A Dangerous Game

Growing Up East of the Oder Under the Nazis and Soviets

Luise Urban

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780752491035
• eBook ISBN: 9780752494234
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World War II
• Index: History

Luise Urban was born in 1933 into a world about to be turned upside down. Her family lived east of the river Oder. Fatefully, her family were not Nazi Party members and suffered as a result. As the Third Reich crumbled and the Red Army advanced, she was one of 15 million Germans trapped in a war zone during the terrible winter of 1945. Weakened by starvation and forced to flee their home, it was only the bravery of Luise's mother that saved the family from total destruction.

The Oder–Neisse line (Oder-Neiße-Grenze) is the German–Polish border drawn in the aftermath of the war. The line primarily follows the Oder and Neisse rivers to the Baltic Sea west of the city of Stettin. All pre-war German territory east of the line and within the 1937 German boundaries was discussed at the Potsdam Conference in 1945. Germany was to lose 25 per cent of her territory under the agreement. Crucially, Stalin, Churchill and Truman also agreed to the expulsion of the German population beyond the new eastern borders. This meant that almost all of the native German population was killed, fled or was driven out by force.

In A Dangerous Game, Luise relives that harrowing time, written in memory of her mother, to whom she owes her life. It is the story of a child, but it is not a story for children.

RAUS! UHODI!

Back to the moment when the soldiers forced us to abandon our home. My aunties helped to get my brothers dressed for the outdoors. I dressed myself in the warmest clothes that were ready to hand, double cardigans, gloves, shawls. I stuffed underwear and socks into my pockets. To my great shame and regret I neglected to take care of my little sister. On hearing that we had to be outside where it might be dirty, she changed her good clothes for old ones, even left her warm new, fur-lined winter coat behind, which had only just been made up for her in December 1944. She had put on her old one which was too short in the sleeves and did not cover her knees and was too tight to wear a cardigan under it. With that her fate was sealed. I was stunned when I realised it, but it was too late: the Russians were coming back.

My mother loaded my grandmother into a hand cart with the help of great-grandfather, with some blankets and emergency food and a pot to boil water in, some aluminium bowls and some knives. You don’t need forks, you don’t need spoons, you can drink from a bowl, but you need fire-making equipment, a pot and a knife. We could not take much in the cart, our most valuable luggage was grandmama. Wheels are next to useless in snow, but our children’s sleighs were too small to be loaded with goods and a large one had to be drawn by a horse. So my mother ended up pulling the wheels through, rather than over, the snow. We were already on the front steps ready to go with the soldiers in sight on their way back when my mother pulled me back into the house. She opened the door to one of the living rooms, the furniture still there, the glass cabinets with most of her favourite china collection still intact. She loved china, Japanese porcelain in particular. My father’s medieval glass collection and tankards were all still in one piece. She said, ‘Quick, have a look. You will never see anything like this again.’ She was right. I remember quite clearly all those precious and rich memories of our house, our home and our lives. Running back to the front door we were stopped by great-grandfather, who pulled my mother into his rooms. He was also a fine china collector. He unlocked a glass cabinet and took from a jug a piece of paper. ‘Take this,’ he said to my mother, ‘it is the address of our New York relatives. I have kept in touch, write to them as soon as you can, they will help you.’ My mother took the address and then he said ‘Goodbye, all of you. I am not coming with you. I am a liability. You already have my Annchen.’ No time to waste. The soldiers were already in the yard. We hurried away. Our other relatives were not yet ready, not all were young and fit enough to dress themselves for outdoors.

My mother more dragged than pulled the cart forward, my brothers and sister walking while hanging on to the cart. The snow was high and I pushed from the back. We made for the forest through the orchard at the end of our long field that would lead us to the road to Soldin. Halfway across our field I stopped and turned round to have a last look at our house. There, on the top of our doorstep, stood my beloved great-grandfather with one hand over his face, clearly crying. With the other hand he was waving us goodbye with his large white hanky. There was nothing I could do. He had survived the 1870/71 war as a drummer boy, he was called up just as he left school. He was 11 when he left school. He survived the 1914-18 war, he would not see the end of this one. When I saw him last, he had only hours to live; his end has haunted us ever since. Of my other close relatives who were in the house on that day, I saw only two again briefly in the coming three weeks, shortly before their deaths. None of the others were ever heard of or seen again.

