Nobody Knew

STRAUBE

NOBODY KNEW

through Quality Generic Education comes Global Understanding and Growth…

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NOBODY KNEW

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NobodyKnewPBK.indd 1

ISBN-13: 978-0-7618-4276-7 ISBN-10: 0-7618-4276-4 90000 9 7 80761 8 42767

Win

STRAUBE 9/25/08 5:28:07 PM

Nobody Knew Win Straube

Hamilton Books A member of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group

Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

Copyright © 2009 by Hamilton Books 4501 Forbes Boulevard Suite 200 Lanham, Maryland 20706 Hamilton Books Acquisitions Department (301) 459-3366 Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America British Library Cataloging in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Control Number: 2008920632 ISBN-13: 978-0-7618-4276-7 (paperback : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-7618-4276-2 (paperback : alk. paper) eISBN-13: 978-0-7618-4277-4 eISBN-10: 0-7618-4277-2

Cover Photos: Author, Win Straube; Top to Bottom: 1990; 1972; 1954; 1935

⬁ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48—1984

In memory of my father, Herbert Richard Straube, born 1902 in Dresden, Germany, died 1945 in concentration camp Mühlberg a/d Elbe.

Contents

Foreword

vii

Preface

xi

Acknowledgments

xiii

1

Introduction

2

From Peace to War

12

3

Growing up Fast

18

4

Holocaust End Run

28

5

Escape to Where?

36

6

End of the Line

43

7

Quo Vadis?

54

8

Winter 1946/47

58

9

Living Dangerously

65

The Grass on the Other Side of the Fence

70

10

1

11 Finding the Pieces That Fit

78

12

Out of the Family Treasure Box

85

13

How it All Began

93

14

Turning Today Into Tomorrow

98

v

vi

Contents

15

From the Old to the New World

107

16

Ontario, Canada

121

17

Toward Closure

125

18

Wrong Blood

128

Appendix

137

Foreword by Günter Johne September 23, 2007 (translated from the original German)

In Nobody Knew and its predecessor, a three-part autobiography entitled Enjoying the Ride, Win Straube deals with his years of youthful apprenticeship in Germany, particularly in Dresden. In that city in February, 1945, he survived the fire bombing by the British and the subsequent carpet bombing by the American Air Force that left destruction and shambles never before seen in the history of mankind. As a contemporary and schoolmate of Win’s, I can confirm that everything was exactly as Win reported it. The streets of Dresden were plastered with corpses which were often stacked tightly together, like spoons. Most survivors looked apathetically into nothingness, though some sprang into action, like Win, who grabbed a bike and went to search for friends and relatives in the rubble. Those at the edge of the strike zone who had lived through the bombings could see the burning of all quarters in the city, realizing that they were now at the edge of a desert of death. We were still scared days later, fearing more air attacks by the Allies as well as German artillery and air defense cannon fire that made the ground shake, causing further damage and devastation. Win would come to realize that it was truly a seminal experience in his life to have been spared by the catastrophe. Decades later, long after becoming a successful businessman in New York, Win took up the pen to rid himself of the nightmares of his youth which still haunt him to this day—the fright and climactic extremes of those times. On the journey into his past, he deeply penetrates the absurdity of his experiences at that time—the massacre of his countrymen and his own survival. He also details the harshly enforced institution of communism through the Soviet Union, which paralyzed the energy of independently thinking individuals. One of the main effects of the communist ideology was to discourage people from developing their own personalities. Win’s remembrances show how he succeeded in forming his own vii

viii

Foreword

persona nevertheless. It was my impression, which is also shared by other schoolmates, that Win’s attitude was that of a fighter in the ring who gets motivated by the punches he receives. It was dangerous at that time to talk about liberty, justice, one’s own initiative, and honest opportunities for all, but to him those topics were paramount. I don’t know whether Win, in a bombed-out 1945 Dresden and during the few years thereafter, could have dreamed of the successful life he’s now living as described in Enjoying the Ride. Because at that time in East Germany, adolescents and young adults faced nothing but prohibitions and barriers which should have made any major attempt of personal ambition fail. But Win wanted to be successful even then and worked at it, which at the time meant going to the “West”—West Germany. And eventually he and his wife, Hildegard, reached the place of Win’s youthful longing and hope, the original country of liberty: the United States of America. There he could finally pursue the lifestyle which corresponded to his character and sense of creativity. Nobody Knew is at the heart of Win’s life story, dealing primarily with the confusing realities of a young East German who had to contend with extreme adversity during the World War II era. The book reads like an Odyssey, where someone starts from the beginning in a difficult but familiar environment and needs to do whatever it takes to prevail in a new and challenging world. In search of his own life goals he sets high demands for himself that he is willing to work to realize, and he does. This book is evidence for me that one can accept the dangers, risks, and vicissitudes of life—even enjoy them. Win Straube’s philosophy of life couldn’t be defined more succinctly as in this account. In contrast to timid types, he was not disposed to bear a sad life full of disappointments and defeats in Dresden which, at that time, necessitated living like a hermit for security reasons and not disclosing any indications of secret escape-attempt preparations. Win chose the dangerous escape to Frankfurt am Main, crossing the border where the “iron curtain” had descended, in the effort to gain his freedom. In spite of his successes, it’s amazing to see him embodying a moving selfportrait of humility and understatement. He reveals, however, his distinctive tendency to slip in the role of the person with relentless drive, one who is never sure whether he did enough to find recognition and who at the same time tries to examine whether recognition is something to strive for at all.

ABOUT GÜNTER JOHNE Günter Johne was born in 1929 in Dresden, Germany. He became an interpreter in English, French, and Russian, then studied Economics (with minors

Foreword

ix

in Islamic studies and Arabic) at the Free University in West Berlin, where he also earned his doctorate. As a lifelong professional diplomat, Johne served in high positions of the German Foreign Service as well as the German Ministry of Economics. He was stationed in Cairo, Egypt, and Moscow, U.S.S.R. at critical periods of international developments. Official government travels also took him to many countries around the world, including Africa and South America. Later he became an independent artist and member of the German Association of Formative Artists (Bundesverband Bildender Künstler BBK). Johne is also a writer, focusing primarily on travel writing; in 2007 his first book was published. Presently he works on stories about India’s culture and everyday life.

Preface

This book did not emerge as a sudden spark of recollections brought to paper, nor was it created by accident. It was put together in response to market demand and consists of sections that were taken out of an earlier book I wrote, Enjoying the Ride, an autobiographical account presented in one volume of three books: “Merci Mon Ami,” the “Illionaire Handbook,” and “Deep Inside,” which appeared as a fundraiser for the Straube Foundation in 2002. The Straube Foundation raised over $120,000 with the first 600 numbered copies of that issue, which was followed with three more-popular paper editions, all out of print now. There was also one audio version in 2006 which, at the annual BookExpo in New York in 2007, won ForeWord Magazine’s gold “Book of the Year” prize, as well as other awards including the USABookNews “2006 Best Book Award” in three categories: Biography/Memoir, Business, and Non-Fiction/Unabridged. Nobody Knew is the abridged version of that same report. It went from Enjoying the Ride’s 430 pages to this book’s considerably shorter length. All the strictly biographical and Straube family data have been cut out. What remains is a period piece about ethnic roots and their consequences at that time, leading up to and following the fire bombing and burning of Dresden—a firsthand documentary of watershed events in world history. —Win Straube, Pennington, New Jersey, U.S.A. 2007-07-07

xi

Acknowledgments

My Many Thanks go to all the outstanding contributors who so generously gave of their extraordinary talent, knowledge, and experience to bring about this book. These include Janet Purcell, a dear family friend and an Arts Writer at The Times, the New Jersey capital’s leading newspaper. She woke up at 3:30 a.m. one night with the answer to what the title of this newest version of the book was going to be: Nobody Knew. One thousand thanks to Janet, a well-versed writer with an eye for the essential as well as what makes a story worthwhile to read. And Lester Staib, my editor for Nobody Knew. He took apart the forerunner of this book (Enjoying the Ride, 2002) and reassembled portions thereof as this historical nonfiction, World War II and after-war documentary. Readers might also want to thank Lester for the pictures of me on the book’s front cover. This is so because, in the previous editions, the Introduction included this statement of mine: “No need looking for a picture of me . . . You won’t find me because I am the one who is doing the seeing. It’s my book, after all. Everything you see is through my eyes. In this journey you are me. You’ll see who and what I saw. More than observe, you’ll think it, smell it, and touch it, just as I did.” Well, Lester convinced the Editorial Board, which in turn convinced me, that pictures of me would need to go with the book. Now they are there. There are many more collaborators who worked on this new paperback in addition to the Editorial Board, which also included Song Tang, Ph.D., an outstanding scholar and researcher and at the same time a most valuable friend of mine.

xiii

xiv

Acknowledgments

I am extremely grateful to each of the unnamed contributors who supplied much of the original book’s information, especially those who did their own reporting. I’d tried to fill in the gaps they left open. To do this, I’d used material from my own previous accounts in Enjoying the Ride, including text from a manuscript I published in 1967 called Blame It On Me. I had revised and updated that text where appropriate, and added details and insights that had emerged up to that point in time. Among additional contributors, to name just a few, are Helmut Straube, my father’s brother, who was a medical doctor and did a substantial part of the original research regarding our family tree in Germany. His scientific homework and precision in reporting are invaluable elements of the facts as presented. Excerpts from Dr. Helmut Straube’s family chronicle and his other writings were translated from German so the English text could be included here. Special thanks go to my brother, Manfred Straube, whose recollections show a photographic memory that vividly depicts and brings back otherwise long-forgotten events. His contribution was taken from the memoirs he wrote for his children and grandchildren. In addition, other sources were identified in the Notes and Author’s Sources sections of Enjoying the Ride. I am particularly grateful to a scrupulously professional, yet thoroughly private, person for sharing some of her closest personal experiences: my wife, Hildegard. Many thanks still go to Josephine Moraa Moikobu, Ph.D., who provided most invaluable assistance in editing the original material that forms the basis of this book. Her friendship, guidance, and advice made Enjoying the Ride into what it remains in its new version—readable. Without her, this would have been a dry recitation of facts. Additional thank-you’s go to Linda Hephzibah Butts who made sure that the text of the original book was spelled correctly and the grammar was correct, as well as ensuring the entire book was laid out for easy reading. Most of all I thank her for having been the photographs and graphics editor; she made miserably deteriorated originals into printable art pieces, as well as assembling and interspersing them with the text in the most intelligent way. Very special thanks regarding this new edition go to Günter Johne, Ph.D., of Bonn and Dresden, Germany, a former classmate of mine, who provided the Foreword and thus speaks for himself. Some of the things he doesn’t say are that Günter Johne was always a linguistic genius who is at home in several European and Mid-Eastern languages. Apart from his diplomatic career, Günter is a highly accomplished and well-recognized modern painter as well as an established writer of short stories, such as his most-recent book, Endstation Pondicherry (Final Stop Pondicherry, India), 2007.

Acknowledgments

xv

The earlier volume included some snapshots of the destruction of Dresden and its aftermath. By recommendation of the Editorial Board, and thanks to former high school friends Werner Wehsener and Manfred Lauffer in Dresden, more photographs of that time have been included in this issue. This book also contains pictures of some of the key characters and others I met along the way, as well as documentary details such as several maps (see Appendix for maps). I alone am responsible for any shortcomings that may appear within this presentation. The volume before you, just as in Enjoying the Ride, does not contain the complete story. I merely followed the thread, picking and choosing happenings and issues which greatly impacted me when growing up in the “old world” and while becoming part of the “new world.” —Win Straube, Pennington, New Jersey, U.S.A. 2007-07-07

Chapter One

Introduction

There is no doubt about it: your genome and mine are 99.9 percent identical. Between us, only 1/10 of one percent of our 40,000 genes differs. Actually, that applies for each human being in relation to the entire world population. With absolute certainty, therefore, you and I have common ancestors, some close at hand, others in the distant past. This book is the personal record of happenings and connections previously known only to a few, most of whom kept their knowledge to themselves, often preferring to forget. Many took it with them to their graves. It is the account of my personal experience through the final months of World War II and its aftermath: from the likelihood of personal extinction—just like my hometown of Dresden, Germany, was wiped out overnight—to the promise of a new life. You, too, are part of that history, either directly or through your forebears and kin, although what you saw and I saw may not be identical. Along the way, your chosen path and your individual thoughts may have differed from mine. But you will find surprisingly familiar ground which you and I have covered together at one time or another, somehow, maybe from different sides of the same front line, maybe through your ancestors, relatives, and friends . . . or mine. It may not look like it on the surface, but when you examine the details you’ll probably find that you and I and all of us are somehow bound together, and not merely by our common DNA. No matter where we came from or where we are going, and also very much so spiritually as well as in the way we think, feel, and understand each other. We may not be sure about the ultimate destination, but the unique gettingthere can thoroughly invigorate and enlighten us. For this joyous trip, I am happy that you joined me and came along for the ride. 1

2

Chapter One

WAY BACK WHEN Allowing two children to a generation, three generations to a century, and ignoring intermarriages among progenitors and among issue, every person alive now has over one million ancestors who lived seven hundred years ago. Therefore, everyone has two parents, four grandparents, and eight greatgrandparents. Doubling the number for each past generation for twenty generations will result in an astonishing one million ancestors. Considering the roving character of many human beings, this seems to prove that our progenitors came from every race, and that some ancestors of everyone now living must have participated in every important event that occurred 2,000 or more years ago on any part of the earth’s surface. It’s also likely that our numerous ancestors must have moved in all levels of society from kings to savages, and ranged through degrees of morality from saints to criminals, and were among the richest and the poorest, the wisest to the most idiotic, and the strongest to the weakest on the globe. This description was offered by one of my law school professors, and I am in no position to judge its accuracy. However, when I was born in Dresden in 1929, that mixing process had been going on for eons of years, and I, as well as everyone else, was a product of it. Maybe esoteric, maybe unique in some characteristics, but basically a product from the same assembly line.

ANSWERS LEADING TO NEW QUESTIONS Once I was old enough to see and hear and then draw my own conclusions, it made little sense to me that my father had joined the German National Socialist Workers Party while apparently being opposed to fascism, as was the rest of the family, and later helping friends to escape its wrath. The surface logic presented by my father at the time was pretty much the party line. He apparently believed that races that remain clean and strong will survive, but others that mix with “inferior” races will die. It was important for a “healthy” and “strong” human being to have the “right” kind of ancestors. My father complied with the wishes of the Party and completed a long investigation into his and my mother’s predecessors. This, of course, was done to prove that they were all descended from a meticulously clean Germanic ancestral origin. In the case of my mother this investigation had turned up what seemed to be an embarrassing fact: my maternal grandfather was an illegitimate child whose ancestral background no one knew. He could have been of Polish, Jew-

Introduction

3

ish, Russian, or Slavic origin. What a sin! He had lived in Silesia, working on farms and later on moving to Dresden. He married my grandmother whose ancestors, my father discovered, were from respectable Danish stock. One of them, an Admiral Heinze, had served as a commander in the Danish fleet during the War of 1914–1918.

HOW FAR BACK CAN YOU BE CERTAIN? My father’s ancestors were tracked and traced all the way back to the year 1755. Again, as it superficially showed, apparently many of them had been miners in the Ore Mountains of Saxony. They lived in rented shacks in and near a very small village called Obergruna. Later on, my father took his family to this village. In 1939, I noticed on the gravestones in the Obergruna cemetery that almost all people in the community had one of two names: They were either Straubes or Peuckerts. Peuckert was my father’s mother’s maiden name. She came to Dresden with my grandfather, Richard Straube, who no doubt was the one to eventually change the development of the Straube family. Richard was a husky man of 6'6" who had served an apprenticeship as a baker in the village. Later he became a journeyman and worked in a bakery in Rüsseina near Nossen; there he became a “bakery master” in 1899. In Rüsseina he met my grandmother, who was the oldest daughter of his employer. Richard was a thrifty man with a sharp eye set on his future.

Godfather Otto Peuckert (1877–1944), brother of my paternal grandfather, together with my father and mother in Ockerwitz, near Dresden, some time before I was born in the 1920s.

4

Chapter One

PULLING UP THE BOOTSTRAPS Some of my grandparents’ sisters and brothers managed to immigrate to America. There was no future in Obergruna, which was for sure, or in Rüsseina, for the Bäckermeister wasn’t old enough to let the new “master” take over. So both my grandfather and grandmother made the twenty-mile journey to Dresden where they were married in 1901. Richard had leased the “Schanzenbäckerei,” which he operated as Bäckermeister. In 1910, he bought a house and bakery at 29 Klopstockstrasse in Cotta, a suburb of Dresden. While Richard baked, Louise sold the wares in the store. Both were diligent and Richard knew his trade well, so that their business flourished and Straube buns and cakes were well known and liked throughout the area.

My father, Herbert Straube, as a student.

Word got back to Obergruna that Richard was doing well in Dresden. Actually, it was Richard who sent word back to Obergruna, because he needed helpers. And, eventually, he functioned as a bridgehead, funneling off young ambitious Straubes and Peuckerts from Obergruna into the metropolis. Many relatives came to work in the bakery: at the ovens, helping in the store, and as delivery boys. Because of a lack of accommodations, most of the helpers lived with my grandparents and their quarters became crowded. Soon the bakery was working in three shifts, with my grandfather being there almost all the time.

FAMILY AND FORTUNE My father was born in 1902, the first of Richard and Louise Straube’s three sons. Werner followed in 1905, and Helmut in 1913. In the meantime, my grandparents not only had children and a good reputation as bakers, but also had acquired some investment property. My grandfather had become the un-

Introduction

5

crowned king of our relatives. I only remember my grandfather as an old man, after most of his work had been accomplished. He died in 1935, when I was six years old. But I can clearly imagine what kind of a person he was by listening to my other relatives talking about him or referring to him. He was the man who knew the answers to most problems brought before him, and he could be counted on to pass out good advice and act on someone’s behalf. He was a strong and stern man but a fair one, and he never took NO for an answer. As I so clearly remember, my father used to explain to us children that he felt sorry for himself at times when seeing his father asserting his rights and powers. For instance, one Sunday afternoon Grandpa Straube took his wife and children out for a walk. They stopped at a fashionable garden restaurant to have coffee and cake. Since it was summertime the restaurant was crowded, but this didn’t keep Grandpa from having the long-awaited refreshments. He looked around for tables where one or two chairs were still vacant, and he proceeded to distribute the members of his family on the empty chairs. My father, then a boy of 10, was left at a table where the other

a Photos a through f. My father, Herbert Straube, at age 21, member of the Dresdner Rowing Club. Pages from my father’s test book for the German National Sports Badge for Men.

6

Chapter One

b

c

Introduction

d

e

7

8

Chapter One

f guests protested that the chair was already taken, that the occupant was in the washroom and would return right away. But Grandpa would have none of that. The chair was empty so it was going to be occupied by little Herbert, who was going to have his coffee and cake right there, seated among strangers. Not very happy, little Herbert did so, and the alleged occupant of the chair never returned. During his lifetime, Grandpa Richard accumulated enough wealth to buy several apartment buildings in Dresden; in the early 1920s he owned five apartment houses. After Germany’s hyperinflation early in the 1920s, followed by other severe economic problems culminating in the 1929 world depression, he ended up with only three buildings by 1930. The idea was that one of the remaining apartment buildings would go to each one of his sons after his and my grandmother’s death. After Richard died in 1935, Grandmother continued to manage the real estate. My father’s brother Werner took over the bakery because he had the least education and thus deserved the most parental help. The other two sons had done well in school and were counted on to do well on their own. Helmut, the last son, born after grandfather had accumulated some wealth already, was sent to a univer-

Introduction

9

sity to become a medical doctor. Helmut gave my grandparents great satisfaction, for he was their example to show that a simple baker cannot only become prosperous himself, but he can also produce offspring with academic titles. A “Doctor” meant “having arrived” for the German bourgeoisie in the first quarter of the 20th century.

CHILDREN CHOOSING DIFFERENT CAREERS My father became a baker because he was the first son, and he must have been considered to take over the bakery before developments changed. However, Herbert apparently didn’t like the idea of being a baker for the rest of his life, having grown up amidst the toil and sweat of this hard work and with lots of relatives around him. After having learned the bakery trade at an early age, Herbert went out to serve an apprenticeship as a merchant in a wholesale company. This should have given him a good grounding in business and administration work. My father was interested in sports, too, and he became an active member of the Rowing Club Cotta, participating in many competitions and winning a few. But times were rough in Germany in the mid-twenties, particularly for a young man who wasn’t top-of-the-line educated and didn’t want to go into his father’s bakery business. After Herbert had absolved his wholesale apprenticeship, which was (and still is today) the preparatory training required for a professional job in Germany, the country was spilling over with the unemployed and there was no job for Herbert anywhere. He was too proud to go back to his parents’ bakery, so he looked around but nothing else came his way. Finally, Grandpa, who must have seen what was going on, came to the rescue again, for he was a man who knew how to handle any situation. He was a member of a bowling club in Dresden, and Herr Jost, General Manager of the insurance company Barmer Ersatzkasse, was also a member. Herr Jost was not an owner of the insurance company, but a salaried manager. He liked to live high and enjoy himself, and once in a while he’d run out of money. Then he’d approach some people of moderate wealth, such as Grandpa at the bowling club, to give him a hush-hush top-secret personal loan. This time Grandpa agreed, on one condition: He’d have to give a job to his son Herbert. Nobody told Herbert what had happened—and I only found out accidentally, long after the death of my father—but Herbert was somehow directed to apply at the Barmer Ersatzkasse and, this time, he surely got the job. In 1925 Herbert Straube started as an insurance processor, Kaufmännischer Angestellter, at the main offices of the Barmer Ersatzkasse in Dresden.

10

Chapter One

Family gathering in garden of our home in Dresden, probably around 1934. My mother with my brother in front of her at very left, grandmother Louise Straube in center, her husband Richard Oswald Straube, in retirement, at very right.

PATRIOTISM AND POLITICS Germany, having lost the war of 1914–18 and the inflation of 1923 having wiped out a good part of my grandparents’ (and almost everyone else’s) assets, made a ripe climate for aggressive political ideas being contemplated and listened to by many people. In spite of the good efforts of then-President Woodrow Wilson, who represented the USA at the post-WW I peace conference, the Treaty of Versailles ended up a treaty of vengeance with which the Germans, a proud people, were expected to live. Instead, a boiling pot of political unrest was created in which communists and national socialists grabbed the headlines. For most of my life I didn’t know what had prompted my father to join the National Socialist Workers Party in 1929. Only 45 years after his death did I find out how it all came about. I grew up with the impression that it must have been his conviction that National Socialism was the best remedy for the strife-torn German Weimar Republic with its more than forty political parties, and that Hitler was the only alternative to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Rationalizing this, I also knew that an uncoerced free majority of Germans had voted for Hitler in 1932/33 when the party came to power. So, why couldn’t my dad be one of them? Lacking other knowledge and experience,

Introduction

11

my father was a nationalist. I thought that he was probably frustrated in his quest for success in business or a professional life, unwilling to follow in the toiling blue-collar ways of his parents. Doing what everybody else was doing, he might have thought of getting a crack at changing the world by a simple formula of being a member of the successful crowd. Little did I know—I was wrong! It was merely the opening act of a tragedy that played out subsequently and culminated with the death of my father 6 days after his 43rd birthday. More on this later.

Chapter Two

From Peace to War

A DREAM NOT PURSUED As a young child one may not comprehend the significance of an event at the time it happens nor fully understand what the adults around you are talking about, but your mind somehow stores that information and you remember later. This is how I recall, from a conversation my mother had with friends, that my dad and mom considered immigrating to America some time after they had met. Germany was run-down then, after the first World War. Jobs were scarce. The politicians were bickering. There seemed to be no future. But America was that silver lining in the clouds. There, men still went from rags to riches. There, life had a purpose . . . at least, so it seemed. It must have been 1937 or ’38. My youngest sister Elsbeth was still being nursed by my mother, and it was during one of those nursing sessions that a former coworker of my mother at the hospital came by with her fiancé, an anesthetist, to say goodbye. In retrospect, I recall he had a Jewish name. At the time that didn’t set off any thoughts for me of why they were leaving, but today, of course, it is all crystal clear. They were immigrating to America and, as it turned out, just in time. I remember mother telling them that she and her husband almost went there some time ago. That made my ears perk up and my concentration shift from the homework I was doing on the big table in the adjoining room. “But, you didn’t go?” the nurse had asked, and mother explained. It would have been quite a decision to make, for they had nobody in America and they’d have to leave all their friends and relatives behind. The main problem, as mother recalled, was to scrape up the money for the voyage. My parents’ folks didn’t like the idea, and my parents didn’t want to borrow for a trip to somewhere where no job was waiting. 12

From Peace to War

13

Mother and my two sisters, probably 1937.

That very same evening after the nurse and her friend had left, mother had dinner with us children at the kitchen table. Our father was working late and had not come home yet. Mother, obviously still preoccupied with the line of thought of her afternoon conversation, talked about it with us and brought up another angle on the same subject: “You know,” she said, “Grandfather Straube had strong feelings about the matter. He chided your father for wanting to run away from Germany’s national problems. He said that the German nation, through its schools and by its mere existence, had made a heavy investment in its people. That leaving the country was like the blossom deserting the tree without bearing fruit. ‘You were born here,’ he said, ‘and that’s where you belong. America belongs to the Indians.’ Grandpa Straube considered emigration, particularly at a time of national misery, as treason. ‘Go to Berlin, if you want,’ he said, ‘or to Frankfurt and make yourself useful. But don’t run away from your homeland.’”

