Flucht from Schönwalde - West Prussia (West Preussen)

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Memories
or
The river of life

Flucht from Schönwalde - West Prussia (West Preussen)
by Manfred Schreyer (c1986)

Carl was sitting by the window, his feet on the red couch, his one arm holding his head, staring outside from a very small living room. He didn’t look at anything in particular. It was like he forgot where he was. His mind wandered into his past, and it didn’t take him long until he reached with his memories the place he had loved so much, and circumstances changed so fast he didn’t even have time to cry in all these years.

Carl was born in 1888 in Schönwalde in West Prussia, on a farm his parents worked and which he later inherited from them. The farm was near the woods which stood tall, surrounded by small ponds, and it seemed like the peace which was present in this part of the country was mixed with the breath of eternity; almost like the small village in Ohio I live close by and I know as Fairhaven. He remembered the smell of the fresh soil he turned with the plow pulled by his team of horses. He thought of his brothers and sisters and remembered his neighbors he knew forever: The “Martin family” and the “Langowske family.” And he remembered his then young wife Else who, when she looked now in his eyes, remembered the tragedy which had occurred years ago.
Carl had never been afraid to work. He was a good steward of his land. He was respected and well liked in his community. Nobody ever thought that anything could go wrong. Life was simple, full of friends and being a family meant more to people than today. Life had never changed in this part of the world. Politics were made hundreds of miles away and the news traveled in a multitude of weeks to the people. Carl and his family always said that this was their land and home and they would never leave it. But that was then, some 40 years ago.

Life changed in 1920. Carl had lost two of his brothers, “Otto” and “Ernst August” in the first World War. He missed them, he missed their advice, their laughter and he missed their voice. It felt like someone took something away that didn’t belong to them. Germany had lost the war; West Prussia was now part of Poland and ruled by Marshall Pizuzki. Marshal Pizuzki was a fair winner; he respected the Germans and he asked them if they would like to change their nationality. Many Germans did, most of them Catholics. Carl refused, his heart was with his tradition of being German.
Life did not change much until Riz Schmigly, a military officer, replaced Marshall Pizuzki. Schmigly seeded hate in the country: Slogans like, “Germans leave now,” enticed the Polish people to change their minds about their immediate German neighbors. Carl became aware of instances where the Poles confiscated land from Germans, his daughter, Elsbeth, had to learn Polish in school and was ousted by her friends who once spent the night at the farm with her. During the daytime, the peaceful setting was often interrupted by military maneuver sounds from the distance.

Carl’s thoughts were interrupted by his wife while his pipe was ready to fall out of his mouth: “What are you thinking about Carl?” As if she didn’t know. “Nothing, nothing,” he mumbled through his heavy, black and grey woven mustache. He took a deep breath . . . “Nothing.”

His mind wandered back to the morning when the mayor ordered of Carl’s farming village all Germans to come to the village restaurant. The mayor told Carl and the other Germans what low lives they were, and why don’t they leave, and if they were found with just one ounce of German propaganda, they would be put against the wall and killed. Carl saw his friends who were Polish and whom he once played cards and laughed with standing right beside the mayor. He saw farm workers whom he had employed. They now yelled words and phrases full of hatred. But he could also see they weren’t able to look him in his face. After that meeting at the restaurant, Polish military often entered the farm house and searched for propaganda material and guns. At one time they threw everything out of the house: Furniture, linen which had been in the family for a long time, Elsbeth's toys, pans and even love letters Carl wrote to Else when he courted her. Else cried so much. The mean actions of the Polish soldiers initiated a feeling of hurt in his wife that Carl had never seen in her before, and cold chills went down his spine. He knew how much she was hurt, but Carl didn’t say anything. On another occasion when the polish soldiers searched the house they took Carl’s binoculars; he was so proud of them. The binoculars had brought him the enjoyment of watching the wild life on his farm he loved so much.

