I spent several weeks enjoying time with my family and Germany, getting reacquainted after many years of absence. Germans tend to range between two forms in their social interactions; they are either loud and boisterous, with arms widespread like an Octoberfest beer on a hot day (non alcoholic for me or perhaps an apfel saft). There will be garrulous arguments, jokes, double entendres, stories, epic poetry, adventures and whatnot, Valhalla would be jealous. Or sometimes they were dour and darkly serious seeking to understand lessons or proverbs from a dismal past when hope seemed lost (some families are very Old Testament that way), even as they soldiered on. It is then that their voices and words take a more demanding tone as each phrase requires an attention of astute clarity. A single day conversation can range between the two, especially when life has afforded both the valleys and the peaks, much as it has with my uncles.
We were sitting in the outdoor patio under a palapa or palm roof that my cousin Dirk had built. Germans love their city of Berlin, but always strive to make their private gardens seem like a place outside the city. It is a dichotomy I have learned to love and appreciate in them, they are of the city, and yet seek to hearken to a mythos long lost to their generation, so the veneer of wildness will have to do. Everyone needs a place for their secret gnomes and fantasies of alone in the wilderness, especially in a place like Berlin. The talks were of the garrulous nature as jokes and stories of the Maur, some tragic but funny. Or how someone tricked someone else into paying for the crematorium urn (yes that is German humor). My uncle Detlef spent years rebuilding the roads of West Berlin, and he loved telling of how all three sons, sons of privilege, all made their way into a bombed out city with little left and were part of that era when the baseline was zero and you literally had nowhere to go but up. So that day they argued, they smoked (as it seems most Germans do), they drank, talked, and drank some more always tossing, lobbing and hurling words to each other.
After a time of my sharing some of my stories, along with theirs, the tone became more somber, it seems the ghosts began to flicker in the edges of their memories. There arose a darkness in their stories now, not without hope, but a darkness all the same. It would venture forth and then retreat like some cur of the past seeking leftovers at the table. Hard memories are like that, we bury them, but cannot exile them from us, they resurrect just to let us know they continue in our minds. So I ventured a question, one that I sincerely wanted to know, but wasn't sure was my place to ask. It seemed the time to ask such a question. I wanted to know of my Grandfather or Opa. Not the one my grandmother married as a widower, the one I knew and the one buried next to her in the cemetary. The man I wanted to know was the serious figure in some very old black and white photographs. Heinz-Karl Schoenicke (no umlauts on this keyboard). How did my grandfather pass away? I was told the war killed him, the Russians killed him, but he had died in 1949. The war was over in '45 and it seemed to me the vague stories and inconsistencies were not "helpful" at least not to me. Dirk, my cousin and Detlef's son himself had never asked, so he too felt compelled to add his voice when he heard me ask. My cousin Dirk is a tall lanky man in his late forties. Blond hair and blue eyes, a somewhat typical German, he was easy with a laugh, though you could tell his life wasn't always convenient to the idea of laughter. He had done comparatively well in business and then lost it, and was in the process of rebuilding, his wife Julie was sometimes a writer and worked in a bookstore, she remained by his side through the thick and thin, both good people. In a way I could ask because unlike Dirk, I was nephew, not a son. I could blithely walk past certain lines and the charity of my ignorance allowed for it. My son Dirk knew family protocol too well to take such a chance.
Detlef's grey blue eyes flashed at me and while the smile did not leave his face, it stopped below his eyes. Detlef was always a keen analytical man, even in his youth, he could measure numbers and men. His only weakness was his first wife, who left him in a miserable state with two young sons and limited means of support.
"So you wish to know how "my" father died." he said.
"Yes, Onkel Detlef" I replied. "It is important for me to know. I am not here in this land the way you are. I am not surrounded by memories like you. When I speak to my children of who they are and where they come from, part of what I speak of will be about you, and part of it is Opa, your father.
"You did not know him"
"That is a more important reason for you to tell me. I cannot share what I do not know", and I would not have them forget Germany and the people who had such an influence on their father, especially through you my uncles".
Detlef is no fool, he knows when he is being handed a line. I can be most diplomatic when it is called for, or audacious if it suits the situation. He appreciated the audacity of my words, and like a key, a locked door was opened.
"Yes" he said, it is no secret, but what you ask isn't so easy to tell.....