GONE FISHING Mother had deep faith in God and his guidance. She’d always have plenty of Bible quotations on the tip of her tongue. Whichever way life would turn, she’d always be ready to understand the reason things were happening a particular way and quote why, how, and what the Lord had done as he did, and that this was also the best way for us now. And, regarding the question of whether to immigrate, she felt that everything had worked out just fine. During the summer, we boys would go fishing where the little Lockwitz brook entered the Elbe. We’d put a worm or, preferably, a fly on the hook. Then we’d stand on the low bridge crossing the brook and let the line down toward the water. The trick was to guide the hook with bait to the fish, which we could see in swarms through the clear water, then to let the fly just touch the water so that the trout would be able to bite. Naturally, whenever a trout

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Chapter Two

snapped, you’d have to jerk the line up to make sure the hook caught, then bring up the fish. During those days, we used no fishing rods or any other fancy equipment. The line was sometimes a fairly heavy string taken off one of mother’s packages from the store. Once in a while a barge loaded with coal or sand would go by out on the Elbe. Usually a small boat or dinghy was attached to the back of the motordriven barge by means of a rope, and this little row boat was used for going ashore in case of emergencies. It was usually empty and swimmers were supposed to stay away from these boats, for they were pulled along maybe ten feet behind the ship’s propeller and capsized easily. For boys, of course, this boat was the main aim of our swimming: to climb in and get a free ride upstream, then later swim or float back down to near our fishing spot. Occasionally, my younger brother would take over my fishing string and hold it until I returned from the swim with the older boys. Once he had two fish bite, both at once, at both lines and he had them still dangling and jumping on the lines when the others and I came back. We quickly helped him get the trout up and out of the water.

WAKING UP TO WAR But with war breaking out and eventually engulfing all of Europe, idyllic episodes of life like that were blown away quickly. School assignments were not only in academics but also became specific in support of the war effort. One of those jobs which was assigned to us as teenagers was the collection of recyclable materials, such as old metal, paper, and other reusable materials, so that nothing in the country would go to waste. Posters were displayed everywhere proclaiming that waste was a national crime. Each schoolboy was given a quota collecting such junk, expressed in points to be reached per month. Our family had a little hand-drawn cart that I was allowed to use for this duty. With two classmates of mine we would push it along the streets and go from house to house asking for old papers and what have you. We’d sort our acquisitions in such a way that each one of us could report an outstanding record, although it was really the combined effort of three. For instance, over several months we collected used razor blades, then we determined by lot who was to present them. Ulrich Huth was the lucky one. He presented 4456 used razor blades, a record in school. Razor blades were a most-valuable steel item because they could be melted into weapons or plates of armor. The school principal intended to announce this grand achievement at the weekly roll call. He had the cigar box with all the blades on display in

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front of him on the podium. Someone mischievous—an obvious saboteur— kicked over the box just before the speech. The blades flew and were scattered all over the floor. A crowd of milling boys started picking up the blades, cutting their fingers, bleeding, cursing . . . And after all that the principal’s review contained no reference to the blades, which were not counted again either. Günter Sauer once made and broke the record collecting precious metals. In this case the precious metal happened to be copper. We found it in the form of downspouts which had either already fallen down or were loosely hanging on the wall of an old museum which suffered from obvious neglect during those trying times. If anyone had known where we picked up the disintegrating copper eavestroughing that had fallen down and that we had dismantled the rest, all three of us might have been expelled from school or worse. We never gained any special mention for recycling although we often tried it with paper, even by hoarding every ounce in excess of our quota for months and then soaking the inside bunches with water to add weight. Somebody else would always show up with more old paper yet—maybe with more water retained inside. One lesson I learned from this was that it was difficult to beat a record in an everyday item or commodity anywhere, for you’d have tremendous competition. It is always easier—and much more spectacular—to establish a new record in an exotic field, such as razor blades or copper eavestroughing.

LESSONS LEARNED Mother was unhappy with the entire Nazi endeavor, particularly the idea of involving young people in national problems of which they understood nothing. She felt we had to grow up first, develop our own minds before we should work actively, at least until we were able to comprehend the ramifications. She was the first to find out by thorough questioning how we had established the precious metal collection record. She told my father. He exploded. I got another lecture plus the threat of a paddy-whack in case of any repeat, which was all part of his “tough love” approach together with his otherwise-unfailing support. Father also told the parents of my two collaborators, and something similar must have happened to them. Günter and I never mentioned copper eavestroughing again. When Ulrich brought it up we told him to “shut up.” Having taken care of the punishment first-hand, my father did not inform the school. Apparently, neither did the other parents. Mother gave me the moral going-over, and this was worse than the paddy-whack.

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Everything had to be above-board at all times—this was the lesson regardless of Mr. Hitler, or recycling contests, or anything else. Mother and father made sure I went to church-provided scripture studies regularly from then on. Our pastor’s name was Rabe, and he occasionally showed up at our house to visit my grandmother, one of his devoted followers. He’d come when she was sick at times or she hadn’t been able to make it to church for some other reason. Pastor Rabe was later to disappear from the Lutheran Church suddenly to spend over two years in a concentration camp, as we found out only after the war. He was a man with solid principles, and one who knew how to teach children who came to service with firecrackers in their pockets and mischief on their minds.

ONGOING EDUCATION A relatively frequent guest at our house was Herr Einhorn, a friend of my father’s at the rowing club. Herr Einhorn was a head shorter than Father. He was of light frame, the best steersman they ever had at the club. His brain was known to work like a computer, and that’s why they won the races with him in the back. He also could shout fiercely, getting the rowers to throw in their last ounce of muscle or energy to pull through to victory. And although Herr Einhorn came from academia originally, for some reason unknown to me he still carried out a manual job then. I believe he worked as a janitor. Mrs. Einhorn had studied abroad and spoke fluent English. The Einhorns had friends in Britain and brought a cosmopolitan atmosphere to our house. It was pleasant talking and listening to them and hearing of the great wide world outside ours. Herr Einhorn had an easy smile, yet at times he seemed to withdraw when political subjects came up for comment or discussion, or when the topic approached anything that had to do with Hitler and his Reich. Questioned, he’d say that everything would blow over sooner or later, hopefully not too late. Only half a century later did I learn that the Einhorns, who survived the holocaust in Germany, were Jews. I’ll come back to that subject later. Therefore, in retrospect, it tickles my mind remembering one occasion when Father, Pastor Rabe, and Herr Einhorn happened to meet in our home at the same time. Somehow their topic of conversation became the proper upbringing of children. Father was in favor of a stern, straight-forward, followthe-book method: there should be rewards given for doing better than the norm and there should be penalties for doing below average, plus discipline if necessary to be enforced with the occasional paddy-whack when really deserved. He quoted Bismarck’s chief of staff: “If you want to learn to command, learn first how to follow.”

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Pastor Rabe’s method was a lot softer. It was to strictly follow the scriptures. Learn from the Bible. Live with the Ten Commandments, and have a moral soul session with your charges once in a while. Herr Einhorn held a sort of a maverick position. He felt that young people couldn’t be influenced very much regardless of what you said. They would copy their elders in doing what they did. He seemed to say to Father and the clergyman: Don’t talk so much, instead be a good example. He felt that young people, left to themselves but provided with the necessary learning, would easily find their own way. I always liked Herr Einhorn’s attitude because you never knew what he was going to say, and he made the two authoritative persons look as if they would be better off looking out for themselves than trying to guide their children. Mind you, Father had the last word. After the guests had left, he came to us children with Mother at his side and said something like this: “Never mind what you’ve heard tonight. You don’t understand anything about this yet. All you have to know right now and to care for is that you do your schoolwork and help your mother with the dishes.” Father said that he, as a child, and Mother, as a child, didn’t have all the many advantages and conveniences we were enjoying and that the world was in a great upheaval with an uncertain outcome. But whatever the future, there would be always tasks for the prepared and opportunities for the diligent. So “stick your nose in the schoolbook. You’ll need all the knowledge you can get.” And we sighed, and agreed.

Chapter Three

Growing up Fast

YOUTH WANTS TO BELIEVE AND BELONG If it hadn’t been for my youth at the time of World War II I’d be dead today, because I had been reared in a world where the highest fulfillment in life was to die for my fatherland. “Give us death or victory,” was the Spartan motto to be adopted. It also became mine. And my mind was made up even as a boy that the battles in which I would participate were going to be victorious, or I was going to be buried in one of those nondescript mass graves. I volunteered for paramilitary training when I was nine years old. As a young boy I was anxious to learn how to move under enemy attack, to read maps, and to find my way at night in the woods. While children in other nations may have played Cowboys and Indians, we engaged in sharpshooting and physical fitness and learned how to survive in the cold. Nowadays, this probably could be compared to growing up like in a state-sanctioned terrorist camp. With my father as an example of obedience to the new Hitler regime, I was being trained for where Germany’s destiny was going to be decided— the battlefields. Anxious to excel, I aimed to become an officer, and only later on when I very much enjoyed chemistry at school did I consider becoming a chemist instead. My parents were greatly opposed to my ambitions of becoming a military officer. They reminded me of the lost war of 1914–18, that the best often didn’t survive, and that many of those who did survive came home crippled. Being the losers, even the healthy soldiers were thrown out of the Army after the war, without a job or qualifications for a civilian job. I didn’t understand my parents’ attitude because it was in striking contrast to my father’s pronounced conviction of the regime’s aims. How 18

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Central Dresden before the bombing: View across the Neumarkt (New Market) and Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) towards Neustadt (“New” Town of Dresden, on the other side of the Elbe River).

could he believe in “Great Germany” and at the same time not support it by letting his son become an officer? Well, it didn’t make much sense to me at the time. But neither did many other things my parents said or thought. I just felt that parents were against everything youngsters were for. Maybe this was a natural reaction for them.

CATCHING UP WITH A VENGEANCE In the meantime, war came and almost passed us by. It was February 13th, 1945, and we still lived in Dresden. My classmates and I were taking part in a night exercise with the Army outside Dresden, as we were soon to be drafted into the Armed Forces. Although the German armies excelled in fighting, Germany was losing the war on all fronts. Germany’s cities were being bombed to pieces. The resources of the fatherland were shrinking rapidly, including the resources of men able to fight, so now trained youth were made ready to join the fighting forces. The 16- and eventually 15-year-olds would participate in defending their hometowns. Dresden, established in 1206, had been an old historic city, a center of art. Centuries of art-loving kings and Bürgers had accumulated a wealth of art

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Dresden before the bombing: Altstadt (Old City) banks of the Elbe.

collections that were exhibited in many homes, palaces, museums, and churches. Famous Renaissance architects, like Pöppelmann under King August the Strong of Saxony and Poland, had added impressive, irreplaceable buildings, bridges, and churches. Dresden was considered the Art City of Germany. In spite of the “total war” being fought, Dresden wasn’t armed, nor did it have any air defenses or even shelters for its population. It was common knowledge that Dresden was not a military target. Actually there were good military targets close to Dresden, on the north side of the Elbe, for instance. There were barracks and military training centers. This is where I happened to be in training that night when the sirens sounded. We were led to the basement of the barracks for protection. Hardly had we arrived when the bombs started howling down. They sounded like a shrill whistle coming closer and closer, finally hitting and detonating with a big blast somewhere—not on my head, for otherwise I couldn’t have reported this to you.

IGNITING A FIRESTORM It didn’t take long for us to realize that this time, unlike so many times prior, the air alarm meant more than before. Actually, the loudspeakers of the air control announced it in their calm but disturbed voices: Dresden was being bombed, first one section, then another. Christmas trees—so called because

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of the light they put in the sky—were all over the city lighting the gruesome act. And tons and tons of incendiary bombs and explosives were unloaded by wave upon wave of bombers. In one of the relatively quiet moments between howling bombs and the sound of fires burning, my comrades and I rushed out of the basement trying to do what we could to help in the situation. The barracks were still in good shape. Actually, they had hardly been hit. There were a few incendiary bombs all around us that were relatively easy to put out. I assigned myself to a group of volunteers who were going to remove bombs that had failed to explode. A few had been located and we carried the live bombs to a predetermined detonation place, where eventually they would be exploded or otherwise made safe. Since the barracks were up on the hills overlooking Dresden, I could see what the real aim of the attack was. It was right down in the valley before me, by now lighted from fire on all corners and ripped by explosion upon explosion. There was no let-up in the attack, while at the barracks there were no more hits. A few fires had been put out, and the duds that had been found were removed. As a precaution, because the barracks could be included again in one of the next wave of bombings, the young soldiers in training were told to dissolve— to get lost, go home, or go elsewhere as fast as possible and report back after the attack.

NIGHT OF DESTRUCTION My parents’ house was near the eastern end of the city. By now it was 3 a.m. and Dresden was like a gigantic firecracker ripping and burning all over at the same time. The sky was red and the waves of bombers were still coming in. I headed to cross the Elbe at the far east side of the city, walking and running all alone along the road. Once in a while I would duck down in a ditch when bombs were heard howling nearby, or whenever debris was thrown or came whining along through the air. I crossed the Elbe all right and made it all the way home. Our house, by some miraculous circumstances, was still okay and so were the houses nearby. The bombing attack had apparently started in midtown and was slowly working its way to the suburbs in a ring of fire. But morning came, and the bomber waves subsided. Piles of rubble, smoldering fire, and bellowing smoke were the only patent signs of devastation left behind. My father happened to be out of town that night. But my mother, brother, and sisters were at home and all right. We had many relatives and friends living in the city and feared for their safety.

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Dresden Zwinger before destruction.

SEEING IS BELIEVING I took my father’s motorbike and left for the city to try to locate friends and relatives, to see whether I could help any of them still alive. There were no other means of transportation. The streets were blocked with rubble and smoke, and the motorbike was just right to get me through, one way or another. After I had made my way inside the burning and smoldering rubble, I passed close to my school and there I had to get off the bike, for the rubble was all over the street and the smoke and fire were sweltering. While pushing the bike over some of the rubble to where I knew the street would have to go on, I suddenly stood before a charred body that lay before me. A woman, naked, her clothes burned off. She looked charcoal-like, discolored, almost entirely black, and shrunk to a miniature size. What an awful picture! She lay there on her back, legs pulled up and in the air. This was the first time I had seen a naked woman in my life. As an adolescent, I had longed for an encounter with a woman some day, a woman I would love and one I would be able to see naked. All these thoughts crossed my mind in the second that I saw this shrunken body of what may have been a beautiful woman only last night. No, this is not how I wanted to see a woman! I turned my head and stumbled on. Soon I made it to the place where Aunt Gertrud used to live. But the big apartment building wasn’t there any more. None of the buildings in the street were there. Only ruins, rubble, smoldering beams and bricks all over, but no

Growing up Fast

Old Dresden: Augustus Strasse, Princes’ Procession.

Dresden, Crown Gate of Zwinger.

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street. While I was standing there a minute or two, thinking whether to try to enter the smoldering ruins to look for signs of life, I heard the sound of airplanes overhead. Turning my head, I heard the whining of bombs again. I hit the ground faster than I ever had. What now? More bombs into that smoldering rubble and debris? MORE BOMBS Yes, a daytime attack was on. Bomber after bomber came overhead and unloaded their deadly cargo that whined and detonated all around me. It sounded like a fire which had been smoldering and which now was being stirred and started burning brightly again. I lay there with my face to the ground, aghast. Was this the war I was supposed to fight in? This war where women and children were being sacrificed for no reason? Why did these bombers hate us so much? I must have lain there for hours, in the middle of the rubble, almost like a part of it. Finally, I got up, as if from a terrible dream. The whining of bombs

In 1941 Charles Portal of the British Air Staff advocated that entire cities and towns should be bombed. Portal claimed that this would quickly bring about the collapse of civilian morale in Germany. Air Marshall Arthur Harris agreed and when he became head of RAF Bomber Command, in February 1942, he introduced a policy of area bombing where entire cities and towns were targeted.

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had long since stopped. Only fires and smoke were all around; maybe it was because of the smoke that I was crying. I am a man and I am needed here, I thought. I found the motorbike still intact and, pushing and pulling it through the debris, I finally got back to the east where there was only smoke, no rubble. Our home had not been hit yet. It was still standing, and safe.

AFTERMATH OF A NIGHTMARE My father had returned. He scolded me for leaving for the city at such a time. Then all of us went to do whatever we could to help the stream of refugees coming out of the city to find shelter and help. I reported to the local school and helped feed and care for the refugees. Once in a while there was a wellknown face among them, one of my classmates or someone else I knew. It seemed that life as I knew it had ended, and I was on the staff of a refugee camp. The homeless slept in classrooms on blankets and straw, 30 or 40 men, women, and children together. They were fed soup or broth; the diet didn’t change for weeks. Whole areas of the city were cordoned off until groups of civil defense workers had picked up the dead, mostly charred bodies of adults and children who had dashed into the streets as their homes collapsed or burned to the ground. The shrunken bodies were put on carts, then piled up at collection points to be buried later on in mass graves. To prevent any epidemic from breaking out and to deal with the overwhelming number of the dead, at the Altmarkt, Dresden’s center square, a large pile of bodies was put on top of a pile of railroad ties, doused with gasoline, and burned. Every day on my way between home and a temporary first-aid station where I was helping, I passed by a subdivision of formerly pleasant one-family homes, now burned to the ground and declared off-limits. I noticed that in one of the doorways lay the charred body of a male or female, I couldn’t tell which, but I saw what seemed like a golden ring on one of the fingers. Grisly, I thought, and hurried on. A day later when I passed by, the body was still there, but the finger with the ring was missing. Someone had broken it off to get the ring? I nearly threw up. “No!” I thought, and the world turned into a big blur right before my very own eyes.

LIFE AFTER ANNIHILATION For days there were still signs of life under some of the rubble, even weeks later. Some people were dug out by volunteers and neighbors more than two

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One tactic used by the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force was the creation of firestorms. This was achieved by dropping incendiary bombs filled with highly combustible chemicals (such as magnesium, phosphorus, or petroleum jelly) in clusters over a specific target. After the area caught fire, the air above the bombed area became extremely hot and rose rapidly. Cold air then rushed in at ground level from the outside and people were sucked into the fire.

weeks after the attack. Other rescuers were killed or injured by falling debris when they tried to pry open basement windows jammed shut by smoldering wreckage. Suddenly, peace came to the city. Signs of life under the rubble slowly died out, though now the area was teeming with rats. Chalk-written or scratchedin notes appeared on the ruins, scrawled there by some survivor, reading something like this: “Fred, went to Anna with John.—Hedwig.” Or: “Anyone knowing whereabouts of Frau Karin König, contact Wilhelm König, 14 Lauenstein, Pirna.” Cleanup operations started slowly and with every hand pitching in, including school children. The main job was to clear some of the roads, at least, so transportation could get going again. For the rest of the time I was in Dresden, the moist air coming up from the soggy debris and the lingering smoke never left my nostrils. It was a peculiar, sweet smell, like in a dump but distinctly its own, coming from the cadavers slowly rotting under the ruins. It’s a smell I shall never forget.

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Nevertheless, life went on. Even in the ruins. Survivors and relatives went back to their former habitats and searched for possessions worth saving. People who had lost everything, and thieves as well, went from ruin to ruin trying to scavenge something of value or which could bring some gain. Once in a while there was a shot piercing the quiet air: Looters were shot on the spot.

Chapter Four

Holocaust End Run

A DIFFERENT REALITY Life was never the same after the Dresden bombing. The actual number of people who died during the bombing may never be known. Estimates range from between 35,000 to 400,000 people who were thought to have perished within 24 hours, most during the night. Dresden had been jam-packed with refugees from the east at the time of the bombing—people who were fleeing from the approaching eastern battlefront—old men, women, and children, each trying to make it to the west. There they were caught, together with the Dresden population, to pay for whatever their country was fighting for or for which they were being defeated. For us, school started again, but it was now held in the undestroyed portion of another building somewhere else. School wasn’t the same any more. Timetables were strictly adhered to, for other classes were held before and after ours in the same location. Not all of our classmates reappeared. Günter Sauer and Ulrich Huth did, as well as I, but our friend Wachwitz was missing. No one knew anything about him. We knew even less about others who were no longer present. There had been no chalk-written message on Wachwitz’s house; as a matter of fact, nothing remained where a message could have been conspicuously attached.

LEARNING WHAT REALLY MATTERS School textbooks, teaching aids, and libraries were no longer available. The curriculum was an improvisation of whatever the few remaining teachers thought was important to cover and to answer the questions we had. Only old 28

Holocaust End Run

In 1945, British Air Marshall Arthur Harris decided to create a firestorm in Dresden, a classical city of culture and the arts. He considered it a good target as it had not been attacked during the war and was virtually undefended by anti-aircraft guns. The population of the city was then far greater than the normal 650,000 due to the large numbers of refugees fleeing from the advancing Red Army.

On February 13, 1945, 773 AVRO Lancaster bombers dropped their load on Dresden. During the next two days the USAAF sent over 527 heavy bombers to follow up the RAF attack. Dresden was totally destroyed. As a result of the firestorm it was impossible afterwards to count the number of victims. (From the British National Archives).

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teachers had remained, for the young ones had long since been drafted or were now involved in civil defense efforts. The old ones had nothing but contempt for the Hitler regime, but they didn’t dare show it because now we were in a “total war” and the principal was a party stalwart—his main job was to produce more soldiers, fast. Except for principal Gehmlich’s political harangues, discussion of politics in school was strictly taboo. Our surroundings and the occasional air-raid alarms were almost disregarded. Instead, we wrangled with the readings of Cicero and Caesar in Latin, and the accusative with infinitive in English grammar. Some teachers would discuss issues that normally would only have come much later in one’s education because, “otherwise, you may miss it entirely.” It was under these circumstances that our biology teacher explained to us Darwin’s theories and the elementary details about the birds and the bees, topics that were certainly extracurricular at that time. Nobody discussed moral issues, except maybe guardedly through the discussion of history like that of the York of Wartenburg. It was strictly technical and undisputable basic knowledge that was being concentrated on, like trigonometry and the law of probability.

JUST HOLDING ON As for the war, the law of probability was already running its course. There was no need to talk about it. Everybody was preparing for the end. The Nazi propaganda machine pronounced that Hitler had secret weapons tucked away somewhere which were so powerful and devastating that Germany wouldn’t use them except as its very last recourse. We didn’t know that the German atom bomb was not nearly complete and that Germany’s supply of rockets was petering out. Every day it became more and more apparent that Hitler, Goebbels, and their consorts had just lied, and they had lied for years. In retrospect it showed that most of the German population had been utterly uninformed. That was mainly due to the lack of access to real information; access which, if attempted (like furtively listening to foreign radio stations), was punishable by death. As a result, to survive (for most) it was about practicing safety, purposely not knowing anything about what was happening outside of his immediate concerns or exhibiting any curiosity to find out. The profile of those scared-to-death people was to at least pretend to be a “good German,” which at the time meant believing what you were told and doing your job. Mother bore it without trying to show the weight of her load. She felt that if defeat came, it was God’s wish, and He’d show the way to the future. After each end there was to be a new beginning. She worked hard to make ends

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meet and to give comfort to her husband, who was beginning to show the wear and tear and other distinct signs of the ravages of war.

THE FRONT LINE COMES CLOSER In spite of a severely crippled leg, my father was drafted into the “Volkssturm,” the last resort of German defense that took in all men, regardless of age, as long as they could hold a gun. This group of defenders stayed and slept at home and kept their primitive weapons at home, but reported for action whenever a pre-specified alarm was sounded. For the time being, however, all they did was train every day on a nearby sports field. Father came home totally exhausted every night. My day came in April 1945 (I was almost 16) when I was ordered to report to the Army barracks at Nickern, south of Dresden, where I joined with many of my classmates and friends to wear the German soldier’s uniform. The uniforms we received were used ones, and they hadn’t even been cleaned. I got a pair of pants that turned out to be bloodstained all over the inside. Never mind—we were here to do our duty for the fatherland. New weapons had been added to the German Army equipment list, such as bazookas, and we were trained on how to use them. In the meantime, the Soviet front was rapidly approaching Dresden; the Russians had come to Bautzen, about 35 miles east. Refugees and retreating military units passed our camp. Rumors and terror stories spread like wildfire. There was the “authentic” report from an alleged eyewitness that a German woman had been raped by 25 Russian soldiers; as a finale, a beer bottle was driven into her vagina and the woman left bleeding profusely, no help in sight, nowhere to go.

TRYING TO ESCAPE THE INEVITABLE My father had been released from the Volkssturm, for his leg acted up and he could hardly walk. He took my mother and the rest of the family out of Dresden. Pulling a little cart they marched along a 20-mile escape route south to Glashütte where they went to Lotte Merz, an aunt, who had a summerhouse there. My parents and the children were not too welcome, for refugees were all over and Lotte hadn’t seen my parents for years. Why should she now share her food and shelter with them? But, grudgingly, she gave them shelter. My unit also got marching orders. We went on trucks that didn’t use gasoline but generated their own power by means of big coal stoves behind the

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cab. It meant stoking the coal all the time and feeding the elaborate stove, but it worked. We left in the same direction that my parents had gone. We came through Glashütte, which is where our particular truck broke down. While a few of us stood around trying to get the truck going again, I didn’t trust my eyes when I saw who was walking by on the road: It was my father and the family, pulling that little cart behind them. I jumped up to meet them, and they were just as startled to see me there. We embraced with tears in our eyes, but it was just a brief meeting in the middle of the street. Now, at least, I knew they were alive and where they were going. My father didn’t say much except that the war was lost, and that I should try to make my way to the west to Uncle Helmut. Helmut was my father’s brother, the doctor, and it would be safer there than so close to the Russians. Well, we got the truck going again and off we went further south and then east into Czechoslovakia. There we were to join up with other German forces.

ONE LAST HURRAH Everyone was afraid to fall into the hands of the Russians. It was essential that our unit shouldn’t be splintered off from the remaining eastern German army, but one afternoon it appeared that we were cut off. So our forces regrouped and a big band of trucks and infantry pulled together into a special unit. We were to slice through the Russian encirclement at night. Two Panther tanks, still intact, were to open the trap, and then the whole group was to rush through as fast as it could. Hardly had night settled in when the battle began. Tracer bullets were shot from our side and machine guns rattled away, with the two tanks pushing ahead in the dark. The Russians fought back, but not too much, and our column slipped through the encirclement. On and on we continued south, through some almost ghost-like villages with white flags or torn-up bed linen hanging out of buildings and homes. Again our truck broke down, this time in the morning. We had left the road and were trying to make it through fields and back roads. Now there was no possibility of getting the truck going again. So, we left it and marched on.

