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

I nodded, handed the letter back to her and excused myself to go outside. I ignored my sister and brothers and began to run, running through the market square, over the bridge and into the forest.

Chapter Forty-Seven

October 1948

In many ways, despite the disquieting political situation, life continued to become appreciably better. Starvation was no longer a threat, and for the first time we had enough money to buy a few things beyond the most basic necessities. Papa had gotten work as a manager in a small furniture factory in Osterholz, a larger town near Worpswede. There he got to know a welder who helped him seal coins into cans labelled as fish oil. These were the old fifty pfennig Reichsmark coins that were no longer legal tender in the West but were still in use in the East where they were accepted at 10 percent of their face value. Sealing them into cans would not fool a thief who picked the can up, as they were much heavier than fish oil and of course rattled in a way that even the nastiest fish oil did not, but the ruse was effective as none were ever stolen. Other people we knew routinely had cash and valuables pilfered from the packages sent to them by relatives in the West.

In addition to this help from Papa, we received a windfall from the bank. Before the end of the war Papa had transferred 16,000 Reichsmarks (or about 5,000 U.S. dollars, which adjusted for inflation would be the equivalent of $60,000 today) to bank accounts in Colditz in the children’s names. He evidently thought that this was a clever way to minimize the risk of losing all his money if the war did not go well. At first it seemed that his plan had failed as the Soviets simply froze all bank accounts, but now three years later Mama received notification that every individual who could demonstrate that they had not been a member of the Nazi Party was entitled to receive 300 of the new Ostmark from their frozen accounts. The remainder would be officially confiscated as part of the ongoing war reparations. Mama had not joined the Party (inconceivable!) and this ruling applied to children as well. Obviously we were not Nazis either and our Hitler Youth time was not held against Theodor and me. Consequently seven of us lined up at the bank and each received our 300 Ostmark, so we had 2,100 in total. We were rich! Or if not rich, at least in a position where we would not have to worry about paying the rent through the winter. Mama did not permit us to spend one pfennig of it, making it plain that she felt bad times could be right around the corner again.

Indeed some of what was being said in school was beginning to alarm me. One particular speech by the school director sticks in my mind. The gist of it was that as young men and women of the new socialist Germany we needed to prepare for the possibility of confrontation with our erstwhile countrymen in the West. Those fourteen years of age and younger should join the Young Pioneers and the older students should join the Free German Youth. He seemed oblivious to the effect of that pronouncement on those of us who had been in the Hitler Youth. I looked around me and saw many stony faces as well as a few wry ironic smiles. The echoes of the past were tragicomic. He then went on to say that Joseph Stalin had done everything humanly possible to reach across the zone frontier and offer the hand of friendship and cooperation to the Americans, British and French, but they had again and again spurned this offer because they were so intent on rebuilding a fascist Germany. Yes, fascism was back, and its successor state was in the West where the Allies coddled ex-Nazis and groomed them to return to power. Such was their fear of the Worldwide Socialist Revolution! Such was their hatred of rights and freedom for workers and peasants! And on it went.

As I listened to this I naturally thought of Papa. He was an ex-Nazi. He was in the West. Had he been coddled? Is that what his friendship with that English major was about? I was so accustomed to the word “Nazi” as it was omnipresent when I was growing up and thus no more shocking to hear than “squirrel” or “lamppost.” It was, I suppose, a little like a curse word that is used so much that it becomes drained of all of its power, and “Nazi” was not even a curse word until 1945, at least not in our house. But “fascist” was another thing. That word had bite to it. It sounded evil in a way that no other political label did. Had Papa really been a fascist? Was he possibly still a fascist in some small way that would infect the new Germany in the West? I was going to have to process these thoughts slowly, although I was fairly certain that I would conclude that yes, he had been a fascist and that I just was not yet used to thinking that way, but that no, he had been persuaded over the course of three years that being a fascist was not the correct thing to be. After all, as I learned new things I continued to change some of my views, such as my belief in witches for example, so why would that process not also be available to adults? This was a rational thought and that pleased me. Also, much as with Radio Moscow, Herr Schimmler spoke with that bombast and grandiosity I associated with questionable factual content.

I recounted the speech to Theodor when I got home from Rochlitz that evening. He listened, nodding, and then quietly asked me