The Luck of the Weissensteiners (The Three Nations Trilogy) (43 page)

“Will you allow me to plant another tree on top of the grave as a secret memorial?” Alma asked.

“Anything you like, my dear. I am so sorry for you. I hope you will stay with us on the farm to keep my Johanna company.” he said with a wink.

“I would love to.”

The first few days after Jonah's death seemed never ending and Alma was glad that there was a lot of hard work to be done in the fields. It tired her physically so much that she managed to forget about her grief at least a few times each day. Halyna with her own worries and sadness was a godsend because it allowed Alma to direct her mental energy on to other things instead of just stewing in self-pity.

Jonah would never have wanted her to break down over this and would have told her to keep
the focus on her own life and the present. Finding Halyna's children would be difficult if not impossible.

Neither the army nor the authorities were in a position yet to reunite separated families or even to gather the relevant information. They would have to hold out here for a little bit longer before their search could begin and be successful. On the other hand the Soviets were rushing the re-homing of
the displaced people from the east, a workforce on which the local farmers like Jaro had relied upon of late.

The thought of losing Halyna as well was simply too painful for Alma to address at all and they failed to take precautions. There was a sense of false security amongst the workers who knew how important they were for the farmers, factories and the economy, especially once all Germans would be expelled. They were mentally not prepared for the rigid and dogmatic way in which the deportations were going to be carried out.

Only two days after Jonah had died military trucks arrived at the farm and Soviet soldiers rounded up everyone they thought to be of eastern European nationality. Jaro tried to intervene and save some of his workforce but the officers were following orders and whoever could not produce satisfactory papers or had aroused the suspicion of the soldiers was loaded onto the trucks. Halyna and Alma both were taken away and brought to an old school building near the station in Bratislava.

One high ranking officer sat on a table in the middle of the school yard with three interpreters and one by one the prisoners were interviewed about their origins, their place of birth, names of local politicians and
landmarks. Most people trying to hide their nationality failed quickly but others had been better prepared and they managed to fool their interrogators. According to the findings by the four examiners everyone was escorted to a different part of the school building.

Halyna failed the test to pass herself off as a local and she was ushered towards a group of wome
n right by the end of the courtyard, without the chance to say goodbye to her friend. Worried about what may become of Halyna in her mental state if left alone, Alma decided that she had nothing left to lose and tried to get on the same transport as Halyna, claiming to be from the same village in the Ukraine as her friend.

The examining officers knew that she was lying but wanted to know why. Instead of being sent to join her friend Alma was kept behind with other prisoners who had escaped the deportation. She had to spend the night in a small sports hall, sleeping on the naked floor. From her fellow inmates she learned that she was amongst the women suspected to be enemies of the state and that her situation was very serious. Alma would be re-examined by a specialist inspector who got to decide if she would be sent to a gulag or somewhere else.

When she asked if anyone knew what would happen to the people that were kept in the yard corner she was informed that these prisoners had been selected for the first train home. By the time it was her turn to meet the next inspector she had already missed the train Halyna was on. So she told the truth, hoping to be released and to be allowed to return to Jaro and Johanna. Sadly this time no one believed her either and fed up with what appeared to be a waste of his time the special agent dealing with her decided to transfer her to a camp in Siberia. No pleading and arguing helped her cause and she found herself on an eastbound train the very next day.

Even on the train, crowded in and surrounded by people already resigned to their fate, she could not believe her misfortune after all the trials and dramas that she had survived. Priso
ners on the train related horrific tales about the gulag life ahead of her, yet her main worry was with Halyna. Not only was the poor woman alone under people who might not be sympathetic to her mental condition but she might never be able to return and look for her kidnapped children.

Had Alma told the truth at the tribunal from the beginning she might have had at least a chance to stay behind and execute that task for her friend. Her own life did not matter much to her any more now that Jonah had passed. She would never meet her friend Johanna again and she had let do
wn her Ukrainian friend - and all in vain. For the first time since the beginning of her life in Slovakia she felt completely powerless and drained of all energy. She spent her time in the train compartment in withdrawn isolation and sleep - as much as that was possible. 

Chapter 12: Summer 1945 - The Camp

Edith and Esther's roommates
were a difficult bunch. Directly next to the two ladies on their left a German woman had settled in with her two young children and she frequently looked at Esther with suspicion. There were rumours amongst the Germans that Czech and Jewish spies had infiltrated the camp to pick out who were regarded as the worst offenders and war criminals. How else could one explain that nobody had been questioned and no distinction had been made between the prisoners so far?  There was deep mistrust between everyone.

Ernst spoke German with an accent, so the trio must have seemed a little dubious to their roommates. The suspicious woman's name was Gerlinde and she had a hard time keeping her sons, Heinrich and Adolf, away from Ernst. The three boys were of a similar age and immediately took a liking to each other. Despite all circumstances they saw the camp more like a summer holiday than an imprisonment.

Ernst was very happy to finally have playmates his own age while the two German boys were relieved simply to get away from their mother, who was constantly telling them off. Gerlinde seemed a lot more bitter than anyone else. During the first few days in the camp, whenever she had to go somewhere, she ordered her sons specifically not to speak to anyone and to wait quietly for her return; the second she was gone however they rushed over to play with Ernst.