SURRENDER There were maybe ten of us, still armed and trying to escape the Russians. Whenever something suspicious moved, we ducked in the grass or jumped into a ditch. We passed single farmhouses, empty, with white flags hanging

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out their windows. Whole villages could be seen down in a valley decorated with white flags and no sign of life. Then we broke up into smaller groups so that we wouldn’t be easily detected. I went with a friend of mine, and we were the last to leave the hideout. We walked right into the arms of a company of Russian soldiers who were combing the field with submachine guns in hand, ready to shoot. They lifted their guns and we dropped ours, lifting our arms to surrender. The Russian soldiers came close, two of them covering each one of us, frisking us, taking my wristwatch away, and pushing us ahead along the road. Finally they put us with a group of prisoners they already held. There we met some of our friends who had left us in the ditch only minutes before we got out. All were disarmed, dirty, shook up, and had torn uniforms: a picture of misery.

DROPPING OUT The group of prisoners increased by the hour as the Russians flushed out more and more retreating German soldiers. Later in the day, the group of prisoners was ordered to march along a road to a larger terminal where prisoners were being collected. The road was winding and the Russian soldiers guarding us were not always in full view of the column. At one turn in the woods, I jumped to the side into the bush and lay there. Not a muscle moved. The column walked on. Nobody noticed or bothered me.

FOLLOWING THE TREK TO FREEDOM Night came, and from then on I marched only at night for two long nights straight. I found myself in the western part of Czechoslovakia. I oriented myself by the stars at night and directed myself south, because I wanted to make it to the Americans who were supposed to be coming north from Bavaria. On the next day, I rested near a road where German troops came walking along. They had laid down their arms and they, too, were heading south. I was happy to see them and joined them on the 8th of May 1945. Defeat was here, and there was talk that the Americans were going to fight the Russians. Allegedly, Germany had unconditionally surrendered that day or the day before. War was over, at last. It was merely a question of escaping the oncoming Russians.

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A big trek began. Unarmed troops trotted along the road going south, day and night, with nothing to eat, taking water once in a while from a water pump at the market square in one of the villages. At night, I slept in a ditch for an hour or two until I woke up shaking from the cold.

ACCOUNTING TIME The Czech partisans and militia, bristling with weaponry, came out to watch us, the defeated Germans, march by. Many of these Czech partisans, including women, were civilians but heavily armed. They hated the Germans and were now overjoyed, showing their contempt outright. They stopped the columns at various checkpoints, such as bridges, and they searched us, allegedly for weapons. Whoever had anything left of value, such as his wedding ring or a pocketknife, lost it right here. Anyone who had anything edible left lost it as well. And some lost their lives when they tried to protest. At one such checkpoint, the Czechs stopped the column. It was a hot and dusty road, and the sun shone brightly on these bearded, starving men. Most Czechs speak German well, and one asked who, of the men passing by, was from the Waffen-SS (armed storm troopers). No answer. Then the Czechs started examining our arms. The tired column of distrustful and apathetic soldiers had to roll up their sleeves or take off their coats and shirts for some partisans to inspect them. The feared Waffen-SS, Hitler’s elite fighting troops, had a mark burned in underneath one of their upper arms. Only much later did I learn that German concentration camp inmates received a similarly permanent marking. Now, here was accounting time. Sure enough, there were some among us who had the marking. One tried to run away the minute he was taken aside. Shots were fired, he fell. We were all aghast. Three more—apparently those with the marking—were ordered over to the side. They were kicked and beaten, then pushed ahead and led away. A fat woman walked over to the one who had fallen and shot him in the head. As we marched on, shots were heard from near the spot where we had stopped. Word went through the column that more of them had been shot right there. As much as I was numbed by this, shock and hate went up and down my spine. Little did I know that the Waffen-SS had extinguished whole villages of non-combatants, including women and children, all over Eastern Europe. Also, in the West, the SS had made its reputation for brutality and disregard of war conventions. The December 1944 massacre in the Belgian forest at Malmedy, of a whole contingent of American soldiers who had surrendered, was one such infamous example of Waffen-SS brutality. Almost

Holocaust End Run

35

everybody in Czechoslovakia had been suspected of being a partisan. As a result, many died. One of the largest and most vicious death camps run by the SS had been in Theresienstadt (now Terezin) in the Czech Republic, where the Nazis wanted to build a “model ghetto” for Jews but ended up extinguishing them. I didn’t know any of this at the time and so was unaffected by any of these realities.

NOT A DREAM After each inspection stop the heavily armed civilians let us move on, until we met the next group of partisans who appointed themselves inspectors of the defeated. It wasn’t uncommon to receive a kick in the ribs when nothing was found in our pockets. But nobody kicked me. Actually, I was still carrying my head up high, for I felt rather defiant. After all, it was the victors who behaved like rats. I had nothing to lose at this point but my life, and this wasn’t worth very much anymore. For what? So if I had to die, I might as well die like a man. Nobody knew what waited for us at the next checkpoint. Better to go down in defeat like a knight than to be a victor like the ones I saw here! The German army uniforms, of the mass of soldiers trotting along this road to what they thought might be freedom, had been reduced to rags. All insignia and other indications of rank and position in the army had been removed. No one wore any more epaulets, and they had hardly any buttons left on their clothes. The man was lucky who was able to keep his belt to keep his pants up. I still wore the German eagle over my right breast pocket; it was sewn on there, and this is where it always was as part of the uniform. Most soldiers had taken it off, for no one wanted to identify himself with the Wehrmacht anymore or give cause to Czech suspicions or possible acts of violence. I kept the eagle on in defiance. So it wasn’t long before a Czech walked up to me and said, “If you want to live, you better remove the eagle right away.” I felt like spitting at the man’s face, but I looked the other way and went on. Nothing happened. But two of the marchers next to me grabbed me and tore the eagle off right then and there. I spat at their faces. And we marched on.

Chapter Five

Escape to Where?

LETTING THEM HAVE WHO THEY WANT The Russians never caught up with us. After several days and nights of marching south, we reached the outskirts of Karlsbad. There were the Americans. One was right on the road, looking like a man from another planet in a shining clean uniform with a white helmet, and with an armband saying “MP,” Military Police. He was a black soldier, friendly and smiling with big white teeth, but all he really did was hold us back. He wouldn’t let us pass. No, the Americans were not going to accept us. We were to go back where we came from. No trespassing here! We were stunned. What now? We, the exhausted marchers, sat by the wayside while more and more arrived. It was like a camp. The Americans wanted nothing to do with us. I learned later on that, at that checkpoint, the Americans not only turned back fleeing soldiers but also turned over their own prisoners to the Russians. In one instance they turned over the Russian soldiers who had been fighting on the German side against the Communists. The Americans handed them over to the Russian Army and, it was to be expected, the Russians executed the “traitors” shortly after having received them from American custody. THE SKY WAS STILL THE SAME Well, this wasn’t a good place to rest. So I stole myself away again into the woods. I had my own plan on how to cross the American borderline. I wanted to make it into Bavaria. At least I’d be on German soil there, and the Americans were supposed to be occupying Bavaria. 36

Escape to Where?

37

Again, I waited for the night to fall, which would bring the stars out and allow me to orient myself in which direction I was to go. And then I started walking through the woods, carefully avoiding villages and anything that looked like it could be occupied by people. At one point on my cross-country walk I came to what seemed like wet soil. There was high grass, and I kept on going. Suddenly, I realized I was in a swamp. Wherever I stopped, I kept sinking. This terrified me. I started running, my feet sinking in up to my ankles, but I kept on running. There was a lonely tree ahead of me standing out against the night sky. I headed for the tree, for where there is a tree there must be some firmer ground. I made it to the tree all right, and it was indeed on firm ground. I fell down in utter exhaustion. There I lay for some time. Then I turned around on my back, looking up into the wonderfully clear May night sky. All the stars and constellations I knew so well were out: the North Star, the Big Dipper, Orion to the south, and millions and millions of stars I didn’t know. And there I saw the faint brightness of morning creeping in on the eastern sky. It seemed to me that I knew the sky better than I knew the world around me. These stars had been there thousands of years ago and they would be there thousands of years more. In the larger scheme of things, what did I matter? The universe was vast and beautiful. And what was the purpose of all this? Why did people have to fight people? Why this irrational world around me? I became completely detached from my situation and thought some basic thoughts that night.

SOLACE FROM ETERNITY Lying there all alone on that wet and damp island of tranquility, my thoughts turned to examine and question some fundamental transcendental ideas. For instance: Was there a god? If there was one, what would he—maybe she—be like? If there was none, what then? Where did it start and where is it going to end? How did men in this world know the truth? How could they say that this or the other was the true faith? Why did they have to fight for their beliefs as they did? And why was the punishment so severe? Or was it? I came to the conclusion that there must be something longer lasting than us human beings, like the stars. I concluded that there must be some underlying principles which governed this universe and which must govern human beings. There must be higher things in life than the following of self-appointed leaders, the building up of an imaginary fatherland. It opened my inner eyes and mind to the realization that, in the past, mine had been a very regional perception. I didn’t know much more than what the

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German leaders of that time had wanted me to know. But there was a world out there with violently different beliefs, a world that took on Germany, fought her, and defeated her. There may be many worlds, both within and outside the universe. And wouldn’t it be stupid to find out that they would be just as regional and small-minded as I had been? No, this was going to end. At least for me. I was going to search for real things that mattered, for the truth, and to try to do my part in making this a better world in which to live. I would like to be free, allowed to think and work on what I felt would be best for me and my fellow human beings. Never again will I take life as it is for granted! And no more poppycock, silly phrases and easy solutions. From now on I’d accept nothing but the real thing. Speaking of being free, how free can you be as long as you are a human being? You are tied to your fellow human beings by the ties of blood, ancestry, the cooperative use of your surroundings, and by the similarity of your ambitions. And yet, maybe a human being wasn’t born to be free, for he needs his fellow human beings and has to support his family and friends. Mind you, this is a voluntary giving up of some freedom, which is desirable, and which is actually one of man’s highest ambitions: to serve the ones one loves. But it must be possible to be freer from unwanted serfdom than I have been in the past. At least, my mind must be able to explore what else there is—and could be. Slowly, it penetrated my mind that, if I survived the ordeal of war and with the world laying wide open before me, that it was up to me to equip myself for a better future. After all, I had survived this inferno. I was young and healthy, though obviously at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or, was it the right place at the right time?

ACTION ON THE GROUND While I was conversing with myself in what seemed like another world, the first rays of sun were just reaching over the horizon. My favorite planet was rising, too, visible only faintly for a twinkle of time before it faded out in the upcoming morning. The frogs croaked by the millions all around me, the crickets chirped as if armies of them were all around, and a bird sung from the tree. Nature was waking up from her night’s rest. And there! A sight that made me turn around and hug the ground. Only about 100 yards away an American Jeep came slowly driving along a mushy road that I hadn’t known existed. There was a driver and one man sitting beside him, rifle in arm and looking around. There was another soldier sitting on the back, up on the rear frame, with his feet on the seat and his hand grasp-

Escape to Where?

39

ing a submachine gun, ready to shoot. It was a patrol, looking for stray Germans like me, no doubt. The vehicle passed by, slow and jerky, without my having been discovered. It showed me there was drier ground around that I could use to escape my wet surroundings. Also, it filled me with joy to know that I must be close to Bavaria, or that I was on the border because, for all I knew, it was better to see an American patrol than a Russian patrol. I waited for a good hour, expecting the Jeep to come back the same route, but it didn’t. The swamp became much more alive in the meantime and the sun was close to coming up. I thought this was a good time for me to get out of the bog because I didn’t want to be caught like this ever again, especially at night. So finally I got up, stretched my legs, and walked out to the little road. Then down the road I went, in the direction where the Jeep had come from. It would have to lead me somewhere. And it did. A few miles down the road it approached a settlement. I immediately went into the fields at one side again, this time making absolutely sure that the ground wasn’t marshy. It was wet all right, but firm. Okay. Then I found a spot near some bushes where I laid down, hoping to spend the day and find out more about my surroundings. Nothing much happened, except that the mosquitoes started to bite again. I wondered why they still would find my blood tasty, since I hadn’t eaten any normal food for days, maybe a week, and strangely enough I wasn’t even hungry. I was starting to get dizzy, though, which told me that I would have to get something to eat soon, or I might just give out. And just as I thought of that a man came along the road, looking like a farmer. Or, was I already hallucinating?

A FRIEND IN NEED I pulled myself together and got out of my hideaway and walked over to him; it really was a man. First the man didn’t see me, then he was surprised and stopped. I went up to him and we exchanged a few words. Yes, I was in Bavaria, right at the border, and I should stay in my hideaway or the Americans might pick me up at any time. I was told they were gathering soldiers all over and collecting them at a nearby meadow. Yes, he would like to help me, but no, we couldn’t stay there in the road where an American patrol might come by. So the man agreed that he would try to bring me some food in the evening and get me some civilian clothes. I wasn’t convinced that he would come back, or that maybe if he did he’d bring along the Military Police. But I resigned myself to the place underneath

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the bushes. I found a little brook nearby where I bathed my feet and drank as much water as I thought I could stand. This was a long, long afternoon. The little road down there was quite active at times. But at nightfall, the farmer really did return. I saw him from a distance, and then he came right through the field and over to me. He had a little bag with him. It contained potato chips. He explained that he and his wife had cut up potatoes for years in the past and dried them for some future emergency. And here was the emergency; this was about the only thing they had left to eat for some time. So I could have as many as I could eat. Again we settled down at the brook. I gulped potato chips, took some water from the brook, then again potato chips. Oh, how delicious! I didn’t even know that potatoes could be preserved by making them into this type of chip. An excellent idea! The farmer just sat there, looking at me. He was sorry, he said, but he didn’t have any civilian clothes he could have brought. I thanked him anyway and suggested that I would like to go with him back to the village and hide out in his barn. But the farmer was too afraid to allow this. He didn’t want to get involved. So I filled up all my pockets with potato chips. I put chips inside my shirt and all around my body; they were held up by the belt around my waist.

ONE MORE TIME—A PRISONER OF WAR Finally we parted, and I was left to my own devices. After the farmer disappeared and night had fallen, I got on the road again. I thought of smuggling myself into the village and trying to find someone who would give me civilian clothes, then I wouldn’t have to hide out all the time. I could walk in the daytime, say that I was a refugee on my way home. But I didn’t get very far, nor did I know that there was a curfew at that time. As I approached the village, I walked right into an American patrol. They picked me up without searching me, laughing at my shirt full of potato chips, and delivered me to a big meadow where it looked like thousands of German soldiers were milling about or sitting and resting. This was the meadow, described by the farmer, where prisoners of war were being collected. I was delivered just beyond the point where guards stood, and I was let go. Now I felt like a lost sheep, but right in the middle of a big herd of cattle. Nobody really paid very much attention to me. It was nighttime, and a few fires were burning. Tired, unshaven soldiers were sitting and lying around, some sleeping. And there were lots of mosquitoes, again.

Escape to Where?

41

As I found out from talking to some of the apathetic men, no one really knew anything. We were supposed to be examined and split up in groups later on, then transported to camps. Or we might be let free, some thought, for there were just too many of us. Everybody helped himself to my potato chips, and they were gone in no time. Apparently everybody was starving, and some men allegedly had started to eat grass. Symptoms of typhus and cholera were appearing among some of the men. All the wounded or sick had been picked up by American trucks and transported somewhere else. It crossed my mind that perhaps I should play sick and try to get out of these dismal surroundings that way. But first I’d have to wait to see what would happen the next morning. Nothing much happened. It reminded me of what the Hitler regime agitators had said: The Allies had decided to destroy Germany entirely and then to turn it into an agricultural country. Now, was this the Morgenthau Plan in action, right here? It wasn’t, because the Americans were just not able to cope with the large number of prisoners they suddenly had on their hands. Procedures for the handling and feeding of these men had to be set up, and this takes time. I didn’t know this. To me it looked terrible, as though here would be worse conditions than where I had been. So, after all, the Russians might not be so bad.

FREE AND ALONE I reminded myself of a German poet, Lessing, who had said that the domesticated horse was fed by its master but would have to serve, and that the wild horse was a mustang, out in the wilderness, by no means overfed but free. Now, I was going to be a mustang rather than stay with this herd. I used the rest of the day to explore the way in which the compound was guarded. There wasn’t even barbed wire around. There were merely guards patrolling, and the compound was ended by some more or less natural borders such as woods on one side, a road and a cattle fence on the other. I studied how I could get out of there. And it really was a cinch when I got away that night. Apparently no one expected anybody to run away, anyway. On the contrary, this collection point of the remains of a defeated army meant food was going to be available for these by now totally lost and destitute survivors. Plus, there is always safety in numbers. Or, is there?

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And here I was, again in the woods. Still in a German military uniform, or the remnants of it, with nothing to eat and a long way to go. Where? Well, if this was the American way of German extinction, I might as well go home to Dresden. I’d have to cross from Bavaria into Saxony, and then I’d have to find some means of transportation. Since these nights were clear and there was no rain, I was able to make it back up north covering maybe twenty miles that same night. I didn’t encounter any patrols and I found a village in the early morning on the Saxonian side.

ON THE WAY HOME I knocked at a door of one of the farmhouses, and a frightened woman came out and let me in. She gave me some food and brought me some of her husband’s old clothes. He was still away in the war. Then she sent me out again as fast as possible because she didn’t want to have anybody like me around, someone who might be discovered and could implicate her. I was now safely on the Russian side, I knew, and I walked confidently down the road to Oelsnitz. I passed Russian checkpoints where I was stopped and searched, but they didn’t do anything to me. The civilian clothes I wore were much too wide and they hung down like loose rags; I was dirty and dusty, a youth just trying to get home to Dresden. So they let me go. It took me two days, with many stops and naps along the roadside to get to Plauen. There I climbed on a freight train and rode on the roof of one of the cars all the way to Dresden. The train stopped many times along the way. Once I was afraid I’d hit the roof of a tunnel, so I tightly hugged the car’s top, but there was plenty of room. Except for the smoke from the engine, there was little inconvenience.

Chapter Six

End of the Line

HOME SWEET HOME As evening approached the train neared the ruins of Dresden, and I slipped off the roof and away into the dark. Here I knew my way around. At least it was home, even if devastated and without people, as it seemed. But this was only because I avoided people; there might be a curfew. Better to be careful. I made my way to our neighborhood where I arrived about midnight. Our apartment house still stood there, old and grey, without a sign of life. I tried to enter the front door, but it was locked and, as I noticed, barricaded. I knocked. And again I knocked. No noise or light inside. Finally, I sat down in our yard, waiting. Shortly, from the second-floor window of the house, a female voice asked in hushed tone: “Winfried?” “Yes.” Then Mrs. Niering and her husband came down. They removed the barricades they had put up behind the front door and let me in. The Nierings were an older couple, the only ones who had remained in the house. They took me to their apartment and let me have some food, including a glass of buttermilk that I will never forget in my life. It was so unbelievably delicious that I gulped it down, then lie down and promptly fell asleep. The next morning they explained what had happened to them. The Russians had arrived and a number of soldiers were allotted to our house for accommodation. An officer and his adjuncts stayed downstairs in my parents’ apartment. Their horses grazed in the garden. Mr. Niering tried to serve the victors as well as he could, being subservient and hoping to save the house and most of the belongings from destruction. Although the soldiers were not overly careful with the furniture and belongings, everything remained more or less intact. They brought tires for my 43

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father’s car, which had been mothballed in the garage for the duration of the war and was without tires. Then they got the car going and took it away. Inside the house there were spilled and broken bottles of liquor, but the rest of what was in our apartment seemed intact. So I moved in.

A NEW BEGINNING Then came the new “People’s Representatives.” These were Communists who had survived the Hitler regime and now took charge. They handed out food-rationing stamps. They asked for my parents, brother, and sisters, but I didn’t know where they were. I was told that I wouldn’t be allowed to live by myself in these large quarters and that they would send in homeless families. I tried to find myself a job—and got one, in a truck gardening farm by the name of Ziegenbalg. What a job! Finally there was something to eat. They grew tomatoes, turnips, and cabbage. While working in the fields I was able to snatch a tomato or a turnip here and there, together with a raw onion. How tasty and satisfying! One night on my way home a group of Russian soldiers picked me up. They were going from house to house and combing the streets. I was told that all men were being picked up. Apparently many former German soldiers had slipped into civilian clothes and had gone home. They were deserters and would be turned over to prisoner-of-war camps to join their buddies who were not able to get away. I was pushed into a crowded room at the railway station. There a Russian lady, who had served in a German prison camp and spoke perfect German, interviewed each of the men being brought in. It was her job to screen the healthy ones from the sick and old. All those passing the test went into a freight train that was facing east. As I was to learn much later, that train and many other trains like it left for the east, to Russia and Siberia, where the German slave labor was used for many years after the war. Somehow I sensed what was going on right away, so I understated my age by two years. But this didn’t influence the lady. To the contrary: she thought I might be stronger than others. Then I explained that I had had polio as a child, that right now I was recovering from pneumonia, and that I had typhus. Actually, I couldn’t stand there any more, I told her, for I had to rush to the toilet right then. Typhus? This was contagious and this even the Russians didn’t want to have spreading among their slaves. So I was rushed to the bathroom where a guard had to watch whether I was really moving my bowels. I sure did, fast, liquid, and plenty, explosion-like, mainly out of fear rather than anything else.

End of the Line

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The report went back to the lady inside and word came back that I should be let go. And so I was, together with a few cripples and old greyhaired men.

TRANSITION IN STEPS At home, in the meantime, some of my relatives had showed up. They wanted not only to find out how things were going but also to warn me that since my father had been a member of the National Socialist Party, he and the family, no doubt, would be prosecuted, and that the Communists could come at any time—as they had done in other places—and take away whatever was left of any value. The implication was that I should give our radio, alarm clocks, books, cooking utensils, china, silver spoons and forks, and many more things to the relatives for safe keeping. Naturally, since they had lost lots of things through the war, all these items were also of great use to them in their daily lives. So I started giving things away. Then came the day when my parents and my brother and sisters came back. They had been at Lotte Merz’s house in Glashütte during the worst days. The way my mother explained it, their exposure to the Russians had been nonviolent and no one in the family was harmed. My brother and sisters told me that the family spent several nights in the woods. This was mainly in fear for the women, to escape the possibility of being raped. Then, they reported, that as things slowly came back to normal, the family left on foot and made the trip back to Dresden in two days. They were starved and appreciated the food I had been able to accumulate, although it wasn’t much and was nothing special: just tomatoes, turnips, cabbage, and onions.

THE TRUTH COMES OUT AFTER ALL Fifty-six years later I learned the full story of my family’s experience, for the witnesses were too young to comprehend what had happened at the time or too intimidated and ashamed to reveal what happened the first night in that house in Glashütte. I learned it from my sister Elfriede, who was a 10-yearold eyewitness at the time, and who still, in 2001, trembled as she shared what she hadn’t disclosed to a living soul ever before. Encouraged by me to write it down, she declined, because it was still too emotional and traumatic an event to her, even after all these years. She felt an extreme shame that she wasn’t going to share with anybody. But since the truth needs to be openly recognized for healing to take place, and so that the record be known to all concerned, I am repeating here what she told me.

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Self-portrait of Käthe Kollwitz, born 1867 in East Prussia; studied and worked in Berlin. Considered the most influential and greatest German printmaker of the 20th century, she produced graphics, woodcuts, and sculpture. Her main theme was the human condition, crying out against war and hunger, showing the fate of the socially disadvantaged. Kollwitz was the first woman taken into the Prussian Academy of Art as a Professor in 1919. Once Hitler came to power, she was denounced by the regime and forbidden to be given any employment. Nevertheless, she continued her work and propagandized against the recruiting of youths for the war effort. Persecuted by the Nazis, she went into hiding in Moritzburg near Dresden, where she died on April 22, 1945, sixteen days before Germany’s unconditional surrender.

End of the Line

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Our Aunt Lotte Merz’s house at the edge of Glashütte consisted only of a few rooms, all of them full with old furniture and stuff Aunt Lotte tried to keep safe through the war. Our family was allowed to stay in one of the rooms, which meant that they were in very tight quarters. It held my father, my mother, my brother Manfred (age 13), two sisters (Elfriede 10 and Elsbeth almost 8). They were going to sleep on the floor. In the evening, a Soviet officer and several soldiers came to inspect the house as they had many others. They went through it, looked at everything and everybody, then left. A little later the officer came back by himself. He told my father and the children to get out of the house, which they did, fleeing to the garden. There, the children stood around with fear and trepidation. My father was totally detached, like he had lost his mind. To the others he appeared entirely absentminded and in despair. He walked around and around a little water pond which Lotte Merz kept for watering her vegetables; he wasn’t really seeing or hearing, almost like not being there but in a far-away world. After what seemed like an endless time, the Russian officer left the house and my mother came out to let everybody back in. No explanations were given, very few words spoken. Instead, a small portable metal bathtub was retrieved from Aunt Lotte’s junk collection. Hot water was made on the fire, poured into the tub, and my mother took a sitting bath in it, cleansing herself, while the children had to look out the window. End of story. Nobody ever spoke about it. Everyone apparently was determined to expunge it from his or her memory. Nor did the world see anything, and everybody who was there acted as though it never happened. My mother certainly never mentioned anything to anybody and, in retrospect, I can only marvel at her almost-superhuman strength—how she dealt with being raped and handling the entire affair like an unimportant business transaction. The world had to go on, and what must have been a most-wrenching personal experience was discarded like yesterday’s spoiled milk. I can only surmise what it did to my dad. Obviously, he was an entirely crushed man by then. For him things could only get worse, and they did. After that first night in the Glashütte house, the family took to the woods, lying there entirely still. They disregarded the searching shouts from Soviet soldiers who came out to the edge of the woods in the evenings, high on vodka, calling “Frau . . . ! Frau . . . !”

TRYING TO RECONNECT After their family’s return to Dresden, my father tried going back to work at the Barmer Ersatzkasse. But there he was told that the new regime was

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dissolving private insurance companies, and that in the future there would be a government-owned-and-operated insurance company. There was no more job for my father. For some reason that only became clear to me many years later, one of his main concerns at that time was, however unsuccessfully, to get hold of his friend Mr. Einhorn. As we now know in retrospect, but had no idea then, Mr. Einhorn fortuitously survived the war’s end. So did his wife. But at that tumultuous time there was no trace of them to be found. There was lots of rubble to be removed in Dresden, and every hand was needed to help. So the authorities assigned my father to go “shoveling.” Many days my mother went along. The pay was very little, yet somehow the family had to be fed.