My mother’s objective was clear. With small children to care for and a very sick mother, she was waiting for no one. To get us off the road to somewhere sheltered and safe before dark was her aim. On our way to the Soldiner Chaussee we passed the house of very dear close relatives of ours. They also had young children. They were not yet ready to leave, the orders to get out had only just reached them. My mother did not wait. I saw my dearest cousin, younger than me, for the last time on that day. That family survived like us against all odds and about sixty years later my little cousin and I managed to get in touch again after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And when we write to each other it is as if we have never been parted, it feels like having a conversation over a cup of coffee. We would not recognise each other if we were to meet in the street. We are now too old and unfit and too far apart ever to visit each other, but our thinking and our views about the world are so alike; in spite of having spent our lives in totally different ideological regimes, we know we are family.

We said a hasty goodbye, my grandmother only half conscious in the cart, and we set off for the town of Soldin. My mother reasoned that with thousands of people on the road in the open, so many would fall by the wayside that most would end up in the villages closest to our town. This would mean desperate overcrowding and, as a consequence, no food. So, her aim was to get as far away as possible as quickly as possible from our town, to where people would be more thinly spread and there would be more chance of finding shelter and food. Her reasoning was spot on and her determination unshakeable. I had a good grasp of her absolutely ruthless willpower. I heard her talk to herself aloud. Again and again: ‘How will I explain to you that I did not get the children out of this?’ She was, of course, talking to my Daddy, wherever in the world he was. And the distance she intended to walk with us today? About 35km. Without food, with a heavy cart, a helpless mother and four children, of whom only I could be of some use. We were not even out of town, only about 3km away from our home, when I did come in useful. Very young, ill-nourished children cannot walk far and my little brothers could not stumble on any longer, so one was put on top of granny and the other was lifted on to my back. I carried him for at least 30km that day. My little sister had no one to carry her, nor could she be put into the cart. That dear little girl trudged bravely on her thin little legs all day through ice and snow. She never even cried.

As we were approaching the Soldiner Chaussee the extent of the horror that had befallen the survivors of the 1944 population of about 25,000 was exposed. Amid the snow and ice, icicles hanging from the high branches of the forest on either side, a slow-moving line of thousands of people, mainly women and children, was trudging forward with no beginning nor end in sight. Bent under the weight of children on their backs like me, meagre items of food, sick children, dying children and other relatives too dear to be abandoned were pushed, pulled, dragged and carried along on the left-hand side of the road crawling east. On the right-hand side were tanks going west, one after the other, endlessly.

Many could not cope, they collapsed crying or just sat by the wayside staring with empty eyes at the moving mass of humanity passing them by. They were waiting for death, which came soon enough. We passed hundreds of bodies lying on the road. Some people had been out on that stretch of road hours or days before and were now dead, frozen solid, sometimes in heaps of four, five and more. Some had been shot, some beaten to death, others with their heads crushed to pulp, otherwise in one piece. Once their bodies had been covered by snow, but were now exposed. If you wanted to go forwards you had to step on them, push your cart over them. It is hard enough to walk along a slippery road due to ice and compacted snow, worse to have to step up onto a body, then down again, then up again onto the next one, getting colder and colder, hungrier and hungrier, feeling weaker and weaker, without an end or rest in sight. You begin to wonder how long you can endure this mental and physical torture and consider how nice it would be just to sit down and have a little sleep for a while, regardless of the consequences.

Occasionally some soldiers would jump off a tank and take a blanket or coat off someone. Here and there were some Poles, trying to hide themselves among us Germans, trying to go home. Home was east. Being men, they had to disguise themselves and some dressed as women. For some reason the Russians singled them out and brutally murdered them. A terrible fear gripped us all when such unspeakable bestialities took place, but we were too paralysed to cry or utter a sound. There was an uncanny silence enveloping all in the vicinity as another human being was turned into ice to be stepped over by those who followed. And it seemed so likely that you yourself would be next.

While I am trying not to dwell on such images because I may pass my nightmares onto an unsuspecting reader, I think I will mention another incident, which is still as clear as crystal in my mind. Tanks drive on in a straight line. When they meet an obstacle they don’t drive around it. They are not designed for small detours, although capable of it. So, if anyone stumbles, slips or collapses into the path of a tank, that unfortunate will be turned into a red stain on the road and no one need step over it any more. When I witnessed such an unimaginable scene for the first time, I literally forgot to breathe. I froze, unable to move, shocked. I remember my mother rushing over to me and thumping me hard on my shoulder and chest as I had my brother on my back. I heard her shout as if from far away, ‘Walk on, child, walk on, we cannot help them any more, walk on.’ And I walked on from one terrible scene to another. I saw without seeing, numbed and chilled and not daring to cry. Neither did my little sister and there was no sound made by my little brothers. One had forgotten to take his teddy. I remember he asked for it once. My mother told him teddy was at home and fast asleep in his bed. My brother never asked again. Teddy was safe. I also never forgot my little sister’s ever so dark blue, big, hungry eyes.

