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

absolutely everything. It occurred to me that the war had been so calamitous that it had warped time. Among our many books was a basic physics primer. Being a precocious reader and having an abundance of free time, I had carefully read it at least a half dozen times. In it I learned that Albert Einstein posited that time was a relative phenomenon. Here was proof. In fact, the entire post-war period was moving through time with thick jelly in its mechanism, but because everyone and everything moved this way, nobody noticed. I felt I had stepped out of time for a moment to see this properly.

We had to visit two banks and miraculously both were still standing. The first one, the Leipzig City Giro Bank, was pockmarked with bullet holes and missing several windows, but it was otherwise undamaged. Inside the main hall was a long table with Russian officers and soldiers sitting at it. Mama had to fill out a form and then hand the safe key over to one of the officers. He led the way down to the vaults and, motioning us to stand aside, unlocked the safe. With a quick smile he pocketed an antique watch while Mama kept a poker face. He then took out a teak box of fine silverware and in reasonably good German stated that this was being officially confiscated as part of the reparations owed Russia. The rest of the safe contents were documents such as birth certificates, Papa’s diplomas and the like. Although these were very valuable to us, they were fortunately of no interest to the Russian, so he handed them over politely. Back in the main hall Mama signed for the documents and signed a statement declaring surrender of the silver. There was no mention of the watch. Everyone was calm and scrupulously courteous. The loss of the silverware and the watch aside, this had gone better than I had feared. On the train ride up Mama told me stories of bank vaults that had been completely looted and even urinated on and defecated in.

The Commerce Bank was a different story. No urination or defecation, but no courtesy either. In this vault we had stored Opa Hugo’s paintings. Mama’s father was a moderately renowned artist from Weimar. He died seventeen years before I was born, but I grew up hearing stories about him. I also felt connected to him through his widow, my favourite oma, and I can picture his face clearly from the self-portrait he painted. He looked very much the part of a turn-of-the-century gentleman painter with his small round glasses, bushy moustache and rakishly tilted Edwardian hat. At this bank the officer assigned to us did not speak German, so we were accompanied to the vault by a translator as well, a sparrow-like woman with a high chirpy voice. Upon viewing the paintings, the two of them exchanged a few words in Russian. The officer looked at us sternly while the translator declared that all of these paintings were quite obviously war booty stolen by the Nazis from Russia. The fact that Hugo Flintzer had signed each and every one of them and that Mama had documentation proving herself to be the daughter of Hugo Flintzer had as much impact on their bizarre assertion as a louse has on the plans of an elephant. They did not respond at all but simply ushered us out with a firm hand on Mama’s shoulder. In the next vault we could see a man weeping loudly while two Russian soldiers dragged him out. Mama told me later that he was a well-known publisher and that she had heard through a mutual acquaintance that the Russians had torn apart and stomped on all of his most valuable documents and first editions. It was a bad day at the Leipzig Commerce Bank.

Mama’s face was a mask and she managed to keep her composure until we got on the train. Once it pulled out of the station she broke down and began sobbing. She had loved her father so dearly and this was like losing him all over again. She was ten when he died and here before me was the ten-year-old girl again, overwhelmed by grief. Fortunately Paul was sleeping. An older gentleman was in our compartment and inquired what the matter was and whether he could help. I explained what had happened as he listened intently, nodding, brow furrowed.

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that. The methods of our liberators are sometimes a little boorish and indelicate, but their aims are pure. In time you will come to see that the loss of bourgeois goods is in fact a kind of liberation as well. We must leave such things behind if we are to build the just socialist future for Germany.” His tone was so kind and gentle, and he was clearly concerned for our welfare, but I could see that Mama was struggling mightily to bite her tongue. To my surprise, diplomacy won out and she just dried her eyes and smiled and thanked him.

When we got to Colditz, Mama went directly to her room. I told Theodor everything that had happened, right up to and including the socialist supporter on the train. He asked me to describe the man and when I did, he chuckled and said that he knew who I was talking about. This man was well known in town as one of the local Nazi Ortsgruppe officials who managed to destroy his records on time, even at the Gau level, and then ingratiate himself with the occupiers by identifying other ex-Nazis for them. He seemed so nice.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Summer 1946

The food situation improved in the summer. The spring rain led to decent crops, which had a ripple effect through to the ration system. Also the berries and fruit were especially good that summer. I found some particularly productive raspberry patches in the forest that nobody else seemed to know about. We were