The gifts of Christmas 1945

Dear Grandchildren,

If you were to ask my father about the most influential and life-altering event of his life, I don’t think he’d mention his wedding to my mother or the birth of his four children. No – I think Dad would tell you about the week in December, 1945 when he traveled from Chemnitz in the Russian zone to München in the American zone.

When you read this excerpt, it will become clear to you why this journey so profoundly impacted my father, your parents’ beloved “Opa.” Remember that in December, 1945,Thomas was just barely 17 years old. He had lost both parents in previous past year and a half and, at the age of just 16, had found his father’s dead body, dug his grave, and laid him to rest. Not only was 1945 an incredibly influential year in world history, it was an incredibly influential year in the life of Thomas Heumann. And, based on these words from Thomas, I’d say that the last week in December was the most influential week in the most influential year in the life of my father.

Read on. What do you think?

Rainer and Ulli were already in München and I was determined to join them before Christmas. My arm was well again and “Dr. Mummi” had released me from home-hospital care. In Spring, Nora would go to school in Marburg in the American Occupation Zone anyway, so we assured ourselves that this would just be a brief separation.

At the Buddeckes’ house, the first peacetime Christmas season was already well underway. As Tante Gert baked Lebkuchen, the whole family gathered in the kitchen (the only warm room in the house) to watch the process. It wasn’t true German Lebkuchen – one dare not even hope for that in 1945 – but if we called it Lebkuchen, maybe we could convince ourselves that it had some familiarity. Tanta Gert mixed cold mashed potatoes with some flour and oatmeal, added a couple of spoons of the mysterious cornmeal, a spoonful of coveted brown sugar, a dozen saccharin tablets, dried egg and dried milk from the CARE package, and some baking powder, almond flavoring, and ersatz cinnamon. When it had been baked into hard flat sheets, she spread some jam over it. It didn’t really taste like Lebkuchen at all, but it evoked memories of what Christmas once was, and would be again someday. That was enough.

It promised to be a cold trip. Onkel Heinz presented me with an early Christmas present that proved to be one of my most useful possessions for several winters to come. He had altered his Luftwaffe officer’s coat to give it an almost elegant civilian look. It was long and warm, made from good peacetime wool.

(Photo: ZIB – militaria)

I felt a certain perverse pride wearing it. As long as I could remember, uniforms had been held in high regard in Germany, and everyone’s ambition was to wear some kind of uniform. It started with Hitler Youth, then the colored cap of one’s high school, the armband of the Flak^[1] helpers, and finally the uniform of the German Army or Navy or, most of all, the Luftwaffe. Even bureaucrats got to wear uniforms to show their status, so that the man who tended the railroad crossing barrier looked like at least a corporal. I was never allowed to wear any uniform, save the blue cap of the Humanistische Gymnasium for three years. Now I wore a warm heavy coat that had been stripped of all its militarism, and I was proud that I had never worn a uniform and at that moment I swore to myself that I never would. As I sensed the irony of the fate of this coat, I began to understand the meaning of the word “civilian”: the simple, the real, the civil, which needs no heroes or uniforms, no power or monuments, to establish its dignity.

When my older brother Michael was in fifth grade, he wanted to join the Berkeley Junior Traffic Police squad at John Muir Elementary School in Berkeley, CA. All the cool boys were on “Traffics,” and I remember that they had the coolest uniform. I remember a heated argument between my father and 11-year-old Michael in which my dad referred to this oath to himself that he would never wear a uniform – and apparently at this point he had extended his oath to his children. Michael did join the BJTP and he did wear the uniform.

  

About 10 years later I, too, defied dad’s “no uniform policy” when I became a cheerleader. I always felt that he asked himself where he’d gone wrong to have children who didn’t feel the same way he did about uniforms. But we were fully American children with American experiences. We had no real understanding of  the traumatic origins of my father’s stance came from until much later, when we were adults.

 

I’m sorry, Dad. Please continue…

On December 21, I rose at five o’clock, donned my demilitarized Luftwaffe coat, and headed to the Adelsberg bakery to stand in line. I’d heard that the bakers had found enough molasses to make pumpernickel bread, a special treat for their faithful patrons. It was light by the time the shop opened, and the line was long, but the wait was worth it. With our bread coupons for the entire week I bought 4 kg of Pumpernickel bread, half to share with Onkel Heinz and Tante Gert, and half to take with me on my very uncertain venture to the West.

By 9:00 I was on my way. Nora and Mummi picked me up in the old two-cycle DKW (Dampf-kraft-Wagen: Steam Driven car). There was barely room for three of us, two large suitcases containing my father’s salvaged art collection and the family silver, and my rucksack filled with all my worldly possessions, including four pounds of Pumpernickel.

(Photo: Revandshift.com)

In the early afternoon, the train headed to the border at Gutenfürst arrived from the east. It consisted of all freight cars, except for two passenger cars reserved for the disabled refugees and wounded soldiers returning from Russian captivity.

The trip of only 100 km (about 60 miles) lasted until the early morning hours of the next day! What had been a double train track been reduced to a single track because the Russians took one as reparations - ties and all. And what remained was in such a precarious state of temporary repair that trains could only go at a snail’s pace. The train that I sat on was the lowest priority of all transports. Russian trains, freight trains, coal trains, and every other train took priority over our dilapidated refugee train. The passenger car stood for hours on a side track and sometimes we went backwards to let another train pass. I could see nothing of what went on outside. I had placed myself and my two suitcases near the oil drum stove. The suitcase made a decent seat with the rucksack as a backrest, and I was not about to give it up just to go to the door and look outside.

We finally arrived in Gutenfürst. The refugee processing station at the border was an old castle with a square inner courtyard — Schloss Voigtsberg in Oelsnitz. The morning was still dark and cold, and the place was dimly lit by two or three bare light bulbs trying to penetrate the misty melancholy of the place.

   

(Schloss Voigtsberg in Oelsnitz today.)       

