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

by Kerstin Lieff

  I found the school easily. Somehow I arrived at a gate to the university, which had a small gatehouse, and inside it a watchman. I was shivering something terrible by this time, and I asked if I couldn’t come in to warm myself. He opened the door with a smile and welcomed me in. Perhaps he was bored and wanted some company. “Sure, sure. Come in! Come warm yourself.” He placed a small stool in front of a little stove he kept lit with bits of wood, and I was able to warm my hands. Together we waited until nine o’clock, when the university opened. I walked, then, the long walk up to the main entrance. I was nervous, and I had no idea how things would go.

  Margarete’s British pass. “Somehow I fell into the classification for British amnesty.”

  First I had to fill out papers. Oh, there were so many papers. Who was I, where was I born, what was my party affiliation—all that. I suppose they were still fishing for the Nazis, but the Nazis surely were long gone. They had either been found and prosecuted or, if they were still living among us, they were lying. No one claimed to have been a Nazi anymore. Who would write “Nazi Partei” on these papers?

  I did acknowledge that I had been in the Hitler Youth. Of course I had been, as everyone had. I wasn’t going to lie. Having been in the Hitler Youth, in the end, was what saved me. Somehow I fell into the classification for British amnesty, and I was never questioned again. I was eventually given a British pass that allowed me to stay in the West for good.

  The Anatomy professor was already at his desk this morning. He was on the second floor in an office that looked like an Anatomy professor’s office. There was even a full-scale human skeleton in the corner, facing out the window. The professor’s name was Barckmann, and I promptly and politely introduced myself with a curtsy: “Margarete Dos. I would like to study here, sir, and I was told you are the professor who can give me the permission.”

  He asked me to sit. He had a graying beard and his suit was worn at the edges of his sleeves, but he had dignity, I could see this. His eyes twinkled. “Nun sag mal, Fräulein,” he began. “Tell me what brings you here.”

  “Sir. I am well versed in all the medical practicalities,” I began. I wanted to impress him. I could not bear the possibility of him writing Not Accepted. I needed this placement. Where else could I go? “I can bandage a wound, I have stood in the operating room while amputations were performed, I can administer morphine, and—oh, sir, please accept me! I’ll study. I’ll be brave. I’ll pass the exams. I want to become a doctor. Please. Tell me what you need from me.”

  “My dear,” he said, “tell me how you came here.”

  “Well, sir. I would have been here long ago, but you see, I was in Russia until now. I have been in Siberia and was only recently released.”

  His eyes widened, and he looked at the Red Cross insignia on my dress, noticing it for the first time. He raised his eyebrows then, and with an amazed look, he barely whispered, “Women were in Russia?”

  “Yes. Yes, sir. We were all women. Mostly from Prussia. We all thought we were going to Sweden, you see, but it was a hoax. We were swindled and ended up working in the coal mines—”

  He took my hand warmly into his. “Say no more. I believe you. I just have never heard of such a thing. This was a terrible fate for you. You’ve suffered so much. Mach dir keine Sorgen. Have no worries. I will make sure you’ll be taken care of.”

  He then told me of his own sorrows. He himself was a refugee from Königsberg, a city that, like so many of the others—Dresden and Hamburg—was decimated by British and American bombs.37 But Königsberg warranted a special prayer, and he told me all about it. Once the bombing was over and most of that beautiful city lay in ruin, the Russians marched in. It was a terror for the people who were left behind. Nearly everyone who could fled. Years later, after the war, Stalin still wanted his revenge for Germany’s betrayal of Russia. The war was over, but even then he wanted to “ethnically cleanse” Königsberg of all the remaining Germans and tried to murder whoever was left. This was the Königsberg that Professor Barckmann had come from.

  “We ran, my mother and I. We simply ran with just our shoes on. No bags, nothing. It was late summer 1944. We hid in the forests and ran at night. I stole eggs from farmers’ henhouses when I could. If the Russians were to find us, it would have been certain death. We ran more than eight hundred kilometers. It took several weeks, but we finally arrived in Hamburg. There, it was not much easier for us. We were from the East, you know. No one wanted to help us. One man, an old man, threw garbage at my mother’s face.”

