The Luck of the Weissensteiners (The Three Nations Trilogy) (38 page)

After the Germans had been disarmed the situation became dangerous for Greta and her friends. The Czechoslovak nation had been encouraged by their president in exile to seek revenge and those who followed his call were looking for Germans everywhere, looting their property, beating up men and women and putting those who were considered fit for work into labour camps. In other parts of the country the last of the fighting was coming to an end but for the previously protected Sudetenlanders the atrocities had only just begun. As soon as the first reports of violence reached their farm, the Countess suggested they head for France immediately.

“We won't get through!” warned Esther. “Ilina says there are road blocks everywhere. The army needs the road
s and won't let any civilians use them until their manoeuvres are over.

“I am sorry but I can't wait. Call me a
coward but I won't sit here and wait for some mob to roughen us up,” the Countess admitted.

“I am afraid we don't have an option,” Edith stated calmly.

“Oh yes we do,” the Countess replied and mounted one of the horses. “I wish I had it in me to stick with you, my friends, but I can't. I am leaving you everything I have brought with me but I will take this horse and try to get out on my own. Please forgive me!” and with that she galloped onto the road, without a single glance back.

Her sudden and abrupt departure left the four women speechless. The remaining horses were insufficient to travel on in the same luxurious manner they had
gotten accustomed to. Shocked by the Countess and her solo lead, suddenly they too considered leaving – now of course on foot and without much luggage.

T
hey repacked parts of their clothes into bed linen and carried them over their shoulders. Three people at a time could sit on the horses while the others would walk beside them. Eager to leave before a wave of hate crimes could reach them they left immediately.

Greta found herself a little unsettled by the cowardly actions of the Countess who had always been so strong and confident. After all, they were in the American zone and relatively safe from the feared violence by the Soviet liberators. Vengeance by the Czechs could not be as bad as it was made out to be. The Americans were there to intervene. Seeing her Highness abandoning everyone s
o hastily infected her with fear.

They did not get far. After a few miles of walking in the f
ields beside the road that led west to Bavaria they met with a group of armed Czech men who were demanding to see their papers. Greta answered in her Slovak dialect that they did not have any. She had burnt the Finsterwalder papers as soon as they had heard that the Americans were coming and buried the remains in the soil near their farmhouse. Being a German was no longer of use. Unfortunately many Germans in the Sudetenland and the former Protectorate had done exactly the same and the men on the control post were already no longer satisfied with dialect as the only proof of nationality.

“Why are you heading w
est? Don't you want to go home to Slovakia?” asked one of them. “What have you got to hide?”

“We got nothing to hide!” Greta
replied quickly. “We prefer not to be come in contact with Russian soldiers. We will go back home to Slovakia when they have gone.”

“What about you two?” the man asked Edith and Esther.

“German Jews,” Greta lied. “They want to go back home and meet with their family.”

“I guess I should have seen that,” admitted the Czech man. “Good luck and
be careful. You are in Sudetenland territory with still a lot of Nazi rats at large!” he warned them and sent them on their way.

After only a few more miles they were held up by another Czech patrol.

“Why are you heading west and not home to Slovakia?” they were asked again. “If you leave the country to the Bolsheviks you won't have any place to go home to.”

“We are scared of the soldiers. They don't have much respect for women,” Greta answered. “And they don't like Jews either,” she added.
“Especially if they are Germans.”

“All the Germans are being rounded up in camps,” said the Czech now in a militant tone. “Have you not heard the orders? You shouldn't be leaving. You must report to the
authorities.”

“But they are Jews. It is obvious, why waste time?” asked Greta persuasively.

“Let the camp commanders decide who is a Jew and who is pretending to be one. No one must be allowed to escape their justice. Who of you are Germans?” he asked.

“This is absurd. Look at us,” Greta pleaded. “Can't you see we are all Jewish? It doesn't take a bureaucrat or expert to see that. Please let us continue on our way. We still have a long journey ahead of us.” 

The man hesitated, and conferred with one of his colleagues in a whisper. At that moment a group of women approached the check point, trying to get around it without acknowledging the guards. The Czech men stopped them and quickly had identified them as Germans. During a quick search it was found that one of them had a swastika painted on her forehead which she had tried to hide under a head shawl. 

The patrol men threatened
the women with their rifles and opened their suitcases stripping them of money, food and jewellery. The men demanded all rings and watches, took the shoes off their victims and then surprisingly let them go without arresting them.

“Consider
yourselves lucky,” one of the men shouted at them. “This is nothing compared to what you did to us. Get out of our sight before we change our mind.”

The women started to run but it was remarkable how they had managed to remain so
stoic throughout the ordeal. Greta wondered where they had found the strength to endure the humiliation so easily. Was it a guilty conscious or was this nothing compared to what they already had been through? Had they committed crimes or were they innocent? If they had been guilty, what exactly could they have done? Greta had been unable to guess from their demeanour. She had expected some pleading of innocence or begging for forgiveness, but the women had given nothing away.

“You can go too,” the guard told Greta and her entourage. “I believe you, but
be careful. Others are stricter than I am. President Benes asked us to take revenge on all Germans. I personally just want them to be gone as fast as they can run but some of my colleagues want to enjoy the punishment. Good luck and shalom!”

Greta thanked him and they went on their way.

“We better not waste any more time,” Edith said. “That was a narrow escape.”

Greta looked at her scornfully, nodding at Ernst and Wilma, as if to say: 'Don't make this any harder on these two than we have to.'