Word got around that it would be best to stand in line at a stairway leading to an office where they would start processing people in the morning. I was lucky enough to be near the door leading to that stairway, so I immediately got a place in line inside the building. No one really knew anything for sure, and whoever was supposed to be in charge was surely still asleep.

(Could this be the inner courtyard Dad mentions, with the stairs leading to the processing office on the left?!)

I didn’t really care. I was so dead tired that I could feel the cold moisture penetrate even my heavy coat. It almost felt like a physical relief to give in to the urge to shiver with a mixture of fatigue, cold, hunger, and excitement. I sat down on the cold stone steps, put my arms and head on the suitcases next to me so that I would wake up should somebody try to move them, and before my eyes were closed all the way I was asleep.

A commotion woke me. It was light now, and I felt nauseated with sleepiness.

“Come on, get going, they won’t open today.”

I took the suitcases and rucksack and waited, too drunk with heavy sleep to even ask what was going on. I went outside into a morning which was cold but clear. The air was no longer oppressive, but brisk and biting, and a merciful sun was already shining on the high roof on the other side of the court. I put my luggage down, shook my head as if to shake off cobwebs, ran my hands through my hair and decided to wake up. Two girls were about to make their way into the door from where I had just emerged, trying to maneuver their luggage through the narrow opening.

“Don’t bother,” I said to them, “They won’t even open today.” We were exchanging rumors trying to decide what to do, when a kindly-looking Catholic priest walked by, stopped to listen in, and put his bag down. Obviously, no one knew what was rumor and what was true, so I volunteered to go and find out. And aren’t you glad you have a man around?

“Just wait for me here, I’ll leave my luggage; just watch it, please.” Two innocent-looking girls and a priest. If you can’t trust them . . .

I ran up the steps to the office, and indeed the door was locked, but through the frosted glass I could see people move about. I tried the door to the left — locked. The next door was ajar, and I was about to knock when I overheard someone inside say, “In ten minutes go out and tell all the new people to form a line at the corner tower to register — we’ll just have to put them up there, but don’t make any promises about when they can go.”

I had my hot scoop. I turned on my heel and raced down the stairs and out of the building and — nobody! They were gone! The collection! My father’s art collection! The silver!

I frantically looked around. There were people everywhere, but no priest, no two girls, neither the blond one with the blue coat, nor the dark one in the dirty white parka. There were no suitcases, just miserable, confused, lost people all around. I raced toward the tower, hoping that somehow they already knew. Not there. I tried to calm myself, then ran back to the wall where I had left them - and suddenly, there they were, my suitcases, the girls, and the priest, not twenty paces from where I had left them, standing in a long line that was forming rapidly.

“Haven’t you heard? The border will be closed until after Christmas, maybe until New Years, and we’ll have to stay here until then. You need to register in here before you can even get food coupons.”

I blushed — some fine scout I was! Two girls and a priest had the real information, and all I had to offer was just another hot rumor!

Eva-Maria, the petite brunette, had bright eyes and a mischievous smile. Something in her face was always in motion, and well, just maybe, it wouldn’t be all that bad to be stranded with her for a few days. Anneliese was tall, blond and much quieter than her big sister. “She’s my little sister but my big conscience,” Eva-Maria told me when we formally introduced ourselves. I would be happy to be stuck here with these young women, I decided.

Brother Antonio was another story. There was absolutely no choice to be made; he was with us to stay. I was afraid that if I separated myself now, Brother Antonio might tag along with me, without the girls, and that looked like the far less attractive alternative.

And so it came to pass that chance had thrown us four people together to spend the first post-war Christmas in a neglected castle in an insignificant corner of Saxony, in the middle of Europe. The castle would have dreamed on for a few hundred more years toward its eventual decay, had it not been for the fact that months ago some English, Russian, and American military aides had drawn a line on a map right where this Cinderella castle happened to stand, and the Big Three at Yalta had seen the map and found that it was good, and American tanks had rolled right by it, deeper toward the east, until somebody pointed out where the line on the map was, and the American tanks withdrew just to the west of it, and the Russian tanks filled the void.

And on the raging river of post-war migration, four pieces of flotsam had become entangled in the swirling currents. They would float downriver together for a bit, one may drift away and others would hook, some may sink, most of them would eventually find a piece of dry land somewhere - maybe not. They may drift apart and encounter each other again downstream, and one would not know the other, and the river would not know. Nor care.

Yes, the rumor, for once, had been true: the border would be closed until after Christmas and, for better or for worse, we were stuck.

By mid-afternoon we were standing in line at the corner tower again, this time to get some food coupons and be assigned a dormitory for the next few nights. The assignment of quarters was strictly arbitrary, housing bodies to a room until it was full, then on to the next room and the next list of names. They were not really rooms, but rather large halls with low ceilings and fat columns, stretching all the way across the width of the buildings. The ones on the ground floor, which in better times may have served as storage for carriages and farming tools, had stone or dirt floors and cots with straw mattresses. On the upper story, where there was a wood floor, the mattresses were put directly on the floor, practically wall-to-wall. It was there that I wound up with my new friends.

We were lucky to get a row of straw sacks along a wall, and we immediately collapsed into them, desperate for rest - rest from carrying, rest from standing, rest from walking, rest from waiting. Immediately, my arms and the legs became as heavy as my eyelids, so that lifting any of them became an effort. How quickly one can become thankful for a place to call one’s own for the moment, even if it is two square meters of flea-infested straw!

The peaceful solitude didn’t last long. When we heard that soup was being offered for the price of one food coupon, Eva-Maria and I volunteered to take the four aluminum mess bowls (who would ever go on a trip without one?) and get everyone’s ration while Anneliese and Brother Antonio stayed to watch our belongings.

We dined on our dilapidated mattresses, sitting tailor-fashion. For a fleeting moment, I thought of the sterling silver place settings in the suitcase against which I was propped. The engraved silverware, the platters and serving dishes, the porcelain-handled fruit knives.