  The professor then walked around to his desk drawer and pulled out a form. With a fountain pen, he put a long strike down the page and signed the bottom. Then he handed me a Studienbuch, the book that would contain all my future grades, and on the cover he wrote in large letters, just after my name, the course of study I was accepted to: Medizin. “Please, have no more worries,” he said as he handed me my book. “I will make sure you’re cared for. I can even help you with an apartment. I will make life as easy for you as I can. Now go. Study!” he ordered, waving the back of his hand toward the door. He sat and became a professor once again.

  It is possible to go to bed and awake to a new day, one that has changed its color forever. It was Monday, and the day before, Sunday, June 20, 1948, the Deutsch Mark was introduced. It was done on a Sunday so that the occupying forces—the British, the French, and the Americans—would have nothing to say about it, because their offices were officially closed. It would be the Währungsreform, the Currency Reform.

  Every German would receive forty new Deutsch Marks, and we could trade in our old Reichsmarks, one for one. We were three years out from our former Führer’s death.

  Everyone was happy with the forty Marks we received. It was not enough to start anything with, barely enough to eat for a week—and then only if you were very resourceful—so it may sound unimportant, but it was not. We all felt we could finally breathe again. New businesses sprang up everywhere. In the streets you saw new signs—house painting services, letterpress services, anything. Universities were filled to capacity. In the summer of 1948, an enormous weight had been removed from our shoulders.

  Kiel had been my home now for several months. Professor Barckmann had been too kind. He had found housing for me. It was only a room in the attic of a house where several other families lived. But it was my own room with a small table and chair just beneath a round window that looked out upon the street. I was impatient for school to begin again in September, and Mutti was still stuck in Berlin.

  For her, more than ever, Germany had taken on a face she no longer wanted to see. The feeling was that things could not help but change, but they were changing much too slowly, and she wanted out. Of course I said I wanted to go too. Sweden was the most logical destination, so Mutti tried her luck at the Swedish embassy, even at the Swedish Red Cross—anything to get us out. But Sweden didn’t want refugees any more than any other country did, and to be accepted, we had to prove our work-worthiness. Mutti hoped our Kriegsdienst experience would be enough.

  A letter arrived from Mutti. It seemed Berlin was no different from Kiel. “The city is up in cranes. Everywhere there is construction. The churches were first. Much of the old stained glass has been put back. The only thing Berliners won’t do is see the Kaiser-Wilhelm steeple replaced. It will stay as a remembrance of that terrible time, that strange time we just passed through.” She went on to talk about the new businesses that were opening, and how some of our neighbors had gotten permission to leave.

  “I hope to get our visas for Sweden soon,” she wrote.

  Several months went by, then Mutti’s letters, three of them, came all on one day. She was so excited to tell me about Papa. She had finally heard from him. He was safe. He was in Göttingen, where he had decided to study medicine. This man who had once been an engineer wanted something new. Medicine. And now we would both become doctors. His story was a difficult one, not unlike our own, and, like us, he had
managed to survive.

  When he returned to Berlin, he saw we were gone. This would not have surprised him. Everyone was gone. He hoped, he said, we were safe somewhere. He had contacted our relatives in Sweden, and from them he learned we had left Germany. They knew we had supposedly boarded a Raoul Wallenberg train, but they also told him we never arrived. That we had been taken as prisoners to somewhere in Russia was something they all hoped; certainly they did not want to believe we were dead. So Papa went on hoping and praying we would return one day. The Russians, of course, never even acknowledged they took us. To them, we were dead, lost, or otherwise unimportant. It did not matter to them what the story was. We were Germans, and we were gone, no need for explanations. And Papa needed to make a new life for himself. The German navy no longer existed, so he decided to study medicine.