For eight years, Carl and his family endured this aura of hate. On the 31st of August 1939, at 5:00 a.m., the night was interrupted by heavy artillery fire from the distance. And just as Carl got up out of bed to check what was going on, military soldiers entered the farm house without knocking. Tall blond soldiers with smiles on their faces stood in the door entry and yelled: “We are here to free you from the Polish occupation! Heil Hitler.” It was the beginning of the second World War, a beginning Carl knew was a beginning of a sad melody which was always going to hum in his mind.
Through relatives, he found out that some Poles resisted the German invasion. In a town twenty miles away, a town called Bromberg, the Poles put all Germans together, thousands of them, transported them to the river of Brahe which divided the historical city, slaughtered them in a horrible massacre and threw all of them into the river. The river mercilessly carried the dead bodies downstream just like tears, which left the water red, full of blood. Blood from small children, wives and husbands. Vicious, senseless murder, but the river forgot fast.
In only eighteen days the Germans won the war against Poland and peace settled back into the farm. Carl never spoke about the previous and current circumstances. If they asked him, he always said: “It will be all right.” Polish workers asked for their jobs back on the farm and Carl, without a feeling of hate, gave it to them. All previous experiences were more like a bad dream which had interrupted a beautiful setting.

“Are you ready for supper,” Else asked? Carl moved his legs from the couch and lit up his pipe again. “No, I am not hungry, I’ll eat later.” “ Grandpa, can you go outside with me and peel me an apple from the fruit trees with your pocketknife?” his grandchild asked him. It was not the apple the grandchild wanted to have, but Carl had a certain way of handling his knife. “Ok,” he said while slowly getting up from the couch, putting his hand on the shoulder of the young 5-year-old boy and leaving the room. His grandson visited him once a year, he was so happy to be with his Grandpa. “I love you Grandpa,” the young boy said. Carl didn’t answer because his mind retrieved back to his past. It wandered to 1941: Gerhard, his 9-year-old son, ran in from the barnyard and told his Carl, his dad: “Janeck said the Germans are in war with the Russians. Why?” Carl, later that evening, explained to his wife that nobody had ever won a war against the Russians. Life went on and after a long summer Fall set in. The winds were cooler than usual, the trees lost their color as if they were afraid of time and the winter to come. Winter came unexpectedly and with a cruel force! The freezing cold became terrifying. This winter was going to be remembered in history as “The Winter of Stalingrad.” Thousands of German troops were surrounded by Russian troops under the leadership of General Zukov, because the German troops were unable to move. They had no food, parts of their body were frozen off, they suffered from open wounds, and their military machinery was unable to operate. That winter, 40,000 Germans died in the nights of Stalingrad and 110,000 were deported into a region of Russia where the cold temperature was constantly stable, Siberia. Siberia was synonymous with death, starvation, hard labor and inhumanity. But what was human in these times? After the war, only 5,000 of the 110,000 deported would return home to Germany. For Carl's family the winter was always going to be remembered. Günther, their youngest son, went outside with his hair wet because he had just washed it. He later died because of a meningitis infection which was incurable at the time. Else cried more than the day the Polish searched their house. They buried him in the graveyard where all of Carl’s family lay. Carl was taken by the loss of his son, the one who would have inherited his farm. Carl only said, “It is all in God’s hands.” Full of sorrow, life seemed endless and empty. For more than 10 years Carl and his family endured sadness and broken hearts, but these incidents were nothing of the things yet to come.

Carl handed his grandson the peeled apple, and his grandson could see a small tear running down Carl's wrinkled, hardened face. “Are you all right, Grandpa?” “I am all right,” he said while he was folding up his pocketknife and putting it back into his black, wide, worn-out corduroy pants.

That winter, rumors of the Russians moving in closer to the farm became ever more frequent. Carl sometimes put his ear to the ground before he went to bed to see if he could hear how far away the Russians were, and told his family on occasion to sleep in the basement. All of that he ordered in a calm, humble voice, not to scare the family.
Gerhard, his son, was asking a lot of questions, and Elsbeth, the older daughter, tried to answer them all. The routine of peace was gone. “Why are we sleeping in the basement?” “What is that noise coming from the distance?” “I want to sleep in my bed.” Gerhard started to cry and put his face on his sister’s lap. The artillery fire came in closer, and Carl said it was time to leave. He hitched up his horses in the cold night; his wife put pans, bedclothes and the love letters in the wagon. The harness was hard to put on the horses due to the freezing cold. It was almost like they were resisting the trip. During all the commotion, Elspeth recognized that her brother did not ask any more questions. He said nothing. He was quiet, as if he knew there would be no return. As if this was organized, other families joined the trek and it seemed like no one knew where they were going. It was only in a westerly direction, away from the heavy military fire. “Aren’t you leaving?” Carl asked one of the neighbors? “No, we’ll be alright. If the Russians come, they won’t hurt us. We didn’t do anything.” Carl did not answer. Carl’s family felt secure with him. The trek was moving slow, because Carl helped other farmers who were stuck in the deep snow. Some only had one horse to hitch. It was horrible; it was hard to keep halfway warm, the animals suffered and were exhausted after only one night. The wagon trek stopped at a large farm building which the owner had abandoned. About 20 families stopped there; it was like they were giving up their hope in order to escape from the Russians. Only one day later, some Russians stopped at the farm on their small Mongolian horses. They looked worse than Carl’s family. The Russians paid no attention to the families. They untied Carl’s and the other families’ horses. They took the bedclothes from the house and covered themselves; their faces were full of pain. They searched desperately for food items. One of them spoke in almost perfect German to Carl: “You Germans killed my entire family, but I will not kill you!” Gerhard, Carl’s youngest son, couldn’t understand the meaning of that sentence. He thought that his family had killed the Russian soldier’s family. The Russian soldier disappeared in the ice cold winds of that day.