For one crazy split-second it occurred to me that I could use one of those knives just for fun, but instead I pulled out my rusty pocketknife and shared the pumpernickel, a treat my friends found hard to believe. If one chewed it long enough it even tasted sweet. To crown the peaceful communal meal, Eva-Maria cut a brown-skinned apple into four neat sections, one for each of us. By the time we finished our shared meal, we had become a cell, a unit, a separate entity, no longer four disconnected individuals, but a group which, by virtue of nothing other than having spent the better part of a day standing in lines together, set itself apart from the ordinary crowd.

We talked all evening. It was no longer the normal exchange of survival tips. Now the conversation turned to ourselves, to past nightmares and future dreams, to past dreams and future fears, former beliefs and newly realized realities. And, most importantly, beliefs that were so deeply held and so important that, all better knowledge notwithstanding, they had been kept alive, in spite of the war’s terrible toll on everything we knew, in ourselves and in our world. Giving up these beliefs, with everything else we’d lost, would have been too painful. My favorite sayings, “Pour quelque chose malheur est bon^[2]” and “Wie es auch sei, das Leben, es ist gut^[3]” definitely fell into that category. But no one knew - least of all I - that I wore those beliefs like life vests, without which I would have sunk.

When others around us fell silent, we started to whisper. Soon, Anneliese fell asleep, but the communication between Eva-Maria and me continued, not on a verbal level, but rather by timid reaches in the dark, by feeling close, warm, and secure. I was lying between Eva-Maria and Brother Antonio, and while I was interested in the closeness and warmth of Eva-Maria, she was interested in my being interested in her, and Brother Antonio, if he was interested in anyone, I realized, it would have been me. Although the small wood burning stove had gone out long ago, neither I nor Eva-Maria were cold during that December night in 1945.

The next day things resolved themselves rather conveniently. Brother Antonio found (or maybe was found by) two other priests and a Protestant pastor and his wife who somehow had managed to arrange — not an easy feat in a Communist country — to secure a small room in the living quarters of the castle set aside for clergy. After the clergy had withdrawn to chambers, Eva-Maria and I (Anneliese was too young for such conversation) speculated for quite some time on the technical details of that living arrangement. I began calling the girls my two new sisters, and that seemed to be just fine with them.

In the morning of the second day, we sat on our straw mats solving crossword puzzles and — good Germans, we! — reading Goethe’s Faust. As the day wore on without much else to do, the dormitory grew into more of a community. This, after all, was Christmas Eve, and if we were going to be here over the holidays we might as well make the best of it. It wasn’t long before someone found a scraggly little tree outside, and everyone in the room was busy all afternoon decorating it with anything they could find, make, improvise, or imagine. In the evening we even tried Christmas carols, sung in all the different German dialects, and the only ones who were silent were those who were too choked up to sing, and a group of orthodox Jews, bearded and with curled locks, who looked grim, mistrusting, and indescribably sad.

I can’t help but wonder how these Orthodox Jews survived the war and how they came to be part of this group. There must be a story there!

There are Christmas Miracles after all! On Christmas Day, by mistake or grace or overcrowding or Russian sentimentality, the border opened. The paper processing was very quick;, there wasn’t even time for inspection of luggage. Before midnight we found ourselves on the other side of the border, in the Moschendorf camp which was not a castle, but somber barracks, with new rumors, just as many people, better soup, and, surprisingly, an open gate.

When my “sisters” and I heard the announcement that we would have to be de-loused the next morning and then stay for three days in quarantine, we made a very quick decision, aided by the unlocked gate.

OUT! Out we ran, into the night and across the field toward the lights in the fog - the train station.

For the rest of the cold night, we hid in an equipment shack in the freight yard, bundled up against the cold in anything we had and huddled together in a gray mass of suitcases, pounding pulses, steaming breath, blankets, and excited whispers, in the unsure light of a switchyard lamp shining through the only windowpane that had not been boarded up.

We were awakened by a locomotive huffing and hissing right outside our hideout. It was still dark, but there were some railroad workers around now. I went out and called up to the engineer in the steam engine: “Where are you headed?”

“Marktredwitz, after we get some more cars,” he answered. And even before the engineer could blow his whistle again, the three of us had clambered aboard the completely empty, dark passenger car right behind the engine. The car shifted back and forth a few times and was then uncoupled and re-coupled so the engine was now on the other end of the car. The lights came on, the steam heat began to fill the cabin. The three of us fell into each other’s arms as though we were waking up from a dream: we were in a real train, a passenger train with light and heat, going south toward Bavaria!

(www.bahnausbau-nordostbayern.de)

We were in a country that was different from all we had ever known - different from wartime Germany and different from the Russian Zone. Here, for the first time in many, many years, peace could be felt. And all it took was a warm, uncrowded passenger car running on (unremoved) double tracks to give us a sensation of luxury and a new standard of normalcy of life.

The new normal lasted until just before Marktredwitz. A bridge was still out and that automatically meant the end of the line. Everybody out, and into a bus to town. Or rather: almost to town.

“Next stop - Hospital!” the conductor called out, and a moment later a flash of mischief flickered in Eva-Maria’s eyes.

“That’s where we get off”, she said with a matter-of-fact voice which betrayed the wink in the corner of her eyes. It allowed no serious questioning.

“Wait. What do you mean? Why . . .?”

“It’ll take too long to explain, never mind,” and we wiggled our way through the jammed bus to the door, heavy suitcases and all.

In the next two minutes, in front of the desk at the hospital, I saw easy-going Eva-Maria put on an air of urgency, almost panic, that was so well acted out that even I was tempted to believe it myself.

“Look, we just escaped from the Russian Zone and we are absolutely filthy, probably disease-ridden. You can’t possibly let us spread whatever we may be carrying further into Bavaria. Please,” — there was despair in her lowered voice — “Please let us have a hot bath!”