  26

  THE MAN WHO HAD BEEN TO CANADA

  1949

  His hair was blond, but only in places. Mostly he was bald, with just a strip of hair running around the bottom of his head. His shoulders spread wide, and the nails on his fingers were broad. The tooth in the front of his smile was chipped. Just a little bit. He’s too old to be going to university, I thought, but didn’t we all have our stories these days?

  He smiled at me that day. In fact, he had smiled at me often. If I turned around, he was looking at me. He had a pretty smile, even with his chipped tooth. His hands took their time to gesture, and he had a habit of running his long fingers along the top of his head, smoothing the few hairs that were still there. I finally returned his attention that day and asked him how Anatomy was going for him. Mostly I felt sorry for him. He was so old, at least thirty-five.

  To my surprise, he was an easygoing man and a gentleman. He offered to hold my books for me while we walked across the campus. He asked me how I had held out during the war. Where was I from? Did I have a brother or father who died? To this, my only answer was what everyone said, “We all have our stories. Mine are no different from anyone else’s—things were difficult. And I’m here.” And so he smiled some more. He smelled good, too, something I had not remembered since the early days before the war, when I was young and Mutti and Papa had elegant guests come for dinner. I was intrigued by this man. Who was he? And why did he make me laugh so easily?

  His name was Jürgen. He was a charmer, and he smiled often. When the time was right, when the sun was sinking, when the birds had stopped chirping for the night and we were still walking, he took my hand in his and he told me how lovely I looked. Sometimes he’d put his arm around my waist. But he always was a gentleman. He waited for me after class. He’d be there when I rounded the corner. Jürgen even picked some spring flowers for me once and said, “They were just waiting for you at the side of the road. Calling your name.” They were white, I remember, and I thought it might mean something. They were the same flowers I saw when summer arrived in Russia.

  I still thought he was old. I still felt sorry for him. But we all had our stories, and every one of them revolved around mystery. He asked me if I would be so kind as to accompany him to his favorite tavern. He’d like to share a bottle of wine with me, this tall man with the chipped tooth, but he leaned into me ever so gently when he asked, and just that made me say yes.

  The tavern was dark. A fire burned in a fireplace, the atmosphere was one of warmth and candlelight. The tavern waiter seemed to know Jürgen, or at least they were familiar enough with each other to say du. “Very lovely to make your acquaintance, Margarete,” he said, giving a slight bow with his head, and he led us to a corner table with a bench that wrapped around two sides of it with red cushions and small embroidered pillows to cozy into. I remember deer horns decorated the walls. I could have sat here for a very long time, and Jürgen was so entertaining.

  Of course I would want to know where he was during the war. I hoped he would leave the bad parts out, though, and to my surprise he did. He made it all sound so simple, so easy, so exciting. He had been a pilot in the war. He had flown a Messerschmitt, and it was dumb luck, as he put it. He could as easily be dead as alive. The other man, a Brit, did not survive. It had been a battle of wills: The first one to retreat would probably lose, and Jürgen said he was the one who “stuck to his guns.” It happened during the first air battle of the war, the Battle of Britain, as it is now known.

  Jürgen Möller. “He had flown a Messerschmitt.”

  The outcome that had been reported to his parents was that he had been killed in action. Witnesses on the ground said they saw two planes crash, midair, a Brit and a German, the Brit flying a Spitfire, the German—Jürgen, of course—in his Messerschmitt. One man parachuted and landed in the cold water of the Channel. He was soon rescued by the Allies who were waiting in ships below. The wrong part of the story was that it was the Brit who jumped and Jürgen who was dead. Instead, Jürgen was taken prisoner and sent away for seven years. His parents eventually learned the truth, but it was one I could hardly believe myself.

  “The British are proper men, I have to say. I was taken to London—along with all the other German POWs who had been fished out of the sea—to be brought before a court, where I was sentenced to a prisoner-of-war camp. They needed to determine what to do with us, where to put us while they had us.

