Coming to Colorado: A Young Immigrantâ??s Journey to Become an American Flyer

CHAPTER 3. Leaving for America

Leaving for America CHAPTER 3 { 36 } LEAVING FOR AMERICA The ticket window at the Hannover railroad station looked just like the window I remembered from Sagan in January 1945, when my mother, Ingrid, and I got on the last train to Berlin, fleeing the terror of the Red Army. As I stood in line to buy my ticket to Fürstenfeldbruck, a vision from my past popped into my head. My mother and Ingrid had somehow managed to get on the crowded train. As much as I tried, I couldn’t find a way, surrounded as I was by hundreds of screaming, pushing, clawing, desperate people wanting to do the same. Then the train began to move, slowly at first, then faster and faster, with me running alongside. When I realized that I wouldn’t be able to get on, that the train was leaving without me, taking my mother and sister with it, when I understood that terrifying truth—I wanted to die. I was only nine years old then, cold, hungry, tired, filled with fear. As I approached the end of the platform, resigned to my fate, strangers reached out of a passing train window and grabbed me by my uplifted hands, my hair, my coat, wherever they could find a grip, and as the train thundered across switches into the darkness of night the strangers struggled with their burden until they pulled me to safety onto the speeding train. But this was 1950. I was on a train platform in Hannover, waiting for a train that would take me to my mother, not away from her. I shook my head vigorously, as if by doing so I could shake off the past like sweat pearling on my brow. The war was long over, yet it lived on in my head. I seldom thought of the past consciously, but it intruded all too often in my sleep, when I couldn’t keep it out, and at times of its own choosing. There was no total escape. The blue-jacketed attendant took my money, stamped my apprentice pass which gave me a special fare, handed me the one-way ticket to Fürstenfeldbruck, and never once looked up. I walked over to the platform where my D-Zug was scheduled to arrive. I was early. The station smelled of the many thousands of people who had passed through it before me; it smelled of urine, coal, steam, and cheap tobacco. I saw daylight at the far end of the platform. Once out in the open I felt better, freer. I sat down on a bench, alone with myself and my thoughts. I began to understand that I was about to start a new life, have a new beginning, like being born for a second time. The thought was thrilling, also intimidating: To have { 37 } LEAVING FOR AMERICA another chance at life. How many people got such a break? Would I be able to take advantage of this opportunity? When the train arrived, I hardly felt the weight of the suitcase in my hand as I walked down the line of green cars looking for an empty compartment . I wanted to be alone with my thoughts, savor every second, every minute of this precious day. I found a compartment in a car to the rear of the train and made myself comfortable in a window seat, looking aft, to have a lingering view of the countryside. Maybe it would be the last time to see the land of my birth. I didn’t know if I would ever be able to return. It was a beautiful December day filled with sunshine, mellow and diffuse, gently warming. There was no wind, or very little of it. A touch of coolness in the air presaged the chill of winter days to come. As the train carried me south I was captured by its rhythm, just as I had always been as a child, captured by the rush of air pushed aside by speeding cars, by the clickety-clack of cast-iron wheels racing across shiny rails, and by the occasional hoot of the engine at the head of a long string of cars obediently following behind like little chicks following a hen. At times, when negotiating a long curve, I could see the train to its full length: an enchanting sight of fluid motion, nearly a living thing it seemed...