(Can I just say… this Eva-Maria was kind of a bad-ass!)

And so, instead of several days of quarantine at the camp, instead of the de-lousing sprays, we three got hot tub baths, soap, and even clean towels. Without even asking for it, we got some food from a redheaded nurse who had taken a liking to us and who seemed to have a boyfriend in the kitchen who slipped her some bread, cheese and hot milk.

How conquerable the world looks after a hot bath, a hunk of bread and cheese in the stomach, and someone flirtatious alongside! Did it matter at all that the day was bitter cold? Did it matter that Germany had just lost the war? Did anything matter as long as we had found this ride on the back of a truck, standing on a pile of coal, leaning over the cab? What mattered was that I had my arms around my “sisters,” that we kept each other warm, and that the truck was going south, toward the low sun of the hazy midwinter noon, toward a freer country, toward family, into a new year.

And there behind us, teetering on lumps of coal, was a badly scuffed suitcase, containing the peaceful portrait of Sophia Hauber with her dreamy eyes, and a Baroque cookie box badly in dire need of a polishing job.

The portrait of Sophia Hauber which, in December, 1945, sat in the badly scuffed suitcase that teetered on lumps of coal, now lives on the merlot-colored wall of our music room in Gig Harbor, Washington. Leo, my first (and so far only) grandchild loves Sophia and when he stays with us, he insists on saying good morning to her when he awakes and goodnight to her before he goes to bed. If only Carl could see his beloved Sophia and his great-great-great grandchild!

And that Baroque cookie box is still in dire need of a polishing job as it sits on the kitchen shelf in Michael’s house. Dad gave the cookie box to Michael for his 50th birthday. I expect and hope that it will continued to be passed down in Michael’s family.

 

---

^[1] anti-aircraft

^[2] any misfortune is good for something

^[3] however life may be -- it is good

An unexpected visit, a surprise bounty, and a branding of rebellious hope

Dearest grandkids,

In this entry, Thomas describes a happy event in 1945 - a reunion with his brother Rainer, who hadn’t been heard from in a year. Can you imagine? Instant electronic communication, like email and texting (and whatever will be invented after I write this!) not only didn't exist then, but Germany was in complete chaos, so ALL communication had been broken down for months. Thomas feared that his brother had been deported or even killed, which – given that he was a half-Jew – was completely plausible, even probable. 

I’ve spoken previously about “generational trauma.” I could feel it when I read Thomas’ description of his hunger and then of the family's sheer delight upon receiving what we would now be considered mere staples. Although I’ve never been truly hungry, I often heard about hunger from my parents who, like any parents, raised their children with their own experiences serving as their blueprint, and I somehow internalized that. I’ll elaborate on it later in this post.

Here are Thomas’ happy words.

Already the days were getting noticeably shorter and having electricity for only an hour a day was becoming more of a nuisance, but not a real hardship - at least not when compared to the hunger. Yes, there was hunger all over the land. It was not the kind of famine where whole populations are decimated and die in the streets, but neither was it the “oh-dear-I’m-absolutely-famished” hunger of well-fed people. It was the hunger that comes from years of shortages, from occasional days of nothing to eat at all, or maybe only a potato. It was hunger that is not yet agony, but is painful enough so you have trouble staying asleep at night. It was during one of those nights when I got up not long after midnight just to be sure to be among the first in line in the morning at the baker’s shop. In the morning they would bake — if the bakers had flour, that is.

Yes, there was bread that morning, and I got four whole pounds with the coupons from the family. As I approached the house, I heard excited noises – everyone talking at once, not angry, not alarmed, but happy - and before I reached the front door, Ulli called out “Rainer is here, and Renate, and she’s going to have a baby, and they are married!”

(I don’t have a single photo of Renate, the wife Rainer brought to Adelsburg that day! He and Renate divorced when their child, Andreas, was very young.)

After not seeing our brother for a year and wondering silently, with greater doubts and fears as each day passed whether something might be really wrong, here he was  - a grown man, with a mustache - and a wife! Rainer would know better than anyone what had to be done now!

Rainer seemed to know how to get food - or maybe life was just better in München, which was now in the American Zone. He brought us bread that was much lighter than the stuff I had stood in line for that morning at daybreak. And then he surprised us with a slab of bacon, real bacon, almost a pound of it! And then he showed us an incredible treasure from a land where living must be good and easy: nestled in a small box were real American cigarettes! “LUCKY STRIKE” said the bold letters on the protective box. They smelled like no cigarette I had ever smelled before, sweet and rich. Tonight, we would all share one, Rainer promised.

The cigarettes were only the beginning of the unfolding miracles. Rainer and Renate also brought a rucksack filled entirely with two cartons, one of them still sealed. They were not ordinary cartons. “C A R E” it said in big letters on the outside, and Rainer explained that it was from Onkel Willy in America. He teased that inside the box were items that we had heard rumors about, but had never seen. One of the boxes was for all of us, while the other one for two friends of Onkel Willy’s who in Saxony, to be re-packaged and forwarded from somewhere in the Russian Occupation Zone because the Russians would not permit CARE packages to be shipped into the Zone directly.

Everyone in the house gathered around the dining table where Rainer was about to pour out the horn-of-plenty in the shape of a cardboard box. The box itself was made from material so strong and so smooth that it evoked visions of peacetime and luxury.

With relish, Rainer unpacked and displayed the contents, one by one. Bags, boxes, and cans labeled with exotic names and strange titles. Dried egg powder, dry milk that tasted delicious just from a licked finger, flour so white and so fine that it seemed unearthly. A can of shortening (whatever that was), and two cans that contained SPAM, which seemed to be some sort of meat.

Then came the real luxury: a can of coffee, a whole pound of honest-to-goodness coffee, the type that came from coffee beans, not from barley! Very few people in Germany had tasted real coffee in a very long time, and the few who had any coffee at all at this point had saved it from early in the war when there had been special distributions of 50 grams per adult after a particularly fierce air raid. On high and holy days, those lucky people would mix the real coffee with the ersatz coffee, one teaspoon per potful. And here -- here was a whole pound of it!