Germany was upon its last legs, the madness that had been exported as war to the rest of the world had made its way back with a vengeance. Bombs fell like rain leaving craters of thunder, Russians were an innumerable host who remembered Stalingrad and other depredations. Their mercy would not be felt upon the German volk,
Oma, my grandmother, was a beauty in her youth. She won "best legs" in Germany, or so I have been told. She does bear a certain classic beauty when you look at her photos from the 20's. I can see how she and my Opa would have eyes for each other. Their life together at the start was not a difficult one. Karl-Heinze was a major distributor for one of the oldest and largest beer breweries in Berlin. Schultheiss Bier had and has been in production for over a century, though now not nearly as large as it once had been. In his day it was ubiquitous in an industry that was itself ubiquitous among Germans. In one sense my grandfather was a dashing figure with a strong income, my grandmother a woman of culture and privilege in a progressive and confident Germany. To Germans, the fairytale is a combination of pragmatic and poetic, in that sense my grandparents held that dream when they married. They married during the world wide depression and even in that economic chaos escaped the ravishes that impoverished so many. While politics became an issue of heat for the few, it was not their forte, as it was not so for most Germans unless of course you were a fascist or a communist. History tells us that overlooking politics sometimes costs a very heavy price. It certainly did in Germany.
You sometimes have to wonder, as I often do, how a nation that gave us great philosophers, scientists, and in its very short existence a burst of creativity; how such a nation could also descend into a mechanized barbarism that to this day boggles the mind in its impact on humanity. I see the old Germans around me and how they lovingly play with their grandchildren and great children, and wonder how many of them bear a darkness in their soul too deep and alien to understand. My uncles were born just before the fruition of such a dark seed and were swept into its growth and ultimately its harvest.
So my Uncle Detlef turned to me. He and my Uncle Hans were born before Germany's drive for world control, so they were children of their times, the nationalism, the incredible heights of military success, and the eventual downfall which must always come to nations who over reach in madness.
"I and Hans were young men, Hans being older went to Hitler youth camps, while I stayed home. {he cringed a bit at the term, Germans tend to avoid such words, they have learned} What you see as strange to you today was for us a normal thing because it was what we grew up with. The martial circumstances of our lives, the militarism that pervaded all we did and were, seemed so quaint then, but looking back, I can see now it was almost ridiculous and combined to how horrible things were. But then it was different. Much of our time was spent playing out doors and preparing ourselves to be the next soldiers of the fatherland. My father, your Opa did not approve of this even though he was a party member, but then if you wanted to be successful in Germany, you became a party member. Part of the gleichshaltung or "bringing into line" program in which everyone would eventually conform to the needs of the state or party.
So for some years we frolicked like young stags in the forest, the horror of what we as a nation were doing never touched us because as children the horror was something we were ignorant of. We played and swam in the local canals and lakes, we would bike and take out our boats to fish and imagined many adventures, we loved your westerns then. This carrying on changed over time, and yet we still adjusted and adapted even as our world became less than it was. While we played, Germany began to pay the price of its own adventure. Armies advanced against us, the skies began to flare at night with beams of light firing into the darkness seeking out the planes that would drop silhouettes whilst thunderclaps meant the collapse of a neighbors building, or ours, our a friends down the street. A cellar only gave partial safety, more than a few became tombs when neighborhood rescue teams would dig out the collapsed buildings looking for survivors. Sometimes storms of fire would rise up in buildings and we knew anyone in them would not live. My father and mother feared for our safety in those storms and their rain of steel, so we moved many of our belongings away from the target that was Berlin into the small town of Pinnow in Mecklenburg stadt. It had no military value and so we were safe.
Pinnow is a wonderful small town with several lakes around it and only 24 miles from the Baltic. We would go to the ocean on warm summer days and sit on a rock (the rock is still there) just a bit away from shore. All of us have had our pictures on that rock, and last year when we went to the Baltic we saw that same rock to this day, but we are too old to swim to it now (he, laughed at that), and my therapies do not lend themselves to me being out in the ocean. Though drowning I think would not be unpleasant, certainly it is much softer than cancer.... (at this my Aunt Rita slapped him and said "Hur auf")
Happy times in our youth became more rare as the war progressed and what was once glad tidings in the news became scarce as censors would make stories of retreats and defeats into victories. My father taught us how to see through the censorship. We no longer heard of the capture of cities or the increase of territory, it became more of a game to understand what was actually going on. If we lost territory the censors would speak of the many enemy dead enemies we left on the field. You know when you are losing, landmarks are not mentioned and only the fierce bravery of the men who fought are highlighted."
At this my uncle Detlef took a long slow breath. he appeared older then than ever before. War I suppose, even for resilient young boys creates a heaviness in life that perhaps those of us who have never been in such a zone cannot comprehend easily. It has been 70 years since the conflicts end and yet it was still there for him, every memory....
