The Last Year of the War, page 21
Papa must have asked if the uncles had a vehicle and could take us to Oma’s house, which I gathered was too far away to walk to with so many suitcases. There was more chatter and then the uncles were locking the shop and we were again out on the street with our luggage. Werner told us to wait for him there on the sidewalk.
He returned with a truck with the name of a bakery on its door, which he’d apparently borrowed from a neighboring merchant. The uncles loaded our suitcases in the back of the truck, and then Max, Mommi, and I got into the backseat while Papa sat in the front with Werner. Klaus said he’d meet us at the house after he’d alerted his wife and Werner’s. He said he would join us at the house with the rest of the family.
We drove past picturesque streets and bridges as well as bombed city blocks that stood in stark contrast. We passed sandbagged corners, antiaircraft guns at the ready, and searchlights pointed to the sky for when night would fall.
We entered a residential area, and at first the houses were built so close together that a person could not pass between them, but after about a mile or so we turned onto a street that led us up a winding hill, and there the houses stood by themselves. These had been built on large lots, and some had barns and fencing for livestock and open snowy fields where I could picture green things growing on warm summer days. We pulled into a driveway and I recognized the front of Oma’s house from the pictures I had seen. It was a large three-story, half-timbered, with shutters painted with blue, pink, and yellow flowers. Window boxes, empty now, waited for spring. It was a beautiful house, straight out of a fairy tale. The heavy oak front door had a stately brass stag’s head for a knocker. Pots of black dirt, frosted now, stood on either side of it. I could picture them full of red tulips.
As we started to get out of the truck, the massive front door opened and a woman I knew at once to be my grandmother peered out. She looked just like she did in the black-and-white photograph Papa had of her from his christening day, except for the silver hair and wrinkles at her eyes. She was petite in height but rounded in ways that made her look soft and pillowy.
She staggered back a moment, almost as if the sight of us was too much to take in, and then she flew into Papa’s embrace. She began to weep with what I can only describe as joy and sorrow. She was sobbing words that I could not understand. I’m not even sure Max could understand all of them.
There were a great many things said the rest of the day that I did not understand, and I would openly turn to Max for a translation as often as I could because I knew I was among family now. They all knew where I had been born, and what language was my mother tongue, and that I was an American citizen through no fault of my own. But Max could not spend the entire day translating for me, and I knew he would have to explain to me later much of what everyone had said.
At that moment all I could discern was that as my Oma hugged Papa, the words she spoke seemed to come from some deep ache inside of her. It wasn’t until hours later when Max and I were alone in the room he was sleeping in that he told me what had been said.
My brother told me Oma had written to Papa when we were still in Crystal City and told us not to come, that it was not safe, and that it would be better for us if we stayed in America. As much as she wanted to see us, she begged Papa not to come. But of course, Papa never got that letter.
Who can say which country’s censors decided this was not a letter that could be delivered? Perhaps the German censors believed it painted too grim a picture of Germany’s status. Oma may as well have said, Germany is losing the war! Do not come!
Max said Oma was happy to see us, but her happiness was woven in with her great sadness, and they were impossible to separate.
After she had let go of Papa, she turned to Max and me and hugged us, too. She spoke many words of endearment to me, but I only understood that she was very happy to finally meet me because I shared her name, at least the American version of it. And then she at last reached for my mother.
I watched in fascination as my mother fell into Oma’s arms and began to weep. I remembered then how Papa had said that my mother had felt such care and affection from Oma when she married Papa, and that she had never experienced that kind of mother-love before because she could not remember her own mother. All those years in America after Max and I were born, Mommi had to be the nurturing one. She’d lost her own mother so young, and while she had been happy in America with Papa, she’d needed someone to mother her in return. Papa cared for her, adored her, and protected her, but a husband is not a mother. And as my father had told me, my mother was not strong, but rather the kind of gentle soul who never outgrows her need for her mother, especially when times are hard. Oma stroked Mommi’s hair and murmured words to her that I didn’t understand, and which seemed too personal anyway.
It seemed as though we stood in the entryway for a long time before Werner and Papa brought in all the suitcases. But once they had, I felt like we had at last arrived to stay. Oma had not been expecting us, so she didn’t have rooms ready for us. Next came the commotion of figuring out where everyone would sleep. The room that I was given was her sewing room, and there wasn’t even a bed in it that first night. Max was given Papa’s old room, and my parents were given the one room where a big guest bed stood perpetually at the ready.
The next few hours we sat in what I would call the living room. It was a cozy, warm room with thick oak beams across the ceiling, big rugs on the floor, and fat leather furniture spread about. A large poster of an unsmiling Adolf Hitler hung on a far wall, which Max told me later Oma was required to display in her home, as was every other German resident. Klaus and his wife, who were childless, arrived with Werner’s wife and one of their two grown daughters, Hilde. Their other daughter, Emilie, was married and lived in Munich. They brought food with them so that Oma would have enough to feed all of us that evening. Food was becoming increasingly scarce even though it had been rationed in Germany since the beginning of the war. Oma, being single, had enough rations for one person, an allocation of only thirteen hundred calories a day. Papa would not get his ration book until he registered with the local authorities, which he had been instructed to do the next day.