A NEW WORLD WITH NEW PERSPECTIVES One night my father sat us down and explained that at the income he was making now and as bleak a future as it looked, he didn’t see how he could possibly pay for us older ones to go back to high school to finish and get our diplomas. He thought the only choice was for us to work and see how things were going to play out. “Hitler betrayed you, and me, and everyone,” he said. “And I, your father, have been unbelievably stupid by shutting my eyes and ears to all indications that should have told me otherwise.” Friends and my mother had urged my dad to flee to the west, to join Uncle Helmut. He was in the American-occupied zone, where the punishment for former Party members might not be as severe. But my father refused even to listen to such suggestions. As I see it now, he was utterly naive. He explained to us at the time: “I haven’t done anything wrong to anybody. My past is open to investigation, and such an investigation will exonerate me. I obviously erred in supporting Hitler, but so did many others, and personally I didn’t participate, or even come close, to anything that could be viewed as fascist wrongdoing. On the contrary, I’ve helped others to escape the Nazi persecution. If I could only get hold of the Einhorns,” he said, “all this will come to light and I’ll be exonerated.”

OH, HOW WRONG CAN ONE BE! One day, some Communist functionaries came to the house and rudely picked up my father; they also searched the apartment and took a lot of things that,

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“Killed in Action” (1919) by Käthe Kollwitz.

at the time, were considered luxurious or valuable. I recall one of the functionaries climbing on a chair and tearing down the curtains from our living room. Another one helped himself to the crystal glasses and a vase in my mother’s credenza. When father came back home late that night, he was bruised and holloweyed, a broken man. Many years later my mother told me that he had been badly manhandled, that the treatment he received was much worse than what he had read in the books about Communism. My father had been an ardent reader of political books in his earlier days, and he knew what he was talking about.

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VAE VICTAE! (LATIN: WOE TO THE DEFEATED!) A few days later, he was picked up again, this time by the Russians. There were three of them. One was a commissar, two were soldiers. They also searched our apartment, but didn’t take anything except some books and my father’s papers. My mother cried and tried to get information out of the Russians. But they were uncommunicative, hurrying the process along. I still have the picture vividly in my mind. It will never leave me, I am sure. My little 8-year-old-sister Elsbeth was clutching herself to the side of my mother, and the 10-year-old Elfriede reached for the hand of our father to hold on to him. Not allowing this, one of the Russians kicked her in the rear with full force, propelling the kid across the room against the wall where she seemed to remain laying like a thrown-away rag doll. My brother and I merely stood there open-eyed, helpless and sad as we watched our father kiss our mother good-bye for what turned out to be the last time. While being led away, he assured her that it couldn’t be long until he was going to be back, for finally he was in the right hands of the military where justice would be served and his innocence easily discovered. Then they left. That was the last time that our mother saw her husband and we children our father. He never came back. And no authority ever informed us of his death or whereabouts. He just vanished from the face of the earth. My mother made numerous attempts to obtain information from many agencies of the government, each of which, however, told her in as many words: Go away. After numerous unsuccessful searches, on October 28, 1952, Mother did obtain a “Decision” by the Circuit Court of Dresden that her husband was a missing person, dead in the eyes of the law as per December 31, 1950. And 54 years later, in 1999, the German Red Cross obtained official documents from former Soviet concentration camps. One listed Herbert Straube, 43 years old, as having died in the Mühlberg concentration camp on November 11, 1945; no cause of death was given. The realization that my father had died didn’t happen that fast, however. At first there was still considerable hope. There were indications that he was going to be released, that he would be home again. And it took very long for hope to die. But piece by piece, the gruesome story unfolded. A few days after my father was picked up, without a single word heard from or of him, my mother went to the Russian commander and tried to pry some information out of the Russian officer in charge. She was not received; her many attempts to talk to Russians who wouldn’t listen got nowhere, except that one officer gave her the name of the facility where all the political prisoners were held.

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“Widows and Orphans” (1921) by Käthe Kollwitz.

Then my mother packed a suitcase with our father’s warm clothes and one of his coats. She went to the Soviet Secret Police station where she had been directed. It was heavily guarded, and she tried to get in. But, of course, they wouldn’t let her in. She’d talk to any one of the guards who would listen. But no one would. Then she’d talk to any Russian officer or soldier going inside or coming out. And since none of that helped, she just stayed around there day after day. One day, finally, one of the tired officers listened to Mother and took along the suitcase, promising to deliver it to my father. Whether he did or not, we’ll never know.

ONE WAY, NO RETURN The next time we heard of our father was some months later, when a shabbily dressed man came to our house. As it turned out, he was one of the former party friends of father, completely run down now. He reported that he had shared a cell with our father for a day or so in the prison where Mother had

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waited in front of the door for so long. He didn’t know whether Father got the warm clothes or not, either. This man had been let go for some reason still unknown to our family. He didn’t explain. We only guessed that, maybe, they had let him out to locate another former Party member who was to be arrested but couldn’t be found. At any rate, the man was convinced that, sooner or later, my father would be released, too. In the meantime, he knew, our father had been transferred to a hard-labor camp near Mühlberg on the Elbe. Mother immediately took the trip to Mühlberg and loitered near the camp for days, trying to contact our father, but she didn’t have any success. It wasn’t until much later, when another of my Father’s former friends came to our home, that we learned of father’s fate. The visitor had been released from the Mühlberg camp, and while there had heard of our father’s death in the camp several years earlier. This hearsay came from what he had been told by another inmate by the name of Franz Schwabach, whose address he had. The latter had been released with him, but only to go to his hometown of Duisburg in West Germany. Therefore he came to call on the widow of his former friend to give her whatever clues he had about the last days of her husband. On December 29, 1949, mother wrote to Franz Schwabach in Duisburg and on January 1, 1950, he answered promptly in a handwritten two-page letter, a copy of which I have. Franz Schwabach wrote that he was released after 4 years in Mühlberg and returned home. He discovered that his wife had died in the meantime. He also reported that in August 1945, my father and he shared a cell for some time in the “G.P.U. basement,” the Soviet Secret Police station, at “Zittauer Strasse” in Dresden. From there they were transferred to the prison at the “Münchener Platz,” where, however, they were no longer together. Schwabach wrote that he then came to Mühlberg in September 1945 and our father was brought there only in early November of that year. Schwabach wrote that the treatment and “long weeks in the prison made us all extremely weak so that we really longed for death to arrive as our salvation.” Franz Schwabach reported, “I believe it was a Sunday when Herbert staggered into my barracks. He said only, ‘Franz, help me, I have been assigned an upper wooden sleeping plank. I am so dizzy that I am afraid to fall off.’ I took him back to his barracks and went immediately to the doctor in charge, who came along and examined him. The diagnosis was overall bodily weakness.” “We then put Herbert on a stretcher,” Schwabach continued, and took him to the hospital barracks. The next day we had to work in the woods felling

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trees. When we came back, I immediately asked how he was doing. And I was told that during the night he had fallen asleep forever.” Much later, another witness reported to our mother. He was one of the parties whose daily duty it was to throw the bodies of the deceased in a pit, and one day my father’s body had been among them.

Chapter Seven

Quo Vadis? (Latin: Where are you going?)

LIFE GOES ON With Father gone, the family still had to be supported, somehow. My mother had been a nurse and x-ray technician but with my two younger sisters being little children, and nobody there to care for them, it was impossible for her to go to work. My brother and I did whatever we possibly could to help her. Mother, at the same time, called on every contact she had to find promising jobs for her two sons. It is how both of us finally connected with employers who trusted our mother, or friends of hers, to trust those unproven kids and give them a chance. Manfred went into apprenticeship as a lathe operator and mechanic, and I left the truck farm to take a job at Riedel & Company, a scientific instrument maker. I was trained as a glass blower and soon became quite proficient in making the fanciest things of glass and glass pipe, such as laboratory coolers, glass vases, etc. While my former classmates went back to school, now under Communism, I had to attend to our primary needs at home and make a living. Nevertheless, or more so because of it, I was eager to go to school all right, for I realized that my future would depend on my education.

FINDING NEW WAYS In Communist East Germany at the time, workers were greatly helped and promoted in their quest for education. So called “people’s high schools” were opened, which worked somewhat like an evening high school or extension 54

Quo Vadis?

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Heine Spezialwiderstände, Schlüterstrasse 29, Dresden, after the bombing and following cleanup, 1945. Before self-help reconstruction.

university. Any worker was welcome, as long as he or she was able to pay the moderate fee. The education offered was good. The teachers were mainly older professors whom the war had passed by, but who still had a high classical standard of teaching. Riedel was a small company of about twenty employees, and Mr. Riedel very much appreciated my efforts. This was not the case with my colleagues in the glass-blowing department, two brothers named Liebscher. They were expert glassblowers, much older than I, and they considered themselves the

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Walter Riedel (Dr. Econ.), engineering entrepreneur, born 1910 in Dresden, died 2006. My first boss (in 1945), under whom I served as glassblower apprentice.

basic requirements of Mr. Riedel’s business. They didn’t like the new competition, and although initially they showed me how to overcome the difficulties of glass blowing, they soon dragged their feet because they thought I might outdo them. Outdo them, I did. We went on piecework, and my piece production in a day was sometimes just as large as that of the brothers Liebscher combined. This didn’t go unnoticed by Mr. Riedel or the Liebschers.

ACTIVE LABOR RELATIONS For glass blowing you need gas for your burners, but gas was rare at those times in 1945–46. At nighttime the gas supply was relatively ample, so that we changed our working time to the night shift. This was fine with me because, again, it allowed me to go to school during the daytime. I brought my vocabulary book along to work, and while I was turning out complicated laboratory glass pieces I had the vocabulary book right behind the gas flame so that I could glance at it regularly and learn my Latin, English, and French. Whenever there was time I would have my nose in the learning, math and all the rest.

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One night, overtired or careless as I must have been, a drop of melting glass fell on my vocabulary book and instantly it went up in flames. Nothing serious happened, but the Liebschers used the incident to show Mr. Riedel that I was a menace to the glass-blowing operation and not at all interested in the work at hand. Mr. Riedel didn’t want to lose the Liebschers, yet he knew what I was doing. So he made me his purchasing agent, giving me the power to visit glass suppliers in Thuringia and purchase materials needed for his production. As if he were to assume the role of my father, Mr. Riedel acted like a businessman with the wisdom of Solomon. He got me out of the Liebscher brothers’ hair and made it look as though it was to punish me. In fact, he was giving me what turned out to be an upgrade in responsibility and more independence of action for the benefit of his company.

HOW LONG TO SURVIVE ON HOW LITTLE? At home we were progressing slowly. Our mother not only took care of all the motherly jobs for 4 fatherless, hungry kids, but she also undertook countless initiatives to get us out of the desolate misery we were in. She had unbelievable faith and self-confidence in us being able to pull ourselves out of the dismal circumstances. Her inner strength and resourcefulness, even in the face of what seemed like absolutely insurmountable obstacles at the time, were more than formidable. She never gave up. She never lost her smile. Our biggest drawback was lack of food. The food rationing stamps, though supplied, didn’t help at all, for there just wasn’t enough food to buy. Mother stood in long queues most of the time trying to catch some food stuff as it came into the groceries or food stores. I remember the time when we went for days without anything to eat, except one piece of dried bread in the morning or at night. No milk, meat, or eggs, nor anything like it. There was no wood or coal to heat in the wintertime, and quite often there was not even electricity for light.

Chapter Eight

Winter 1946/47

This chapter was written by Manfred Straube, my younger brother, in Dresden, Germany, February 1996. I translated it on January 18, 2000, my brother’s 68th birthday.

THE REMAINING FAMILY MEMBERS Unlike most recent winters, we are having a long-lasting severe cold period this year in 1996. It reminds me of the first winter after the war (World War II). After the loss of our apartment in Dresden, we lived together with our paternal grandmother on the third floor in the house at Guerickestrasse 34. During the winter, our mother had to undergo medical procedures that required her being hospitalized. Our father did not return from the Mühlberg concentration camp, and Grandma had to take care of herself since she was of considerable age by then (73). In preparation for her stay in the hospital, our mother had arranged for placement of both our sisters with friendly acquaintances. Elfriede was

My brother, Manfred B. Straube, 1966.

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lodged with tailor Master Maresch and his wife, while Elsbeth was taken care of by the Klinkicht family who operated a well-established bakery. My brother Win and I continued living at home. Win pursued his job with Walter Riedel & Co. glassblowers for chemical and medical instruments, and I apprenticed for the career of a machine builder with Messrs. Alfred Galle in Niedersedlitz, a suburb of Dresden. TO KEEP WARM WITHOUT HEAT It had been cold for a long time and coal was practically unavailable. What was available (if you were lucky) were, at best, coal scrapings, slack, and coal dust in all possible forms, mostly very loose. A somewhat higher quality was represented in the form of so-called wet press-stones, which never came to a full burn but would smolder long after the process had been started by the relatively long-lasting, intensive heat of a wood fire. To keep the embers glowing throughout the night in our kitchen stove, in the evening we carefully put a wet press-stone on top of the fire. It was about the size of a brick, and it had to be rolled inside moistened newspaper and then carefully placed on the dimly glowing fire without breaking it in the process. Also of critical importance to us was a small so-called thrift-oven. It had the shape of a cube approximately 25 cm (about 10 inches) long at the edge. It was made from remnants of thin sheets of metal that had been part of the guide-framework of the incendiary bombs that had been dropped on Dresden. One such thrift-oven we acquired in exchange for some household item we were able to live without. The central ring of the cast iron heating plate of the kitchen stove was removed and the thrift-oven put in its place so that it would be connected to the chimney draft. The door for feeding the thrift-oven was about the size of two matchboxes. The fire grill inside had just enough room for, maximum, half a lignite briquette. Thus it was possible, with very little wood, to boil water for “coffee-ersatz” (a substitute). Often, our grandma sat in front of that tiny stove to warm her gout-plagued hands, as this doll-house-sized oven rarely gave enough heat to benefit the kitchen. Today I can appreciate how much our grandma must have suffered from the cold. THE JOB OF APPRENTICES Win was lucky to work in a warm place on his job since powerful gas flames were used for forming the glass. At my workplace, however, we had as little

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in heating materials as we had at home. We lived mainly from burning wood that my boss and I, his apprentice, had found in the summer by locating tree stumps that we then dug out and chopped up. In the winter time it was this apprentice’s first task in the morning, after picking up the workshop key from my boss, to start the fire in a big self-feeding stove which was very similar to a large cannon stove. After I had removed the ashes from the previous day and started the fire on the iron grill, the stove was fed through a large lid on the top. Since the heating material was mainly coal slack and brown coal dust, it happened quite often that the fire was extinguished by pouring in a new supply. Although I had a very good relationship with my boss, I had to listen to many a reprimand regarding this. The reason also may have been that I wanted to become a machine-tool builder, not a fire stoker. Always on the stove was a big tin-pot with water that we used for washing our hands in a pail next to the workshop door. Nowadays, nobody can imagine the hands of a workshop apprentice of that time who was dismantling old burned-out and rusted machines in order to try and make them operable again. Today protective gloves are routinely worn for far less-dirty and dangerous work. When the fire didn’t want to burn at all, the boss very occasionally sacrificed a little bit of anthracite pit-coal, which was rationed and had been obtained through official channels, but only for fire in the forging of metal parts. As a matter of principle, however, using that valuable coal for heating was banned since it was required for the forging of steel, which otherwise

Rubble of the company where I served my apprenticeship as glassblower.

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could not have been formed; the existence of the shop depended on that capability. There were days when I came into the shop in the morning and it was so cold that the boss couldn’t get the lathe turning; the tool chuck was so stiff and the main spindle unwilling to turn in its bearings that the flat power belt just slid over the drive pulley. Then the boss set the leverage of a tool wrench to the three-way chuck and jolted the spindle out of its cold freeze. Then, after maybe half an hour turning in idle position, the bearings were sufficiently warmed up that we could start with our work. About noontime the stove

Dresden, 1945. Beginning of self-help reconstruction.

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would overcome the worst of the cold so that in the afternoon we could get back to work. I remember one day when it was so icy that even this method wasn’t successful. The workshop was dog cold, and it was impossible to think of doing any work. So we sat in front of the stove that only reluctantly gave a little warmth, and our boss shared with us some of the experiences from his journeyman years. Germany had severe unemployment during the 1920s, and he signed on to work in the rain forest in Brazil; his employer paid for the emigration. But only through an adventurous maneuver was he able to escape the hell of the jungle; later he was able to settle in Sao Paulo and enjoy a bearable life amid German compatriots. When the war started in 1939, he happened to be on a visit in Germany and was therefore prevented from returning to Brazil.

LIVING IN AN ICE BOX In the evening at home it wasn’t any better. In the living room the water in the ball-glass vase produced by Win was frozen. We had to throw it away immediately, for it would break anyway in the thawing-out process when it got warmer at some point. The bedroom was colder yet because it was a corner room and had windows to the north and east. At night we went to bed muffled up as if we were outside in the open. The transfer was accomplished in record time in order to hopefully warm up as soon as possible under our eiderdowns. During the coldest nights I wore long-john underpants and put my father’s bathrobe on over my pajamas. Aggravating the situation was the lack of electrical energy; in other words, there was often no power. Natural gas was not available either, except in very rare instances.

CONSOLATION FROM CULTURE It is during that time that I had my life’s first introduction to the theatre. Every so often my brother Win took me along to a play or opera. Both were performed temporarily in the Tonhalle, which had survived Dresden’s fire bombing sufficiently intact that it could be used. What was difficult was the preparation for such a theatre visit. I rushed home and tried with cold water and clay soap, or a similar imitation soap, to clean myself. During that process the lights went out since power was being

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turned off because of citywide overloading. By candlelight I finished the process and put on a pair of pants that were too short and some heirloom jacket that had been altered to fit me and of which I was extremely proud. In the electric streetcar I found the time to check my getup and found out that my cleaning efforts would not stand any scrutiny. My fingers had to be hidden since all the fingernails were broken off from my job and my hands wouldn’t get clean, even with most intensive brushing. Once we were in the theatre foyer I quickly disappeared to my seat inside, and then as the lights dimmed I was absorbed by the music and action on stage. For a few hours I was temporarily transported out of this world and did otherwise forget all the miseries around me. I remember well details of Schiller’s “Cabal and Love” and Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute,” with such well-known Dresden actors as Christel Goltz, Elfriede Trötschel, Elisabeth Reichelt, Manja Behrens, Bernd Altenhoff, and Hans Löbel, just to name a few. Joseph Keilbert directed the orchestra. Those were unforgettable experiences for me, for which I am grateful to my brother Win to this day. From those experiences in my early years I developed a love for the theatre which Jutta and I nourished during the first years of our marriage, particularly also because of the good relationship Jutta had with one of the ballet dancers at the State Opera.

NECESSITY MAKES ONE INVENTIVE After our mother returned from the hospital and our sisters returned to the family hearth, it was necessary to increase the temperature in the apartment by a few degrees. Win and his friend Gerd Straumer (later Dr. Gerd Straumer, lecturer at the Technical University Dresden) came up with a plan in which I also was going to play a role, if a subordinate one. Since coal was available nowhere, wood was to be obtained in grand style. I was not involved with the preparations but when the time came, in the evening as soon as darkness fell, we took off. I was told to bring my sleigh along. We met with Win’s friend at Gerd’s mother’s place and left from there, equipped with a large woodcutter’s saw and sleigh, headed for the park across from the sports arena at the Gondelweg. Since birch wood burns without having to be dried first, Win and Gerd cut down several birch trees of substantial diameter and cut the trunks in twometer (79 inches) long pieces, then tied them down on the sleigh. Now my task began. I pulled that weight to the house where we had met and together with Gerd’s mother carried the birch trunk pieces into the basement.

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NO SILENT NIGHT As soon as I came back to the park, my sleigh was loaded up again and I repeated the task as before. I can’t tell any more how many times I went back and forth. I only remember that Win and Gerd assisted several young women with the big woodcutter’s saw since the women on their own were unsuccessfully trying to cut down trees in diameter about the length of their little household saws. The project was stopped by the appearance of several policemen. These were quite normal civilians with a white armband who tried to convince the people to stop this carnage. On principle they were right, but the suffering was so great and there was sawing in every corner of the park, so that their words fell on deaf ears. As we finished up we first secured our woodcutter’s saw, since it had been borrowed from somewhere, and I moved the last sleigh load to the basement of Gerd’s mother. Thus, I didn’t have to take part in the outcome of that socalled police raid. Gerd had organized the further cutting up of the trunk pieces and the chopping up. During the next days, pulling the sleigh, Win and I brought our portion of the spoils home.

COZINESS RETURNS During the weekend we tried with all our might to put an enchanting temperature in the apartment. To our surprise we discovered that the moist birch wood burned fine, but the heat started thawing the frost in the walls and water came streaming down everywhere. Some time, however, spring did arrive, very gingerly. Starting in March I was hoping from one week to the next that it really would warm up. Never before in my life had I longed so much for the warming rays of the sun. Now, when winters in general appear more like cold summers, we are hoping for more wintry weather. However, this year the cold is lasting a relatively long time, yet it is by far not as cold as it was then. Now we have a rather warm living room and I have to think of a long time ago, the winter of 1946/47.

Chapter Nine

Living Dangerously

BEGGING DOOR TO DOOR (Back to my own report—WS) 1947 came and things weren’t any better. Actually, it was getting worse. Somehow we had managed to obtain turnips from friends. The family ate turnips in the form of raw and cooked, in pieces, in soup, mashed and in many other forms, but always the same turnips until we ran out of them. What then? From time to time, my mother made trips to the countryside begging from door to door at farmers’ houses. She took along our last valuables, as far as there were valuables left: her linen, some old earrings, whatever china was left which didn’t have a crack or even if it had a crack. She tried to bargain those things for some food. But the efforts were seldom successful. Whenever they were, my mother would come walking home with a knapsack full of potatoes, and everybody would be full of joy again. Quite often I also went on those begging trips. It was necessary to go far away from the city, because the farmers were overrun by the townsfolk bringing carpets, lamps, and anything that a farmer might like. Yet, many farmers’ fields hadn’t been worked for some time, and they, too, had to feed their families, plus they were expected to fill their quotas of food to the authorities. “The Germans,” wrote former President Herbert Hoover in February 1947, “in food, warmth, and shelter have sunk to the lowest level known in a hundred years of Western history.” We were hungry and cold. These were the grim facts. The average consumer received about a third of a pound of meat on his ration card every four weeks in 1947, provided meat was available, which it rarely was. Every three months he was given an egg, again provided 65

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Left: Time magazine’s Man of the Year 1938: Adolf Hitler (April 20, 1889 to April 30, 1945. Death by suicide in bunker under the Reichs-Chancellory Berlin). Right: Time magazine’s Man of the Year 1939 and again in 1943: Josef Stalin, born Joseph Vissartonovitch Djugashvilt on December 9, 1879 in Gori, Georgia (Russia). Adopted the pseudonym Josef Stalin (the Hammer) in 1910; died March 6, 1953.

it was available. The average ration amounted to 800 calories a day. This was from Mr. Hoover’s report on WEST Germany. Nobody reported on the East. There, in fact, things were far worse. Police went out in the country and patrolled the railway stations, stopping people who tried to obtain food from the country. They took the food away from them and sometimes clapped them in jail for illegal possession of potatoes, for it was illegal to obtain food by any means other than by purchasing it against food rationing stamps in stores. On one of my trips, I walked for three hours out in the country to a village near Obergruna, where my grandparents had come from, trying to find a friendly soul that would part with some potatoes or anything else edible. When I came to one of the farms where I had once been a guest as a boy, the doors were locked, nobody came out. When I tried to enter the farm through a back door, which I knew, the farmer let his dogs loose from the chain and set them on me. Dog-bitten and bleeding, I limped back home. Without potatoes. NO ARREST WARRANTS REQUIRED And then came the day when a Russian commissar and two soldiers again pulled up in front of our home and came inside. This time they were looking

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for me. I had to go along with them. Mother convinced the men that I had to dress warmly first, and they allowed me to do so. Then off we went in a little German car, which, no doubt, had been requisitioned by the victors and was now being used by the military. I was taken to a military compound and led into the basement. Then the door was closed behind me and there I was left unattended. In looking around, I noticed that there were about five men lying or sitting on the dirt floor. When I talked with them, I discovered they were political prisoners, either from the SS or otherwise somehow linked to the National Socialist Party. They had been there for some time already; each one had been caught in an “illegal act,” such as crossing the Elbe in a motor boat or having talked to another former Party member on the subject of politics or the like. This was the station where the Russians seemed to interrogate all political suspects, but at first they didn’t interrogate me. I spent a few days in this dungeon without knowing why I was there. Once, when one of the prisoners was led out of the basement for interrogation, the others turned to me and told me confidentially that they were quite sure that man was a spy, planted in this group to find out what the others had done against the present regime. Or, if he wasn’t a spy, he was at least trying to save his own skin by tattling on the others, for some of the basement discussions had turned up as questions in the interrogations of the others. So watch your tongue, they told me.

WHERE WERE THEY COMING FROM? The flies were stinging, and it smelled awful in that dungeon since we were not allowed to go outside for any of our necessities. In one of the corners of the room there was a pail we all used as a latrine; it was bound to create bacteria. Little bugs, mice, and rats ran around. I wondered: How do you differentiate between a large mouse and a small rat? I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t. Finally, on the fifth day, I was led out of the dungeon and faced a Russian officer. He told me bluntly that I had distributed anti-Soviet leaflets in a department store and that I was trying to revive National Socialism. The officer told me that I should confess right away, for this would ease my lot and take me out of the dungeon. I was perplexed, for I hadn’t done anything of the kind. Actually, I thought National Socialism had died in the war, and I couldn’t see how anyone would try to revive all that again. But regardless of what I thought, it didn’t seem to matter one bit. It mattered what the Russian in front of me thought, and he

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was convinced of my having been guilty of an offense against the Soviet authorities. I’d been a rebel and could be shot for that. As convincingly as I could, I asserted my innocence. I explained my position and that it would be foolhardy to do something like he’d said, that there was no reason for me to commit such an antisocial act, and that I didn’t think anything like that would be of any benefit to anybody. All my explanations were wiped away with a brush of his hand. The guard came in and took me away again.