"So a stratagem when the war started, used by Germany, was to drive civilians before the military advance in order to create confusion and stop reinforcements from getting to the front quickly by clogging roads with refugees. It was also bad press and created panic. Hitler gave the order that no one was to leave their homes when the Russians came. We were told to stay and fight. But our nation was bled dry by our war, we had almost no one to stay and fight but children and old men and women. Father had a defect in his right eye and so could not see well. We as a "volk" had paid for our ventures and unlike some of the nations we faced, did not have such a deep well of blood to draw from. Few were left to 'stay and fight'.
We remained in place as the Russians advanced as a result of state police watching to ensure no one left their home, or packed their belongings. Travel documents were held back or denied and only special members were allowed to travel. On clear sunny days with blue skies we could sometimes hear In the distance the thunder of guns that carried over the miles. Everyone knew it was the last remnants of our once vaunted army being worn down to a thin tapestry. My parents knew the end would come soon and there was no escape from it, we would have to weather it. Our nation or our land would fall to our bitterest enemy. I was young and wasn't sure what that meant. But now that I am old and I have my children here and Rita, I can imagine the despair that would be in my heart.
When that day came it was slow and then suddenly rapid. First you saw the local secret police no longer making their rounds. My father would go to get travel documents, only to be rejected every day. On that morning, the offices were closed in the nearby town. You saw military command vehicles in the distance moving, and then the soldiers later. A few first, some in orderly ranks, but that too broke down and soon you had many milling through the grounds over fences and fields. Their faces were worn and scared, their clothing disheveled dirty, and torn, and they were young, almost as young as we were. Their eyes stared toward Berlin and you knew that the fight they had just left would be there for them again. My father pulled a small tractor truck out from behind the house. He turned to our mother and said "Stop for no one, do not stop for the German soldiers, they will take it from you, the Russians are behind them and you will be overtaken on foot. You must get the children to Berlin, we will not be so isolated there and perhaps we can hide. I will come with our possession (and these were all of our earthly belongings, our building in Berlin had been thoroughly destroyed in the bombings). Then as she started the diesel vehicle, he ran into the house and came out bearing a shotgun with a bag of shells. 'Take this', he said. 'Protect the children'. There were no tears in his eyes, nor in my mothers. Just determination that this had to be done. This is how I know they were brave. The truck started and we made our way. I remember looking back down the dirt road, my father stared us for a moment, and then turned away to our house. Our mother did not look back.
I was finally able to get some clarification from my uncles. I owe their wives flowers though. Detlef doesn't need the stress, and Hans is in his eighties too. But I had to know.
Johanna Schoenicke; her first name is the name my wife and I gave to our oldest daughter. It is one thing to intellectually know that she had lived through hard times. It is another to see her confront the most difficult of situations and fall back to that most basic of a mothers instinct. Detlef went on speaking...
"The road was unpaved and our jumbling vehicle splashed from mud hole to ribbed eroded streets. Rains came and went a great deal at that time of the year. The irony is that it was a German spring, a beginning when in fact the dark skies and the flashing of distant artillery brought only an end. At first there were a few people here and there walking. Refugees escaping the oncoming wave of Russians, some soldiers, many displaced or homeless. The soldiers were the saddest. They were boys now, and old men. I remember thinking I might have to be with them, Hans looked stern and he was trying very hard to be brave. He knew that when we returned to Berlin, he would be one of those boys, and that his will be the last line in a war already lost. Rain fell upon us for we had no roof on our old Olympia car, that canvas has been torn away and the war required all resources at the front, so we were wet, but we could not stop, things were too serious to worry about being wet. My mother knew this was now a race, and even if we arrived first, the prize would only be a chance at survival, nothing more. It was that determination or perhaps fear that kept her moving forward. There had been stories of how the Germans treated those they conquered in the East, she did not believe they would be any more merciful to Germans. The few possessions we had with us were under a small bit of tarp between we boys, which Hans and I held down, it seemed the jumbling and jostling would throw us and the package out of the car at times. I wish I could say we made rapid time, but it was impossible to go very fast. Sometimes a bridge would be out or a pit from a bomb that had yet to be filled would block us, and we would have to drive down into a ditch or upon a field and find a path around the other-side or even another bridge. Some lucky individuals had DKW motorcycles that allowed them to travel more freely through the fields, these were wonderful motorcycles for the joy of riding, there was no joy in the faces of those that passed us. Everyone knew what was coming. I was surprised to see not a few of those motos going through the fields around us, most had been confiscated for the war effort. We were so grateful to have our own car which my father kept hidden behind the house under a makeshift lean to. Everyone had their "things" which they hid, it is just what you did, even if you were a "gute deutche".
