giant ghosts looming over my head. Walls that only yesterday housed a family.

  My job offered me warmth and it gave me tea when otherwise I’d be hungry, and it gave me something to do. Above all, it allowed me a view of the war as seen from one man and then another.

  “It’s a terrible mess in the east,” I heard again and again. “I was in Russia.” “I was in Poland.” And they would shake their heads and say again, “It’s a terrible mess.” “We should be out of there soon. Otherwise this war is a lost cause.” I believed this; I understood it all too well. All I had to do was take a look around my own city, what was left of it. All I had to do was listen to the BBC. And now the Americans were fighting us, too. Indeed, they could be right. Indeed, it could be a lost cause.

  III.

  I was alone at the station one day. My job had become routine: I knew when to be there, what to do, but also when to leave. The air raids continued. We were so used to them by now. The Americans arrived around six o’clock, followed by the British, and we knew we should be close to a bunker when evening rolled in, when the sirens began their wailing.

  It was a day not unlike the others, when there were many young men and even more civilians who needed my attention. A sweet little boy, blond with brown eyes, told me quite earnestly that he was coming to Berlin because “There is a very nice school here for me!” I glanced over at his mother quickly and saw the strain in her face. Oh, that dear boy. May he only keep believing! I gave them both a cup of tea and a warm smile and said, “Macht’s gut!” I wished them well and moved on to tend to the next man.

  It was a soldier who said his home was in Jena. Oh, my heart fluttered when he told me that, and how I wanted to talk with him more. But suddenly the sirens went off. We quickly said goodbye to each other, his train took off, and I turned to run. I left my bicycle where it was, as I knew I would need to run for cover somewhere if the bombs actually fell before I made it home.

  Oh, but the wailing! It comes and then it comes louder. Slow, then it speeds up. Then comes the final tic, tic, tic that we always waited for in the bunker, the one that screams at you, They’re here!

  I could hear the planes overhead already, and the thud of bombs falling in the distance, and I knew I was nowhere near my home. The sky became black with a wall of at least one hundred planes, maybe more, all flying in formation. It was what they called a “carpet bombing” raid, something both the British and the Americans did.

  I heard them drop then. Thud! Thud! Thud! But I was still in the street, still running. Parts of the city were already burning, and I knew I needed to get to safety fast. I ran down some steps into a U-Bahn station as fast as my legs could take me, and in the darkness I looked for where I could hide. It was behind the stairwell, a tiny space, but large enough to cover me. I could barely breathe; my eyes were blinded by fear. I turned to brace myself against the wall, and then it gave way. It felt soft, not hard, and I realized I was leaning against a man who had also found this space to take shelter. Without thinking, I grabbed his coat lapels and buried my face inside his jacket, right up against his chest. Then this man whispered the Lord’s Prayer into my ear and he held me tight around the neck.

  Sometimes bombings lasted only twenty minutes, but at other times a second squadron would fly over us, right behind the first one, and the whole terror would start all over again. This was one of those times.

  When it finally quieted, the man breathed deeply, and then he spoke. He said, “It is finished.”

  “I believe it is finished,” he said again.

  And then again.

  Under normal circumstances I would have collected myself. I would have apologized for my rude behavior. I would have been embarrassed about hiding my face inside his coat. But this day was not normal. In times like this, the unimaginable can happen and you do unimaginable things. We wished each other farewell, gave each other a little nod, and then we walked up the stairs to go back to our lives.

  As I emerged from the subway and saw what was before me, I quickly grabbed his hand one last time. I closed my eyes and said once more, “Dear God!” Fire was burning everywhere. To the right, to the left. People running, stumbling over ruins, holding bags, some clutching a child with one hand and a handkerchief to the mouth with the other. The sky in the direction of Charlottenburg was engulfed in flames.

  I ran back to the train station where I had left my bicycle and found it was still leaning against the railing, as if it did not have a care in the world.