No one could figure out what the funny looking powder called “corn meal” could be, but there was no doubt at all about the bars of chocolate, or the whole pack of cigarettes. Raisins, dried soup, green peas, rice, even some jam with real fruit in it — all treasures, all exotic because of their origin and the long trip they had behind them. What a great country America must be!

We finally reached the bottom of the box. We went to the kitchen trying to figure out what we could do with corn meal. Ceremoniously, Rainer opened one can of SPAM as one would unveil a new piece of art, and they passed it around to smell.

Interestingly, I never had corn meal muffins or pancakes, or anything made with cornmeal as a child. Even when I was an adult and had fallen in love with buttery cornbread, making it for my parents a few times, they were not fans. Only quite late in life did they begin to appreciate Mexican food, which uses a great deal of corn meal. I guess this one experience really affected my dad.

I also never had sweet potatoes as a child. Only a few years ago, as I cooked Dad a dinner recipe that included roasted sweet potatoes, did I ask him why. He explained that regular potatoes become sweet as they age and that, with the severe food shortages during the war, he often had no choice but to eat old, sweet, potatoes. Of course they had no relation to the delicious American sweet potatoes that we eat now, but my father simply couldn’t even try something called “sweet potatoes” once he left Germany!

The fried SPAM was supreme, and there was enough so everybody could have a whole slice. The corn meal looked like Cream of Wheat, so we cooked it like Grießbrei. It turned into a thick, almost hard solid which, even when salted and sugared, tasted bland. What little one could taste was new and strange. But all of us all ate it with delight because if it came from America it must be good. We decided that we probably just didn’t know how to cook it right.

After dinner, which concluded with a whole cigarette for each of the men, Rainer and I went to the little attic room where we tackled the problem of distributing the still unopened box into two smaller boxes for mailing to the lucky and unsuspecting recipients. We had two boxes of about equal size. Since the CARE package contained either two of each item, or at least equivalents, it wasn’t hard to separate. We even used the original shredded newspaper material to carefully fill the voids. (They shred the paper, Rainer said, because they don’t want us to read it.) But no matter how cleverly we arranged the coffee on its side, how hard we stuffed the dried apricots in the corners, it simply wouldn’t all fit. At last, we hit upon a particularly clever arrangement that stowed everything neatly, except one O’Henry candy bar. A mighty moral struggle with inevitable outcome ensued. “How, oh Henry, can we fit you?” “Henry, oh Henry, you are too fat!”

Henry lost. So did our morals and ethics. But, Oh, Henry — was it delicious!

I am overweight and have been for much of my life. I have an odd relationship with food, consuming it mindlessly until my plate is clean, with no regard for appetite. In fact, I don’t think appetite has ever played any role at all in my eating. I just eat until the food is gone. This is how I learned to eat. Not “eat till you are no longer hungry,” but “eat everything on your plate; you’re lucky to have this food and not be hungry like we were!” I’ve been on a variety of diets and have gone to conventional therapy and even hypnosis therapy to address my deep-seated issues with food. Ironically, the method that seems to be working now is to actually make myself hungry – intermittent fasting! I’m not a psychologist, so I can’t really explain it, but I have a feeling there’s a connection here somehow to what I learned as a child, possibly rebelling against it, or maybe embracing and reflecting my father’s experiences with hunger in his youth. Big difference, though – I get to eat when the clock says I can. Dad couldn’t.

Later, Rainer showed off a scar on his arm with the flair of a war hero displaying his wounds. Rainer’s and Renate’s pride of that scar said something about why they were now married.

During the last year of the war, until Rainer was shipped off to labor camp, they were both closely involved with the München underground student movement of which the Scholls — the executed brother-and-sister instigators of a brief but bloody student uprising — were the most visible members.

Renate was an art student and Rainer was working as a machinist at BMW. They saw each other almost daily, although it carried great risks, because for each of them these dates only compounded their crimes. As if being a Mischling was not enough of a strike against Rainer, now he was associating with the dissident underground! And Renate aggravated her own sin of association with revolutionary elements by committing Rassenschande (sleeping with a Jew).

On the 20th of July, 1944, they were both at the University with lots of strangers around them when the announcement came over the radio that there had been an assassination attempt on the Führer.

What does an impulsive girl, who is equally in love with the man next to her as with the idea of being a revolutionary, do when she hears news that sounds like the revolution has begun and she will soon be allowed to openly date (and possibly marry) the half-Jewish man she loves? What does she do when she must not give herself away, must fear everyone around her, when she must put on a somber face, when all she really wants to do is let out a jubilant scream, jump for joy, and dance?

She bends down, buries her face in her boyfriend’s arm and bites it - hard, to prevent herself from opening her mouth in a liberating scream that’s in her throat and wants desperately to escape!

For the rest of his life, Rainer had the scar to remind him of that moment of joy and hope, disappointment and agony.

Obviously I have no photo to depict this event, but in my mind’s eye it’s a movie that I’ve watched over and over since I first heard the story from my father when I was a young adult.

The Longest Year in the Young Life of Peter Bauer – an Introduction

My dearest grandkids,

My father wrote The Longest Year in the Young Life of Peter Bauer (which focuses on 1945), in 1979, thirty-two years before he wrote The Rim of the Volcano (which focuses on the years between 1928 and 1945). In 1979, I was in my senior year of college and completely immersed in (what felt like) the complexity of my own life. I read Dad’s book immediately upon receiving it for Christmas and I was completely immersed for a few evenings – but I read it with the same third-person detachment with which it was written. I felt a deep connection to the character of Peter Bauer, but that connection didn’t necessarily translate into a deep emotional understanding that it was Thomas Heumann, my father, who experienced such profound chaos and trauma. And by writing the book in third-person, Dad, in a way, gave me permission to distance myself.