On the main road there were many soldiers, most did not seem attached to any unit and milled forward in the general direction of Berlin. I am not sure what the apocalypse will look like. Religion is fine for stories (no offense junge) but if there is one, I imagine I have seen it with the darkened skies and the faces of fear knowing that mercy had been used up and now was the time of judgement. All pretense or putting things off was gone. Yes, that was what it felt like. Every time we heard a plane when the sky was clear, we looked up in fear. We were mixed with soldiers now and soldiers were targets, even disorganized ones. The rain then was a blessing in disguise because it made it harder for planes to target us.
Halfway to Berlin was when my mother was most tested. A group of soldiers both old and very young were at a cross road and they had it blocked. Mother drove the vehicle forward but was forced to slow for the makeshift barricade.. As the day had waned people became more desperate and some rode upon our bumper or running boards for a moment until the jolt or pitch of the car into a depression threw them off. Most of our efforts were made in keeping our much younger Volka and our possessions in the vehicle. The crowd at the cross roads did not move and Oma slowed, as the desperation of others for a vehicle had risen to a peak. Suddenly, spontaneously they began jumping on the sideboard and reaching in for the steering wheel. One was on the hood, and too held on to the rim of the roof of the car. Both Hans and I shouted at them and all seemed lost. We had never seen Oma fire a rifle before. And had rarely seen a gun at all. The restrictions in Germany were harsh for unauthorized gun ownership. Only through a license can one buy a gun, and then another license to use the gun and a third for ammunition. I am not sure if our father had any license at all, so this remained hidden almost as a secret family heirloom. Ours was an old Staur 16 guage shotgun with shells for fowling. My grandmother must have known how to use it because in one quick move she pulled the double barreled weapon from the floorboard and as she pulled it forward her thumb pulled back on one of the hammers. Her finger must have come around the trigger and she fired full into the heavy nettle coat of the soldier on her running board. He flew backwards as she stepped heavily on the gas pushing or running over both obstructions and the soldiers in front. I cannot remember for sure. She swung the rifle around and fired into the air. The shock was enough to make the soldiers jump off as she shifted the gear and increased the speed, heedless of who was in front.
She looked at Hans and for the first time I saw her with tears in her eyes, and panic, and sadness, she shouted "Hans put two more shells in the gun... now!". I think she was shouting to protect herself from falling apart and simply giving up. We thought she was angry with us then, but in later years I have come to understand that she was so afraid. Afraid of what she had done, but more afraid for her husband who was left behind and more afraid for us, her children. When all is done, children are all you have left. We were lucky I think. Things could have been much worse, we could have been left on the road, we could have been exposed when the Russians came, I fear what might have happened to our mother if she had been on those roads. There were no more obstructions or soldiers at cross roads. When we came to Berlin, no one asked to see our papers as everyone began manning what was left of the defenses. It was dark as we drove around debris into a battered and ruined city that was Berlin. We could hear the distant artillery fire, even now it seems almost dreamlike or perhaps a nightmare. Spires of stone with empty windows and no floors pled with the darkness of the night. No one heard or saw through the dust and smoke of the night.
My father, your Opa, pulled the bus from his neighbors barn. He quickly loaded the last of our possessions on board and then went to see our neighbor. The old man had been a family friend from Berlin and they were very close. He knew the man was terribly ill but did not want to leave. This home had been in his family for years. His wife had died bearing their only son and his son had died in the war. Maybe we were the only family he had left. He was old before his time, worn down by the years, and he was dying. I am not sure what it was, perhaps like me he had cancer, or something else. But with a war and devastation everywhere, doctors and medicine were not so easy to find. If you became ill, you either cured yourself or you went to the next life. I think he was ready to go.
He lay there in his bed, breathing shallowly. A few pictures of his wife and child were on the shelf with books, but little else besides the chair. in the living room. He looked at my father and said "I am dying, stay with me please so I do not die alone." My father could not refuse. He consoled himself that his wife and children were well on their way to Berlin, he could stay for a short period. His friend lingered, the life of even the weakest candle tries to remain lit long after the fuel is gone. He would fade in and out, mumbling and perhaps calling to family while my father sat by him. The Russians were coming closer, my father could tell because the front had grown quieter. When there is no fighting, there is only advance, so the silence is perhaps more fearful than the noise. The afternoon sunwas setting low as his friend passed slowly slipped away. My father determined that the next passing he would have to leave. As it was, his friend breathed his last with my father next to him. With a sigh my father rose and turned to leave. There in the front doorway of the living room past the anteroom was a Russian soldier with a rifle trained upon him. The man fired and hit my father in the chest and he fell over his friend.
Some hours later he awoke on the floor. There was blood on his chest and he coughed some up as he slowly raised himself from the floor. His boots were gone, and when he looked outside, he saw his truck was also no longer there. The pain in his chest was horrible and he could not breath deeply for the bullet lodged there. He slowly picked himself up and began what was to him the most hopeless of journeys. He had to get to his wife and children, and so he began; 120 miles, with a bullet in his lungs and the Russians between him and his family.
