The year was 1945 when Russia annexed eastern Germany. Sixty-nine
years have passed since then, and few of us who experienced the annexation are
still alive. Yet those who are, remember it as if it were yesterday. It was a Russian
“check-mate” move like no other. The Russians are experts at chess.
During the preceding twelve years Hitler had battered the German people
into total submission. It was easy for the Soviets to become the new master,
especially since most people of means and education had fled or were being exterminated.
Law and order vanished overnight. No person or object was safe—not
anywhere. Scientists and inventors were the first to be dragged from their beds
and shipped to Russia. Doctors and nurses, among them father’s young sister,
went next, as well as hospital equipment and beds.
The Czechs had driven us—mother, our pretty au pair and
us children—from our mountain cabin with nothing but the clothes we wore. We
had taken refuge there from the nightly air raids in the city.
The Czech soldiers had stormed into our cabin unexpectedly. We had to stand against
the wall with our hands above our head, and stared down their gun barrels. Yet mother
chatted with them amicably as if they were visitors. They searched the house, and miraculously, none of the
soldiers touched us. One of them even escorted us safely to the border that led
into East Germany. I still think of them with gratitude.
We
hurried to the next village, the Ski Resort
Oberwiesental. There, a compassionate hotel owner who remembered mother from
better days took us in.
“Don’t open the windows or curtains,” she warned us. “My friend
down the street was shot dead this morning while he was using the open window
pane as a mirror to shave himself. Soldiers took his mirrors a few days ago.”
So we children watched life from behind the curtains. We had no
books, no toys and felt like prisoners in our room we couldn’t leave. Yet the
world outside was much too dangerous.
We watched as the Russians marched groups of civilians down the street.
We saw them poke people who were passing by with their guns and push them into
their group. Where were they taking them? No one knew. They disappeared and
never came back.
Sometimes it was women and children they herded away, but I’d
rather not dwell upon those memories.
We
saw German women guarded by armed soldiers drive cattle and goats past our
window. “They are on their way to Russia,” it was murmured, and later
confirmed.
When East German schools reopened, Russian became the only
language that was taught. However, in the three neighboring countries, Estonia,
Latvia, and Lithuania that were annexed earlier, Russian became the only language
that was allowed to be spoken in school.
When the long-interrupted mail service eventually resumed, letters
took months to get in or out of East Germany; Russian censors were analyzing
them first. Some letters made it across the border, some did not, and some had
passages that were thoroughly blackened out. So letter writers took to veiling their
messages to get past the censors. It became quite an art. I’m glad to live in
the Land of the Free, where there is hope
that the sanctity and privacy of our electronic mail will be restored one day.
Precarious as it was, we managed to escape to West Germany. An
incredible adventure, but we made it—you may have read about it in The Madman & His Mistress.
We were East German refugees now, and deeply despised
by the West Germans. We competed for their shelter
and food, and there was not enough to go around. Years of severe hunger and deprivation! But thanks to the Marshall Plan that
fed us starving children a heavenly noodle soup at lunchtime we survived and we
were free.
Many years later, as luck would have it, a scholarship brought me
to the United States (and my first good meal). What a blessing to live in these
United States of America, a country that does not lie in the path of
annexation.
Until next time,
Rosi