Edith found out from the little boys that Gerlinde had been the wife of a high ranking SS officer from Dresden who had been 'killed by the hands of some dirty Bolshevik pig' in Russia. After the air raids had set the city on fire, Gerlinde was homeless and decided to take to the road. Once the widow realised that her story was known she allowed the children to play together but she still kept a distance from everyone. Within the hut community she seemed to trust only one other person, a young woman called Irmingard, who had been engaged to a soldier named Ralph who was missing since 1943.

Irmingard was much friendlier towards her inmates than her confidante but Edith and Esther found it hard to establish warm relations with her.  Having given her heart to a proud and elegant soldier true to the Reich, Irmingard refused to accept the end of what she had naively considered the golden age of Germany. She was not educated enough to have a proper grasp of the Nazi ideology and all its implications, but she had been drawn towards the imagery and the rhetoric and refused to believe any of the 'evil and hateful propaganda' that was now directed against the Nazis.

Six years ago she had made a commitment to Ralph and the Fuhrer and had patiently waited for the best part of her youth: For victory, for the occasional home visits of her lover from the front or for the birth of a child, which would be her ultimate gift to the only two worthwhile men in her life. She too had heard rumours about spies within the camp and had sworn to Gerlinde to be careful with whom she discussed politics but in her loneliness and pain she easily got carried away and voiced
,  or rather repeated, the party slogans about races and the European war without noticeable inhibitions. The two Nazi women had soon made such a name for themselves that even those who agreed with them kept their distance for fear that undercover officers were listening in.

Irmingard and Gerlinde often whispered to each other even when they were alone, the former always hopeful and naïve, the latter usually in a foul mood and in need of a little cheering up.

“You must not despair, Gerlinde. Your husband died for a good cause. He was a hero who died with honour,” Irmingard once tried to reassure her ally.

“I know all that,” was the abrupt reply. “That is no good to me now. I have two children to feed and I will have to start from square one. We don't even know where we will end up after this prison. God knows what they have in mind for us!”

“No, you must not give in to fear. This is all just a temporary setback. I believe that the Fuhrer is not really dead,” Irmingard continued. “He is still alive and is forming another German army as we speak, to liberate us from the shame of occupation. Do you know how many of us in the Sudetenland voted for Henlein? Two thirds! Can you imagine! There have to be many more potential soldiers in this country, just waiting to hit back. They call them the German Werewolves, and the Czechs are scared of them. It is only a matter of time! The German prisoners in Russia will overpower their guards and march to Moscow. We are a strong nation and we will not be beaten. You must not believe what we are being told over here. Just remember how far the Reich has stretched across Europe. It can't just shrivel to the size of a peanut and stay that way. It is not in the nature of our race to give in. We are a huge nation and we need all that space, we deserve it. We will overcome our enemies in the end.”

“Oh you make me laugh with your ideas,” Gerlinde said cynically.  “For crying out loud, Irmingard, we are detained in a camp by Czechs and Russians. The Reich is over.”

“No it is not!” Irmingard insisted. “You must not believe what they are telling us. Maybe this is a setback but our Fuhrer has planned everything through to the end, of that, I am as certain as I can be. Just think of all the Russians, Poles and Jews that your husband has killed. How many children these men and women might have had? This is far from over, believe me.”

“They killed my husband
too, I don't know what I should be hoping for now!” Gerlinde said with bitterness in her voice.

“Thank your lucky stars that he already gave you two amazing boys who will take his place. They will help repopulate this country and make it once again a force to be reckoned with. That is why Hitler encouraged us to have children. If only I had been so lucky myself. Not that we didn't try,” Irmingard carried on.

“I don't know about what is coming for us Germans but I sure as hell do not regret a single shot my husband fired,” said Gerlinde with a sinister tone in her voice. “I despise the Jews and the Slavs and I cannot bear to see their faces all smug and superior. It is quite disgusting to think that those evil and inferior bastards have triumphed and are allowed to rule the world. If it was not for them there would not have even been a war.”

“They will get what they deserve.” Irmingard said.

“My husband came here once after the Czechs assassinated their German leader Heydrich, who used to be a good friend of our family, a great man, and a credit to our race. My husband Wolfgang asked to be transferred to participate in the revenge, until they needed him in Russia. May the bastard who shot him rot in hell.”

“I hope so too,” Irmingard agreed.

Edith had coincidentally overheard this conversation. Esther had taken Ernst for a walk but Edith felt too depressed to join them, still convinced that all of her friends could be free if only she had been more careful. As she was wallowing in her guilt, she had fallen asleep and woke up to the whispers of the malicious women. She was chilled to her bone that even after the fall of the evil
Reich, people could be so hateful and ignorant. Even if one believed only half the stories that were told about the concentration camps, it was enough for any decent human being to distance themselves from the system that had allowed such atrocities. How these two women could hold on to their hateful ideology was beyond her comprehension but then again so was most that she had witnessed during the war years.