Final
"My mother came to what was left of our bombed out home in Berlin. We had three walls, a cellar and little else, it was all dust and piles of brick and while it was not a burned out hulk, it was not very intact either. The back wall remained exposed to the inner garden while the front facade to the street remained intact (barely). Hans my older brother went to report to his Hitler Youth group, all of the young boys had to report for the defense of the city, he was all of 14 and old enough to die for the Fatherland, I was but 11 and still felt I should go, but my mother forbade it. We were raised to put society or the state above ourselves. When we were young the state taught us what was right and what was wrong, today I know this is wrong, faith in an institution of the state is too full of the holes, of greed and control. But when you are a desperate nation and a man, even a crazed one offers hope, you tend to follow. Hans went away and Oma busied herself removing the broken glass and bricks in order to create a living space for us. She found some chairs that had not been destroyed and a table, candles came from the car along with pots and pans. She then saw to our little sister, your mother who was only two and had Volka and me continue with the cleaning. We emptied the car of the last of the our possessions, some clothes, a box of family photos. I remember finding some things we could use, some blankets under the rubble of stones that we carefully removed and piled near the fallen forth wall. My mother gave a prayer to God for our father for we did not know where he was and when he would come. He should have been just an hour or two behind us but we weren't sure.
My father moved slowly over the fields. He told me he often lost consciousness as he walked. People who saw him seemed to turn away and it wasn't surprising. He saw himself in a still ditch and saw he had blood on his face around his mouth, clotted and hard, his chest had blood dried upon the white shirt. His normally well coiffed hair was bedraggled and his eyes sunken. He looked as if he were walking death. Sometimes he would chew on the food he carried very slowly since every movement hurt or drink some of the water from a flask he carried and would refill when he saw clean water. In a normal day one could make a brisk walk from Berlin to Pinnow or back in a few days. His shuffle would take much more time. The roads were clearer now than when my mother had left. The Russians had rounded up anyone that was military. They had also rounded up the refugees and taken some of them, women mostly. It is sad, but we know why they did this. The thought did not occur to my father, he only knew as he walked that very few people were around and since the path for walking was not generally on the main roads but fields, he was not noticed. Besides, everyone's attention was focused on Berlin. The city was the prize and it would fall.
A fever had developed as my father walked. He could feel it growing and sometimes would become delirious as he walked, he imagined wolves were trailing him once and woke with the thought of and animals jaws clamping on him. Another time in a panic he awoke in a field at night not knowing where he was or how far he might have traveled. The uncontrollable shivering fits would come on as muscles attempted to instinctively warm him but also made him cough up blood. Even in the hot spring sun he continued to shiver as he walked. The shivering and fever would come, and break, and then it would come back again. He could feel it slowing him down and sapping his strength. 'Please dear God' he pled 'is this how I am to die, without even knowing if my family is safe? Or alive? ' It was family that kept him moving forward, it was the thought of his wife alone in the world, his sons, and his only daughter left to the ravishes of this time. Family and the shear will to live was enough to maintain his life, nothing more could explain it. He would walk mostly at night, and rest during the day. A shed or a barn would be his shelter, once a farmer gave him some food and aspirin in pity, but then hid. It would not be good to draw attention to ones self helping other Germans in these times, not with Russians and worse all about. The farmer was kind as he could be in these times and helped clean my father's face as the growth of the beard grew thicker and the face underneath became thinner. My father could not remember the name, but remembered the face, it was one of sadness. The man thought for sure he would die but helped him anyway.
The dead lay were they fell and one could hear their locations by the incessant buzzing of flies around the corpses. My father forced himself to stop and look or rather scavenge, he found a coat, for the one he lost, He even found a tin of food and can opener, but his hands trembled too much to open it, so he kept it in his pocket. He laughed at that. Could he starve with food in his pocket? Is fate so humorous? At one point the fever came on strongly and he passed out in a field thick with brush. I think he might have died, except a strong spring rain came and helped break the fever and the bushes stopped him from getting too exposed while he lay there. He awoke wet but felt strangely better. Picking himself up he continued forward.