Wilma stiffened when she witnessed how the women had been treated by the patrol. Esther had held her tight and squeezed her hand, managing to keep her fragile friend under control. The hysteria however got to Wilma soon after they had passed the control point and she was quietly sobbing and shaking. When they decided to take shelter in a nearby forest for the night Wilma’s nerves finally gave up and she entered into a state of mad frenzy, calling for her father and her brother.

Edith and Greta decided to use one of the few injections they had left to keep her calm for the night but the medication didn't work as well as they would have hoped. Wilma was restless, plagued by nightmares a
nd woke everyone with her whimpering.

The next morning their party w
as shattered from lack of sleep; Ernst was the only one who seemed to not be affected. Wilma at least had exhausted herself and had entered into a lethargic state. She sat on one of the horses during the morning. Ernst suddenly wanted to know where they were going and why.

“We are going to meet the Countess in Paris,” said Esther with an excited tone in her voice that sounded a little too strained to fool even the young boy.

“Why?” he asked unimpressed.

“She has a lovely place there and she has invited us to visit. It would be impolite to turn down such a request,” Edith chipped in. If her lover had to try to cheer up the boy she h
ad to do a bit better than that she thought and she decided to take over the task.

“I am absolutely sure that you will love it. It is a beautiful place right in the city of Paris. Have you ever heard about the Eiffel Tower and the big Cathedral of Notre Dame? They are fine sights to be seen. There is no city just like Paris,” she promised him. The poor little boy was going through so much at such a young age. They all had a responsibility to make this as smooth for him as possible.

“I have seen a book with pictures of Paris in the library,” Ernst replied casually. “But why has the Countess left us?” he wanted to know undeterred.

“She went ahead so she can get the place tidy for us. There will be a huge party when we get there,” Esther promised her little prince, having composed herself and up for the task of lightening the mood.

“The French make excellent bread and sweets. There are streets with nothing but shops for chocolate and pastries. You will love them,” Esther assured him.

“Where is grandfather?”
Ernst asked suddenly. “And Alma?”

“Oh,
they are waiting for Egon. The minute your uncle is back from the war they will join us in Paris and then we will all be together,” said Esther.

“Will my father be there too?” asked Ernst.

“Maybe not in Paris but once he comes back from the war you can
meet him. I think you will most likely see him in Berlin,” answered Greta. “He is always busy and he told me that he can hardly leave his house there, he has so much work to do.

“What does he do there?” asked the boy.

“He works in a big bookshop. You remember the big library at the manor house that Wilma and I often worked in?” asked Greta.

“Yes.”

“It is a place just like that, only he sells the books from the shelves. They have even more books than the Countess has collected in her library. Do you remember how long it took your aunt and me to get those shelves into order? Then you can imagine how much he has to do. He has got to do it all by himself. He couldn't just leave and travel to Paris but one day I hope you can go and visit him,” Greta promised.

Ernst
’s curiosity was satisfied.

It was a beautiful sunny day but for travellers it was almost too hot. Whenever possible they made short stops to cool down in the shade of trees. They had advanced only a
small fragment of their way but were already exhausted. There were much fewer people on the road than there had been between Budweis, Pilsen and Carlsbad. Edith put this down to the fact that there was no longer the danger from the Red Army but it felt a little strange to see so few refugees.

The road bloc
ks meant that many people were unable to move, especially those unwilling to leave luggage and means of transport behind but there had to be more Germans on the run concerned about the violent acts of retribution by the Czechs. Greta was very troubled by what the last road patrol had said to her about his colleagues. Sooner or later they could run into some unreasonable Czechs or militia and be mistaken for Germans.

She found it hard to understand why Germans should be interned when the goal of the nation was to rid itself of them as soon as possible. While she was still trying to see the reason behind this illogical policy a large truck approached on the road ahead of them. I
t was a German army truck with the Czechoslovak flag hanging out of one window. Greta prepared herself for the next patrol and its questioning but the truck drove past them. Greta saw that the back of the truck was heaving with civilians and she guessed that these were Germans being transported into the next internment camp. If there had been any more space the driver would have probably stopped and frisked them. That was one more escape she thought, hoping that their luck would hold out just a little bit longer until they had passed the border into Germany. Once there they hopefully would be free from worries about controls and misunderstandings, even though there might be other issues which they had not anticipated.

Obviously their group had chosen the right route to avoid the American road blocks, which
were affecting traffic running south or north rather than west or east. Greta and her friends were running low on food provisions but decided not to try and buy anything until they were across the border. The Countess had told them how in Pilsen, even during the last few weeks of the war, Czech shopkeepers were already refusing to sell food to Germans and entering a local shop as a stranger could easily lead to complications that they could do without.

In the early afternoon the truck they had seen in the morning came back empty and promptly stopped next to them by the side of the road.

“Papers!” an armed Czech officer shouted in German.

Greta answered in Slovak that they were not in possession of passports. Before she got to explain any further the officer aimed his rifle at her and shouted at her to shut up. His colleagues stormed from the truck and searched their luggage.

Esther said “Jewish”, but one officer only laughed and hit her in the face. “Shut up!” he shouted and continued his search of their luggage. The soldiers took all of their jewellery and stuffed them into their own pockets. Wilma panicked completely, grabbed Ernst and tried to run away to a nearby little forest but one of the armed men chased after her and pushed her to the floor, pulled her up by her hair and dragged her back to the side of the road. “Ugly woman,” he said to his friends and laughed dirtily.