Or maybe that’s just generational trauma speaking!

(Our family, c 1978. Dad was deep into the writing of Longest Year. I was deep into… well, being me.)

Here are my father’s words:

I originally wrote what follows - about the end of 1944 and all of 1945 - about a fictional character named Peter Bauer. I chose that alias because “Peter” means “rock” in Greek (strong and solid) and “Bauer” means builder in German. I’d need to be strong and solid to build my future life after enduring the life-altering chaos of 1945 Germany. I wrote this book in third person because it’s easier to step outside and look in from a distance, and it allows more freedom to make the truth truer by adding some “retrospective imagination” to details, without having to feel guilty of lying. In 1979, when I began to write The Longest Year in the Young Life of Peter Bauer, I found third-person to be the best approach.

(Thomas at about 16, circa 1945, the age of Peter Bauer in Longest Year.)

I’m sure I wasn’t half as likable as I made Peter Bauer!

I wrote The Longest Year in the Young Life of Peter Bauer for Michael, Stephan, Carol, and Christopher, and for their children. In my original Forward, I suggested that they had been “both spared and denied a 1945.”

“Spared” because their teenage lives in the U.S. were so much easier than my teenage life under persecution in a war environment. My kids never had to deal with forced exclusion from friends, with the loss of personal freedoms, or with persecution for their grandparents’ religion. Neither did they have to count on being exposed to death -- their own and that of others – at the sound of constant air raid sirens.

But my four children were also “denied” my greatest opportunity. They were not orphans, alone at the age of 16, in a most challenging world, nor were they faced with the necessity of growing up quickly, simply to survive. At the age of 17, I was solely responsible for every decision I made. My kids were rarely put to the test of having to find out for themselves “what one is made of” and to test the values they learned in childhood.

The Heumanns around 1974. We teenagers were both “spared and denied a 1945.” It hadn’t been said like that yet, but we definitely felt it.

We didn’t yet know Dad’s whole story, but we did know that, compared to him at our age, we lived a life of carefree luxury. And I believe that all four of us kids felt some guilt around that – but we wouldn’t have been able to identify or admit that at the time. I was so busy being a typical American teenager – friends, school, cheerleading, dates – that I had little time or incentive to even try to understand my father’s (and mother’s – she also experienced wartime in Germany!) perspective. Our family was different, and I hated it. My parents had strong German accents and listened to Mozart instead of Sinatra. Our lunch bags held liverwurst sandwiches on brown bread instead of PB & J sandwiches on white bread, and dinner consisted of Leberkäse or sauerbraten instead of tacos or hamburgers. Unlike my friends’ parents, who were active in PTA and in their kids’ social lives and friendships, my parents played very little role in my early school or social life – until, that is, my mother became a beloved German teacher at my high school, which I actually liked because she got to know my friends and had the opportunity to finally see what being an American teenager was like. My boyfriend was even in her class, and more than a few times my friends and I spent lunch hour in her classroom!

The 60s and 70s were tumultuous years in America, but they were peaceful and tranquil compared to Europe in 1945. Only a few years in all of history were as turbulent as 1945 in Europe. In Germany, especially, it was a year of death and birth, a year of demarcation of one age from another. All over the world, 1945 was a watershed year between old and new. It was the first year of the atomic age.

Whether my children and grandchildren know it or not, they, too, have much of 1945 in their veins because all of its terror and all of its beauty left such deep marks on my own life. The difference between the 1980’s in the US and 1945 in Europe might help explain some of my idiosyncrasies and maybe even excuse my being a bit of an embarrassment to my children by being (as they put it) “so ... so ... so different.”

In my next post, we’ll start in on The Longest Year in the Young Life of Peter Bauer, which my father basically “inserted” into The Rim of the Volcano, changing Peter’s words back to his own.

Food and Clothing Shortages and Some Across-the-Generations Comparisons

Dearest grandchildren,

In this excerpt, my father, Thomas, describes some of the difficulties of everyday living in the very early 1940s.

Can you imagine spending hours per day on the task of simply finding food to eat? It wasn’t a matter of going to the grocery store, finding what you need on a well-stocked shelf, and then paying for the groceries, as it is here (now, still, anyway; the future in America has never been as tenuous as it is now!). And in most cases, it didn’t matter whether you had very little money or plenty of money; food was hard to find for everyone and coupons were required for many items.

When your parents, my children, grew out of their clothes, we simply went to the store to buy the next size up to again fill their closets. Can you imagine owning just one pair of pants, one shirt, one dress (girls never wore pants back then!)?

I was heavily influenced by my parents’ experiences during WWII (yes, my German mother experienced wartime shortages, too) and I was reminded of their experiences at almost every meal and every shopping trip during my childhood. “Eat everything on your plate; we would have been so lucky to have a meal like this!” When, in fourth grade, I complained that I only had two dresses, I was reminded that German girls during the war were lucky to have one.

My parents didn’t mean to transfer their traumatic experiences to us; it just happened. That’s called “generational trauma,” and I am coming to realize (this late in life!) that my brothers and I are the beneficiaries (“victims” is the wrong word) of it.

My three brothers (Stephan, Michael, and Christopher) and me in about 1963, along with Betsy, our dog. Michael had “graduated” to a suit and tie for this occasion, but the rest of us are wearing Bavarian loden coats (probably more from my Bavarian mother’s influence than my Saxon father’s influence). I have many photos (and memories) of my brothers wearing lederhosen as play clothes, which they must have hated, and I always had a dirndl dress – which I loved, actually! My hair is in a simple ponytail here, but I have vivid memories of a tight bun or “hoop braids”!

The daily demands on my mother to keep her Jewish husband and Mischling children safe and secure must have felt completely overwhelming to her, though we kids noticed only that she seemed increasingly nervous. Little did we know the pressure she was facing!

Life was getting harder for everyone, even those who didn’t have to constantly fear the hostile confrontations from the regime, as our family did.