By now the Russians had begun their artillery barrage of the center of Berlin. There were no more defensive regiments left in Berlin. The army had long been broken and now it was little more than Volkstrum (or Peoples Army) and the Hitler Youth in broken formations dealing in some street fighting. My brother Hans went to his patrol. A day later he was back and most harsh in his tears. And was silent and angry for an entire day. Earlier he had met with his group leader and they were given guns, Hans however was given a Panzerfaust, a type of anti tank weapons that fired a projectile into a tank, in theory they had all been taught how to use these things. There were two old men with the five boys and they were told to prepare to defend a street from the Russians. These Russians though, they were the ones who had survived the deprivations of Stalingrad, the starvation that occurred (and even cannibalism), fighting off the German military machine in some horrible death spiral (my Onkel used the word "dance"). They were much stronger, more battle hardened than old men and boys who had never experienced death and fighting on the front., whereas these boys played army, and the old men had not seen a fight since 1914 if even then. It was a fools errand and suicide, it seemed the whole country had committed suicide. While the old men were scared, the children themselves were ready to pee in their pants, as Hans told it. Terror to them were the Russians that their mothers at one time warned them would come for them. In earlier years it was merely a distant threat if one did not do their chores or go to sleep. The idea that the Russians might take you, but no one was really worried then. Those distant scary monster though were now at their doorstep and prepared to kill their families. Hans said they set up formation and waited. He was above the street on what was left of a third floor landing lying flat. He would fire upon the tank from the top where the armor was thinnest. The other boys and old men would be below creating a cross fire. Such is the classic strategy in the military, and yet theory and reality rarely coincide in such things. No tank came but men; men who moved cautiously in skirmish lines with quick eyes and automatic weapons. Those friends on the street below only had single shot bolt action rifles except Hans who had the Panzerfaust. But that weapon was useless and he could only watch helplessly from the landing as his friends and the old men were cut down with almost casual ease. As far as I know this was Han's first exposure to death by violence and I think there was nothing heroic about it. He could not fight because he had nothing to fight with, he could only watch. His boyhood companions all became corpses before his eyes. He could only watch, and remain quiet. Children often think they can live forever, but only until they meet the reality of death. Hans then knew that his life was held by the thinnest thread, that at any time it could be cut. He knew to remain quiet."
Detlef laughed then and wiped a tear. "And now he is in his 80s. I think perhaps he should not be here, but he is."
"When the soldiers had moved on around the corner of the street, and when other soldiers had passed, he shimmied or climbed down the landing, he left the Panzerfaust on the landing, it and he were now a useless part of the defense of Berlin, it was time to go home. The city had fallen.
The relief your Oma felt when Hans returned was in her face as she kissed her brave oldest son. Hans still felt angry, he was angry because he realized that he could do nothing, and probably was glad that he still lived, or guilty. We haven't spoke of it in many years.
Berlin had fallen and the Russians were everywhere. But it was worse than occupation. Germany had been a conqueror and its conquests were without pity and without remorse. The battles fought were fierce and while we had the industry and the technology, the Russians soon matched us and had many many more men. When they came upon us, they showed us the same mercy we showed them. Soldiers were shot since capture was a waste of time. Many of the Russian soldiers knew little of the technology beyond the weapons they fired and killed with. They would wash their potatoes in toilets because such things were unknown to them. Perhaps the worst though was dragging away women and shooting the children if there was protest. Only the very old were safe, and sometimes not even then. Oma smudged her face and tried very much to look like an old crone in case they came through the door. She would send me out to get things but hid herself as much as possible. As the days passed, we realized that our father was probably dead and we as an occupied city would find very little mercy at the hands of our conquerors. We just weren't sure what would happen.
At the same time my father was traveling closer, and while the fever broke, he was still weak, finding some things to eat sometimes from the dead, sometimes from other places. A cough began and that almost killed him. Each shuddering brought pain to him as he moved. He told us later he would alternate between pleading with God and being angry with God for putting this upon him. He would pass out on the road and awake, get his bearings and then continue walking. He passed around villages because he was afraid a road block would put him in a prison and then he would never see us again. It seemed a routine of walking, passing out, eating what little he had, and walking. He said he swore at God, and then begged for His help. It was like his will was all that was left, and while he spoke with God, and felt God didn't answer, he still needed to talk. He begged that the family would be safe, even as he kept his head up and moved. Progress was made, but then he came to an obstacle that he simply could not get around.
There was only one bridge across the canal at Oranienberg and it had Russian military guarding it. He realized that he did not have the strength to cross the canal by swimming as he hid among the trees. He would drown, so close to Berlin only 30 KM from home (18 miles) and yet this would stop him and they would take him far from his family. 'Please' he begged to God. 'Help me go home.' Only silence came back to him. There was nothing left for him and his shallow breath with the blood on his chest and red sputum dribbling from his chin. He had nothing more to give and in despair with a final gulp, he passed out hoping to die.
