The Willow Wren by Philipp Schott (free ebook reader for iphone txt) 📕

the time before or to imagine the time after. Not that it really mattered to us as it had so little impact on our lives, with the exception that Papa was in uniform and at the office all the time, rationing was steadily increasing and both the Volksempfänger and our teachers reminded us constantly that we were at war, beating back the encircling Bolsheviks, Free Masons, Jews and Anglo-Saxon warmongers. They did sound like a scary bunch, but in the abstract manner of the witches and ogres in fairy tales.

It was a glorious summer. Really glorious. The Volksempfänger appeared intent on vigorously and repeatedly proving Mama’s gloomy prediction wrong and the bullies had vanished for the school holidays. I presumed that their parents sent them to some sort of junior SS camp where they were being taught how to catch knives with their teeth, but I would not have to worry about that until the fall. Most importantly of all, the forest was especially wonderful that summer. There is nothing like light and air filtered through a million leaves to put your soul at ease. I know now that the Japanese call this “forest bathing” and believe that the compounds released into the air by leaves have health-giving properties. Their doctors even prescribe walks in the woods. But at that time I just knew that no matter what, I felt better when I was deep among the trees, in that world of fragrant green. Of course more than the trees there were the birds. My special favourites remained the sparrows and the wrens. Most especially the energetic, diligent little wrens. They were proud and they had reason to be proud.

You might ask yourself, Who remembers a specific summer from that age if he did not do much more than hang around in a forest? Who can distinguish the summer of age seven from that of age six or eight? The invasion of Russia is of course a memory anchor, but the summer of 1941 is mostly one I remember vividly because it was the last peaceful and happy time in my life for at least a decade.

By the end of the summer we knew that Mama was pregnant again. With Johann she had already qualified for the bronze “Cross of Honour of the German Mother,” or simply “Mutterkreuz” for short. This was one of Hitler’s schemes to encourage Germans to have as many children as possible. The unstated aim was to man the armies and populate conquered lands, but it was all dressed up as a cheery celebration of the joy of large families, with the posters showing a beaming Adolf presiding over swarms of blond children like a peculiar uncle. You received the Mutterkreuz if you had four children. Five was still just bronze level. You needed six for silver, but by the time Paul was born in 1945 nobody was handing out Mutterkreuzes anymore. Incidentally, for a gold Mutterkreuz you needed to bear eight children or more. I never saw Mama wear the medal, which is not a surprise, but from Papa I know it existed.

Papa was proud of his large family and on our Sunday family walks, one of the rare times we were all together, he would strut out in the front like a father goose. It was, however, never clear that he was notably proud of any of the individuals who made up this family. The story went around that he was upset when Clara was born because there was some sort of extra special award for having an unbroken series of sons, but I do not know if this is true.

In any case, the winter that followed was one of the hardest and snowiest in memory. As Mama predicted, Hitler’s panzer divisions stalled thirty kilometres outside of Moscow. To prevent a catastrophic loss of men and materials, General Guderian stopped the offensive on December 5. Two days later the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Germany’s treaty with Japan obliged Germany to declare war on America too. Hitler did not care much for treaties and under other circumstances might have ignored this one, but he gladly obliged because he assumed the Japanese would follow through with their promise to then attack the Soviet Union from the east, taking pressure off Guderian’s forces. They did not do so. Everyone in Germany outside of Hitler’s inner circle knew that declaring war on America was a serious mistake. Everyone knew this, but very few said so.

My third brother, Oskar, was born on an especially foul February day. Mama developed a serious infection and lay in bed with a high fever after the birth. Coal had been rationed to the point that it was difficult to heat water properly, and medicines were in very short supply. Everything was needed for the Russian front. She became so ill that a deaconess came from the church and stood at her bedroom door singing, “Prepare yourself for the journey into eternity.” Imagine how terrified we children were to hear this! Even Johann was old enough to at least roughly understand that something terrible was happening to Mama.

But Mama had no intention of journeying into eternity.

Part Two

Fortunately, people can comprehend only a certain degree of misfortune; anything beyond that either destroys them or leaves them indifferent.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Die Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities)

Chapter Eight

March 27, 1943

This is the night the war came to us. There had already been several false alarms. The thick silence of night would be abruptly torn open by the screaming of sirens. Papa would race off to the Ortsgruppe and Mama would hurry the five of us, dazed and blinking, out of bed and down the steep wooden stairs into the basement of our building to join the other families assembling there. Nobody would speak to anybody else though; each family inhabiting a private bubble of fear. Mama would guide us down there with a flashlight, but then, after struggling into our gas masks,