Rationed food was not a new concept to us; that had been taking place in Davenport since the spring after Pearl Harbor, as well as at Crystal City. But Papa saw quickly from one look at Oma’s pantry that we’d eaten well at the camp, better than perhaps even our Texan guards and schoolteachers had, which had been the rumor that no one wanted to believe. Meat, which we had nearly every day in the camp, had now become so scarce in Pforzheim that many, including Oma, were raising rabbits for consumption. Max asked for and was immediately given care of the hutches and Oma’s current population of ten rabbits, which were housed inside her barn. I was fine with him having that responsibility all to himself. I had no desire to spend any time getting to know Oma’s rabbits if we were going to have to eat them on another day in a stew.
When the rest of the family arrived, there were more sad and happy tears because we were there. We moved into the dining room, and the conversation around Oma’s big dining table went into the twilight hours as we suppered on tins of smoked herring, black bread, boiled potatoes, and dried apples. I grew restless after the light meal was consumed and yet we lingered at the table. I couldn’t ask to be excused when we’d all just been reunited. I knew I was with my family, had been warmly welcomed into the very bosom of it, and yet I felt apart from the fellowship in the room. I couldn’t follow the conversation, couldn’t say my own piece. I couldn’t tell these people who obviously loved me that I felt like I was only visiting. Their city wasn’t mine. Their war wasn’t mine. Their sorrows and deprivations were not mine.
Finally, the uncles and their wives and Hilde left, and the house was quiet again. A bed was made for me on the floor of the sewing room with sofa cushions covered in a soft down comforter, the softest I had ever touched. Mommi and Oma made the bed for me, and Oma spoke to me while Mommi translated.
“I’ve waited since the day you were born to meet you, Elise,” she said. “I’ve always loved that we shared the same name. Would you mind if I called you Elsa?”
Papa had already told me while we were still aboard the ship that this was how he wanted non-family to know me, as the name Elise was not German. The memories of being the hated one in Davenport were still relatively fresh, so at the time I told him I didn’t care one way or the other. But now as Oma asked me if she could call me this, I found myself wanting her to. I told her I would like that very much and I very nearly apologized for the unspoken thoughts of not belonging here that I’d had at supper. Oma hugged me, then closed her eyes, and what she said next sounded like a prayer. Mommi didn’t translate; she just stared at Oma as tears filled her eyes. That’s how I was certain it was a prayer to God. She was pleading to the Almighty for our safety because we hadn’t gotten her letter and we’d come here instead of staying in America.
When she was done she opened her eyes and kissed me. “Tomorrow morning, you and I will use the sugar ration and we’ll make a cake to rival all cakes,” she said.
She was crying again, and I found that my own cheeks were wet. I had never had a grandmother speak to me this way or look at me with the kind of love with which she was now gazing at me. I had seen it with my friends and their grandmothers in Iowa but had no frame of reference for understanding what that kind of love is like. She loved me without having met me except through letters that Papa or Mommi had translated for me. Shame over what I had been thinking at the dinner table again swept over me. It was so hard to know who I was in that moment, other than a teenage girl loved by her grandmother.
Oma tucked me in and told me Uncle Klaus and Aunt Helga, who’d never been blessed with children and had extra bedding, would borrow another truck and bring a feather bed over to the house the next day. I was able to say thank you and good night in German, which made her smile.
She rose from my makeshift bed and checked to make sure my blackout curtains were secure. Mommi leaned down to kiss me good night.
“Are you warm enough?” she asked in English. Such a strange question. I was under two layers of eiderdown and plenty warm. But I know, all these many years later, what she was truly asking. She was asking me if I thought I could be all right here. Would I forgive her for not being stronger? For not being able to live in Davenport without Papa?
I didn’t see the questions behind the questions that night, so I just said yes.
* * *
• • •
The following morning, Papa walked back into the heart of the city to register our arrival, receive ration books for our food, and inquire about a job so that he could support his family. Papa was told by the Sturmbannführer—the officer in charge of recording our completed repatriation—that he would be working alongside his uncles making fuses, until his skills as a chemist were needed, and that he should be ready at a moment’s notice to be transferred to Berlin. Papa politely told the officer of his pledge not to serve in the German military and was promptly told there was plenty he could for his country without putting on a uniform. As my father stared at the German major, he was reminded that Uncle Werner had said there were rumors that Hitler had physicists, engineers, and chemists like my father working to construct a bomb so powerful just one of them could flatten an entire city. But Papa couldn’t ponder this for even a second longer because the next moment he was told that Mommi and I were expected to start making fuses at the watch shop, too.
