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

this noise though, just as loud, and still the ground shakes, just as hard. Then I begin to scream. I scream and scream until I am louder than them and at that moment I am suddenly awake, screaming.

I am by far not the only boy to occasionally wake up screaming at the KLV-Lager, so nobody pays any attention.

Chapter Sixteen

May 31, 1944

Leipzig was heavily bombed again by the Americans on the 29th of May. Apparently the attack had been in the small hours of the morning and by breakfast that day word had reached Herr Tischendorf that his home neighbourhood had been heavily damaged and was on fire. He took one of the two old staff cars kept parked at the KLV-Lager and left immediately.

We didn’t learn any of the details until two days later, when another teacher told us the terrible story before class. He said that when Herr Tischendorf arrived, the fire was out, but the entire city block that his house had stood on had been transformed into an enormous heap of smoking rubble. Not a single wall still stood. Apparently Herr Tischendorf then began wildly clawing at the debris, heaving bricks and hunks of plaster aside. He could hear whimpering and moaning from somewhere deep in there. Civil defence workers and neighbours were digging on either side of him too, calling out to anyone who might be trapped and able to hear them.

A young girl, covered in dust and blood, was pulled out alive from what had been the neighbour’s place. Herr Tischendorf’s fingers were raw and bleeding by the time he reached where he estimated his family’s cellar shelter would be. The three floors had all pancaked in, collapsed and compressed and jumbled. The shelter had been no shelter. He found his disabled son, Max, first. Max’s face looked peaceful, as if asleep, but his chest had been crushed. Next, he found his wife, or at least what he knew to be her from her clothing, location and size. Her body had been smashed beyond recognition.

The teacher who told us this, Herr Kraus, did so in a quiet steady voice. He was a very small man with round glasses and unruly black hair. He stood before the classroom with his hands tightly clasped before him. It was obvious that he was making an effort to control his emotion. His eyes were red rimmed. I was shocked. I was shocked by the graphic nature of the information and I was shocked that we were being told any of this at all. There was no requirement to explain Herr Tischendorf’s absence. He was the head teacher and he was, in essence, our overlord, so his comings and goings were none of our business. Moreover, to this point no authority figure had told us anything that could even faintly be construed as negative about the war. Whether Herr Kraus was trying to inspire us to anger against Germany’s enemies or whether he was trying to sober us with the true horror of war was unclear. Even Felix seemed unsure of how to respond. Herr Tischendorf returned after a few days and did not seem any different at first, but the rumours of his drinking plum brandy in his private office began to gather strength again, although this time with a sympathetic undertone rather than a scornful one.

In all the chaos and destruction the postal service continued to astound, for that day we received a letter from Mama dated the day of the latest bombing raid.

Dear Theodor, Dear Ludwig,

As you will have heard, Leipzig was badly attacked again this morning. They say over 10,000 buildings were damaged and half of those completely flattened. Papa thinks it is impossible for us to return home until after the war. He also understands that it is terrible for the family to be split up in four locations. He has used his connections to find a home for us in Colditz, only three kilometres from your camp. We will be able to get Clara and Johann from Aue. They are so sad and homesick there. It is a very small place though and you boys still need to go to school, so you will have to stay in camp, but you can come to our new temporary home on Sundays and holidays. We are moving immediately, so I will see you this Sunday.

Your Mama

It was a Wednesday, so we would see Mama, Clara and Johann in just four days! To go from the horror of hearing Herr Tischendorf’s story to the jubilation of this news in the span of an hour caused a kind of emotional whiplash that led me to being unable to concentrate for the rest of the day.

On Sunday, immediately after the mandatory flag raising, anthem singing and “Heil Hitler” saluting but before breakfast, Theodor and I excused ourselves from camp and set off for Colditz. Even though it was so close, we had never been there with the Hitler Youth or for any other purpose. It was an easy forty-minute walk down a road through flat farm country along the Zwickauer Mulde river, southeast of Schönbach. There were many people out in the fields. I did not know very much about farming, but it looked like they were hoeing weeds. I was surprised by the number of them and by the fact that they all wore the same loose-fitting grey clothing. They were absolutely silent as they worked, and none of them looked up at us. When I asked Theodor about them, he said that they were labourers from Poland. I did not think to inquire further, and Theodor would not have known more then anyway, but later I would learn that these were in fact not just labourers but slave labourers, who endured inhuman conditions and were often worked to death.

Colditz is important in this story, so I will take a moment to describe it properly. At the time