In Berlin in 1939, Michael Tradowsky celebrated his fourth birthday with his parents by helping his father tack up blackout paper over their windows. Germany was at war. For the next six years, the Tradowsky family endured the nightmare of the German home front. Intense and powerful, War Children shares the incredible saga of an ordinary German family during World War II. Looking back from the vantage of seventy years, Michael's memoir directly confronts how his childhood experiences, despite his parents' attempt to give him a normal upbringing, were shaped by an epoch of rampant evil under Hitler. Michael shares how each member of his family had his or her own way of fighting against the regime. His courageous and outspoken aristocratic mother was determined to protect her son from Nazi brainwashing and sacrificed everything but her love and honor to keep her children alive. His father, a promising theater director, rubbed shoulders with the great entertainers of the time-until his refusal to join the Nazi Party destroyed his aspirations. But perhaps Michael's love for his baby sister exemplifies the tragedy of a childhood spent in war, for her very life depended on him carrying her to the bomb shelter. From winding roads twisting through the tall pines of the Black Forest to trucks crammed with refugees, War Children offers a sobering testimony for children victimized by war, past and present.
War Children
A MemoirBy Michael TradowskyiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2012 Michael Tradowsky
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4759-5427-2Chapter One
The day of my life I remember best and try to forget most isWednesday, April 11, 1945. The morning of this brilliant day inErfurt, my mother, sister, grandmother, and I, along with all thewomen and children who lived in our four-story apartment building inthe Louisenstrasse 21B, hid in the cellar. Now and then, someone hushedthe group, and all listened for any sounds coming from the outside; nomatter how we strained our ears, we heard nothing. This was the third daythat we'd huddled down there, driven into our dim shelter by the soundsof approaching battle. For two days, the sound of gunfire and tanks hadgrown ever closer. Then, at last, at midnight, all noises faded to silence. Asmorning approached, the silence taunted us. Finally, around eleven, mymother stood and declared she would climb to the attic to find out what wasgoing on. Everyone knew that once my mother had made up her mind, shecould not be stopped. I begged to come along, thinking she might allow it.The air attacks had ceased for several days now. The bellowing of artilleryand the rumbling of tanks from the southern hills of the Steigerwald haddied down during the night. Besides, I was almost ten years old. Duringalerts, out of a strange mixture of fear and competitiveness, I was alwaysthe first to reach the cellar. Surely, if we were surprised by an attack, Iwould be able to make it down here quickly enough. She looked at mewith her big eyes, "brown as a doe" as my father described them. I sensedher pleasure with me.
"All right, come," she said, her low voice still deeper with concern, "butif we hear planes, we'll have to get back down immediately."
With that, she started up the concrete cellar stairs, sliding her shoeson each step with those quick chip-chip sounds. Curious and proud, Itrip-trapped behind her up to the basement door, which she flung openresolutely. The blinding light flooded through the tall windows onto thestaircase.
The attic was the most dangerous place in the house. I never had beenpermitted up there before. The roof, our only protection from the sky, wasso highly pitched that even my tall mother could walk standing up. Therafters and the clean floor smelled of dry, warm wood. I followed, lookingcuriously into the far corners, and was surprised to find them totally empty.According to air safety regulations, all rummage had been removed. Onlya zinc tub full of sand with a little hand shovel stuck on top had beenprepared in the middle of the spacious room. I had learned in school duringair safety instructions that this sand was called Luftschutzsand (air safetysand). We third graders had been taught, if we saw an incendiary bomb,to cover it with sand, never with water. When unknowing people hadcarelessly put water on these bombs, the burning phosphorus had floatedon top of the water, down the buildings, and along the streets and ignitedother houses.
My mother and I took a few creaking steps and then stopped andlistened. All was quiet. Over the last weeks, our family had confinedourselves to our first-floor apartment so that we could rush into thecellar quickly enough at each wail of the siren. During the last days, theAmericans had moved their airfields very close; attacks came at any time,often before the warning sirens could be sounded, so we had moved intothe cellar entirely, putting bunk beds into a small side room. We allowedourselves only short periods upstairs until the approaching battle soundskept us below permanently. Only our nagging curiosity could make usdisregard all caution and drive us up to the attic.
Following the direction of last night's battle sounds, my mother wentto the hatch facing south. She lifted the glass cover, stretched her neck intothe open gap, and looked toward the Steigerwald. I observed her scanningthe horizon. Two long, vertical wrinkles crossed her brow, starting fromthe base of her nose and making her most prominent feature look evenlarger. These furrows meant either concern, anger, and determination ormerely deep concentration.
"See anything, Mutti?"
