Open Writing

For us this was the end of the war. For others the war still dragged on for a month.

For me this also was the end of my childhood because hence-forward life was not all play anymore.

In Blankenburg, and all over the Harz Mountains, remnants of the German army foolishly tried to make a last stand. We actually heard the shooting at night for another two weeks and watched the tracer bullets from the flat roof of the ‘Yellow Box’, our house. We also heard a few major explosions as the army destroyed ammunition depots.

Tragically our beloved neighbour, Dr.Oddey, was conscripted during those last desperate days, made to serve in Blankenburg, barely 10km away, and promptly was killed by artillery fire.

Dad still remained in his post until the end of April, at least pro forma. Somebody had to pass on the know-how. The American Officer in charge was quite a likeable fellow. Our cousin Annemie (27 at the time) actually fell in love with him. She spoke English fluently and made herself available as an interpreter at the town hall.

She had come to Derenburg during 1944 at Dad’s request to work at our local school as an auxiliary teacher because they were short-staffed. But for now the school was closed until further notice. I was elated since going to school had never been my favourite activity.

We youngsters found the Americans very friendly and generous. Apparently their supply of chocolates never ran out. Sometimes they wanted things in return. Nazi Party badges or Hitler Youth knives were excellent objects for barter.

Sometimes we were offered cigarettes which the older guys were willing to die for, and some of us youngsters smoked them even if we got dizzy. But certain demands made on the civilian population had to be met to the letter. One was - understandably the requirement to disarm.

I don’t know whether Dad had any proper arms of his own, but there was Grandfather’s collection of some 20 to 25 ancient muzzle-loaders, pistols and muskets. To be on the safe side Dad proceeded to smash them all (and we had to help him do it).

In retrospect I see this destruction as an outright sacrilege. Even at the time I thought it a dumb idea and quite unnecessary. Klaus Weißleder was of the same opinion and thus, as soon as Dad was out of sight, we lugged all these severely damaged collector’s items into a large cellar compartment and started to repair them.

We felt very superior having scorned an official order. Just imagine, here we were - a few days after the war - sons of the vanquished – quietly reconditioning guns! Naturally we were careful not to be detected. When we finished for the day we covered up all suspicious looking items.

Nobody ever inspected this cellar compartment until, one day, somebody did. Dad! He was furious. The whole collection got a second going-over making our attempts at repair utterly hopeless.

More important, of course, were the many jobs we had to do to put food on the table. With the help of Onkel Eduard we worked about half an hectare of our land, planting mainly potatoes and wheat. Part of the wheat crop we simply pushed through the coffee grinder and we made porridge from that.

We also kept chickens for eggs and rabbits for meat, and a pig whose slaughter and processing was done under the supervision of a professional butcher. This was always an important occasion in our calendar, but having all these animals also meant a lot of extra work. They all had to be fed and their stables kept clean.

Another chore was the fetching of wood because coal was in short supply. Intermittently Klaus and I worked in the fields for Onkel Fritze Henne, not for money but food. The Yellow Box housed plenty of hungry mouths.

This brings me to the youngest hungry mouth that, so far, I have forgotten to mention. In September,1944, my mother gave birth to her third child, another boy who was named Albrecht. He was a proper war child, by which I mean he was undemanding, and easily satisfied. He was healthy, too.

A picture I recall vividly is him standing on a chair in front of the slow combustion stove in the kitchen with a boiled potato in his fist, happily cooing. It was in the middle of winter and the flap door of the stove was kept wide open so that the boy would get the full benefit of the heat.

He was boxed in by the backs of two other chairs and seemed perfectly happy with the attention the passing kitchen traffic afforded him. For obvious reasons Albrecht and I never were playmates - the age gap was too great. We also were physically far apart most of the time.

Due to his age he got left behind in what became the East German Republic where-as I emigrated to South Africa when I was twenty. But our time came. As a South African citizen I visited him a couple of times beyond the iron curtain and after reunification (1990) we met fairly often and developed a close relationship.

I cannot remember when the Americans left – was it after four weeks or six? But leave they did, and for our liking too early. At one stage the English took over; we did not know why. Of their presence I do not remember anything. But then ominous rumours were heard that our area had been earmarked for Russian occupation.

This was bad news indeed. As the war had been drawing to a close, soldiers and civilians alike – even foreign labourers - had had but one goal,: to move as far west as possible. Everybody wanted to get away from the Russians.

But, unfortunately, the dissection of Germany had been decided some time before the end of the war at a meeting between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin at Yalta. According to their decision Saxen-Anhalt, the province to which we belonged, was to be ceded to Soviet-Russia.

All kinds of ugly rumours preceded their arrival. There were rumours of wholesale rape and brutality. There were rumours of Russians confiscating anything they fancied. They particularly fancied bicycles we were told.

A story that made the rounds and caused wily laughter was that a primitive Russian soldier (the suspicion was that they were all primitive) confiscated a bicycle from a teenager who was riding it without his hands on the handlebars. Obviously the Russian had never seen that before. He had a bad fall when he tried the trick himself.

There were also rumours that the Russians were arresting all able-bodied males and sending them off to Siberia. All this instilled feelings of gloom and doom in us, but when the Russians finally arrived it was not half as bad as expected.

A new mayor, a new commander, soldiers in different uniforms wearing red five-pointed stars on their caps and speaking a language that no-one could understand - those were all the differences one noticed.

We went back to our various chores to feed the many mouths residing in the Yellow Box, surprised that there was life after the Soviet takeover. There certainly was. The Russian officer commanding the army contingent in Derenburg insisted on living in our house.

He chose die Altdeutsche (the Old German) to live in. This was, no doubt, the most beautiful room in town. Walls and ceiling were covered with the most exquisite wood-panelling, carved and with inlaid ornamentation, including the family crest.

The room was adjacent to our dining room and had two large leaded windows showing saintly figures, as if they belonged to a church. Heating could be provided by two medieval-looking tiled stoves, and the electric lights of the chandelier were made to look like a myriad of candles.

I spare myself the description of the furniture. Suffice it to say that the room was a museum piece, a replica of the state-room in a wealthy patrician’s home. It was used only at the rarest occasions. For years we used it only for Christmas.

We had never offered this room to any of our needy refugees, but one cannot go against the demands of the victor?

I heard my parents in subdued and worried voices expressing the fear that our ‘Russian guest’ might break up the parquet and build a fire in the middle of the room. But truth be told, nothing untoward happened. Sure, he drank vodka in that gem of a room and occasionally invited in some noisy friends, but no damage was done. The Russian officer did not stay all that long either. I think his high command did not want the troops to get soft. Sooner than expected he took his leave and was gone.

But let me finish this chapter by telling you what happened only days later. in August 1945. A most unsavoury character had become Derenburg’s mayor. His name was Schweimler. He had been a convict during the Nazi period due to criminal activity and now claimed to be a communist who had been victimized for political reasons.

It can safely be assumed that it was because of this circumstance that twenty-five male citizens of our little town were rounded up and taken away.

One of them was my Dad. Fourteen of them never returned. The arrest happened on the 31.August 1945, my Dad’s 57th birthday.

I was not even there when they took him because Klaus and I had been working in the fields all day and only found out when my tearful mother told us the story.

We never saw him again.