Food, of course, was a constant and central concern for Mother. She spent a great deal of time and effort finding out what food was available, where, and whether rationing coupons were required.

On top of the worry about food, Mother was concerned about keeping three growing children clothed. Ulli, our sister, was easiest: as she grew, Mother could usually crochet another few centimeters to the bottom or shoulders of her dress. We boys, luckily, had Lederhosen we wore every day - the dirtier, the “cooler”! Everything wearable required a Bezugsschein (purchase certificate), another bureaucratic function handled by The Party. If one could prove (or convince a Party employee!) that one really needed a shirt or dress or new pair of shoes (or even new soles for an old pair), one would get a piece of paper authorizing the purchase. Then, one had to find it -- another time consuming and often hopeless task!

 

     

Left: me in kindergarten. My mother knit this dress and, just like my father describes, new rows were added as I grew. Right: School picture day in third grade warranted a dirndl dress.

  

And… next generation! Erin (Elisabeth) in the same dress, and in a dirndl. My mother (the original “Omi”!) always made sure my girls had dirndls!

     

My “baby” brother, Chris, wearing lederhosen, with Stephan (and another dog, “Silver”), circa 1962. Michael’s lederhosen (circa 1954) were a bit too big, yes?!

Everything was hard to get. I remember trying to find out one day how Father’s safety razor worked. When I put it back together, I over-tightened its handle so that it yanked out the screw from the head. It was irreplaceable. Father was so furious that my punishment was a whole month without allowance, and he had to resort to his old razor knife and leather strap.

Father’s pride and joy were the Cuban cigars he had saved from better days. At times, Mother liked to give a cigar as bribe or thanks to some workers or service people who were also harder and harder to find and employ. How do you tell if one cigar had been removed from the box? Father came up with a system I spent hours trying to figure out: when he, himself took one cigar out, what he left in the box had a specific relationship between the number of cigars on the top layer, the number of cigars on the right, and the number of cigars on the left. I recorded, I observed, and I showed him a record I kept. He looked at it with a quick glance and said, “They’re all right, except this one.” He had picked out the one I put in wrong just to trick him! I decided right then and there that the job of detective would never be for me. And statistician would be most questionable!

One day, a telephone repairman arrived, saying he needed to make “a repair” on the phone in Father’s sitting room. My parents must have thought of the possibility that his “repair” was actually an installation or re-wiring in order to make the receiver into a permanent wiretap. The next time my parents entertained company in that room, a guest wanted to be sure that they could talk freely, as the phone being bugged was a perfectly reasonable assumption to make, he assured us. “You know, the walls have ears now!” he said. So, my mother got a fat, well-padded tea cozy and put it over the telephone. “Now we can talk.”

Chances are, Father didn’t say much worthy of a bugged phone. Whenever someone wanted to engage him in a political discussion, he cut them short: “But Herr Doktor, you know that I am a completely apolitical person!” That normally stopped the talk right then. There was only one political remark I ever overheard from Father. It came in June,1941, when Hitler invaded Russia. Father said: “The Napoleonic adventure all over again!”

Enough said! And how prophetic!

German Social Culture in the Late 30s and American Social Culture in the 70s - a Comparison

My dear grandchildren,

We’re all kids today.

Yes, I’m an old lady of 64, but reading this excerpt from my father makes me feel like a child again. My father is talking to me about how things were done in his day, how things are properly done, how things are best done. Four years after Dad’s death, this except still makes me feel rebuked by my father.

Why? Because my life as an American teen in the early 1970s was the polar opposite of my father’s life as a German teen in the early 1940s. Everything for me was about my social life – friends, fun, frivolity! And Dad judged that – heavily.

It’s taken me about 50 years to really understand that my father was an elitist and that he definitely had elitist prejudices, as did his father. You’ll see it peppered through this excerpt.

Here are my father’s words about academic and social life in Germany in the early 40s:

School classes took place daily from 8:00 to noon, and from 2:00 to 4:00. Those of us who lived close to school went home for lunch. I’m not sure what the “commuter students” who came to school by train every day did for lunch, because there was, of course, no cafeteria. No school, as far as I know, had one. I’m not sure if that’s still the case today, but I don’t think the attitude has changed much. “Schools are for serious learning, not for socializing!” It was an unspoken, but clearly understood principle that was supported by the entire community. Learning as much as we could was our primary “duty” at that age. Period.

(Thomas and Ulli, c 1939.)

I heard this message loud and clear as I grew up. I was an excellent student, but never quite excellent enough. In fact, when I applied to a graduate program in Education at Stanford University, I remember that part of my motivation was to show Dad that I could be a real scholar. I’d had a lot of fun in high school and college as an American student and my father (and also my German mother) definitely judged me for it. “You want to be a cheerleader? For football games? How does that make you a better student?” The idea of school being fun was so foreign to my parents! While my friends’ parents were intimately involved in their non-academic school pursuits, attending football games, encouraging their kids’ sports and other activities, mine pretty much just shook their heads. I remember bleachers full of other parents when I tried out for cheerleading and drill team, but mine were nowhere to be seen, They simply didn’t understand how these non-academic pursuits could be important to me.

    

(Me as a cheerleader… and a graduate, with Dad and Mom.)

That brings up the question of how we socialized without cell phones. Well, there are several differences between “there, then” and “here, now”! Maybe most importantly, we didn’t have nearly as much time after school as kids do here.

HA! What American school kid has lots of time after school?!

School was not only in session for more hours per day, there was also more homework, plus piano practice every day. If there was time left, we did things like chemical experiments or building something with the erector set.

