German Boy: A Refugeeâ??s Story

Chapter 14. Summer 1946

Chapter 14 SUMMER 1946 T here still were not many men around. Most had been killed or were prisoners of war. The men in Strasburg were, for the most part, either old, very young, crippled by war wounds, or active Communists . In the burned-out sections of Strasburg, groups of women could be seen with hammers in their hands and babushkas around their heads pulling bricks out of ruins and cleaning and stacking them in neat piles. They were working to help feed their children, and it was hard work. On my way home from school, I noticed that one of the house ruins was being rebuilt with such reclaimed bricks. I watched the house being put back together day after day as I went to and from school. It turned out to be a bakery, the first building to go up in Strasburg after the war. They finished the building on the inside; the outside, however, did not receive the customary coat of plaster and continued to look unfinished and ugly. Once the bakery opened for business, bread was never displayed on its shelves. It was always brought out from a back room after the store formalities had been settled. That way it was easy for them to say, ‘‘Sorry, we are out of bread. Try again tomorrow.’’ They were always out of bread when I went there. On a cloudy, damp, and still-cold Saturday in early May, our lives changed again. About nine o’clock in the morning, several battered Russian trucks drove into our street and stopped in front of two makeshift air raid shelters. One shelter was located directly across the street from our house. 203 204 From my Berlin experience, I knew that shelters such as these could never have stopped a direct bomb hit; rather they were intended to provide shelter from falling debris and deadly steel shards produced by exploding bombs. The shelters consisted of two steel boilers from the sugar refinery which had been buried in the ground and had entrances on either end shored up by railroad ties. The tops of the shelters were also covered with wooden railroad ties and a layer of dirt. Although the Russian soldiers didn’t speak German, they quickly got their message across to us. We were to evacuate our houses at once. At once meant right now. ‘‘Dowoi, dowoi, dowoi, raus, raus . . . ,’’ they shouted, gesturing with their hands to emphasize their intent. We assembled in the street, watching the soldiers unload boxes of explosives and carry them into the shelters. Then they attached detonators to the explosives and ran detonation cord out to one of their trucks. They attached the cord to a box with a plunger and then stood around for a while, smoking and talking. All of us watched the goings-on in disbelief. It finally dawned on everyone that this wasn’t an exercise, that they actually intended to blow up the shelters. I moved away from the shelters along with the crowd. Several women protested loudly to the soldiers, to no avail. The soldiers tried to chase the women away. When they refused to move, the soldiers ignored them. Without further warning, one of them walked over to the box to which the detonation cords were attached, a hand-rolled papyrossi dangling from the corner of his mouth, and pushed the plunger. It was a horrendous blast. Debris flew high into the air and shattered nearby houses. The soldiers had placed the explosives in the center of each shelter. They had not sealed the entrances. As a result, much of the blast effect came straight out of the entrances, blasting debris into our houses like shot from a gun. Many windows and doors were completely blown out. The midsections of the shelters, directly below the explosives, also blew, throwing old railroad ties up into the air and out into the street. Surprisingly, no one was injured. The Russian soldiers jumped into their trucks and left, never to return. The stench of explosives lingered in the air for the rest of the day. People removed debris and railroad ties from their front yards and from the street and began to repair the damage to their houses. Mutti was away during the explosions. She had gone to visit a girlfriend who was the town’s sole telephone operator. She liked visiting her at work and listening in on what she described as often hilariously funny telephone Summer 1946 [3...