Detlef looked at me then. "Your generation may never know such hardship, but there are people in the world that do, it is when there is nothing left that you know you are truly broken, when hope ceases and the bitterness of this life lays over you like a blanket that suffocates you. His eyes grew thin and flint hard. That is when you know what the end is like. Oma had no food for us, but if she went out, there is a good chance Russian groups would find her and have their way with her, but we children needed food. Hans and I went out to find potatoes in a bombed store, we dug through the rubble and found scraps that had been thrown away. She needed heat, so we went out along the rail lines to seek coal that might have been dropped from the rail car, but that had already been scoured by others, so we would go to bombed out buildings ready to collapse and dig for the foodstuffs and into old furnaces looking for coal. Sometimes part of the building would collapse while we were in side. Sometimes we were shot at, and you never knew when a bullet or accident would find you. There was little in the way of hope and we presumed that this would be our lives from now on. There was no reason to believe in mercy or hope. My father was dead and we were left alone with nothing. That is how and what we thought.
My father woke up, but not where he had collapsed. He was in a pit or a trench. As he slowly rolled over he saw a dead face staring at him. Then he noticed the flies on his face and flying into his mouth and nostrils. Then he saw legs and arms and bodies all about him. He thought perhaps he was dead, but as his mind cleared he realized he was not. But everyone around him was. Piles of the dead. It seems the Russians had begun to impose a conquerors discipline, or maybe self preservation. Units went about gathering up the dead, knowing that to leave them out and rotting would invite disease that could devastate them as well as the conquered enemy. It was time to clean the mess. They came across my father, and his breathing was so shallow and his face so dead that they assumed he was one of the many many bodies they had to clean from the land. They dropped him in a pit with several others, in fact he was one of the last thrown on that day. The dust of lime was on him and the bodies of the dead and they would probably soon fill in the grave for their makeshift burial, but as luck would have it, not until the next morning. So in the night, like a ghoul he dragged himself over dead bodies to the shallow end of the pit and pulled himself out. He did not recognize where he was, he could be miles away and he despaired again. It was dark and he could see nothing nearby. Camp lights were down the field, and trees stood beside him and to his back, he cleared his mind and thought again. 'Where am I?' As he stumbled and his eyes adjusted he saw a blanket which he put over himself and from it fell a half eaten onion and turnips. Manna from heaven could not be more sweet for him. Slowly he chewed on the old onion, it was a bit rancid but the sustenance was needed, then slowly he gnawed upon the turnips, swallowing the pieces in a slow manner so as not to increase the pain in his chest. The pain in his lungs seemed a constant companion and every hard move he made seemed to cause a sharpness. Now the early predawn light was making itself known to the world.
And with that light he realized where he was, near Berkenverder, they had taken him over the canal to bury him on the side closest to his family. He was only 12 miles away, a brisk walk when he was healthy, a dangerous long walk now, but still much closer. And with renewed strength he began to make his way through the rubble of the city.
The city had settled somewhat as the Russians imposed order, even their own soldiers were now being disciplined and while fear still pervaded, it was taken over by the need to survive as people began seeking to rebuild. My mother was in the back room preparing food for us when there was a knock at the door. Hans grabbed the shotgun as my mother moved over to a corner ready to run, she knew she would be caught, but it was better to be far from the children when it occurred. She told Hans to hide the gun and had me open the door. There before us stood the ghost that was once my father. Your Oma was in tears as we all where, he was hardly recognizable but he was there and we knew him. We ran to hug and kiss him when he collapsed, and it was then we saw the blood on his chest. Mother told Hans to go find a neighbor who was a physicians assistant and tell him to bring tools, and then with tears in her eyes, she took some of the water we had and began cleaning him.
A short time later the assistant came by, led by Hans and he saw my father, and the clotted hole over the lung. 'Perhaps we should keep it in there, I am not sure'. If it moves it could cause more problems, but if we dig it out, it could kill him too. I am not a doctor and I do not think....' My mother said with finality 'Remove it', but do so in two days.' So for two days she fed him soup and they talked and whispered, and talked a bit more. Germans had begun leaving their hiding places and had started cleaning the many many bricks in the city in order to use them to rebuild. One could hear the clicking all day long as Hans and I went out and did the same. We would hire ourselves out for barter with food for something to bring back. While we were never full, and always hungry, we at least felt we might not starve. The assistant found a doctor who would come, but there was no anesthesia to be had. I do not think that it was so hard for my father to lose consciousness, he was very weak. The doctor dug out the bullet and then placed a bandage and said he should be better. He asked for nothing, and smiled at us and then left. I never knew his name. Sometimes in the most bitter pits, one can find humanity.
The other allies had moved in, and we were grateful for the French and the Americans who were more efficient without the viciousness of the Russians. My mother found someone who had an intact kitchen and took over the first floor creating a tavern that served beer and food. My father remained weak for a month and while he improved and his spirits were better, he did not seem his old self. He had lost his hair in the ordeal and he looked much older than before. As the months passed his frail body gained little weight but he helped where he could. My brothers and I all worked cleaning bricks and laying them. We began apprenticing to be brick layers, we had plenty of practice in a city that had few bricks left in the right place, and many bricks to repair. We learned to barter for everything since there was little to no money to be had that wasn't worthless.