  “There we were marched through the streets. It was a sunny day. It must have been a weekend, because many people came out to watch, or they just took time off from work. They lined the streets, men and women, so that they could have a good look at us. I was number 162. That means I was the 162nd prisoner, and I had a sign on my chest announcing this. We were spit at, as can be expected. Booed at, sneered at. Vile things were said, some of which I understood, much of which I merely ignored. I was an officer first and foremost, and I kept that at the front of my mind. Of course they would sneer. They were English, we were the enemies.

  “My comrades and I had known we were about to appear before a judge, and so we asked if we couldn’t please shave first. And perhaps receive a set of clean clothes. We were so dirty. The British, with all proper manners, obliged promptly. We were each given shaving implements, soap, and clean blades. A clean towel and a white shirt each, and fresh trousers. I am proud to say, it was clean officers the British were sneering at.”

  I then told Jürgen about my own experiences with the British. How it was for me in Berlin and now here in Kiel. And yes, they had been ruthless during the war. I spoke with the knowledge of a woman who had been there on the ground when it happened. They bombed civilian neighborhoods and destroyed our beautiful cities, and it all seemed so useless and for no good reason. But they were also men of honor. I too had to admit this. They provided food to us when the war was finally done.

  “I was sent to Canada then,” Jürgen said.

  “What? Who went to Canada? I’ve never heard of such a thing!”

  “No, no. Don’t misunderstand. I went as a prisoner. I was sent to a prison camp in Montreal.”

  Although Montreal sounded romantic, my blood chilled at the sound of those two words: “prison” and “camp.” No matter what life would bring, what beauty still lay ahead, I would never outlive the feelings that come with those words.

  “I was there for seven years.”

  Jürgen kept speaking, but I suddenly felt too sick to listen. Seven years. I would never have survived that. Seven years! Oh God!

  And when my ears tuned back in, I heard the most unbelievable things:

  “We were given an officer’s paycheck, just like we would have in Germany …”

  “We ate very well. We cooked elaborate dinners with meats drenched in sauces made with dill and mustard …”

  “We had access to the library …”

  “I attended one of their best universities, McGill …”

  Spinnt er? I kept saying to myself. Is he spinning stories? How could this be true? The past had such a different reality for him than it had for me. And yet, we all had our stories, he his, I mine, and he poured an
other wine.

  Then, this man kissed me.

  I was lightheaded. He smiled, and I smiled back.

  “Margarete,” he said from another place, one more intimate. “Margarete … you have a lovely name.”

  I was feeling something like love, and he was looking straight at me. He held my hair in his hand, something a man didn’t usually do, and he pulled me close. “Margarete. Would you kiss me again?”

  I had not felt this, this feeling, in such a long time. He was there, his eyes large and bright, and his grin with the chipped tooth. I let him kiss me. We were sitting at a corner table, where other couples must have sat; the tavern keeper left us alone. The kiss felt soft and easy, and in that moment I felt trust, a feeling I had long ago lost faith in.

  “Do you know how many languages you can learn in seven years?” Jürgen asked suddenly.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Seven. I learned seven.”

  “No you didn’t. What languages?” His story was so fascinating, but some things were too big. I mean, who lives the war years doing things like this?

  “Swedish.” He then said, “Svensk flicka,” calling me a Swedish girl, and I giggled.

  Oh, this man could make me laugh! This man who spoke English well, the man with large fingernails and warm hands. With what I’m sure was a strong German accent, he called me a beautiful woman in Arabic and Czech and Italian. Then he said it in one more language, and this one took me by surprise: Russian.

  “Oh, Jürgen, tell me anything. Tell me about sauces made with mustard. Tell me about your dress shirts and ties and library books. But don’t tell me about the Russians. Not their language or any of it …”

  Right about now Jürgen’s face was much closer to mine. We had slipped our bodies closer, his eyes, such a rich blue, never left mine, and his voice soothed me. I noticed his top button was in the wrong buttonhole, but I dismissed it as just a silly thing to notice and thought only of the man he’d been, so young, and to have fallen from an airplane!