Maybe it was naïve to expect those convictions to vanish altogether along with the leadership and on hearing Gerlinde and Irmingard she could somehow understand the Czechs and their blind rage a little better. Most of the inmates here, fortunately, seemed pleased that the war was over and with it the terrors that the Nazi regime had brought to their country.

Another concern for some ethnic Germans was the sudden rift from the Czechs whom they had considered their fellow citizens. Unlike those prisoners who had been born in the Reich itself, the Sudetenlanders in Czechoslovakia had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire for centuries, and had not defined themselves by their language or culture alone but also to a large extent by a shared history and affiliation to first, the crown in Vienna, and later, to the government in Prague. They might not have been the same race or people by ideology but they shared a love for the same country in which they had lived peacefully together. Edith felt their pain but when she heard hateful opinions like the ones Gerlinde and Irmingard had just exchanged she could better appreciate why the government wanted to get rid of any Germans regardless.

She wanted to confront these horrible women but then thought better of it. She did not want to be a target for angry Nazi women in a camp where she had few friends. But she felt ashamed for keeping quiet. She knew that her desire for survival in this camp was poor justification for her lack of action but the war had made her feel powerless against trigger happy Nazis.

“One woman cornered me yesterday and told me that I would have to rename my sons,” Gerlinde continued with rage in her voice. “She said it was a disgrace to run around the camp and shout Adolf or Heinrich. I could not believe my ears.”

“What did you say?” asked Irmingard.

“I said that my children were used to those names now and that would have to be the end of it. She gave me a long speech about the shame of our Nation and our duty to make amends. I pretended to agree only to get her off my back. Think of all the people that named their children after Hitler and Himmler. Should we call them all Anton and Herbert instead? That is absurd!” Gerlinde exclaimed.

“You should have told her where to go,” suggested her friend.

“I would have but then I thought: If that cow informs on me, she would have won and I would have sacrificed myself for nothing; only for an argument. I won't do her that favour. That is all she wants. She couldn't possibly care what my sons are called.”

After that conversation, Edith and Esther were even more on guard with Gerlinde but fortunately they had very little interaction with her and tended to meet up with Greta and Wilma.

The Weissensteiner sisters were a little luckier with the company in their hut. The woman who had so generously invited them in was one of many who claimed to have been selected for this camp by a complete mistake. Her name was Evka; she was Czech and accused of being a collaborator. She told the two sisters in lengthy detail about the ordeal of her arrest and its background.

Her problems had begun when she had fallen out with her best friend over a man. Evka and her friend Ludmila were in their thirties and had been considered old spinsters. They shared a small flat in Pilsen and worked together at the same factory. Both women fell for the same man, a middle aged Latvian, who at first, flirted with both women at the factory but then focused his attentions on Ludmila. Soon after that the man moved in and Evka was told by her friend to look for her own place to give the love birds some privacy.

Their friendship had never recovered from this episode but Evka swore she had no ill feelings towards the couple. When the Soviets came to collect the Latvian man to return him to his now Soviet home state, Ludmila was convinced it had been Evka who informed on them, in revenge for being rejected. Evka's effort to reassure Ludmila of her innocence was fruitless and one night, shortly after their last argument about the lover’s deportation, someone painted a red swastika on Evka's door. She could not wash it off easily and a dark shadow remained on the door where the symbol had been. Later that day she was collected at the factory by two Czech soldiers and put into prison, together with other Czechs who were under suspicion of being collaborators. With not even the remotest of connections to the Nazis, Evka was sure the misunderstanding would be cleared up in no time but there never was a trial. One of the prison guards told her that there would never be a trial. There was a reliable witness report and she would be expelled with the Germans as soon as a time for it had been agreed by the politicians. She broke into tears and pleaded repeatedly that this was a lie. The guard told her to thank her lucky stars for being in prison rather than on the street.

Evka hated being in the same boat as Germans and Czechs who had helped the Nazis. She did not want to be associated with any of them. When Greta and Wilma asked to take up the spare bunks, Evka took a shine to these women and invited them in. It was a welcome change to have people staying who had a problem beyond the political situation. She hoped it would help her to shift her focus from the injustice that was being done to her and to distance herself from the collaborators and Nazis.

The sisters were mainly interested in keeping a low profile and had little to do with her. Other Czech women in the camp often winked at Evka when they heard her accent, implying co-conspiracy and solidarity, which upset her tremendously. She had hoped an association with two outsiders would free her of such attentions but neither she nor the Weissensteiners were so lucky. There was more interest in Greta and Wilma than one would have thought. A variety of women entered their hut during the first week, some to assure themselves that what Wilma was suffering from was not contagious, whereas others came to ask
probing questions about their background.

Greta did not volunteer any more information than was absolutely necessary. In some cases it was obvious that the aim of the social calls was to find out whether Wilma was Jewish or not, but it was not necessarily clear why the visitors wanted to know. They could be Nazis or Jews themselves, who were merely looking for other members of the ‘tribe’.

On the truck many had claimed to be mistaken for Germans because of their names. If those people really were Jewish they had reason to be careful. They had to find their kind without attracting too much attention from Germans who might be part of a Nazi resistance group. On the other hand, those women asking questions could easily be Nazis still looking for the Jews amongst them.