My mother was a sharp business woman, she knew how to drive a hard bargain, and soon had a thriving restaurant. As many as two hundred people could pass through in a night, and even if we came from working all day, we were expected to help and clean at night. It was a favorite of American soldiers. Those who occupied the city at first were hard fighters but well disciplined and they were generous. We gladly exchanged our cooking for the food they brought, or the cigarettes we used as barter, or the chocolates. We would have loved to eat those chocolates but dared not. Out mother would not hear of wasting chocolates for the pleasure of a small snack. Better to exchange it for something better and more nutritious. Flour to make bread, or better yet, real butter, or spices, or leaven. She used my fathers contacts to arrange to have beer brought to the pub and as we the economy improved we slowly moved from a barter to a cash economy.
Later American soldiers however were not so well disciplined. My mother saw how American soldiers would use their rations to barter with German women for sex in the restaurant. Other Germans who saw this were also dismayed. So she finally made the restaurant off limits to American soldiers. The next week someone broke all of the windows in the pub. A different type of solider."
"And what of Opa?" I asked my uncle. He caught himself for a moment and looked sad.
In 1946 he wasn't stronger and the doctor diagnosed him with tuerculosis. At that point we were all tested, but found to be negative. We all knew he was dying. The Americans had just developed a cure, but the cure was limited to soldiers of the American forces and it was harder to find than penicillian. All of my mothers profits went to make black market purchases to fight the tuberculosis. Mercury, even chemotherapy, but nothing helped. When some streptomycin was finally made available, it was too late to do much good in 48. Our father was isolated from us. He could no longer touch us or reach out. We were reduced to staring at him through a glass partition as he slowly withered before our eyes. He would smile from his bed and wave and he even seemed grateful. It was a far cry from who he was. But from somethings you simply don't recover. And so his life ended. I think he was all of 40 kilos when he died."
I think then my uncle shuddered a moment and closed his eyes. "Rita, can you take me up to my room. I am very tired, and suddenly very old". We all stood as he did, his wife helped him back into the house, the cancer treatments did tire him more than we realized. We sat there for a few moments saying nothing. A window to a not so distant past had been opened for us, and we saw a glimpse of what had once been. A part of what it meant to be in the Schoenicke family.
Epilogue:
I have had to think on this a bit. Germans, as a people hold a collective guilt. On a macro basis there is no denying the horror and blood brought forth upon the world. It wasn't merely the sheer numbers which on their own are bad enough (though not the worst). It was, I think, the impersonal nature of death in which many Germans had finally been past feeling for their fellow man. That their humanity had been somehow set aside and their victims were reduced to non human chattel to be destroyed. The means was as heartless as the formula for a chemical reaction. No pity, no mercy, merely the snuffing out of life and lives. Whether Germany paid in full measure or not, with its incarceration for generations, with the death of its armies of youth, is in no way quantifiable and many will tell you that the debt can never be fully paid. I tend to agree. Such things cannot be paid by us in this life since we do not know the genius or saint that might have arisen from the six million victims. My perspective in understanding this is more to understand the tragedy and hope of a very personal nature. We are, all of us, swept into the tides and eddies of history. We are often left with little to make sense in a world beyond our ken. When we wish to impose order, we are made to look foolish and not wise and it is often the most foolish of ideas, the love of family, the will or desire to be with those we hold most precious, that makes us seem wise.
A cynic will tell you that my Opa was a man cruelly dealt with. That he lost all and his prayers were the feverish mumblings of a man whose very life was slipping away from him. It is true, the wound and subsequent journey most probably killed him, and not quickly either. The pain of a slow death from a man who outwardly sought to hurt no one, is itself tragic and dark. A man of faith will say my Opa's greatest prayers were answered. He lived to see his family, to know they were safe. To know that his beloved wife had survived and that they would move forward in a world that was going to be better than the world that killed him. I was never much of a nihilist, though sometimes I feel the part. I think God did hear him, and while God allows us the choice as to how we treat each other, he tempers our freedom with His mercy. The words of my uncle reflecting on the loss of my grandfather will not be lost in the wind now. History, my history has spoken and another generation will know the ghosts for the past. Now no one will claim this as holy writ, but it is a passage in the book of life. I am sad from what I have learned, but my heart is gladdened by what will soon be a rising sun this morning. I look to my beautiful wife sleeping next to me and wonder if my devotion to her could possibly equal that of such a man. I want it to. His DNA resides in me and I too am part of the Schoenicke family.