IN BAD COMPANY Back in the basement, I asked the others whether their accusations had been just as fabricated as mine. It seemed they were not. They may have been exaggerated and connected to the wrong reason or person, but it seemed that the other inmates were more involved in some illegal act, or an act considered illegal, than I was. But how was I going to get out of this? As time went on I became quite familiar with my surroundings. Some new prisoners were thrown in, while others were transferred. We were allowed to clean out the basement with a broom and water. I volunteered for this duty, so I got to know the evening guard at the door quite well. His name was Mischa, and Mischa took a liking to me. He taught me some Russian words and phrases that I was anxious to learn, and he enjoyed it when I tried to talk to him in his mother tongue. In the back of my mind I was mulling over a plan of how to somehow persuade Mischa or cheat him into letting me out. That basement bred disease, and the other prisoners were possibly serious cases that the Russians were keeping here for good reason. This, again, might mean Siberia eventually, or death. And if this had to come about, I might as well try to escape. The penalty for the act I was accused of was going to be severe, that was for sure. To the Russian mentality of that time it was just as serious to hand out anti-Soviet leaflets as it might have been to shoot straight at Marshal Stalin. But I didn’t have to go through with my plans. Virtually every day I was called before the same officer and interrogated in the same way. The questions were almost always exactly the same, almost to the word. Sometimes I would be asked for the names of some of my friends or somebody else I did or didn’t know. Always I was promised light treatment if I would tell the truth. Always I repeated that I said nothing but the truth, that I had nothing to do with the activity as charged, and that I was as innocent as could be.

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LUCKY DAY Then there were two days when I was not called for interrogation. This worried me. What was going to happen next? Well, the third morning a soldier came in and took me outside. There he told me that I was a free man and could go home now. I was so grateful that I asked to see the officer again who had interrogated me. The soldier took me to him. The officer looked at me as I thanked him for letting me go free. He continued to stare at me, but didn’t say a word. I didn’t wait around, just left, accompanied by the guard who led me down to the street. Only much later did I learn what apparently had triggered my release. The same type of leaflet attributed to me had been distributed in the same department store again during the time I was locked up in that dungeon for interrogation. This, apparently, made my captors realize that they had snared the wrong bird.

Chapter Ten

The Grass on the Other Side of the Fence

FACING THE FACTS By 1946, Germany had been divided into east and west, partitioned by the “Iron Curtain,” thus named by Winston Churchill during his speech at Westminster College, in Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946. This signaled the onset of the Cold War. It was illegal to travel between eastern and western Germany, unless authorization had been obtained from the local German authorities and the occupation forces. I don’t know anybody who had ever been allowed to cross that border legally. Instead, they might have been thrown in jail just for coming in with a request that was most likely politically motivated. My mother didn’t want to see her eldest son end up the way her husband did. She encouraged me to go west, for the east was too dangerous. On the western side of the iron curtain I was more likely to build a future that would be better than the past. In the east it could easily happen that I would become the inmate of a political penitentiary at the whim of anyone who denounced me. “Justice” was meted out by “people’s judges,” one of whom was a former tailor who, as it turned out, had been responsible for my father having been put away. No, my background didn’t lend itself for a career in that country. I was going to be hunted and discriminated against for the rest of my life. So, better move on to greener pastures. And I had to move fast, because I didn’t know what was going to come next. Yet it would have to be done covertly. Otherwise, I’d never get out of town, and next time I might stay locked in a dungeon, or worse, for good. Obviously, permission would never be granted. 70

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STEALING AWAY Eventually, after careful preparations and without permission from the East German authorities or the occupation forces, I left Dresden by rail on June 16, 1947, when I was 18. This time I did not take with me even such simple things as a suitcase or some extra warm clothes, as my dear mother had suggested, because I didn’t want to look like a traveler. In those days, travelers were always suspected to be up to no good. Surely, I didn’t want to be caught. Carefully avoiding the “People’s Police” and occupation forces, I traveled cautiously and succeeded in getting to Thuringia, one of East Germany’s provinces bordering on western Germany. I made it to the town of Kahla where uncle Helmut, my father’s younger brother and a doctor, lived with his family until their own successful flight to West Germany not much later. This was to be my staging area. Uncle Helmut introduced me to the pharmacist in the local apothecary’s shop, which was in the center of Kahla’s main market square. They obviously knew each other well and had complete trust in each other. Uncle introduced me as his nephew and explained that I intended to cross the border into Bavaria, the adjoining West German state. As a local naturalist who had been collecting herbs and mushrooms in the region’s forests all his life, including the area going into Bavaria, the pharmacist knew precisely how to get there and how to do so without being discovered. PREPARATION FOR SUCCESS In what was a crowded lab a few steps from the pharmacy’s main counter, the pharmacist pulled out a couple of maps and we went over them in great detail. He pointed out landmarks to look for, explained what to stay far away from and how to blend in with the local culture, and also how to retrace my steps or change the route in case of suspicious sightings. Eventually, he questioned me like a drill sergeant to make sure I had everything committed to memory. “In case they catch you,” he said in the end, “don’t ever admit that you talked with me. I never met you. Good luck!” “That’s right,” said my uncle. “The meeting with this young man never took place.” The next morning I rode to the town of Probstzella by train and continued on foot. I still had the pharmacist’s map clear in my mind and repeated his instructions silently to myself many times. With all this preparation, I knew exactly where and how I was going to cross the border.

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As he had described to me, there was a road coming from the south going up north and swinging like a C around a mountain. The border crossed the mountain from east to west and tried to cut across the road at about the center of the C. At that point, I had been warned, the occupation forces had constructed a turnpike. On either side of the turnpike were American and Russian soldiers and West and East German border police. On the American side there was a restaurant, maybe 50 yards from the border, and this was a popular place. With the help of the Kahla pharmacist, we had carefully planned that I avoid the official border crossing by climbing the heavily wooded mountain from the Russian side and then descending the other far-steeper side, eventually to walk nonchalantly into the West German restaurant and then try to hitch a ride south.

FLEEING AND BEING CAUGHT I made it up one side of the mountain, bathed in the warm and bright afternoon sunshine. I made it down the other steeper side exactly as planned. So far, so good. No east German border police caught me, nor did the Russian soldiers see me. Casually I strolled into the restaurant. I surveyed the scene and decided to leave as soon as possible because it was carefully watched by West German border policemen. During that time, too, the West was just as militant about letting anybody come in from the East as the East was unwilling to let anybody escape. I couldn’t walk along the road, because there I would be picked up by a military or police patrol sooner or later. I’d have to produce my identification papers, and this would be the end of my trip. So, I went sideways into the woods instead, along a walkway that ran parallel to the eastern border. I intended to go down this path a little further on and then turn right, and walk parallel to the road leading south. So I walked along this path for, maybe, a few hundred feet. There I came to a big clearing where the trees had been felled. As I proceeded to rush across the opening, an open Russian vehicle pulled up at the northern end of the opening and a warning shot rang out toward my direction. They had seen me, and fear ran through me like a lightening bolt. I stood there in the open, frozen in place like a statue, making a beautiful target. The Russians waved and motioned me to come back to their side. Ever so reluctantly, I did. I walked down the opening, crossing the borderline, and came back to where I had started.

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They put me in their vehicle and completed their patrol along the border. No more refugees were caught then. Finally I was delivered to a villa back near Probstzella where, as usual, I was put in the basement. And also, as usual, lots of other prisoners were there already. Young men and women, and old ones, too. All of them had been caught one way or another trying to flee the eastern paradise.

REFUSED AND RETURNED I was thoroughly searched. Even the seams of my suit were cut open at some places. Later in the day I was brought before an officer upstairs. He told me that though I had been caught fleeing they would let me off this time, but that I surely shouldn’t be caught again. The Russians would see to it that I was put on the next train back home. Obviously so many Germans were trying to cross this border illegally that it really wasn’t worth prosecuting each single one, particularly if they didn’t appear suspicious in any other way. The Russians took a whole group of refugees and carted us to the train station. There we were put on the train that wouldn’t stop again until it was out of the border region. The Russian soldiers and some East German border policemen watched as the train pulled out.

ONE MORE TIME I remained on the platform, and as the train went around a curve picking up steam I jumped off, laid down, and let the train pull away. Then I pulled myself near a better hiding place and stayed there until night fell. I sure didn’t want to go back home. Here was my opportunity to make it to the West. I had made it already, but for this unfortunate discovery. Yes, I would do it again, fully aware of the risks I was taking. I’d know the way much better now, too. This time it was night. There was a curfew in this border area, so most likely they would shoot at me without warning if police or the military should see me. If they caught me in the fields or in the woods that I had to cross, I’d try to persuade the police or soldier that I was a local farmer’s help, without a watch, and on my way home. This, at least, is what I thought I’d say. So, again I started out with the same objective. This time, of course, I wouldn’t approach that restaurant on the West German side. I would stay on the steep side of the mountain maybe 50 feet above the street, regardless of

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how rocky or steep it should be there; I’d climb around the mountain that way, then walk along the road but maybe 50 feet to the right, inside the woods.

NIGHT CROSSING But first I’d have to get there, and this was the most difficult part. I must have used more than half of the night trying to find my way back up that mountain, crossing a barbed-wire fence in the process. Once I heard steps and laid down until the Russian patrol had passed. Once I heard shooting, but it was off in the distance, in the other direction. Maybe they caught somebody else trying to escape. Finally, I made it all right, until at the West German side I accidentally loosened some rocks. They went crashing down and landed near the road. I stuck to my position, holding my breath, but nothing happened. After maybe half an hour or so I continued my journey of hope. It was daybreak before I crossed the mountain as I had planned and I was lined up with the road, maybe 50 feet to the right. I kept marching on as fast and as far as I could. I would have to make it to Lauenstein where the railroad line ended from the western side. Actually, before and during the war the railroad went all the way through from Ludwigstadt via Lauenstein to Probstzella, around the mountain, just parallel to the road I described. But the partition of Germany had made Probstzella the eastern and Lauenstein the western end of that particular line. I had been told beforehand that anybody unfamiliar would be arrested at the Lauenstein railway station by West German border police. This was information I had picked up in the basement of the villa where the Russians had held me. There I had learned that this train came to Lauenstein about 7 o’clock in the morning, delivering workers who were working in the nearby mines. Then, only people with appropriate passes were allowed to enter the train which would pull out again after 10 minutes and go on to Kronach, Bavaria, where you’d be free—no more border police or checkpoints.

CATCHING THE TRAIN Since I was to the right of the road and the train tracks were on the left, I went farther south than the Lauenstein train station, which really wasn’t much more than a hut at the end of the line. Then, after I was down about 3⁄4 of a

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mile south of the railway station, I carefully approached the road and crossed it. I approached the rail line and followed it, hoping to find a curve or some switches where, I hoped, the train would slow down. Then I looked for a hideout in the shrubs nearby and waited. I didn’t have to wait very long. There came the early morning train puffing along the winding valley. Sure enough, it slowed down sufficiently at the curve that I had selected and I left my hideout, going close to the tracks. As the train passed by, I ran along and jumped on one of the last cars. I went inside, locking myself in the washroom. Nobody noticed, or at least nobody bothered. I guess the workers there, if they had seen me, knew exactly what I was doing. And they were Germans too, after all. They were not interested in politics or playing police. No one raised an eyebrow. The train huffed and puffed and stopped at the Lauenstein end station hut. I was ducked down inside the washroom and briefly dared to glance over the windowsill. There I could see the workers disembarking, chatting and carrying their lunch boxes with their daily rations. Also there were the border policemen with shouldered rifles patrolling the platform outside. They carefully watched the men streaming out and then stood at the entrances of a few cars, where they checked the passes of the few passengers boarding the train.

WAITING IT OUT In the meantime, the locomotive was unhooked on the one end and positioned to be hooked up at the other end. The minutes passed by like hours. The border policemen outside walked up and down the train, looking into a window or two from the outside so as to make sure that only authorized passengers were inside. Then the train got a little push, and another one. The locomotive had been coupled on at the southern end. Then a shrill whistle sounded from the engine. As the train pulled away from the station, I was still ducking down, waiting for another minute or two until I dared raise my head again and look outside. I came out of the toilet and took a place inside the car. In German trains, at least during that time, there were no conductors. All the handling and checking of tickets was done outside at the railway station where you had to pass a gate, and then again at the gate when you left the station at your destination. I was not approached by any trainman while on that train. More people boarded at the next station, and more again later on. The train filled up nicely, and now it would be difficult to spot a single refugee.

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THE HOBO MODE OF TRAVELING I oriented myself along the way, repeating the names of places in my mind and watching for where I would have to get off. Just a few miles before Kronach, Bavaria, I left the train the same way I had entered it, by jumping off at an instant where it was turning a curve and slowing down in its approach to a station. For the next three days, I walked and hitchhiked about 100 miles to Vohenstrauss, a little village near Weiden Oberpfalz, where I knew my former school friend Rolf Jacob was working on a farm. He had never returned to Dresden since the end of the war and had invited me to see him whenever I would be able to come in that direction. Now, here I was. The time had come. And sure enough, Rolf was known in the village and I was directed to where he lived.

REUNION IN PARADISE Meeting up with Rolf who, like me, also miraculously survived the last phase of the war’s devastation, was like two dead men meeting again in another world. It truly was a different world, and the burden of ducking oppressors fell off me like a big stone off my back. It was going to be buried and forever left behind, right here in Vohenstrauss. Relief, at last! I shall never forget the farmers where Rolf worked who let me into their houses and had me join their evening meals. The food mainly consisted of slices everyone cut off a fresh, large, home-baked sourdough bread with a heavy crust—I can still smell it today—and then homemade butter spread on as thick as you liked. It was an unbelievable luxury at the time and I cherished every bite. Unfortunately I couldn’t eat very much, because I had gone hungry for so long that my stomach and my entire system needed time to adjust. Within a few days there it certainly did, but then it was time to say “Thank you very much” and go on.

FREEDOM AT LAST Before leaving I remember Rolf, who was two years older than me (20 years old vs. me being 18 years old at the time), giving me some advice for the time ahead and the newfound freedom to be enjoyed: “Be careful when getting involved with girls. Make sure you find the right one first. Otherwise, you can be back in the dumps faster than you think, and

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your freedom gone, too.” Strange, I thought, he must be speaking from experience. “OK, OK,” I said, “When the time comes, I’ll let you know.” Rolf lent me enough money to continue the trip to Munich. After some more hearty food and another night of wonderful rest, I went on by train to Munich. There, at last, I was a free man, no longer an escapee on the run. I was outside the railway station in Munich, in a bustling city, absolutely free. The air tasted wonderful.

Chapter Eleven

Finding the Pieces That Fit

LOOKING FOR A WAY In Munich I had relatives. Dr. Franz Thierfelder and his family lived in a beautiful villa in Graefelfing, which hadn’t been affected by the war. The Thierfelders had two daughters, Hannelore and Henriette, both about my age. Dr. Thierfelder was a Professor at the Munich University and its legal counsel. At that time, of course, refugees from the east plus many homeless people from the west were coming out Germany’s ears and noses. West German production was sufficient to provide each person with one pair of shoes every four years, a water tumbler every two years, a ladle every fifteen years, and a kitchen sink every 150 years. On the black market, a radio cost 3,000 Marks. At that time, a light bulb was less, namely 50 Marks or US $12.50 at the rate of exchange. There was no housing, and there was little to eat. Barter and the black market became a way of life. Strange scenes were enacted in the countryside as city-dwellers spread out across the land foraging for food. The city people brought with them candlesticks, bed covers, furniture—for the farmers. The aristocrats of the time tended to despise money— “What are we going to do with it?” they asked. And, at night, the people from the cities took back with them vegetables, lard, and fruit, clutching these treasures tightly against their bodies as they hung from the steps of packed trains. So the Thierfelders didn’t really appreciate my sudden visit. Nevertheless, they didn’t flatly refuse to let me come inside. They showed me the bathroom and took away my clothes. I had to bathe and clean myself while they took care of my clothing. Then I was fed properly and allowed to sleep for a night. 78

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STILL LOOKING After that, politely, I was asked by Uncle Franz to come along and was ushered into his car. When he drove off from his home, I didn’t have the slightest idea of where we were going. But soon I discovered I was being delivered to the nearest refugee camp. Just in time, before we had a chance to get inside, I realized what was happening and asked Uncle Franz to stop, and he did. I thanked him for his help and guidance, and then I stepped out of the car. No, no more camps for me. I’d find my own way, alone. This, too, was agreeable to Uncle Franz. Right there he wished me luck and drove away. With a heavy heart, I trotted down to the nearest railway station again, got myself a ticket to Frankfurt am Main, and took the next train there. The next morning I arrived in Frankfurt and went straight to my local relatives’ house. It was my Great-Uncle Bruno Peuckert’s home. He was about 60 years old, the youngest brother of my paternal grandmother, an old pal of my grandfather’s who had followed him to Dresden to work in the bakery and became a proficient baker himself. Later on, Bruno had served in the Army in the 1914–18 war and, after that, he didn’t return to Dresden. Instead he had stayed in Frankfurt where he became a policeman. For many years Bruno was the “lucky bachelor,” living it up until the late twenties when he married Aunt Maria, who was more than 20 years younger. They had two daughters, Lioba, who was then about 19 years old, and Ulla, maybe 17. I had never seen this great-uncle and aunt before. I just knew they existed, and their address had been given to me by my relatives in East Germany. This time around, I pleaded with them not to throw me out or turn me over to the refugee camp as my other relatives had done in Munich. TEMPORARY CONNECTION I didn’t have any presents to offer them; just a smile and good wishes from the impoverished folks back home in East Germany. Great-Uncle and Aunt took me in with open arms. As it turned out, I had a certain family resemblance to GreatUncle Bruno and, apparently because of this, he was proud to finally have someone from his own side of the family show up where, for many years, he had been living only with the relatives from his wife’s side of the family. Great-Uncle Bruno had been a strong anti-National Socialist. He never joined the Nazi Party and he didn’t get along very well with my father, who had joined the National Socialist Party early on. Each tried to present a totally different political outlook. Great-Uncle Bruno had worked his way up in the police force and, after the downfall of the Third Reich, few police officers

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were left who could be used and trusted. The Americans sought Captain Bruno’s help and appointed him Chief of Police in Frankfurt South. Because the Peuckert daughters spoke fluent English, they were both working for the Americans. So they brought home rare luxuries such as butter, meat, and eggs. Here, I found an oasis where I certainly would have liked to settle. Immediately Aunt Maria sensed what I was up to, and she pointed out that the housing restrictions made it impossible for her to accommodate me for much longer than a few nights. Otherwise, the authorities would find out and think there was still enough room for one more person to move in and live with her in her already-crowded household. She was right about the law. I assured her that I was staying with them only temporarily. I did not want to go back to the east; I would find a place of my own where I could work and live. She knew, too, that this wouldn’t be so easy. But why not let me try it? And that’s really all I wanted—a chance.

THE PROSPECTS The very next day I went to my Great-Uncle Bruno’s office in the police building where he proudly introduced me to his colleagues. He put me in touch with all the experts to whom I wanted to talk. These experts were policemen or officers who might be able to direct me somewhere to get a roof over my head and to find a job. While talking to the law enforcement officers, the picture that emerged was pretty grim. First of all, I was in West Germany illegally and didn’t have the right papers. If any policeman on the street or a military patrol should pick me up, I’d go straight to jail, and perhaps be sent back to East Germany, as I didn’t have a permit to stay in Frankfurt. It was a vicious circle, a chicken and egg puzzle. So, my first approach was to Great-Uncle Bruno. I asked him to please issue me a permit to let me stay in Frankfurt, for it was the police who issued these permits. Well, Great-Uncle never had done anything illegal in his professional life, and how could he possibly issue a license to me that he was not legally allowed to give? It meant issuing completely new identification papers. Such were to be issued only to newborn babies or men returning from the war who could prove that they had lived in Frankfurt before the war.

LEGAL DILIGENCE PAYS OFF Finally, through a loophole, an intermediate solution was found. His police department issued me a temporary visitor’s permit. This they could legally

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do, for Great-Uncle Bruno endorsed my visit. This was something, at least. Now I could walk on the street without fear of being clapped in jail. After all, I was a legitimate visitor. As Great-Uncle indicated, the permit could be renewed several times if necessary. But my time should be used to establish a better legal status. To do this, again I consulted the experts. The picture there was just as unpromising. As a matter of principle, because of the shortage of food and housing, nobody was being allowed to move into Frankfurt on a permanent basis at this time. The only way in would be to 1) Bring proof of a job—this meant certification that somebody needed my services very badly inside Frankfurt; and 2) Show that I had living quarters—but this, everyone knew, nobody had to offer. Nevertheless, I went to various firms and authorities, knocking on doors seeking opportunity from morning till night, trying to find a job somewhere or a place to live. The skills I had to offer a future employer were not in demand, it seemed. And when I had lined up an employer who might need a handyman or a willing worker for any kind of a job, he’d have to turn me down, for I couldn’t show that I had living accommodations in or near Frankfurt. And no permanent license for living in Frankfurt was to be issued to an unskilled worker. When I went to the city administration department where all living space in Frankfurt was registered and administered, I had to line up in a long queue. My name was taken, and a number was given to me, and I was told that maybe I would be eligible for a room in seven years. Right then nothing was available, and whatever would become free because of deaths or moving was being waited for by many, many others who had applied a long time before me. The vicious circle continued. I couldn’t get a job because I couldn’t prove I had accommodation. And I couldn’t get accommodation because I couldn’t prove I had a job that required my presence in Frankfurt.

SEARCH AND YOU SHALL FIND Frankfurt had been bombed just the same as many other cities. There was lots of rubble around yet, and the city had to be built up again. A new company had been started by the city fathers, the Frankfurter Aufbau A.G., the purpose of which was to rebuild the city. That company tried to attract bricklayers and carpenters who were to be housed in old, dilapidated barracks near the city, ones that had been put up temporarily during the war. I went to the hiring office of that company and

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inquired as to what kinds of jobs were open. I thought of applying as a bricklayer or carpenter, even though I had never done this type of work before. But as the list of open positions was read to me, I realized that they were looking for a man with a medical background to work as an assistant to the compound doctor. Well, here was my chance, I thought. I had been trained as a member of the ambulance corps in the Army. I immediately jumped on this opportunity, and without much delay I was hired. The company provided me with a bed in the first aid station. I was to be there day and night, attend to the sick in the compound, and look after minor injuries like bruises, etc., until the doctor came during his daily round.

CONNECTED, FINALLY Finally, having been connected to what I thought was a wonderful job, I thanked Aunt Maria and Great-Uncle Bruno many times. Now his department was entitled to issue a permanent living permit to me. Great-Uncle was proud, too, for he knew that members from his family would succeed. Then I moved out from my Great-Uncle Bruno and Auntie Maria’s place to the Niddawiesen first. Later on I was transferred to Sandhoefer Wiesen, where I stayed for two long and active years. My salary was DM 45 a week (equivalent to US $11.25 at the time). The compound had about 30 barracks, the smallest of which was the infirmary and the first-aid station. A room in there became my “home.” It was next to a railroad track where rattling and horn-blowing trains rushed by day and night, right at the foot of a large metal span across the Main river. The racket these trains made the second they entered the bridge is indescribable. Operations and conversations in the infirmary stopped every time this happened. But in time, this became part of life and nobody really noticed or objected to it any more. The camp population increased by the day as more and more building workers were brought in. Food was provided and was excellent, for the times. And in order to supplement my income I took on extra duties, such as pest control for the camp. Extra income from that source: DM 5 per month (US $1.25 equivalent). I received a room in one of the barracks for gassing all blankets and mattresses once every six months. I laid out rat poison and hung up informational posters to help fight the pests.

HAPPINESS IS A JOB I knew no one at the camp when I first got there and most of the workers were much older. Many of them were quite rough; they were from different back-

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grounds and different parts of the country with different interests. The person who did take some interest in me as a person was my boss, Dr. Peifer, the compound doctor. I always looked forward to the opportunity of having a challenging conversation with him about politics, geography, the people, or philosophy. From time to time he brought along magazines and books that he had just finished reading at home. Among them were such pieces of literature like “The German Doctors Journal,” the alumni paper of the Berlin medical school (where Dr. Peifer had studied), Thoreau’s “Walden,” and other foreign authors that Dr. Peifer thought would be good reading. Clothes were far too expensive for me to buy. But the company provided us with old U.S. Army uniforms that had been dyed pitch black and apparently were worn by prisoners of war before, and now by the laborers everywhere. Cleaning was done in a compound laundry at no cost to the people living there. I had two sets of such black uniforms, and one set was always in the laundry. Whether it was always my own set that came back, I was never quite sure. There were no labels or marks, just holes and patches, some of the latter stitched on by me in a very crude manner. The after-work activities of most camp dwellers were, in the sequence of frequency of their indulgence: beer drinking, fights, bringing in women, playing cards, an occasional game of soccer. No need to elaborate, but I surely had no time nor inclination to take part in any of these planned or unplanned activities. Getting ahead was forever on my mind. So, I made myself useful wherever I could. And as the work settled into a routine and the volume of sick patients increased with the growth of the camp, a daytime nurse was brought in to help.

EDUCATION IS BLISS After a while I was able to renegotiate some elements of my position. I was allowed to start work at 5 p.m. and be on duty till 8 a.m. This left all the daytime patients to two nurses. Only at night did I take care of all first aid and ambulatory requirements when, after normal working hours, a good part of the workers came in for treatment. Naturally, sleeping on the premises meant being there to respond to any emergencies at night, too, and there were some regularly. This meant I was paid for the night also, whether I was attending to emergencies or whether it was quiet and I was able to sleep through the night. This way, I was able to go back to school again, because I wanted to continue with my education. I went back and finished my required school program. At the same time, I went to an interpreter school in Frankfurt and attended typing and shorthand classes. I spent all my money on my education,

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except for the money I sent back home to Dresden. I couldn’t gobble up knowledge fast enough; I really enjoyed learning, and I still do to this day.