Surprised, Papa fumbled to come up with an excuse as to why I shouldn’t have to do such a thing. Everyone—my parents, Oma, the uncles—had agreed that because of my lack of skill with the German language it would be best for me to continue my studies at home with Oma and Mommi. It was not uncommon in those days for children to be done with formal schooling after eighth grade. But Papa had not even for a moment considered that I would be expected to work in service to the Nazi war machine.
“Both my wife and my daughter?” Papa asked.
The major did not look up from his paperwork. “Ja.”
“But my daughter is not yet sixteen.”
The major looked up, peering at Papa over the rims of his wire spectacles. “You stated here she is finished with school.”
“Yes, but—”
“Then she works.” The Sturmbannführer returned his gaze to the paper on which he was writing.
“My wife and daughter are . . . are in delicate health,” Papa tried next.
“Your documents signed by medical staff at the detainment camp state your wife and daughter are in fine health. They start tomorrow, as do you. That is all, Herr Sontag.”
Papa came home from this errand glum, tossing the ration books onto the kitchen table and slumping into a chair. Several minutes passed before he shared with Mommi and me all that he’d been told. The three of us were alone in the house. Max and Oma were outside with the rabbits.
“Can they really force you to help them make a bomb like that?” Mommi asked, tears in her eyes and a catch in her throat. “Can they force Elise and me to work for them?”
Papa didn’t answer her; he just put up a hand like he couldn’t speak of it anymore, and he stood and walked away. I was starting to realize—Mommi probably was, too—that the Nazis could make us do whatever they pleased. The picture of what it was like to live under Nazi rule was becoming clearer every day. I knew Papa was not a follower of this regime and that every time someone saluted him and said, “Heil Hitler!” it pained him to return the greeting.
I also knew the kindest thing I could do for him now was to get up the following dawn, ready to walk down to the watch shop, and say nothing about where I’d rather be.
So that is what I did.
Several times the next morning, as we readied ourselves for the day at the watch shop, Papa told me how sorry he was, how sorry he and Mommi both were, that I had to come with them today and learn how to make the fuses Hitler needed to keep his U-boats in the water, ready to torpedo Allied ships.
“It’s all right, Papa,” I would say in return, and he’d shake his head and whisper that it wasn’t.
The air was frosted and flurried with happy white confetti as we walked to the shop. Our feet crunched on frozen gravel and our breath came out in gauzy plumes. It was a beautiful morning. It was as though the world had forgotten it was at war.
Werner and Klaus had been made aware of our labor assignment: extra materials to make the fuses had been delivered to them late the previous afternoon. They did not welcome us to their work as we stepped inside and took off our coats, but they did welcome us. Werner’s wife, Matilde, had made ersatz coffee from ground acorns that she’d roasted on top of her stove and then percolated as though they were coffee grounds. The drink was nutty and smoky and there wasn’t enough sugar to make it palatable for me, but it was warm and I drank it anyway. And then we set to work.
I learned that day that a fuse acts as a sacrificial device. When too much electrical current flows through the fuse, threatening the circuit connected to it, the metal strip inside the fuse’s cylinder melts, so that the current is interrupted. The circuit is saved, as well as the apparatus it powers. The fuse, though, is destroyed, sacrificed in the line of duty.
Werner and Klaus and their wives and Helga had made thousands of them.
“Do you make these fuses as well as you make your beautiful watches?” Papa asked his uncles as we stood in the workroom and surveyed the assembly line they had created between the five of them.
“No,” Werner said softly. “We do not. But we are careful. And we will show you how to be careful.”
The rest of the morning the uncles showed us how to make fuses that were slightly less than perfect: a shortened wire here, a loose connection there. It took effort to produce a nearly flawless fuse.
And while we worked, all that day and the next and the next, my German family taught me the language.
I didn’t have the aptitude that Max had for learning languages, but my great-aunts and -uncles were patient as they taught me. Max was more than willing to go to the nearby grammar school, as his command of the German language was better than passable. Oma’s neighbors, as well as the uncles’ closest friends and fellow retailers, all knew where my parents had been the last two decades and where their children had been born. I didn’t sense the need to pretend I could not speak around them, and I appreciated their help in learning to communicate.
The first few days I wrote long letters to Mariko, telling her everything that had happened to us, knowing full well I couldn’t send them yet. No letters describing what we were experiencing would get past the censors. I was hoping that the war would end soon, and if I saved them up I could just send the letters all at once. Stacks of them. Maybe Mariko was doing the same thing, writing me long letters she couldn’t yet send but would someday.
We were becoming more fully aware of what the German armies had done in Poland, Holland, France, England, and other countries during our detention. We also knew that millions of European Jews had been deported from their homes and sent to labor camps, but now the rumor was that many were being killed there, not merely put to work. They’d had to wear yellow stars before they were rounded up, identifying them as Jewish, as though that label meant they were guilty of something terrible. I would think of my crumpled-up identification tag that I still had in my coat pocket and I would feel the dueling burn of shame and defiance. The more I grasped the German language, the more I could see how troubled my German family was by everything that was happening, including the relocation of the Jews and the tales of what was happening at those labor camps.