“Grandpa, what am I supposed to do with the seeds?” his Grandson interrupted his thoughts about the Russian soldier. “If you plant them, there may be a tree growing next year when you come back to visit me.” Carl looked in his small amazing, smiling face and it reminded him of his daughter, Elsbeth. His grandson looked exactly like his mother. Carl bent over to press the seeds into the ground. “Wow, Grandpa, maybe I’ll be able to peel my own apple when I get bigger.” Carl heard only the beginning of his Grandson’s sentence.

His mind was on the Russian soldiers who arrived after the first ones had left. One of the soldiers, a high-ranking officer, got off his horse, looked at Carl’s daughter, Elsbeth, and demanded with a strong accent: “I woant five watches, or MAJSIBIE TAM ROBOTKO NOVA,” meaning, there is enough work in Siberia. “Yo, giirl, are responsible . Go louk, and find me some watches.” Elsbeth and Carl knew that there were no watches. Elsbeth hid that night in the hayloft of that place. Else, Carl’s wife, was incapable to cry the whole night. She knew if the soldier would find Elsbeth he would kill her because she was unable to come up with the watches. Both Carl and Else laid awake and listened to the soldiers who were getting drunk. They sung some sad songs into the night. Their voices were mixed with homesickness and patriotism. But then they heard a female voice shouting with anxiety into the night: “Help me, someone, help me.” The Russians laughed in an alcoholic delirium. Else and Carl rushed to the door and they saw a girl strapped to the side of a Russian horse, her head bouncing on the snow; her hair was flying, and the Russian rider tried to entice his horse to run and jump over tree stumps. A Russian soldier spotted Carl: “Da Dogjie,” “Go Home.” Carl couldn’t do anything. It was the neighbor’s 16-year-old girl they had strapped to the horse. They found her later that ice cold morning after the soldiers left her. Her body was frozen stiff and in a fetal position. Innocents, surrounded by snow, white snow. Elsbeth, his daughter, survived and it often entered his mind if they had mistaken the neighbor’s girl for his daughter. Carl thought about his two brothers who didn’t leave the home farm. He later found out that the Polish rounded up all the Germans into a Lutheran Church. They didn’t let them go to the bathroom and they starved them to death. The church was torn down after the war and a tower was erected saying: “Remembering the tyranny of Adolf Hitler.” The third group of soldiers was arriving and ordered everybody against the wall. They found a pocketknife on Carl and stuck a revolver into his mouth. Else will never forget Gerhard's face as he looked up to his dad. “You were trying to kill Russians with the knife, Heh?” He put his revolver back into the holster and broke out laughing. “Are the Germans trying to win the war with a pocketknife?” “We’ll teach you a lesson.” Carl’s body was not overcome by fear; he learned to live with it.

“Grandpa can I please see your pocket knife,” his grandson asked as they walked back to the house. “It’s too hard to open for you,” Carl answered. Carl’s mind went back to the place of thinking he had just left off.