CHOICES HAVE CONSEQUENCES Living and working in Frankfurt was a decisive way station in my life. And for the first time ever I became aware of what freedom meant. Freedom meant that no one really needed me or cared about whether or not I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. I was left to my own devices. Being alone, I might as well have jumped from a rock, and nobody would have flinched. So what? It was formidable Realization Number One. At times, I was very lonely. I was left with only work and studies. The realization would force itself upon me that no one else cared much about it. So, why and for what purpose should I pursue all these goals? Realization Number Two: To me, freedom meant having to make choices. With no one close to really advise me, I had to decide whether or not to go on to school, to which school, and what to do afterwards. Necessity dictated that I must have a paying job that would support all of this. Any effort put in the wrong direction was a waste, and waste, I knew, was the last thing I could afford. Therefore, again, back I came to making choices, and one of the most important choices was made by Cupid.

Chapter Twelve

Out of the Family Treasure Box

FROM THE SUBSTITUTE REPORTER My wife, Hildegarde, is a very private person; she’s very personable with everyone but reluctant to share details of her private life with a larger audience. She has always been, and still is, the ideal friend to have because she listens, empathizes, and is discreet. Plus she remembers and regularly reinforces the bonds that develop. This chapter, as well as the next, were reserved for Hildegard to write, but she chose to write, “How it All Began” only, which is the next one. That, in spite of the fact that she is an excellent writer; she was trained as a journalist and won a literary prize as a writer. Although Hildegard has the gift, talent, and skill to write, she preferred not to write about herself. She believes that words not written cannot be used against you or your friends. In my opinion, however, she really has nothing to fear. This book would not be complete if it didn’t contain at least a glimpse of Hildegard’s background. Although, admittedly, the information coming from me becomes secondhand, I will nevertheless try to the best of my ability to provide it.

THE MOTHER A BAVARIAN Hildegard’s mother, born Margarete Schipper, came from a land-owning family in Dittlofsroda, Unterfranken, which is located somewhere in eastern Bavaria close to Hessen. It is a small community at the Kränkische Saale river. By today’s standards, Bad Kissingen is a town not too far away. The Schipper family was comprised of 12 children. Five died during infancy, and two brothers became World War I casualties. After that, Margarete 85

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Hildegard in her youth.

was suddenly the oldest child in the family. One of the established rules during that time was that property went to the oldest son in the family. This meant that the rest of the children had to find their own ways to fend for themselves elsewhere. That’s how Margarete ended up in Frankfurt/Main. Margarete’s fiancé, also from Dittlofsroda, was killed on the Verdun battlefield in France during World War I. However, after the war in Frankfurt, Margarete met a returning soldier, Christian Rittinger, who had survived the war unharmed. Christian was a Swabian, the youngest child of a large family originally from a tiny hamlet called “Hals” which, when literally translated, means “throat.” Hals was some way from Schwäbisch Gmünd in a beautiful countryside; it consisted of only two houses deep in the Swabian woods. THE FATHER A SWABIAN Christian became fatherless early in his life and was packed off to live with and be cared for by a considerably older brother who lived in Frankfurt/Main. As soon as he could hold a shovel, Christian went to work

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for the German railroad as a lineman, performing manual labor laying track; later on he became a train conductor. Except for his time drafted in the military, Christian had only one employer for all his life. He was a very solid individual, often serving as a juror and at other times as an expert witness in railroad-related trials. Christian was a very private person also. Hildegard, for instance, never learned how many children were born to her father’s mother and, thus, how many siblings her father had. The Swabians are known as wanderers, roaming the world. They can be found anywhere. Some of Christian’s brothers had immigrated to America and their tracks were lost. Christian and Margarete eventually married and had one daughter, Hildegard. When Hildegard was born, she was skin and bones, a mere four-pound baby whom her mother was afraid to handle. All her early life Hildegard heard from relatives, as well as her own mother, what an ugly kid she was. Only her father thought she was a beautiful baby. Hildegard had no brothers or sisters, yet she was brought up to excel and to be task-oriented, industrious, and self-reliant. Her father worked irregular hours, and was away a lot working on trains crisscrossing Germany. Her mother saw to it that Hildegard received the education that would take her further than her parents had been able to go. Since Hildegard showed promise with words, she was given plenty of opportunity to read, study, and practice her linguistic skills.

Wedding picture of Hildegard’s parents, in Frankfurt/Main, October 29, 1921.

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PREPARATION FOR THE REAL WORLD Hildegard was enrolled in stenography lessons early in her life. Her parents eventually paid for a private tutor to take her beyond the scope of an ordinary office stenographer. Every day at home, with a stopwatch in hand, Margarete would dictate text for her daughter to write in shorthand, increasing the reading speed more and more. The outcome: While 90 to 110 words a minute is considered a good speed for the office variety of stenographer, Hildegard eventually achieved a record-breaking 240 words a minute and above, with no problem at all. This, of course, was way before the time of dictating and recording machines. It was the realm of select press stenographers. Hildegard, at an early age, was already a well-recognized stenographic champion. As a result, she landed an apprenticeship with Allianz AG, Germany’s largest insurance company. After learning all the facets of insurance and bookkeeping, Hildegard graduated with her skills in high demand. Some of the preceding took place during World War II, which didn’t allow Hildegard’s growing up to be a smooth ride from an only-child’s attention into a young professional. Frankfurt was bombed often and, as dictated by his job, Hildegard’s father was away frequently. There was little to eat, and many times mother and daughter had to fend for themselves.

WAR COMPLICATIONS Most bombing attacks took place during the night, and it was during one of those nights that the neighborhood where Hildegard and her parents lived was hit. Buildings collapsed and fires started all over the area and eventually burned out of control. Hildegard’s father was away, so the two women fled to the shelter in the building’s basement. But after the bombs hit and the building started coming apart, everyone who was able to got out of the shelter and went into the blistering fire storm, out in the open. Desperately, people tried to salvage the little they had left of their belongings. After tying handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths to protect them against the belching smoke, Hildegard and her mother worked with others trying to pull belongings out of the house. Eventually, however, the flames engulfed everything and it became far too hot to battle them any further. Hildegard dropped on a mattress in the garden, which had been pulled out and put there just in time before the flames would’ve consumed it. Exhausted, Hildegard looked up in the sky, and thought, what next? This had been the second time the family had been bombed-out and survived.

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Toward the end of the war, with few buildings still standing in Frankfurt and air attacks occurring almost every night, the young Hildegard was evacuated to a farm outside of Frankfurt while her parents moved into a cell in a bunker. And that’s where they remained and lived, past the end of hostilities, because most of the housing had been completely destroyed.

STARTING A NEW LIFE After the American occupation forces arrived, Hildegard returned to Frankfurt to join her parents. Eventually, the family succeeded by being allowed to occupy a small apartment in an otherwise heavily damaged building. Everything had to start from ground zero again in the effort to rebuild their lives. That’s when Hildegard came across a notice on a large round advertising pillar: the City of Frankfurt was looking for an assistant to the chief executive officer of a company yet to be formed, the Frankfurt Reconstruction Company. The FAAG (Frankfurter Aufbau AG) was to be incorporated by the City of Frankfurt and the State of Hessen to undertake the reconstruction of the bombed-out city. Substantial funds were going to be poured into this enterprise as well as marshaling massive amounts of manpower for the giant undertaking. Just as an example of the tasks that had to be dealt with, look at the Frankfurt/Main airport complex today. It was merely one project of the FAAG during the course of many years. Then, try to imagine what there was at the end of the war: a simple airstrip with a defunct little building. The man chosen to head this herculean job was Heinrich Schütz, a proven financial executive and administrator. Unknown to her parents, Hildegard went for the interview. What allegedly had been an ugly little duckling at birth was now a well-developed, energetic young woman with unbeatable credentials for the job. End result: Hildegard was hired on the spot. Before Hildegard went home to break the news to her parents, CEO Heinrich Schütz asked his future assistant: “By the way, do your parents know about this . . . that you are taking a job with me?” “No. Not yet. But they will, right away.” “Do you foresee any problems?” “No. I think not.” “If necessary, I will be available and would like to talk to your parents.” “No, thank you. That won’t be necessary.”

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NEW PERSPECTIVES Well, Hildegard’s parents were certainly taken by surprise, particularly her mother. She would much rather have had her daughter stay around the house while they were still in the process of settling in. But Hildegard convinced her that the time to get a professional life was here. Ever so reluctantly, Margarete and Christian agreed that maybe this was a good idea after all. The job appeared solid, and had lots of promise for the future. Although Hildegard’s own career had just begun, it was agreed that she would continue to live at home with her parents. Her job would take Hildegard to Bonn to work in the German Bundestag (General Assembly) for the Hessian delegation and others involved with soliciting federal funds for the Frankfurter Aufbau AG and Frankfurt’s reconstruction in general. She’d be hobnobbing with key political and economic prime movers and shakers of the time, often transcribing meetings that went far into the night and having the transcripts ready for everyone early the next morning. Hildegard was Heinrich Schütz’s right-hand person, and in the process she became a verymuch-appreciated executive in her own right while facilitating FAAG’s business.

Hildegard grown up.

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It was during this time that the two of us met. Hildegard’s own account discloses the when, where, and how in the next chapter. The rest, as they say, is history.

FAMILY DATA Hildegard’s father died of a heart attack at age 68. He died the way he lived, a strong individual pursuing his own course. Christian had been brought to the hospital with an ongoing heart attack and was put under an oxygen tent to help him with his breathing. The oxygen helped him recover, at least somewhat, and he felt better. But then came the time he needed to go to the bathroom. He was not supposed to get out of bed or out from under the oxygen tent. Instead, they wanted to give him the necessary implements so that he could relieve himself while continuing to rest. But Christian wouldn’t have any part of it. He got out of bed and walked to the bathroom all by himself. In the process he suffered another massive heart attack that took his life. Hildegard’s mother survived her husband by 5 years. She died peacefully at age 72 of natural causes; what had been a full life just gave out then. This left Hildegard as the sole survivor of her family except that, in the meantime, she had started her own family—ours.

EXEMPLARY WOMAN To give one more example of Hildegard’s willpower and determination, the following episode is from her teenage years. Every year Hildegard went for her annual physical examination to a doctor who had attended to her parents all through their married life; a true family physician of the type hardly imaginable any more. During peace times, Hildegard’s parents were both rather stocky, although Margarete had been a shapely beauty during her youth and had been sought-after to model for sculptors. As Hildegard was blossoming into a young woman, she became concerned with the direction her weight was going. So, during one of those annual physical exams, she mentioned this to the family doctor. He understood her concern because he knew her parents. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Your mother is heavy. Your father is heavy. And as a result, you’ll be heavy, too. You can’t change heredity. That’s how it is, and that’s the way it’s going to be. So you’d better get used to the idea of being heavy. Relax and enjoy it.”

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Well, Hildegard didn’t say anything to the doctor to his face, but internally she said to herself, “No, I’m not going to become as rotund as my parents. No way!” She vowed. And “no way” it was and has been all her life. Self-discipline and determination, plus the right diet and proper exercise, have kept Hildegard in top shape, both physically and mentally, throughout her life. She is still going strong now, and often she is viewed as a woman decades younger than her real calendar age. She was and still is the kind of woman many women would want to be and most men would like to marry. Hildegard has too many attractive features to list them here. Only one for the closing: “My husband and I are ideally compatible,” she says. “I like to cook, and he likes to eat.” Yes, she cooks extremely well, and what she feeds me is responsible for my being in top condition, also. I am counting my blessings every day.

Chapter Thirteen

How it All Began by Hildegard Straube Honolulu, 2000–07–16

MAY DAY 1949 Call it fate, call it serendipity, call it happy memory—here is the story of how Win and I met: The Frankfurter Aufbau AG had two people at its inception, its CEO Heinrich Schütz and his assistant, me. It quickly grew to 130 office personnel and 3,000 construction workers. May 1 is a holiday in Europe and, traditionally, businesses have a company outing the day before. In 1949 the Frankfurter Aufbau AG planned that event

My wife, Hildegard Straube.

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in the form of an excursion to a wine-growing region in the Rhineland area. There was to be dinner and dancing and socializing, and everybody was looking forward to it. The company by then had a personnel department that did the arrangements; they hired buses and made the seating arrangements. My assistant, Ellen, was married to a jealous husband who only grudgingly gave permission for her to come along. So she and I happily boarded our assigned bus at a central meeting point for a day of fun. Our jobs in the executive office didn’t give us much opportunity to mingle with the employees, so this was our chance. However, whether we liked it or not—and we didn’t—during dinner we were to sit with the board of directors. They were all prominent men, like the Mayor of Frankfurt was the Chairman of the Board, but they also could have been our fathers. Besides, we knew all of them from meetings, so being the only two token females at a table of “older men” wasn’t a very exciting prospect. But that didn’t spoil our hopes for a lovely day.

WHO IS THAT GUY? As Ellen and I were riding on the bus, we noticed a young man sitting right in front of us who had his nose in a book all the time and didn’t talk to anybody. We saw his little doctor’s kit on the floor, so we knew he was one of the first-aiders assigned to every bus. Since the company housed their 3,000 workers in corporate camps, we were aware we had first-aiders but we didn’t know them. Ellen asked me and I asked her about his name, but the young man remained a mystery rider. As we arrived at our destination and filed into the huge hall where dinner was to be served, I saw this same young man again, already sitting next to our personnel manager, no less. As I walked by, Win looked at me with his piercing blue eyes. It was a long look with no particular emotion attached, but a most memorable one I’ll never forget. The festivities started with speech making, then good food followed. Eventually the music played for dancing. And here comes Win from way across the room, bracing the quizzical looks of the dignitaries, asking me for a dance. I accepted.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS We didn’t talk much, and I noticed he didn’t have much practice as a dancer, but he was polite and didn’t ask personal questions. He may have found out

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from the personnel manager who I was. I never asked him. As the evening wore on, the Board of Directors indulged in plenty of wine and didn’t miss the fact that Ellen and I were at their table. Some of the younger employees decided to go to one of the numerous wine cellars in that little resort town. Win was part of the group, and when they asked Ellen and me to come along we gladly did. These small Bohemian wine cellars are cozy and informal, just what we were looking for. Muenster am Stein, the name of the resort town, is home to a famous white wine “Zeller Schwarze Katz” (Zeller Black Cat). We drank it, and for years after that, on the anniversary of our meeting, Win and I bought a bottle. It isn’t available in all the places we have lived, so the habit got dropped. But we still have empty “Zeller Schwarze Katz” bottles around the house for decoration.

RIDE ON THE BUS As all good times come to an end, we had to board our assigned buses for the trip home. Win asked me if he could reserve a seat for me, and I said yes. When going back to our table in the large hall of festivities, some of the board members offered me a ride back in their chauffeured cars. I told them I had come by bus and I was going home the same way. I’m so glad I did. Win was already sitting there when I got to the bus, holding a window seat for me. Our first conversation was about art. We obviously both had haunted galleries and museums, and we loved opera and the theatre. As it turned out, Win wrote movie critiques and had contributed prose to newspapers. At the end of the ride we made a date to go to a movie together seven days later. “Ninotchka” with Greta Garbo was our very first outing, and by sheer coincidence it happened on Win’s birthday. We do have the “Ninotchka” video now as a piece of pleasant memory.

GETTING TO KNOW YOU We got to know more of each other during the next two years before we got married. We were never engaged. My mother was not amused about the relationship. She had met Win and had nothing against him as a person, but he just wasn’t what she had in mind for her only child. She saw him as an unconnected refugee with little potential for making it big, no way to reach for the hand of her daughter. She also wanted to know Win’s religion and more

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about his background because he came from a part of the country totally unfamiliar to her. These were all things that didn’t seem important to me, particularly since I was not looking for someone to marry me. But, as it turned out, I had met the great persuader! Win phoned me every morning at the office. I still don’t know where from. He lived in an unheated attic room, worked the night shift as medical staff at one of the company’s workers’ camps, had a newspaper route that started at 5 a.m., was a student of philosophy, went evenings to Interpreter School, donated blood (paid at that time), tutored to supplement his meager income, and he still sent money home for his mother and three younger siblings because there was no more father. Yet he never complained. We never even talked about finances. Most of what I learned I found out by osmosis. And needless to say, I had never met anybody like him before.

MOTHER’S PERCEPTIONS But all of that wouldn’t impress my mother and she talked plenty about it to my father. Time went on with no improvement of the climate in sight on that subject. It was my job at home to polish all the shoes once a week. Eventually, the conversation about Win happened. One fine Sunday morning my father sat casually next to me on a little footstool and said: “What is it with this young man I’m hearing so much about?” I told him that we wanted to get married. My father listened and then he replied: “Your parents are not here forever. If you think he is right for you, we don’t want to be the ones who say he is not.” From then on, my mother never again said anything negative. Actually, she and Win became the best of friends. He was welcome at Sunday dinners, and when he got sick in his cold quarters she even brought him home to us and nursed him back to health. My job took me out of town at the time and when I returned, there was one doctor coming to the house for my father, who was hit by the same epidemic, and another one for Win. The way I found out that Win must be sick was when his daily morning phone calls to the office had stopped. I alerted my mother, because I had to go away, and she took over from there.

WALKING A NEW WAY, TOGETHER As time went on, actually it went very quickly, Win’s career progressed to the satisfaction of my mother. When we got married, Win had an enviable job as

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Assistant to the U.S. Treasury Representative for Germany, working out of the American Consulate in Frankfurt. But what attracted me to Win weren’t worldly trappings. It was the sheer force of his personality and his focus. I’ve learned a lot from him over the years and tackled jobs I probably would not have touched on my own. He helped me to grow without ever trying to stunt my growth—being the person I am, that wouldn’t have sat right with me. On a lighter note: We met dancing, and we still love to dance. We’ve had many dance teachers over the years, until we came to meet the best. Her name is Adelaide. We’ve had her for many years since. She is so good that Win will never, ever, take a lesson from another dance teacher. He also doesn’t need to any more, because by now he is a very accomplished dancer himself. “Could I have this dance for the rest of my life”1 is my wish for our living together and for our partnership in work.

NOTE 1. This is from a song sung by Anne Murray, words and music by Wayland Holyfield and Bob House.

Chapter Fourteen

Turning Today Into Tomorrow

A PLACE OF ONE’S OWN (Back to my story—WS) My life turned on small hinges. I made many decisions, some seemingly of little consequence, but the total accumulation of them all seemed to determine the happiness or misery of our lives. I finally succeeded in getting an attic room in the highest floor of an old apartment building, right under the roof. Never mind that the city administration responsible for living space and apartments knew of no such space available. This one I dug out by diligently talking to acquaintances and with my Aunt Maria’s connections. The room was about 8 feet by 16 feet. It didn’t have a stove or any running water, but there was a water faucet outside in the hallway. It had a window overlooking the rear yard of the apartment block. Finally, I had my own little bailiwick. I got myself an old Army cot for a bed. There was an old wooden cupboard, a table and chair. That was all. The monthly rent was 45 Deutsche Mark, or equivalent to US $11.25. For me, the small, cold room of my own, under the roof, was heaven. It was unbelievably wonderful to be independent and sheltered.

PERFORMANCE AUDIT It was mostly on Sundays in the beginning that I went to my attic and plotted the course of my future life. What was I going to do? After some time of pondering I decided, with my basic education already completed, I ought to pursue higher education. I wanted something practical 98

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and yet intellectually demanding. It needed to be in a field where I could use my head for true personal satisfaction, yet enable me to earn a decent living. For some time, I had held three full-time jobs. Every single working day I started promptly at 5:30 a.m. when I distributed newspapers (Frankfurter Rundschau) through the northern parts of the city on a bicycle. Then at 9 a.m. I reported to the Foreign Language School and finally, at 5 p.m., I reported to Sandhoefer Wiesen Ambulance Station to attend to my duties: I spent my nights there. At 5:30 a.m. the next morning, the same routine would start all over again. Needless to say, everything went smoothly as long as there were no unusual circumstances that needed special attention. Yet, at times, life seems to exist of nothing but special circumstances. For example, inclement weather could put a crimp in my early morning delivery routine. It could easily take far longer than it should to get the newspapers delivered, with the result that I was late for school. That happened every so often, but I tried to make up for this in other ways and normally was forgiven. Quiet nights at the ambulance station were best for me. That meant I could do some homework and sleep. Normally, until about 9 or 10 p.m., there was the usual traffic of handing out medications, doing bandage replacements, and attending to other medical routines. Thereafter, there were usually no demands on me. However, every so often emergencies did happen during the night. And that’s, of course, what I was there for. I remember one such night. The attending doctor had been called by security to come over for a bleeding and vomiting patient whom security was going to bring from his barracks to our station. Both of them, the party with the patient and the doctor, arrived at the same time. But then they had trouble waking me up. I must have been in a coma-like sleep. Turning on bright lights and shouting at me, however, did the trick, and the procedure could begin.

SEEKING NEW HORIZONS I worked in the ambulance department for precisely two years, from September 1, 1947 until August 31, 1949. The three-job arrangement was toward the end of that period and lasted maybe three months. While still working on my interpreter diploma, I decided to quit the Sandhoefer Wiesen ambulance job and take a job that tied-in better with my future plans. I applied for a position as an interpreter at the Joint Export Import Agency; at that time, it was the only official organization in Germany that conducted foreign trade. And, to my complete astonishment, there was a job opening, not for an interpreter, but for a secretary. Since I was able to take shorthand, type, and speak English, I got the job.

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5th-floor window of unheated, walk-up attic with no water connection: Frankfurt/Main Sachsenhausen, Schneckenhofstrasse 20, the first abode I was able to rent. A wonderful place at the time.

At that time, I lived in my attic and had a good job during the daytime. After landing my new job I decided to drop the newspaper route in favor of advancing myself in my chosen work instead. And I found a new way of making some extra money at the Frankfurt blood donor station; I had gone there several times in the past, whenever I felt strong and energetic, in order to donate blood. I benefited from being paid 25 Deutsche Mark for each donation of 500 cubic centimeters of blood; also, as long as food rationing lasted, additional food rationing stamps for butter and eggs and meat were given free to blood donors. I steppedup my visits to the blood donor clinic, but sometimes I donated blood too often. I recall once I dropped unconscious during a blood-transfusion session. In those days, blood was directly transfused from the donor to the patient. And at that particular instance, the donor became the blood recipient as I found out afterwards when I awoke and found myself in a doctor’s office. I was given milk to drink, and staunchly advised not to show up for blood donations that often.

ONGOING EDUCATION For my continuing education, I found the Academy of Worldtrade. At that time it operated out of the Frankfurt University and offered evening

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courses. I considered this to be a prime opportunity for me to acquire the knowledge necessary for an international trade occupation, something I thought would have a great future. The two-year course at the Academy would give me a good basic training that could help me to make a living at any time. Also, during this time, it served me well to widen my horizon beyond Germany. While living in Frankfurt, I tried hard to find as many sources of knowledge as possible. To satisfy my thirst for knowledge, I visited the libraries and gobbled up books of all kinds. Reading widely also provided me with a change of pace from the otherwise-rigid routine of learning and preparing myself for examinations. And, to me, a change quite often served to be as good as a rest or sometimes better. In the process of tapping my local libraries, I came across the “America House,” a newly established center stuffed with many American books principally dedicated to making Germans better acquainted with America. Becoming a member of the America House library was free of charge, and the treasure trove stocked there was more than fascinating. According to one of the America House librarians I befriended, I consumed books like a hungry lion after a kill, or drank like a camel at a desert oasis. Well, why not?

AMERICA CALLING Once I discovered this intellectual oasis, I became a frequent visitor at the America House and took out many of their books. It was the very first time that a new and fascinating international world had opened before me. In this new world I saw not only Germany but also the rest of the world through other people’s eyes. I was fascinated by the freedom and liberty with which those authors wrote. I fell in love with Jack London and his style. I enjoyed Melville and read many of the American and English literature classics. I immediately fell in love with America, long before I saw her or knew much about her economic or political systems. Jack London and George Gershwin were the salesmen who sold America to me. America, what a fascinating place! Right away I knew that America was a land I certainly would like to see some day. However, as for that time, it was out of the question. America seemed like a million miles away, mainly because it was going to take a considerable amount of money to finance such a journey. It was as though I was expecting to make a million dollars, an impossible proposition for a poor kid from behind the Iron Curtain.

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But, of course, I could still dream . . . and work. So that is what I did. I enjoyed philosophy, read many of the old and newer philosophers, and also went to University lectures in philosophy. In my few free hours, maybe on a weekend, I’d write some poetry and even some short stories.

IDEALISTIC VS. PRACTICAL In contemplating my choices for the future, I thought that I liked thinking abstractly and following through with a thought very much, that I liked putting these thoughts on paper to find a workable solution. And since beauty of form had always fascinated me I thought that, perhaps, writing could become a means for me to earn my living in the long run and would give me the satisfaction of creating a piece of art at the same time.

Hildegard and friend in the French Alps, 1952.

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Therefore, during this time, my life’s career choice centered around becoming a writer. Jack London was my main example, but I would go about it in a different way from what he did. I figured I’d prepare my way, maybe by starting as an apprentice with a newspaper. So, I prepared myself for the time I would be finished with my studies at the Academy of Worldtrade. I approached several newspapers and magazines, telling them of my ambition and asking them for a part-time job, even if I wouldn’t be paid. I told them I wanted to learn. Nobody gave me a job but some did give me assignments, even paid ones. For instance, I filled in for a movie critic several times. A great job: seeing movies for free, then writing about them and getting paid for the pleasure. But that was a very sporadic activity and, on top of it all, it required schedule reshuffling in my otherwise tightly organized daily endeavors, which could mean valuable time or income sacrifices elsewhere. Independently, I submitted some of the stories I had written to different publications, but nobody was interested. Actually, no paper, magazine, or publisher of any sort was willing to accept any of my writings, nor to employ me, not even without pay. They were polite in their rejections or sometimes they held out very distant hope, which was just another polite way of saying “no” or “not now.” I concluded in my mind that they really had no use for such an idealist and didn’t know how to fit him into their old-fashioned, steeply hierarchical organizations. I could have had my paper route back at the Frankfurter Rundschau, I was told there, and maybe later on I could work my way up through the distribution department into the editorial department. But I found this approach very prosaic for a young man who had the art of writing in mind.