After about 20km or so there were fewer people on the road, only the hardy like my mother were still trudging on. Most had fallen by the wayside. Few would survive the night. It was getting quite dark now and words fail me to describe the degree of exhaustion and fear that was gripping me. Unless something happened to give us a glimmer of hope we were done for. We were lucky, the glimmer materialised. In the darkness the sky began to glow, redder and brighter with every kilometre that we stumbled on. The town of Soldin was resolving itself into a glowing sunrise. We followed the glow like the three kings followed the star of Bethlehem. Perhaps around midnight, we approached the outskirts of the town. And here I saw another weapon which frightened the wits out of me. Looming dark and towering well above the height of a nearby house stood a massive Flak gun. The mere size of it conveyed its destructive power and I suffered another panic attack and, being so tired, I even cried. The by now familiar ‘walk on, child, walk on’ sounded in my ears and on I went.

Finding shelter proved to be difficult. We stumbled through row after row of completely destroyed houses, many still burning, it looked more like a bomb attack than accident or arson. The area we had entered was completely deserted and we did not know which way to turn. There seemed to be no way out either, with roads blocked by collapsed buildings and we were quite disorientated. I was thinking of the Minotaur’s maze. A small dark figure emerged from a half-destroyed building. A feeble voice pleaded: please, please, help me. I am alone, please, stay with me. A trembling old woman approached us. She, like my great-grandfather, had been left behind when her family had fled. We were only too glad to go with her. Part of her house was still standing. The top half had departed and the front caved in. But round the side was a good-sized hole in the brick wall and we clambered in. The room still had a ceiling and through another hole in an opposite wall there was another room, also with a ceiling. The second room was more sheltered. I helped my mother to get granny inside; the three young children were laid down on a bed with loads of bedding and blankets provided by the dear old woman. My mother constructed a simple hearth from loose bricks, she ‘cooked’ delicious hot water, we could thaw out and also had a meagre ration of bread.

Much later I learned that this was the night that Dresden was firebombed out of existence. And I don’t believe the low figures given after the war for the numbers of people killed during the raid. Dresden, like my own town, would have accommodated several times more refugees than the original number of people living there. Moreover, I don’t think that the Germans expected the town to be bombed and enormous numbers of evacuees, among them orphans and lost children from all over Germany, had been sent there by the tens of thousands. Dresden was considered safe, being a jewel of European civilization and had minimal defences. I will say more about Dresden later on. That night I sank into oblivion.

Our plight re-emerged with unforgiving clarity the following morning. ‘I am not going to stay,’ I heard my mother say. ‘There will be no food anywhere in this area. I must move on with the children.’ ‘And I am not going with you,’ said my grandmother. ‘It will be beyond your strength to take me as well, and you must save the children. I will be a handicap to you. Load the children into the cart and leave, this is my last word.’ My mother agreed that this was the only sensible option open to her.

We dressed for the road, had a piece of bread and hot water. The old woman assured us that she would look after our grandmother, she was very anxious to keep her as company, but their fate could not be taken into consideration by my mother. My mother and her mother had only one thing to consider: the children’s survival. We children said our innocent goodbyes and scrambled through the hole in the wall. I was last. As I clambered over the bricks I suddenly remembered that it was the birthday of my grandmother. I hastily stumbled back and walked up to her. She was sitting on the floor, still too weak to stand. I remembered my manners. I curtsied and wished her a happy birthday. There was a smile on her face, which I could not interpret and she said, ‘Mein liebes Kind, leb wohl.’ My dear child, farewell. I quickly left and joined m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise
• Title
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Foreword
• The Wrong Side of a River
• School
• Things Go Wrong
• Food, Always Food
• Bidding Farewell to Grandfather
• Mother Courage
• Raus! Uhodi!
• Home
• Burying the Dead
• The Scent of Lilac
• The Order to Go West
• West of the Oder
• Our New Socialist Friends
• To the Border
• Climbing Out of a Dark Hole
• To England
• Plates
• About the Author
• Copyright