She reached down, boosted me under my arms, and I grabbed hold ofthe sharp, metal rim of the hatch and chinned myself up. Stretching intothe opening, I saw the tile roof, the gutter, and our garden right belowme.
A checkerboard of vegetables spread to the white picket fence. Behindthe fence was the river, the Walkstrom, a small branch of the Gera. On theother side stood the frayed facade of the neighbor's house that had beenhit two weeks ago. From up here, I could follow clearly the path the bombhad taken. It had blasted off half the roof and the exterior walls, rippingoff parts of the five floors. Then it had burrowed into the cellar, where itgouged out a dark, bottomless funnel and spewed a wall of white rubbleover the backyard.
"Look to the left, to the Steiger," my mother said.
I cranked my neck toward the hills but could not make out anythingbefore my hands hurt too much and I had to drop to the floor. We listenedagain. Was there a distant hum? We did not wait to determine whether thesound was real or a result of our frightened and worn-out imaginations.We rushed downstairs.
While we were gone, the women in the cellar had busied themselvesstraightening cots, folding blankets, checking flashlights, replacing candles,and stacking magazines on crates that served as tables. They sent thechildren into the next room to play their usual cellar games. My motherand I rushed down the flight of concrete stairs into the cool, musty air.Our eyes adjusted to the light of the one naked lightbulb, and we saw thewomen scramble over the cots to gather around us.
"What's going on up there?"
"Tanks," my mother gasped. "The Steigerwald is full of tanks. Thereis no shooting. It's totally quiet."
My grandmother, Omi, pushed close while the others made roomfor the stately old lady. Her lifetime servant, shriveled, little Martchen,followed in her shadow. Omi turned her right ear toward my mother,cupping her hand behind it. My mother raised her voice.
"Tanks, Mamusch, tanks, up in the Steiger."
"What did she say?" said Omi, bending down to Martchen indisbelief.
The maid lifted herself on her toes to shout into Omi's ear. "Tanks,gnädige Frau (gracious lady), up in the Steiger."
"Tanks?" Omi repeated. "That close?"
Many years later, I would find out the historical facts of this day. Iwould read that the tanks belonged to the XX Corps under General WaltonH. Walker, who had permission from Patton to take Erfurt, although itwas east of the line the troops were expected to reach by this date. Thatday I understood only that the tanks besieging Erfurt were American, andthey would attack.
As if to prove my mother's report, we heard right then the dark, hollowsound of gunfire, like the rumbling of dirt falling on a coffin. Everyonethought the attack was beginning. We waited for the next barrage, but itdid not come. Instead, we heard a sound that, after a few moments, couldno longer be wished away—the humming of approaching planes. Mymother pushed me in front of her into the small side room. She picked upmy little sister, Monika, who was sleeping in the lower bunk. She wrappedthe thumb-sucking child tightly into her arms and sat down on the edge ofa chair. The grinding of the motors bore directly down on us; we sat withlowered heads, prepared to throw ourselves onto the concrete floor with thestart of the thuds and the tremors. We held our breath. Every fiber of ourbeings followed that lowering in pitch as the planes passed over the house.The sound slowly faded. We breathed again. The planes had not droppedany bombs on their first pass. They turned at the northern slope of thevalley for a second pass. Here came the approach. This time, one of theplanes flew so low that the roar of the motors shook the house. The pitchbroke in a glissando. The roar faded away toward the south into silence.We were puzzled. Why did they not drop their bombs?
After a while the adults dared to get up and walk around. Mygrandmother leaned her elbow on the shelf where the Volksempfänger stood.She cupped her ear against the round field of cloth over the loudspeaker.She tuned through the chaos of jamming sounds and Morse signals tofind the air safety broadcast. I hated this Volksempfänger (the "people'sreceiver"), a radio the government expected each household to purchase. Itsshape reminded me of a bar of soap standing on end, its corners all washedround. However, in a perverted way, it was black, not white.
I wondered why Omi bothered listening to the radio. With the airfieldsso close, warning messages came after the attack now or not at all. So,why listen? Perhaps it had become habit. During the last months, we hadbecome accustomed to following the reported routes of the bombers on theirapproaches and returns. Night after night, following each announcement,I looked up their location on a little square black-and-white map that hadbeen thumbtacked to the cellar door. Remembering this map still makesme shudder. The map showed almost all of Thuringia superimposed byconcentric circles of 25-km distances, with Erfurt in the center. The mapshowed no natural features—no rivers, no valleys, no mountains—justcities as little black round marks like bullet holes. During the raids of thelast eight months, the names of the cities on the map had dug themselvesinto my brain. When the radio announced the locations of the approachingbombers over the cities west of us, each name evoked its specific degreeof fear.