OTHER INFLUENCES One Sunday in the summer of 1950, I went out with Hildegard. She listened patiently to my reciting of poetry, and we discussed art and the theatre. We had a pleasant afternoon walking in the Taunus mountains. Toward evening we came to the park of the castle at Bad Homburg. And there we sat on a wood-and-metal bench discussing our situation. We loved each other, we knew by now, and we thought of marrying some day. The discussion came to the point where Hildegard wanted to know what I planned to do with my life in the future. Up until then I was merely a student, with a small income. She, as a top executive assistant, made much more money than I did. If we were to get married, where was the money going to come from?

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I explained to Hildegard that it was my ambition to be a writer and that, so far, no one had accepted any of my writings—and that everybody in the business had turned me down. But I still had hope. Well, Hildegard had a great deal of confidence in me, but she brought me right back and focused me directly on the situation at hand. She pointed out that writing might not be the most profitable business in the world, that poets and writers were notoriously out of funds, and that it may be wiser to stick to a more concrete foundation if we were to stick to each other.

WALKING A DREAM The Sunday after that I sat again in my attic, trying to come up with a story which no magazine or publisher could refuse. This story was going to knock them over, including Hildegard, and show them what I was able to do in my chosen profession. Like the crackling sparks right off an electric wire, ideas crackled in my head and I put them on the paper in front of me as quickly as they came. It was going to be a book. The book’s hero was a young man who was born poor, started out with all the odds piled against him. And, from scratch, through virtue and industry, he worked his way up to become a millionaire in the U.S.A.—or anywhere else, for that matter. While thinking hard, trying to flesh-out my best-seller book into a believable opus, I was stumped: how could I make it sound believable? Anybody could write a sweet story like that. But no, no. I wanted to make mine thoroughly thought-out, the real thing. I remembered my Uncle George back in Dresden. He had started by selling fruit from a pushcart during the depression of the 1930s. When war broke out, he had his own store with 15 employees. Because of that success, the relatives called him “George the Great.” After all, he was one of the dashing and wealthy people in Dresden. Maybe “the Great” would serve as an example. Or, maybe, there was still a better idea: why not take a young man like myself who came to the West, just as I had come, and who, the previous Sunday, was sitting with his girlfriend on the park bench at the castle in Homburg, who didn’t own much more than the clothes on his back. Why not take such a man and let him go to the blood-donor clinic, as I had done, raising his first 25 Deutsche Mark right there, and using this as basic capital to build up his career . . . which would finally make him a millionaire. This was the idea, all right . . . and away I wrote, till late at night.

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WAKING UP After I had filled a number of pages, suddenly I felt I needed a breather in order to help me gather my thoughts. I went downstairs and took a short walk all by myself. It was summer, the flowers were out, fruits had ripened; it was humid, “sinful” air. I thought and felt as though my life was just around the corner ahead of me. Now, all I had to do was to be successful and write this tremendous story. And as I walked, a strange thought crossed my mind: Nonsense! Why write such a silly story that anybody can write? “Paper is patient,” as the saying goes; it tolerates anything recorded on it. Horatio Alger had written this type of story late in the last century and people were laughing about them today. It just wasn’t believable. And, after all, if it was that easy, why wasn’t I a millionaire? Why would I, one of a zillion of “have-nothings,” be qualified to pass advice to the rest of the world? Why should anybody buy my story, if it were merely a story? That type of make-believe hero was long dead. No, this wouldn’t work at all. So I decided to make it believable and set out to do so. In fact, it decided itself in my head without my consciously making any contribution to this process. I had to follow my own advice on how to become a millionaire. It was that simple. If, in my youthful exuberance, I sincerely thought that I had the key for turning a needy refugee youngster with holes in his shoes into a millionaire, then go ahead and try to live that romantic story yourself. Do away with the wishful thinking, and do it yourself! Never mind writing a book about it. Nobody will be interested in your fiction, anyway. And once you are a millionaire, you couldn’t care less about whether the book was ever written or not. Well, this new revelation shocked me into a very wakeful state. But, of course, this was only logical in action. It was, after all, the logic of it I admired in my favorite philosophers. What good are mere words without proof and action?

OPENING THE DOOR After all these musings, I returned to the attic. I tore up the manuscript and threw out all the other writings I had done up to that time. I saved only a few poems I had written, a play, and some aphorisms. Away everything went, into the garbage. My writing is dead! May these publishers seek writers after their own taste! From now on I was going to be a practical man. Let me not waste

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any more of my precious time on writing. I may come back to it someday when I have something important to talk about, but first, let me do what I thought was so easy for somebody else to do. And right then and there I shifted my occupational gears, going directly into a new life. I had made the choice. From then on, the creation of wealth was going to be, and remain, my prime motive. Only after a man is free from hunger and material wants can he really contribute something of value, to art in particular or to mankind in general. This is the only way that does work. Here I was, determined to carry it out.

Chapter Fifteen

From the Old to the New World

OPPORTUNITY CALLING “Chance,” said Louis Pasteur, “favors the prepared mind.” And here I was, preparing myself all the time. But where was the chance? I don’t know which was the greater and more important of the two chances that did come along, eventually. The Personnel Department of the U.S. High Command in Germany (HICOG) was in charge of all local employees. After several months at the Joint Export Import Agency, HICOG had advanced me to the position of executive assistant to the U.S. Treasury Department, stationed at the American Consulate in Frankfurt/Main. This in itself was a career move that gave me great opportunities for further professional development. I was very happy there, working directly under the Treasury Representative to Germany, Horace A. Browne, who took me under his wing professionally as well as personally. Horace A. Browne and his lovely wife, Kay, who was an outstanding piano player, in more ways than one assumed the role of substitute parents for me. They truly cared for me not only as an employee but also as a human being, as if I were their son. Unfortunately, they never had the pleasure of having their own children. They will be close to my heart forever. During the winter of 1950/1951, however, a very special chance came one day when I was called over to the Personnel Manager at HICOG’s office, Wolfgang Spohn. The U.S. State Department, I was told, was conducting tests in Frankfurt right now to find suitable interpreters. Mr. Spohn had talked with my mentor, Horace A. Browne, and asked him whether he’d let me take a series of tests that might result in my being sent to the U.S.A. My boss told him point blank he didn’t want to lose me; however, he thought this would be an 107

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opportunity of a lifetime and not to be missed. At the same time, he put Spohn under the gun, requesting that he find him an equally good replacement. Wolfgang Spohn said he had already lined one up. She was a highly competent young woman, Lotti Fröhlich, a former colleague of mine from the Interpreter School. Ninety-eight applicants were interviewed and thoroughly tested for the interpreter assignment in the United States. Seven were chosen. And, lucky for me, I was one of the seven. This very special break meant I was finally on my way to America. During that time, the Marshall Plan was bringing many Europeans to the United States. They were mostly experts in fields such as farming, manufacturing, and banking. The purpose of their visits was to learn as much about American methods of doing things as possible so this information could later be applied in Europe. It was the idea of importing foreign authorities to make Europe independent of American aid, to help the European nations build themselves up and get back to normal. American know-how was available and free. All these university professors, industrial managers, bank presidents etc. did not necessarily speak English. This meant interpreters were needed. It was strictly a temporary assignment, but one that promised a considerable widening of my horizon.

GOING FOR IT The new prospects came just at the time when Hildegard and I were preparing for our wedding. Not everybody approved of us marrying. Some people, whose ideas and opinions we didn’t care about anyway, thought that the contrasts of that newly arrived Easterner and a well-established Westerner were just too sharp. Even bets were solicited by overanxious “friends” with regard to how long the two of us were going to last as a couple. Most of them highly doubted whether or not we were going to make it at all. Despite the opposition and doubt, we were married on May 20, 1951. Eternal thanks to my boss at the time and his wife, Horace and Kay Browne. They meticulously arranged and financed our entire wedding reception. It was a big event, and we couldn’t have had a much more pleasant wedding ceremony if we had been millionaires. Mr. Browne was careful to point out that I should invite all my friends, professors, and industrial contacts to establish good personal ties for the future. So I did. The guest list numbered seventy-two people. We had rented a furnished room at 36 Metzlerstrasse in Frankfurt to be used as the honeymoon suite on our wedding day, and it was going to be our

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Hildegard on Capri, September 1951.

home for the foreseeable future. In comparison to most people who were looking for living quarters, we considered ourselves most fortunate and were well off there. Our room was in a house with central heating and hot water. It was a sublease in the apartment of an old aristocrat widow with her 40-yearold spinster daughter, who essentially served as her mother’s maid. Our rental agreement allowed us the use of the bathroom with a shower and a bathtub, which at that time were both unheard-of luxuries. We also had the use of a telephone in the hall, another marvel unavailable to the vast majority of the German population. When we got home that wedding night, the room was filled to capacity with our wedding presents, confetti, and colorful decorations. Exhausted, Hildegard sat down on what she thought was a chair; it turned out to be a large china vase, friend Norbert Christoph’s wedding present. It went crushing down into tiny pieces without ever having been unpacked. We consoled each other with the old superstition that “broken china brings you luck.”

HEAVEN CAN WAIT There was no honeymoon for us. Come Monday, we both went right back to work. And six short weeks after our wedding, off I went to the U.S.A. via the Strato-Cruiser, one of the most modern airplanes of the time, and Hildegard stayed behind in Germany. She did, however, take time off to do the trip to Italy, which we had planned for our honeymoon, by herself. At every stop along the way she wrote to me and I wrote to her from wherever I happened to be.

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In Washington, D.C., I wasn’t put to work right away. Instead, training for interpreters started. I received some of my best language training right there in the “temporary buildings” of the State Department (long since removed) at the Potomac. I’d sweat in the simultaneous translation box for hours, translating recent speeches of Harry Truman, Vichinsky, and others. Then I’d study the practice of consecutive translation—which was really nothing less than an exercise in memorization.

SETTLING IN As a member of the U.S. State Department interpreter section, I met many interesting characters. To my surprise, I learned that more than half of the State Department interpreters during that time were Russian-born. No doubt about it, the Russians are great linguists. One of my interpreter colleagues was Dr.

General Douglas McArthur (1880–1964). I interpreted for General McArthur and members of his staff.

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Erich Haberhanns from Vienna, Austria. He was there under the same program as I, but he had arrived in Washington two months earlier. For me, as a greenhorn, Erich knew all the ropes around Washington. I rented a room next to his in a residential house on K Street. We regularly had breakfast together (Rice Crispies and milk) at a nearby diner on Connecticut Avenue near Dupont Circle. We’d reflect on our present and past lives. America was so much different from Europe. Already the weather was different from what we were used to; in Washington it was hotter and more humid, and the rainfalls were more violent. The whole atmosphere and the people were more prone to extremes. Advertising expounded the advantages of the largest, longest, shortest, cheapest, finest. There seemed to be nothing in between. Americans rushed from their exhaustive work to their exhaustive recreation, and drove on super-crowded highways with radios blaring and conversations going. The American way of life seemed to be “Take it all in” in the short span of time we were here on this lovely earth. We liked it. Finally, I was sent out with groups or individuals to tour the country and work as their interpreter. I got to know the United States well at that time, plus a number of important people both in the U.S. and from overseas who depended on me to get their messages across. The biggest compliment was paid to me in Boise, Idaho, by an American irrigation professional who, after I had translated a long lecture consecutively into German, turned to me and said: “Where did you learn to speak such good German?”

THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING. . . . ? I was variously assigned as an interpreter to engineers, bankers, professors, businessmen, and government officials. Once, I was accompanying a group of three German agriculturists from Florida to Denver, Colorado. The purpose of their trip was to study American ways of irrigation in order to increase food production in their home country. In Florida, we had seen the swamplands and everglades as well as the higher lands that needed irrigation. It was mid-August and very hot. Our flight reservations were made from Washington on a little-known airline with 16 stops between Miami and Denver. Some of the stops were at airports not much larger than a schoolyard or football field. The plane was an old two-engine DC-3, and that run was dubbed by the locals as the “milkman.” My group consisted of two professors involved in agricultural research and an agricultural trade association official. It was their first visit to America, and they spoke no English. They probably hadn’t ridden in an airplane too often before this visit to America. Each was equipped with cameras and light meters that were hanging over their shoulders or being carried in separate bags with extra lenses, filters, and other photographic paraphernalia. At that time,

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for sure, Europeans coming to America could easily be overloaded with things like that. Since the plane flew low there was plenty to see. The professors would look out to the left and right, call each other to come over to take a picture here, then rush to the other side to take another one there, change filters and lenses, and then do the whole thing over again. Then we landed in Little Rock, Arkansas, again on what looked like a landing strip in the middle of meadows. Only the right engine was shut off to let passengers disembark and let the new ones board. Then a voice came over the intercom: “Passenger Straube is requested to come to the terminal.” What was that? Why? In Little Rock? I went outside. “Make it snappy,” said the stewardess, for the flight was already behind schedule and the right propeller had just started turning again. There were three civilians waiting on the lawn. One of them asked me: “Are you the gentleman who presented four tickets in Miami for this flight in the name of ‘Mr. Straube and a party of three’?” “Yes, sir. Why?” The man pulled a badge and the second one an identification card. I studied the card. It said this was an FBI agent. “Could you identify yourself,” said the agent, and I produced my State Department ID. “Who are the people with you?” he wanted to know. Their identities were easily established. “What are they doing on this plane?” “They are in this country to study irrigation under the auspices of the Marshall Plan, and they are following the schedule as worked out for them by the U.S. Department of Commerce.” I produced a copy of their travel schedule, which was on the official paper of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The FBI agent then explained what had happened. On a previous stop of the flight, a disturbed patriot had gotten off the plane and rushed to the next telephone. He alarmed the FBI that a group of Russian spies was on the plane, photographing just about everything in sight including military installations, and talking to each other in Russian. The FBI had taken immediate action. And then we all had a good laugh about it. The agent wished my group and me a good trip.

EVERYBODY RELAX In the meantime, to show that it was time to go, the pilot revved both engines from time to time. During the first such exercise, my agriculturists were panic-stricken because they didn’t know what was happening. Their only link to understanding the surrounding strange world had left the plane, and now

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the engines were being revved up apparently for the plane to take off again. All three rushed out of their seats, out of the airplane, and onto the grass below, as if two tons of flying ants had been released inside. If the interpreter was going to be left out of the trip, then they were not willing to continue alone. What was this all about, anyway? But no one understood why they were so disturbed. Foreigners! Shortly thereafter I returned and boarded the plane with them again and off we went, on our way to Denver.

LEARNING ABOUT LIQUOR LAWS Between assignments we interpreters would meet in Washington again. There were many stories we shared. Erich warned me to stay away from Toronto, Canada, if I could, because they had strange liquor laws. He had been up there with a group of countrymen. While his group stayed at a more-expensive hotel, Erich checked in at the Toronto YMCA. It was summer and hot. Before going to bed Erich thought of drinking a glass of beer. This, of course, was taboo at the Y. But as it turned out, he was also unable to get a glass of beer in the nearest restaurant, or anywhere else for that matter, because the liquor laws forbade this. His curiosity aroused, Erich pursued the matter and discovered that alcoholic beverages were sold by the government only through governmentowned stores. Still more curious than before, Erich finally located such a store, but no bottles were displayed—the beverages had to be selected from lists. Then he soon learned that beer, or any liquor, was available only for people with a passbook. Of course, passbooks could be bought. Erich explained that he didn’t need a passbook because he was a visitor, here only once, just wanted to buy some beer. There was a solution. For 50 Cents he could buy a visitor’s certificate. He did. Then he tried to buy one bottle of beer. The clerks just laughed at him. They didn’t sell single bottles. And six-packs, at that time, apparently had not yet been invented. So, Erich ended up buying a carton of 12 bottles of beer which, under the rules of the Y, he couldn’t take into the building. He then put his coat around the box and smuggled the beer into his room. Overnight Erich almost became an alcoholic by trying to drink as much beer as possible after so much money had been invested in it. He didn’t want to throw away what had been dearly acquired. Nevertheless, in the morning he smuggled four empty and eight full bottles back out of the Y and dumped the whole box in the nearest garbage can. North America was fun. By now we felt pretty much at home.

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THE AMERICAN WAY The North American way of life was slowly rubbing off on us and seeping in and through us. Or was it more natural to live this way, anyway? We couldn’t get excited about the “tastelessness,” “boorishness,” and “cultural disregard” of the Americans, as our European friends tried to point out. We knew by now that America was a great country with room for many and differing expressions of ideas and idiosyncrasies. And, in many respects, the Europeans were just misinformed or too wrapped-up in their own prejudices. We once figured out, for instance, that there are more Americans per capita who learn to play an instrument, go to operas, take part in cultural events and productions, and give money for charitable purposes, than anywhere in Europe—or in the world, for that matter. True, there are some crazy nuts in America but there are nuts in other places as well. I was impressed with America. This was a free country, and an individual human being was his own man or woman. One could do as one pleased—within the boundaries of the law, of course, which was there to protect him and his individual way of life. Didn’t the inscription at the Statue of Liberty say: Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

FALLING IN LOVE WITH AMERICA People had come to the United States of America to build a new, more promising future. The creation of wealth was on most everyone’s mind. And see how this benefited the whole nation! Were these people ever so practical! Religious, national, or other differences meant little to the individual who wanted to build his or her own future here. I fully realized that my love affair with America had begun in earnest when I first stood in front of the grave of Buffalo Bill, on Lookout Mountain, twenty miles from Denver in Colorado. I followed the others in throwing a coin over the little iron fence onto BB’s grave. Our guide told us that people who left a coin there would some day come back. And back to America I wanted to come, this was for sure. America was for me.

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BARRIERS TO OVERCOME Despite the love in my heart for America, the rest of it didn’t come so easily. After my four-month assignment I returned to Germany. I soon realized I didn’t have anybody in the U.S.A. who was willing to foster my immigration process. During that time, too, stringent rules existed with regard to who was eligible to seek immigration status to the United States. I had written Hildegard many letters while in the States, describing all the many opportunities that existed. After my return, I was able to tell her more about it. She, too, was eager and ready to come along. As a consequence, Hildegard went to a language school to improve her English. But how would we get over there from Germany? Even if we could scrape the money together, we’d still have to find some good American who would be willing to guarantee that we wouldn’t become delinquents or be without a job and thus become a public charge. Both Hildegard and I had some relatives in the United States so we wrote to them, but their responses took very long. And, when they finally came they were polite but negative, or evasive at best. Nobody knew us well enough to be prepared to vouch for us. No one was going to take a chance on us. Lacking an American sponsor, we took matters into our own hands. We went ahead and applied at the American Consulate in Frankfurt for immigration to the United States. We were given questionnaires with long lists of questions, ranging from the factual to the imaginary, searching our past, our pockets, our minds, everything. It included the following questions, for example: • Can you, if you are over sixteen, read and understand some language or dialect? • Are you now or have you ever been a) an anarchist? b) an advocate of opposition to all organized government? c) an advocate of Communism? • Are you going to the United States to engage in an immoral sexual act, in prostitution, or other unlawful commercialized vice? • Are you a pauper, professional beggar, or vagrant? • Are you a polygamist, do you practice polygamy, or do you advocate the practice of polygamy? The waiting list was very long and since U.S. immigration worked on the basis of annual quotas, the quota for Germany had been filled for the next five years. We had to wait.

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FINDING A CONNECTION There was another important matter I had to take care of anyway: Through night school and via long-distance learning, I was allowed to finish my last semester at the Academy of Worldtrade and take the final examinations, graduating July 4, 1952. In the meantime, however, we had to keep on working. After returning from my American assignment I had temporarily been turned over to the German Foreign Service in Bonn as an interpreter for the cabinet of Konrad Adenauer, the German Chancellor. Hildegard continued with her job in Frankfurt, and weekends she either came to Bonn or I traveled to Frankfurt.

Konrad Adenauer (1876–1967). Elected as first German Chancellor after WWII for initial four years; thereafter reelected for three more terms. I served as interpreter for the Adenauer cabinet.

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In my efforts to find a permanent job outside the government, I wrote to practically every newspaper ad that looked promising, looked up friends, and did whatever I possibly could to find a job. Lotti Fröhlich held my old position with the U.S. Treasury Representative in Frankfurt, and she was doing a great job. There was no way for me to go back there, although the personal relationship with Mr. and Mrs. Browne continued. Both my ideal of a substitute father, Horace A. Browne, and I thought that by now I’d be worth a better-paying job than that. But, first, I’d have to find it. It came in an answer to one of my letters responding to a newspaper ad. It was from the German American Trade Promotion Company with offices in New York, Frankfurt, and Cologne. GATPCO was a company set up by the German Government for promoting exports of German goods to North America. Germany was suffering under the “Dollar Gap” at the time, i.e., it imported far more than it exported—mainly foodstuffs—and it created an unfavorable foreign trade balance particularly with the United States and Canada. One of the bosses of the company was Dr. Georg Schaller, a man I had approached when still at the Academy of Worldtrade to talk at one of the seminars I held on Canada. Dr. Schaller at the time accepted the invitation and gave an excellent report on Canadian economic conditions. Now, he immediately recognized the man who had sent the application and asked me for an interview. He had written to say that the position had to be filled right away and, it was pretty obvious, there were going to be many applicants. So I put in a collect call to Dr. Schaller; he accepted my call without hesitation. More than that, he offered to make arrangements for my round-trip train ride, BonnFrankfurt-Bonn.

EXPERT FOR THE JOB It was early October 1951 when I took off from the Chancellery Office in Bonn to see GATPCO. Dr. Schaller introduced me to Dr. Dehne, the President of the company. Dr. Dehne eyed me carefully, as if I looked like somewhat too young a lad to fill the position they had to offer. The job which had just been created was to be filled by someone with North American experience and an economic background to find and evaluate German products which could be sold competitively in the United States and Canada. It meant analyzing the market potential for certain products, advising the German manufacturers of necessary changes in the products themselves to make them suitable for the market, giving information on price structure, and suggesting the best ways of selling in North America.

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According to Dr. Schaller and myself, no one was better suited for the job than I was. Dr. Dehne didn’t resist very long, and I landed the job. Hallelujah! This meant Hildegard and I had to move to Cologne, unless we were going to continue seeing each other during weekends only. But this practice we wanted to end as soon as possible anyway. Therefore, no hesitation whatsoever. We would have moved to any place in order to get this sort of a job. It was then, with the German American Trade Promotion Company, that I got involved in analyzing the markets for German products all over North America and finding ways to sell them. Again, I gathered valuable experience as an economist and foreign-trade specialist.

BRINGING FUNNY CARS TO AMERICA As an example of the type of work I did, here is one of the events I was part of that resulted in far-reaching consequences for both Germany and the U.S.A. It was a meeting in the office of Hoffmann Motors Corporation in New York City late in 1952. Hoffmann was the prestigious importer of foreign sports cars, such as the British Jaguar, the French Delage, the Italian Ferrari, and the German Porsche. Hoffmann had the sole sales rights for all of the U.S.A. for these cars. And, by the way, they also represented the German Volkswagen. Heinz Nordhoff, the General Manager of the Volkswagenwerke in Wolfsburg, had traveled to New York and was confronting his distributor. The question was whether or not the Volkswagen could be sold in the U.S. and why Mr. Hoffmann didn’t sell more VWs than he actually did sell. One or two people from our office were along for the meeting. Mr. Nordhoff asked the questions. Mr. Hoffmann answered. He had the air of the man with experience who was telling the novice something about a market of which the foreigner obviously knew nothing. Dear Mr. Nordhoff, Mr. Hoffmann said, if we are ever going to sell 700 Volkswagens a year in U.S.A., you should pin a medal on me, for this bugshaped little rear-engine car is so unsuitable for this market that it isn’t even funny. Here people expect big and roomy cars with lots of horsepower and with model changes from year to year. And what do you have to offer? A car designed in the thirties and never changed! Well, Mr. Nordhoff didn’t doubt that Mr. Hoffmann knew his business. We left and, with Mr. Nordhoff coming along, we went over to our office to kick some ideas around. Mr. Nordhoff was a realist. He was here to make a deci-

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sion as to whether and how to enter the American market on a large scale. It could become an expensive experiment if it misfired, and maybe Mr. Hoffmann was right, the VW was not for this part of the world. Mr. Abt, the chief of our office, brought up a new idea: Durability, economy, and price were all features Americans liked. Maybe it was just a question of selling and Mr. Hoffmann’s approach was all wrong. Couldn’t Mr. Nordhoff send over a couple of young VW salesmen with lots of enthusiasm and good knowledge of the English language. Then send them out to Utah— for the competition would hardly be looking there—and let them try to sell VWs to independent car dealers as a sports car, a novelty, something unusual yet practical and inexpensive. There may be people who’d go for that. There are a large number of car nuts in the U.S.A. so if the experiment failed there would be little notice. If it succeeded, the approach could be repeated in the other states. After some discussion Mr. Nordhoff thought it worth a try. Everybody knows the rest of the story.

LANDING IN CANADA As history went, it didn’t take too many years for the German export trade to get back on its feet, particularly to North America. Now, I thought, the time had come to make the jump, and let’s use the connections I have. The Canadian International Trade Fair was coming up in 1953, and our Toronto office was to hire a man for a total of forty days, starting about three weeks before the fair, and letting him go again one week after closing. This was to help the Toronto staff handle the heavy load at the fair where our company had a booth. I went to Dr. Schaller and asked him to give me the chance to take this forty-day job. With the German export trade getting back in full swing, the company would be turned over into a Chamber of Commerce soon, anyway. I had ambitions of getting ahead in business rather than becoming an official. Would he give me that job and then let me out? I’d pay the fare to Toronto for my wife and myself. Dr. Schaller didn’t want to see me go, but he was understanding. He wrote to Dr. Herbert Graf, the Toronto office manager, but Dr. Graf didn’t like the idea at all. He said that he had selected another man already, and it sounded like he felt he was to get a head office spy put into his organization, which he didn’t like. I had never met Dr. Graf before, nor did he know me. The more Dr. Schaller described my advantages, the more Dr. Graf objected to the idea. So, finally, it took Dr. Dehne to put matters straight. He just advised Dr. Graf that he was going to get me. Period.