…which is so much more valid than just hanging out with friends, or being on a school sports team. Is it just me, or do you hear a bit of holier-than-thou in my dad’s words? Keep reading…

Especially during the war, there were always other things to do: try to find a tire for the bike, stand in line at the butcher shop, or install emergency lighting for the air raid shelter in the basement. We siblings also did some fun things, like roller skating or riding scooters. In the winter, we went ice-skating at the tennis club. We simply did not know any different, and therefore had no need to constantly know where others were and what they were doing. Visits to friends’ houses were rare. For emergencies, there was the telephone, but every local call cost money, and any long-distance call, besides being prohibitively expensive, had to be arranged by the operator, usually hours ahead of time. Most importantly, we all had bicycles, and if we wanted to see someone across town we’d get on our bike and ride there. The idea of an impromptu get-together with friends just didn’t exist. Besides, after-school activities were much more rare than they are today. There were no school sports like you’re accustomed to here. We all had piano lessons, and we rode a bike, walked, or took a streetcar to get there. I don’t remember any family who had a car, so nobody could be “taken” anywhere. On weekends, we often did things with our parents and siblings, like a train ride, a hiking tour, or an afternoon of cross-country skiing.

(Thomas, Ulli, Rainer, c 1937. I believe they were building a scooter.)

My friends’ parents “took them places.” That is, if they had soccer practice or even just wanted to get together with friends, their parents often drove them. This was unknown for me. If I had plans after school, it was completely up to me to get there on my own. “Ride you bike!” my parents insisted, even if it was a 5 or 10-mile distance. Whereas my friends “rode bikes” for fun, my parents, at my age, used their bikes as transportation and (they made sure I knew) they were grateful for their bikes!

Did we have parties? I remember hardly any. We had occasional weekend afternoon parties for things like air rifle practice, where the host’s mother would bake a cake and serve juice. And did we ever drink alcohol in high school? It wouldn’t have occurred to any of us. Sure, at home, on occasions, we may get a glass of wine that tasted terrible, but lemonade was better anyway. In no way was “getting to drink” a big deal. Occasionally, in the summer, we’d drink a “Radlermass” (literally, a “cyclist’s liter”) consisting of half beer and half 7-Up. No one would have thought twice about it since it was completely legal. Asking for ID, or “carding” any one to qualify them to legally drink, was entirely unknown. Having a beer was just not a big thing. Nor did it have the reputation of being a “grown-up thing to do” Nor did it taste good.

I didn’t drink in high school, either. I believe that my father is referring here to my brothers’ and my kids – your parents. Like most American high school and college students, they drank – and sometimes too much. (Sorry “kids,” your bubble has been burst!) My parents didn’t understand why alcohol played such a role in the US, and I agree with them here. Maybe if the US had the same laws (or lack thereof), allowing beer and wine at 16, drinking wouldn’t hold such fascination for American teens.

At times, we siblings had conflicts because of the three-students-one-piano problem. We solved that by agreeing that whoever said “besetzt!” (“reserved”) first got to name his or her practice time. Once, Ulli and I had that problem, but the peaceful negotiation didn’t work and we ended up physically fighting. In that noble pursuit, Ulli somehow got a curl of her hair caught in one of my shirt buttons. Trying to free herself, she pulled away too quickly, leaving behind a lock of hair. (That’s my version!) She screamed, our mother got hysterical, and off to the hospital they went! (Ulli still has that bare spot on her head. She calls it her sacrifice for the love of music!)

Junior Prom, Senior Prom, dates, dress-ups, taxis -- how foreign all this was to me when I learned about it all from my kids growing up! Our schools were for boys only, and there were no organized or even semi-official coed events.

I was mocked and teased relentlessly for taking part in the fun (“shallow”) aspects of high school, like prom and dates. (Though Mom did sew beautiful dresses for me for the occasions.)

 

You were limited to whatever acquaintances you could make via your family. One advantage: approval was often automatic, because whomever you met was automatically from the “right kind” of family. Outside of that, making contacts with girls was hard. Very hard. Having a sister helped, having relatives helped, so it turns out that I was luckier than most.

“The right kind of family…” Carl and Irmgard raised their children with the notion of “us” and “them” and, it turns out, my parents raised their kids with the same unspoken, insidious, and quite influential attitude. To be honest, I didn’t even recognize this until it was brought to my attention many years into adulthood. “We” liked classical music; “they” liked Frank Sinatra. “We” lived in large, unique, classic houses; “they lived in mass-produced ranch-style houses. “We” spent weekends sailing, skiing, or attending cultural events; “they” spent their weekends “parked in front of the TV.” And my parents let me know, in no uncertain terms, whether my chosen friends were ‘acceptable” (from the “right kind of family”) or not. This is an example of how parental attitudes are passed from generation to generation, without us even knowing it. I feel confident I didn’t raise my kids with this sort of elitist  attitude, and I don’t think my brothers have, either, but we’ve all had to specifically and intentionally break the cycle.

During the summer of 1941, at the age of 13, I was invited to visit the home of a friend of my mother’s who had “a good name” - even with a “von” in front of it. She had a house at the edge of a small lake north of Berlin with a big vegetable garden and lots of raspberries and gooseberries. She also happened to have a 13-year-old daughter named Kristine (yes, with a “K”!). We turned out to be each other’s first loves. We picked berries together, we found old magazines in the attic and looked at them together – innocently, in bed. We waded out in the lake with mud above our ankles, we swam in the pool at the little town of Liebenwerda nearby, and she hugely impressed me by a jump from the three-meter board. (When we were both in our forties, she visited us in Atherton. She told me then that she had never dived from the high board before then, or after.) We had discovered what “love” was, the mysterious and somehow taboo thing the grownups kept talking about. We longed for each other for a year, until I went there again, this time by bicycle, in one long day. “Nini”, as she was called, ended up in a “Napola”^[1], near Vienna, a Nazi boarding school where, at practically no cost, one could get a so-called high school education heavily infused by Nazi ideology.

A few months after my mother’s death, my father found Kristine again – in California!

He had high hopes, I think, of some sort of continuation of their young love. In reality, she was “very nice,” he said, but, “well… no.”

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^{[1]Napola =} Nationalpolitische Erziehungsnanstalt = National-Political-Education-Institute