There was Eisenach on the extreme western margin. When the bomberswere reported over Eisenach, I still hoped that they would follow a morenortherly or southerly route. Mülhausen and Nordhausen meant they wereclose, but there was a chance they would pass us to the north and go on toHalle, Leipzig, or Berlin. If Saalfeld was announced, I prayed they wouldpass us to the south. However, when Gotha was named, the bombers wereheading directly for us, and we would hear the humming within minutes.Gotha made my heart beat in my throat. Please, God, not Gotha again!Then the humming would grow into the droning of hundreds of planesthat would wear on and on. Are they circling? Are they continuing to Jena,Chemnitz, or Dresden? Surely they will come back over us on the way out.
When we first tacked up the map, I studied it with interest, even aslight feeling of appreciation, as if by locating the danger I could controlit. But now, after hundreds of nights, it had become a record of dread. Itried to look around the map when I glanced toward the door. Besides, itwas useless. Following the concentric circles, the danger closed in on uslike the arches between someone's thumbs and index fingers closing aroundyour throat. Finally, it became just as disturbing looking at the map as itwas listening to that black bar of soap. Why did my grandmother persist?I did not understand then that she was trying to get information about theimminent occupation of the city, not about the usual air strikes.
That morning, the big news did not come over the airwaves.Disseminated in a unique way, it spread through the city by word ofmouth. It would take another hour and a half to make its way to theLouisenstrasse.
I could not stand listening to that radio. I felt compelled to untangle theweb of jammed, fragmented words and interpret them on that constrictingmap on the door. I had to escape this confinement.
I closed my eyes, groped for the door, and rushed into the main room.I almost ran over Martchen, the only adult I knew who was smaller thanI. She had gotten down from her chair the same instant, leaving on herseat the black book with the thin golden cross that she'd been reading.She was on the way to do what she felt was her duty even in these perilousdays. She had cooked and served all meals for my grandmother and herfamily for over thirty years.
"Are you hungry, Michael? Surely! We're all hungry."
She stroked her gray hair away from her tiny, round face. My fatherhad compared her face to a small, boiled, and cooled spring potato, itsskin smooth but shriveled into a hundred little folds. She refastened thehairpins in her bun and marched up to the kitchen to prepare bread andsoup. I turned toward the laughter that was coming from the larger sideroom where the children were playing their cellar games.
As I entered, the children were sitting on chairs in a circle, facing oneanother. They were holding hands playing "silent mail." I do not rememberthe names of the children except for the twins, Hedda and Gerda, who wereclosest to my age and, therefore, had become my playmates. Not identical,the twins were easy to tell apart. Hedda was pretty, Gerda plain. Havinglost their parents, they had found refuge with their aunt, Frau von Reuss,a childless and domineering lady, who abhorred the fuss that children wereliable to cause. The twins were twelve. All the other children were youngerthan I. None of the children were natives of Erfurt. They were all refugeeslike my sister Monika and I. We all shared the fate of most of Germany'schildren left in the cellars of the yet unoccupied land. We were childrenwho had fled with their mothers from advancing armies, from the eastout of Silesia, Pomerania, and East Prussia, or from the west, from Alsace,like Monika and I. They were children who had fled from devastated citiesto other places that had suffered less, like Erfurt. Many were children oflarge families. Their fathers had been fighting the war for years in everycorner of the world. They returned on leave and sired another offspring.The mothers, as obedient citizens, had given birth to five, six, or sevenchildren. For this, they received special privileges from the government.They earned tax exemptions, food allocations, and "mother and childcompartments" on the railroads. If they were exceptionally prolific, theyreceived the honor of the "Mother Achievement Cross." The names of thechildren were Nordic, like Hauke and Frauke, and often from the heroesof the Nibelungen Saga—Brunhilde, Sieglinde, Siegfried, or Gunther. Mymother could not suppress an ironic smile when she heard women call theirdaughters or sons, "Come here, Brunhilde," or "Bring me that, Siegfried,"and an undernourished five- or six-year-old with skinny arms and legsprotruding from oversized hand-me-downs would appear.
"Brunhilde, Siegfried," she would whisper, rolling her big brown eyes,"oh my."
The husbands, after fathering these children, returned to the front, andwould perhaps meet them as toddlers on their next leave. Many fatherswould never see their youngest. Someone would find the snapshot of thenewborn on their body in the dirt and snow of some distant battleground.
Continues...
Excerpted from War Childrenby Michael Tradowsky Copyright © 2012 by Michael Tradowsky. Excerpted by permission.
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