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That settled that and gave me a basis for applying for and getting a Canadian immigration visa, for in Canada immigration was restricted to farm labor and wood choppers. Canadian authorities felt they had enough of the intellectual type around. All they needed was cheap labor. A friend of mine, a lawyer who posed as farm labor to obtain the visa, was asked by the immigration official how a cow got up from its resting position, whether it got up with the hind or front legs first. He picked the front legs, which was the right guess, and passed the test. I had no difficulty getting the visa because I had a job waiting for me. For how long, nobody needed to know.

NO RECEPTION PARTY WAITING On March 29, 1953, Hildegard and I landed in Halifax, Canada, and disembarked from the SS Arosa Kulm, a 4,000-ton boat converted to carry emigrants to the New World. We were finally in North America. In Toronto, I soon discovered why Dr. Graf didn’t want me there. He was running the office as if it were his own family company, keeping his wife on the payroll, throwing parties for his daughter, and generally playing the big shot at every turn. Well, I served five weeks and then, when the fair ended, asked whether I could leave a week earlier than originally planned. Dr. Graf let me go with relief, keeping the last sixty-dollar paycheck for the sixth week.

Chapter Sixteen

Ontario, Canada

ON OUR OWN Toronto was teeming with immigrants in 1953, and they came from all corners of Europe. Even twenty years later it appeared to me as if everyone in Canada had an accent of some sort or another. At that time many didn’t speak English or French at all. But all came to work, with little illusions. With them they brought a cosmopolitan influence that would sweep away the old stodgy colonist town and change it into a modern, worldly metropolis. Hildegard and I rented a little cottage on Center Island, a ferry ride away from downtown, out on Lake Ontario. In the meantime, professionally, Hildegard had found a job as secretary in the Foreign Department of the Canadian Imperial Bank. Now I could start to work on a more independent basis since not all of my income was needed at home. Where to start? Back to research: Which was a growth industry of the future? Where did my experience and talents fit in best? What were the chances of advancement? Was it merely going to be a moneymaking process or was I going to work on the resolution of real problems? Was there a chance to be useful to society, to help in advancing human knowledge?

RAPID-GROWTH AREA After careful elimination of a number of opportunities, I concluded that engineering was one such growth industry of the future. Canada’s resources had to be converted into products and services. America was going to automate more industries and electronic developments were on their way. There would 121

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be dams and aircraft to build, power to generate, and almost limitless opportunities for engineers and engineering. I thought that I was a practical person who would fit into this engineering world. I had seen many engineering offices in North America on my travels as an interpreter, and I had translated at engineering conventions and conferences. One thing that made me think “opportunity” was to see these high-priced engineers working in crowded, grandfather-style offices. How could it be that the most advanced nation in the world had engineering offices comparable to those shown in pictures of the same offices 100 years ago? A revolution in how engineers produced their information had to come just the same as it had come through National Cash Register Company and IBM in the accounting field. Today’s accountants use computers, networks, and processing devices that their predecessors in 1880 didn’t dream of having. That same job would have to be done in engineering, while for the time being people in North American engineering departments still worked with the tools of Leonardo Da Vinci. Sooner or later “efficient engineering” was going to be as important for companies, maybe countries, as “computer accounting” in order for them to

Hildegard and Coca Cola in Canada, 1953.

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be competitive price-wise and time-wise in world markets. So far, many companies considered “engineering” as an overhead expense, as a necessary evil rather than as a possible production tool or part of management, or even a sales weapon.

FROM BLUEPRINTS TO COMPUTER DRAWINGS In many companies cost studies in engineering had never been made, although engineers studied the costs of all other departments. Engineers themselves weren’t necessarily expected to be efficient, only to come up with the right answers. But my concept was different, more in line with the upcoming computers. Engineering is another opportunity for humans to apply judgment and design based on the function of computers and machines. I entered the business through the back door. I went to work for a local distributor of engineering equipment such as T-squares, triangles, drafting paper, drawing boards, field books, slide rules, levels, and transits. Payment arrangements were Canadian $40 a week in drawings against commissions to be earned. Engineers are a strange pack. Quite often in college they chose engineering because it gave them the opportunity to deal with things instead of people. A history major or a future lawyer are entirely different, much more a part of the world. Someone who is “100% engineer” has a shell that is hard to crack. Engineers may know how to drill a hole, move a mountain, or fly to the moon, yet they often don’t know how to deal with their fellow humans. Of course, there are some who do. But those move up to the top in companies fast, taking on more and more managerial duties and finally ending up as presidents. The one who stays behind in the engineering office, maybe bent over a drawing board and almost physically attached to his computer, is more likely an introvert. Engineers as a group are different. If you can influence engineers, you can really talk to the trees and make them move. I wasn’t fully aware of this when I started calling on engineers and architects, the latter being yet worse in this regard. But I soon found out.

TECHNOLOGY AND THE LAW Fortunately, at the same time, I made up my mind to go back to a university and study law. Why, of all things, law? Because, in my opinion, it best introduces you to the way a nation thinks and acts. American law is based on

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British Common Law and was developed from there. If you are not British or American by birth or education, the study of law will provide you with the background to understand and act intelligently in the world of the Anglo-Saxons. I didn’t intend to practice law for a living, yet I thought I’d be a much better-equipped businessman if I was well-versed in the laws of the country. Considering my daytime endeavors, I chose to specialize in patent law. With America being my final goal for practice and daytime study out of the question, I enrolled at LaSalle Extension University in Chicago, Illinois. LaSalle was an old, established correspondence school that graduated many a famous American. One studied at one’s own pace, sent weekly examinations for grading to the school, and went to attend examinations when the course was completed.

HOME SWEET HOME The beginning in Canada also marked the beginning of our family. Our daughter Michele was on the way when we finally moved away from Center Island in 1954 to take possession of our first house in Oakville, Ontario. It was a row house in a new subdivision, and the house only about 85% complete. For years we still had the mud around from the rest of the subdivision going up. Workers were in the house for a long time, bringing in dirt and disturbing the baby. Our savings were just enough for the down payment. We lived with bare walls and newspaper on the windows instead of curtains, and Hildegard was allowed to sit on a chair that I had made myself while I sat on a box, and a larger box served as our table. We had oil heat, and a range and refrigerator in the house. We were able to buy a fine double bed in addition to the crib. (The bed still exists. It is now in our apartment in Saipan). That was it. We didn’t believe in overextending our credit. Ours was one of the first houses in the subdivision and we were the second family to move in. When Hildegard had the baby in December, I was home with her for a few days. Then we again took up our separate duties. Hildegard was a housewife and mother now, I was a salesman and on the road. My territory stretched from Windsor, Ontario to Quebec City, PQ. On overnights out of town, as soon as it got warmer again, I’d sleep in the car to save expenses. Our first car was a 1949 Ford that we had acquired from the previous owner, a proverbial old lady, for Canadian $850 cash.

Chapter Seventeen

Toward Closure

As mentioned earlier in this book, there were some inconsistencies regarding my birth family that I’d wondered about as I grew up, things that hadn’t quite made sense at the time. The most important and far-reaching of these was my father joining the National Socialist Workers Party in 1929, when his political proclivities (and personality) indicated that he likely would have preferred to remain in the free, non-Nazi-affiliated majority of Germans. This mystery did eventually get solved, and it in turn answered many of my long-standing questions. To share with you how that happened, I’d like to fast-forward in this narrative to an event that took place in 1988.

UNCLE HELMUT’S 75TH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION, WITH A TWIST It was a catastrophe, according to several of the participants at that meeting in Arnsberg, Westfalen, on January 23, 1988. Little did they know the extent of it. Uncle Helmut’s own father, my paternal grandfather, died when he was 66 years and 9 months old, and many of the ancestors before him had died at an earlier age yet. For Uncle Helmut, therefore, 75 years was an accomplishment. It was an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to celebrate, to look back and share, and to look at so much that needed perspective. January 20, 1988, a Wednesday, was Helmut Straube’s 75th birthday. For the convenience of friends and relatives, however, the official celebration was held on Saturday, January 23, 1988, at a small hotel in Neheim-Hüsten, a little town maybe 15 minutes by car west from Arnsberg. Helmut and Gerda, his 125

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wife, had made every effort to invite close relatives, including those from far away, to join in making this a memorable family occasion.

FESTIVE SETTING The party started with a sumptuous luncheon at the hotel. In the afternoon it moved to the Straube’s large residence in Arnsberg. Uncle Helmut had prepared well for all aspects of the meeting—not only stocking up with delicious food and wine, but he also planned to talk to the group about the past, to disclose details he had never told anyone before. That revelation was likely to be shocking or enlightening, depending on whose opinions were going to be aroused. But it was time for the facts to be known, the rest of the clan should know the truth. He had prepared his speech well. Never could he have anticipated what was to happen that evening. Almost everyone who was expected had shown up, even from afar, including my sister from Dresden with her spouse. Making that trip at the time was not easy since East Germany was a separate country then and special permission had to be sought, which was rarely granted from the Communist regime, for visits to the capitalist west. Nevertheless, somehow, my youngest sister Elsbeth’s husband did receive East German government permission to attend and take her along. In contrast my brother Manfred and his wife, also living in East Germany, were not granted that privilege. My West German sister, Elfriede, however, and her daughter, Martina (24), were able to attend. Living in the West, they didn’t need anybody’s permission. And also present, of course, were Helmut Jr. (45) with his wife Gabriele, and Ingrid (42), the children of Gerda and Helmut who were both living in West Germany. Hildegard and I did not make it, although warmly invited, for we couldn’t fit it in our schedule. Actually, Hildegard was in Saipan while I had arrived in New Jersey from Tokyo the day before, on January 22, 1988, and was in our head office there that day. Thus we missed the disaster, but the waves traveled to us, too. In retrospect, I regret very much that I wasn’t in attendance that night, for I would not have allowed the disaster to happen. At least, I would have stood up for Helmut and let us all hear what he had to say.

SCUTTLED ANNOUNCEMENT It happened at the end of dinner in Uncle Helmut’s home Saturday night while he, the honored guest, presided over his extended family at the table. Helmut put down his napkin and wanted to start his speech. But the visitors

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were restless, deeply engrossed in all kinds of unrelated conversations. The most restless were his own children, Helmut Jr. and Ingrid, who thought that they had heard it all before, many times, again and again. For example, they’d heard that during their father’s youth every member of the household participated in earning a living, that Helmut as little boy had a route for fresh-baked buns from his parents’ bakery to be delivered to customers before breakfast, which he did before going to school. Helmut Jr. and Ingrid didn’t want to hear all these old stories again. They showed their lack of respect as well as a definite shortcoming in whatever relationship they had with their father. Uncle Helmut, however, knew that he really had something new to say and it was his day, after all, to bring it out. Totally ignoring his wishes, though, were his own unruly kids, who were grown-ups in midlife themselves now. Exasperated and overspilling with emotion, Ingrid walked over to the adjoining room where her mother had a collection of unique porcelain plates hanging. Ingrid grabbed one of those plates off the wall, charged back into the dining room, and stopped in front of her dad, shouting at him that she didn’t have to take this any more, and then she smashed the plate on the floor in front of him.

SAD CONCLUSION Everybody gasped. End of the attempted speech. Aunt Gerda turned to the guests to usher them out of the house. The party was over, though Martina stayed at her mother’s side and didn’t want to leave that abruptly. She thought that Uncle Helmut should have sensed that the congregated guests were going to be bored with his old stories. Herbert Wiegand, my brother-in-law from Dresden, was embarrassed to no end as well as disgusted with the way Uncle Helmut’s children were treating him. Yet nobody stood up for the celebrant. Not even his own wife, who acted as if the incident could be wished away. Like after a funeral, everybody left, some of them very angry, most of them deeply saddened, and the vital facts weren’t disclosed as if they were buried with the corpse. The visitors went back to the hotel in Neheim-Hüsten where they were booked for the night. On Sunday, January 24, 1988, they departed for their respective hometowns. In Arnsberg that evening it started to snow. However, that is not the end of the events as they unfolded. The truth always wants to come out, and it did. It was revealed at a later time and not to the group for which it was intended but to Uncle Helmut’s nephew who wasn’t able to make it that night: me.

Chapter Eighteen

Wrong Blood

LAST FACE-TO-FACE MEETING Two years later, on the way back from Singapore to the United States, Hildegard and I came via Germany for a brief business stopover there from May 16th to the 25th, 1990. It so happened that Thursday, May 24th that year was Ascension Day (Christi Himmelfahrt), a legal holiday in Germany, and also that year it was Father’s Day there. We used the time for a visit with Uncle Helmut and Aunt Gerda at their home in Arnsberg. This was the last time we met, for Uncle Helmut died on August 20th, 1991. Nobody knew then, of course, what the next year was to bring. Coming from Frankfurt/Main airport via Hagen that day, our train arrived in Arnsberg at 11:49 a.m. Uncle Helmut was waiting at the station and brought us home where Aunt Gerda had prepared a delicious luncheon. Everybody had a great time, and we exchanged family updates. The Berlin wall had fallen the year before, and practically every East German member of the Straube family had shown up in Arnsberg since then, many of them just to collect the free cash stipends of up to 100 German Marks per person offered by West Germany communities to Easterners in celebration of reunification. Later on, Aunt Gerda served the traditional afternoon coffee and cake. For Uncle Helmut it was just like old times and he enjoyed it. He took us back to 1947 when he and I had tried to find living quarters for me in Frankfurt/Main but had little success. Noticing that Aunt Gerda wanted to talk about things other than that, he excused himself and me for, as he explained to his wife and Hildegard, he needed to talk with me separately and give the women an opportunity to pursue their topics at leisure. 128

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FAMILY TREASURE CHEST Then Uncle Helmut took me to his study. There he showed me an ornate, heavy wooden chest and its contents, which consisted of a lot of paperwork and documentation. It included the letter a friend of his on the city council of Kahla had secretly taken out of the Communist Party boss’s file: 1) so that it was “lost,” and 2) to give Uncle Helmut advance notice of his arrest. It contained his denunciation as a Free Democrat councilman who was continually opposed to the Communist party line. Helmut subsequently was successful in fleeing to then West Berlin, leaving his medical practice and all the family’s belongings behind. Helmut explained that this chest and its contents were going to be mine after his death, and he let me read a letter to his executors stating such. As it turned out, Helmut Jr., his son, never did give the chest or one piece of its contents to me. Helmut Sr. told me that he was disappointed in his children’s apparent disinterest in their roots and all that goes with family tradition, that he had always considered me like a younger brother (we are only 16 years apart, the closest link between his generation of the family and the next), and that he was proud of my progress upholding the Straube record of hard work, courage, commitment, and accomplishment. If someone was to be the standard-bearer for the ancestors’ values, it was I, and he hoped and wished that I would carry the family torch and pass it on.

THE RULES OF THE DAY He said that this could be the last face-to-face conversation we might have and he wanted me to know a few things which were weighing heavily on his mind, but which he had never disclosed to anyone or had anybody with which to share them. He had thought of bringing them out on his 75th birthday but his children, as well as the others, had not been willing to listen. Uncle Helmut wanted me to know about the secret he had carried with him all his life and had sworn to my father that the two of them would never disclose. Yet he felt that I should know now. It would give him great relief to know that someone he loved and greatly trusted, who understood him, was going to share this knowledge and maybe explain it to others at some future time. Again, this was not supposed to be a public disclosure, rather I should let sleeping dogs lie, particularly since the rest of the family was obviously preoccupied with their own little concerns. No one else seemed to want to

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know the whys and hows of the course lives had taken, why in essence we are who we are and what we are. The North Americans were more practical regarding citizenship than the Europeans right from the start of their young nation. They considered anyone an American citizen who was born there, no matter what his racial or ethnic origins. In Europe one’s place of birth meant little; instead, citizenship went with the blood. Whatever your parents were, that’s what you were—no matter where you were born. This rule actually still applies in most European countries. One of the staunchest defenders of this principle at the time of these events was Germany. Only more than half a century later it has allowed limited exceptions and in the year 2000 passed a law to permit the place of birth to determine nationality.

BUILDING ON PRECEDENT In the 1920s/1930s, however, Europe, and particularly Germany, couldn’t imagine any other way of seeing nationality than through blood lineage. It was the perfect setting for discrimination on the basis of race. And that was really nothing new, for that’s what it had been since the dawn of time. Thus, when the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazis) gained more and more influence at the end of the 1920s and beginning of the 1930s, it didn’t take a lot of foreknowledge to understand that racial background would soon play a bigger role in Germany. The way it was going to shape up was that the more pure the Aryan background you could claim, the greater your opportunities were in the “1000-year Reich” ahead (which eventually lasted a mere 12 years). For the others, well, their rights were going to be less. If they were Jews, they’d heard “Juden raus” (Jews get out!) already during the ’20s since members of their race were blamed for profiteering from Germany’s earlier debacle, which meant that they should be denied participation in Germany’s coming paradise.

QUESTION OF RACE Most German Jews, however, didn’t see themselves as Jews and actually hadn’t done so for a century or more; they saw themselves as good Germans who happened to be of Jewish descent. They were on the side of Germany, not on that of its enemies. Only a few Jews saw the rise of the German swastika as a threat to their life as usual.

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And what about all those people in-between? Those who had Aryan blood but also Jewish strains, maybe Mongolian, Gypsy, Slavic, whatever? They were soon to find out that clean Aryan bloodlines mattered very much. Adolf Hitler, like John F. Kennedy, was elected in a free election with a comparable margin of a simple majority. Except that, once in power, Hitler and his supporters perverted these powers and provoked their enemies, culminating in World War II. As Hitler’s star was rising in Germany anti-Semitism was rampant, cascading towards what was going to become the Holocaust. In hindsight that’s what happened but at the time it wasn’t so obvious, and human hope for a good outcome is eternal.

SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET Yet in the early 1930s Herbert Straube, my father, and Helmut Straube, his younger brother, were very uneasy with the political developments. They realized that Germany as a whole, not just Hitler alone, was on a path to violent confrontation with Judaism. They knew just by looking around them that the ascending regime was going to deny rights to Jews that were common to everybody else, such as going to college. They had no idea what was really ahead and lacked the imagination to foresee the future Holocaust. But my father and uncle knew that their ancestry research in preparation for that new German epoch proved the Straube’s were far from being pure Aryans. They were a mixture with substantial Jewish content. Their forefathers had names like Eisenreich, Schoenberg, Abendroth, Thierfelder, Pilz, Bilz, and others, all good Jewish names. Yes, most by then were derisively called “baptized” Jews, which means that they had run away from their original faith to adopt the prevailing religion, or their parents had done it for them. This was the way, particularly during the 19th century, to escape what by now may appear somewhat-lesser forms of discrimination against Jews. Although they had no choice in who their forebears were, at this point in history my father and Uncle Helmut, representing the overall family’s feelings, didn’t want to be Jews and didn’t want anybody to know that they had Jewish blood pumping in their veins. Nobody knew in the 1920s what Hitler was up to if he was ever going to be Chancellor of Germany. Nobody knew then what consequences Jewish roots were going to have in a Nazi Germany, if there was going to be one. And truly nobody knew the steps my dad took at that time without having knowledge of the Holocaust to come.

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THE MAKING OF A CONSPIRACY Now came the Nazi party that promised to disregard all forms of camouflaged Jewishness and follow the bloodlines back as far as they could go. Herbert and Helmut knew what this meant in their case, and they didn’t want to be part of it; they actually found it highly unjust, particularly since they didn’t see themselves as Jews at all. They wanted to be seen and judged as Germans. They, however, realized that if they wanted to be part of the revolution they’d have to join not too early, but also not too late, before it could turn against them, as revolutions often do and did; just as the French revolution devoured its own founders such as Robespiere and many others. This, then, is the beginning of the conspiracy. The two brothers decided that Herbert, my father, would join the Nazi party and become the family’s official ancestry researcher. This would give them two advantages: 1) it would demonstrate that the Straube’s were part of the German mainstream, and 2) it would serve as an early warning system from within, just in case the true bloodlines were discovered and pursued. Herbert’s task became to find the ancestral evidence, and if need be destroy it or bend it to appear in the desired light of the time. For the rest, act as though he was the good German.

BURIED SECRET Nobody was to know about this, and both Helmut and my father were to act out the roles they decided to assume. As a result, Helmut ended up studying medicine while his openly Jewish classmates were denied such a privilege in Germany. The end result for his brother Herbert Straube: My father died in a concentration camp when he was 43 years old. Now, of course, what were for me contradictions at the time of my early youth, especially the official party line as pronounced by my father and his actions contradictory to it, started making sense. Too bad that he ended up paying the ultimate price. In retrospect it was a deadly game with fire, a Faustian pact that he was bound to lose one way or the other. Helmut escaped, maybe just to tell us what happened.

MORE SKELETONS As the policies of the Third Reich unfolded, other incriminating racial evidence came to light in the case of my mother. She and her 5 siblings came

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Medical Doctor Helmut Straube with his wife and Hildegard on the platform of the Arnsberg railroad station, May 24, 1990. I took the picture, and a few minutes later the train arrived and Hildegard and I boarded. Uncle and Aunt waved, and so did we, until the train disappeared. That was our last meeting, forever.

from a marriage of a Scandinavian woman and a man from the East. My grandfather came from a mixture of Mongols, Chinese, Huns and Slavs; precisely those people whom Hitler later determined were subhuman races (Mongols ⫽ mongolites), of no value except maybe as slave labor. To the credit of my father and the great relief of all concerned, he was able to extinguish all traces of this background and destroy the evidence. Obviously nobody was told about this, least we children, but instead everybody bought the concocted story that Grandpa Vogt had been an illegitimate child, his parents had given him up and didn’t want to be identified. At that point in time he couldn’t be identified any more. Luckily, my parents got away with that. With a cover letter from Arnsberg dated April 17, 1984, Uncle Helmut sent me a copy of his final update of the family chronicle. Looking it over today I notice in the epilogue a reference to his sources, including one which reads as follows: “Those in the ‘Preface’ mentioned handwritten notes from the ’30s were destroyed since they were fully taken into consideration and partially written in shorthand, which nowadays would be undecipherable.” Aha! Now

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I understand why. They were part of the otherwise-incriminating evidence that he and Herbert couldn’t afford to have around.

ATTEMPTED COVER-UP There are other references in Helmut’s family chronicle that now become more understandable, such as his pointing out that names like Samuel were good Christian (not Jewish) names in the 1700s and 1800s. That was the last line of defense he and Herbert used where the Jewish background showed too much. And he, of course, never changed his point of view, for it could have started to unravel the entire Aryan background logic. There’s another piece of the puzzle I never could figure out, although the above might point a light in the right direction. Non-Jewish Germans didn’t circumcise their men as a general practice and, to my knowledge, they still don’t do so today. So I’ve always wondered why I was circumcised and my brother wasn’t. The difference might just have been my being born in 1929 when the German scene was relatively temperate, while in 1932, the year my brother was born, the shadows of the new Reich were over the horizon and the above decision had been arrived at in the meantime. Whenever I asked my parents about the difference I was told that in the olden days it was believed that circumcision for boys improved their health. It kept diseases away, yet that this had been found to be an old superstition, unproven and unwarranted, therefore unnecessary and no longer part of modern medical practices. My brother just happened to be born in more modern times, after enlightenment.

THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE Well, Uncle Helmut and I almost ran out of time that afternoon. The ladies had finished their chitchat and cleared the coffee table. Hildegard came to the study and made us aware that the return train D-Zug 2328 was leaving at 4:16 p.m. and we’d better wrap it up. So we did. Helmut took us back to the train station. Gerda came along. We snapped a couple of pictures on the platform just before the train arrived. I later glued them into our Reportage, thus they’re still available to look at for whomever is interested. It was good-bye for good, as it turned out, also for Aunt Gerda, who followed her husband to die on January 16, 1996. Hildegard and I sat in the dining car while riding along the Rhine back to Frankfurt, pointing out the sights to each other guided by the “PolyglottReiseführer, Der Rhein von Mainz bis Köln,” the little booklet which Uncle

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Helmut had given us as a going-away present. Punctually, at 7:57 p.m., the fast train spit us out at the Frankfurt/Main Airport station. The next morning we left Frankfurt/Main at 10:00 a.m. on Lufthansa flight #400 to New York.

TOMORROW IS TOO LATE After lift-off—sitting comfortably in my seat, above the clouds, engines humming on both sides, and with a long way to go—it came to me slowly, like a revelation, of how much I had left behind. Body and brain had departed; however here I was, solidly connected to times and places gone by. And this, while I had thought of myself as a man of the present and future. I now realized that, regardless how small and out of the place the little world I live in seems, it is part of the whole. What those before me did or didn’t do, and what I do or don’t do, does affect not only others nearby but in the long run, inescapably, all those who come after. Life may appear random, but the universe’s rules do guide every one of us. There is a purpose for being here, at this time, for being able to think, imagine, and act. Learning is our obligation to the past. Drawing conclusions and passing on what we have learned is our obligation to the future. Our task for the NOW is to study, to heal and improve, and to blossom and enjoy, including sowing new seeds. Hey brother and sister, this is not merely my day, but ours together. What a great day it can be!

For more books by the author, search the world wide web for: Books by Win Straube

Appendix

AUTHOR’S SOURCES Chapter 1 LaSalle Extension University, “Success” Magazine, 1964. Straube, Frida, geb. Vogt. “Ahnen-Pass,” Dresden, 1936. Straube, Herbert. “Ahnen-Pass,” Dresden, 1936. Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Straube, Win. “Blame It On Me,” manuscript, 1967. Chapter 8 Straube, Manfred. “Recollections,” written in Dresden, Germany, February 1996. Translation by Win Straube 2000-01-18. Chapters 9, 10, 11 Straube, Win. “Blame It On Me,” manuscript, 1967. Chapters 12, 13 Straube, Hildegard. Honolulu, 2000–07–16. Chapters 14, 15, 16 Straube, Win. “Blame It On Me,” manuscript, 1967. Chapter 17 Lengert, Elfriede. Telephone interview, January 23, 2000. 137

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Appendix

MAPS

Europe 1920–1940.

Europe after 1945.

Appendix

Cold War Power Blocks.

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Appendix

1990—Germany after reunification.