  The winds had begun, and I remembered the horrible night when Dieter and I went out after a bombing. I tied my scarf tight and pedaled as fast as I could. I needed to get to Mutti.

  At the Windscheidstrasse, everything was burning. But, once again, our house still stood. Our Wohnung was still the top floor, and quickly I said a prayer of thanks. When I got to the door, they were all standing there—Mutti, Frau Schulz, and Frau Ahlbeck. They were terribly shaken, and of course Mutti was terrified because I had not been home.

  Then, all of a sudden, as if it was just another day, our telephone rang. I couldn’t believe it still worked. It was Papa Spaeth. He was worried for our safety. He was fine, he said, but then he never seemed concerned for himself. The Oberkommando had a bunker deep beneath its floors where the officers and the personnel hid during these day raids. We merely had our cellar as shelter, and it was our home that would go next if the house were hit again. Mutti tried so hard to stay calm while she answered his questions. “Ja, Karl. We’re all right. We’re all right. Yes, we can breathe again. Yes, our Wohnung is still standing.”

  A day or two later, a phone call came from my friend Ilse, who lived in Wilmersdorf, three U-Bahn stations from our home. Her house had been hit.

  “Think about this,” she said. She was trying hard to be calm, not hysterical. “I was in my Wohnung. It was, as you must remember, on the top floor of the building …” I knew what was coming. “I was busy trying to pick up after the bombing. Furniture that had been knocked over. A wind came through the hole where a window had blown out and a whirl of sparks flew in. Quickly I ran to the tub to fill a pail of water so I could douse the carpet that had caught fire. Then the drapes caught fire, and suddenly I looked behind me and everything was burning. I could only run down the steps as fast as I could. I took nothing with me, not even my purse. As I ran past the other doors, I saw neighbors in their homes trying to gather up their things. I screamed at them, ‘The house is on fire! Run! We’re on fire!’ ”

  She paused. I knew what she was about to say; she did not need to ask.

  “Ilse. Come to me. Come right now. Walk if you must; take the U-Bahn if you can. I’m here.”

  She began to cry. “Grete! I’ve lost everything! Everything! Not a scrap of paper! Not a comb!”

  “I’ll be waiting for you. Don’t worry. I’ll help you.”

  It wa
s not long before she was at my door, her face dirty from tears, her hands shaking, and she fell into my arms.

  “Come, Ilse. Quickly, before Mutti gets home. I’ll help. Of course, I’ll help.”

  I took her to my room and together we filled a suitcase. I went through my closet, took a dress and said, “Yours.” I left the next one for me. The next was “Yours.” I went through all my things—stockings, gloves, hats, and sweaters—“Yours, mine, yours, mine,” until I had given her half of all I had. We then went to the linen closet and I put a few of the pillowcases into her suitcase as well. We shut it, set it next to the front door, and made some tea.

  “Ilse, breathe,” I told her. “You’re safe. The war will one day be over, and we are each other’s best friends.”

  But I didn’t let her stay long. I told her to go quickly, before Mutti saw what I’d done. She’d want to take some of the things back—“because it’s good quality, because we might need it”—I could already hear her say this.

  “Go, Ilse. And trust in God.”

  She thanked me, we hugged, and then she left. Ilse, like all of us, did what she had to do. She moved in with the neighbors who lived below her. That’s just how it was done.

  IV.

  The destruction didn’t happen all at once. It was gradual. The Tiergarten, the Alexanderplatz, Kurfürstendamm—they had all been hit, and their ruins were constantly crumbling, long after the bombings were over, when their walls couldn’t hold out any longer. More and more of the neighborhoods became larger and larger piles of rubble. We understood it as a way of life. Like boiling frogs. Put a frog into boiling water, it will jump right back out. “No, no,” it will say, “this is wrong.” But put the same frog into cold water and slowly bring it to a boil, and it will stay as if it were meant to be there forever, and even die. This is how we lived in Berlin.