The German owner of the farm Carl’s family and the rest were staying at came back to his home place. He had fought for the German army. He was thin, his worn out civilian clothes didn’t fit him. You couldn’t really tell that he was a German soldier but a small swastika on his hat, barely covering his red ears, gave him away. He was looking desperately for his family, who once lived on the farm before he was called to war. He couldn’t find them. A Russian soldier spotted the swastika: “You German Pig, you are coming here after you killed my people.” “You Nazi pig . . . we will show you what we do with people like you.” The poor German soldier asked: “Where is my family?” “I just want to see my family . . . ” The Russians tore his clothes off, and tied him between two horses. His arms were tied to one horse and his legs to another. One of the soldiers whipped the horse full with enjoyment, so the horses would move in opposite directions. His body was literally ripped into pieces between the two horses, and the blood from his body was steaming in the cold air. Alfred Kent, a relative and intimate friend who had visited Carl during the war at his old farm, told him that horrible things were going on. He couldn't talk about it. He just mentioned that Jewish people were deported to concentration camps and mistreated and killed. Alfred said he had to be careful talking about it; in times like these you can’t trust anybody, father against the son, the son against the father. Else couldn’t believe it, she said it can’t be. “Why would anybody do such a thing?” Until she saw the owner of the bakery being picked up by the German Gestapo. Else never saw him and his family again. She had always bought her bread there. Mr. Goldstein had been living there as long as she could remember. The German soldier, who died by the mighty power of the horses’ strength, died a very slow death. His screaming voice must have been heard for miles. It was the same scream as from Carl’s cousin, Emil. Emil was the first who drove a car in his home village, a wealthy mill owner. One night, the Poles picked him up, stripped him naked and deported him. He never came back. The next morning Carl told his family that it was time to leave. No horses, no food, no pain, only memories. Carl’s children were mentally exhausted.

“Grandpa, do you think that the new tree we are growing will have red or green apples?” the Grandson asked. Carl answered with a smile, “I don’t know, we’ll have to wait until next year when you visit me again.” The grandson saw his grandpa drop his head.

Carl’s mind wandered off again. His mind was on the long walk into nowhere. He thought about the hundreds of dead bodies along the roads. Nobody stopped, nobody asked questions, nobody cried for them. The sky was surrounded by fire of artillery from the Germans and the Russians, and the whole family was freezing. Gerhard hardly spoke a word anymore. On occasion they met German soldiers who cried out for help. These soldiers didn’t look like soldiers; these were 14 and 15-year-old boys. A Russian soldier stopped Carl’s family, took his daughter, Elsbeth, lifted her skirt, and whipped her legs with a leather whip. Then they stopped. “Where is your brother?” “Is he killing our families in our motherland?” Carl was helpless. Blood came through the thin pants she wore under her skirt and dripped down her ankle, while the Russian soldier kept on whipping her harder. “Where is he?” She knew they thought she had a brother fighting for the German army. Finally the soldiers left. It was a long walk. About 400 miles, but it seemed like thousands. Illustrated by the worst pictures life had to offer.

The day the war ended, they had finally arrived in a small village called Essel. By state order, a farmer had to give them a roof over their heads and food. The farmer put them in a brick chicken house and always complained to Carl and the German government why he was supposed to help them. He made Carl’s family feel like dirt. Carl’s brothers all died, and so did their families. And he never complained. He worked on that farm, although unwelcomed, to pay the farmer rent, until he retired on a very small social security check. Carl had seen the worst life has to offer. He never said a bad word of hatred against anybody and must have forgiven everybody whoever hurt him and his family.

While Carl, MY Grandpa, was walking into the now remodeled chicken house, I asked him: “Would you please water our tree while I am gone?” My Grandpa answered with a sonar voice, “Sure, I do what I can.”

Are we doing all we can, even if it seems impossible to give more than expected? My Grandpa died the year after I left from my vacation in 1969. I never got to see him again and the tree from the apple seed never grew. My Grandma died soon after. My uncle Gerhard does not like to speak about his experience of the war. The child who was once active and always asked many questions before the war started, is very quiet and very reserved in his emotions. In 1984, the year I immigrated to the United States, my mom, Carl’s daughter, Elsbeth, and I visited for the first time the old farm my Grandpa’s family had to leave, which he loved so very much. Thirty-five years had gone by. My mom was crying her heart out; it must have been the same cry my grandma had in 1939. While she was crying, the old hardwood door of her home opened and out came an old lady. She was an old Russian woman. “Why are you crying?” she said in Russian. My mom answered in broken Russian: “This used to be my home and I have so many memories.” The old lady opened her arms and embraced my mom and both were crying for a long time. She said she was so sorry and she didn’t want the farm. Her family was deported from their farm from the other side of the Soviet Union to the occupied territory. My mom learned that the old lady missed her home just as she did.

How often do we really try to understand other peoples’ circumstances? Do you know, really know, your neighbor? Have you ever embraced your friend and neighbor and forgot all circumstances which hinder you to do so?

My Grandpa Carl Julius Kottke did. I love you Grandpa.