Escape From Sedetenland
By Warne Wilson.
Copyright 2012 by Warne Wilson
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Escape From Sudetenland
Gunther Hoffman was eight years old in 1938 when Germany annexed Sudetenland, the western region of Czechoslovakia where he lived with his parents and his two older sisters in a little village close to the German border. The village was German and the villagers spoke German as their natural language. Gunther knew little of war, apart from the stories he had heard of 1914 - 1918 and the years of inflation and famine which followed before he was born. Germany had found a new rising star, Adolph Hitler, and the promise of his thousand year Reich.
Nothing changed for a week or two in the village, but Czech people there and in the surrounding countryside began to resent the long standing German families. Gunther’s father lost his job at the village Post Office when a Czech was appointed in his place, and he had to find work on a sugar beet farm.
On September first 1939 Gunther and his sisters sat obediently with their parents listening to the evening wireless news. Gunther was tired of the speeches and the cheering which dominated the news and he was daydreaming. He looked up in alarm as his father swore and his mother caught her breath in a stifled groan. “Our invincible German army is marching into Poland supported by our glorious Luftwaffe. Germany is at war!”
Wehrmacht tanks rolled through the village, and as Germans, Gunther’s family became hated and abused by the Czechs. At school he had his problems, he found his schoolbag filled with dirt and his lunch of sausage and cheese ruined. A big Czech boy pushed him and others began to chant “Hun, Hun, Hun.” He lunged at the big boy but someone else pushed him sideways and he fell, skinning his knees and a hand.
Gunther’s father was called for service in the German Army. On the day he left he gathered his little family. He kissed each of them in turn and said, “I will come back. Whatever happens, stay together.” Gunther’s mother, Giesla, clung to her husband in tears. He held her and kissed her, and from the door, Giesla and the children watched him until with a wave, he turned into the main street and was gone.
Years of starvation and fear followed; at first under the Germans, and then under Russian occupation when the war ended. Gunther’s village was just a few kilometres from the little village of Lidice where all of the men had been shot by the Germans and the women and children sent to the death camps in reprisal for the assassination of a German officer. The Germans suspected that the assassins were sheltering in the village and they razed it to the ground and cleared it to the bare earth so that no trace of it would remain. They even dug up the bodies from the cemetery and disposed of them.
Gunther’s father did not come back. They heard that he had been killed. The family did not stay together. The girls left one by one, and by the end of the war Gunther was out every day looking for food for his mother. One day he found a half rotten turnip to supplement the awful, mouldy, emental cheese they were surviving on. A Russian soldier hit Gunther in the face with a rifle butt when he caught him near the rubbish tins at the barracks.
That night Giesla bathed Gunther’s bruise by candle light. “We will die if we stay here,” She said. He winced a she dried the abraded skin, “I have a sister in west Germany; your aunt Magda. Life there is better under the British occupation and they have food. I think we must try to get to her.
Gunther felt the bruise tenderly, “But we cannot travel! The Russians guard the roads and we have no way of getting out. We will be shot if they catch us.”
His mother whispered, “One of the ladies at Church told me that there is a way. It would mean waiting for a moonless night. She knows a man who lives in the forest near Lidice,” she hesitated, “At least where Lidice used to be. She will arrange for him to leave a candle in a window. We are to knock there and he will give us directions for a safe route to a railway station. It will be a long walk, particularly at night, but we will be safe and we will have food if we can get to Magda’s”
Gunther fingered his face and tried his painful jaw. Mother is weak and she might not be able walk all the way. I might have to carry her and I am not sure if I have the strength to do that, but she is thin and she would not be heavy. I could support her if she could stay on her feet. I wish father was here. He would know what to do. A vivid image of his father filled his mind, he had been the village postman. Everyone knew him, people waited at their doors to greet him as he delivered their mail, making jokes about bills to pay when he handed them envelopes with windows in them. But he is gone, and it will be up to me. “But we would need food for the journey, and some money for the train tickets?” Gunther stared at the floor.
Giesla said resignedly, “I have my mother’s gold necklace.” She had been hoping the day would never come when she would have to sell it. “Schornhorst the banker will buy it. I will not get its true value, but enough to buy some bread, and perhaps a piece of new cheese. There will be enough for the tickets.”
Gunther felt his spirits lift, an unfamiliar feeling in his young, abused life. He would be leaving this terrible place. The bullies from his school days would be left behind and the humiliation of the Czechs’ taunts and jibes would be no more. The Russians too, would be left behind, with their orders and their pushing and their hitting. “When can it be, mother?”
Giesla was looking around the room as if for the last time. Her husband had built the little house when they were young, and there had been happy years, she was still under forty and she had loved teaching kindergarten at the old stone school. She thought with bitterness of the day she had been dismissed. A Czech lady had taken her place and there were few children now. The house was her last link to her husband and to the girls. She did not even know where they were, and perhaps she would never see them again. A tear brimmed and she brushed it away impatiently. “I must first sell the necklace, and then there will be arrangements to make, and we shall have to wait for a dark night: But soon.” The decision made, her mind began to focus. “I will see Schornhorst tomorrow.”
Gunther took his teaspoon of rotten emantal to eat in bed. He had no idea where his aunt lived in West Germany, or how far it was, but he knew it would be a dangerous journey. They would risk terrible punishment, and even death, but he felt the thrill of adventure, daring to imagine a neat well kept home in West Germany, and a welcoming aunt Magda, with food and light and warmth.
September sleet was slapping windows in the winding main street as Giesla entered the bank to see Mr Schornhost. The bank doubled as the village Post Office. Behind the counter, Mr.Schornhorst was arguing with a Russian soldier about the cost of postage. She sat on a hard wooden bench clutching her handbag. She could feel her mother’s necklace through the shabby velvet and she was dreaming of the time she was a girl and her mother was beautiful. She started as the soldier clumped angrily out and slammed the heavy door behind him.
“Next!” Barked Mr. Schornhorst.
Thankful that no others were waiting, Giesla stepped up to the counter. Schornhurst gave her a hard time, but she saw the glint of avarice in his eyes. She braved his depreciating arguments, but in the end she accepted part of the necklace’s value as another Russian banged in, slamming the door against the weather. She caught a last glimpse of glittering rose gold as Schornhurst swept the necklace off the counter and she had a moment of fright when the soldier saw the money. She drew herself up and placed the money in her bag as if it was an everyday transaction and the soldier looked to Schornhorst, to bark questions about a lost parcel.
Outside in the street, she was shivering with cold and fright. She gripped the money in her bag and leant against the sleet to stumble toward the baker’s.
A few nights later, all was in readiness. No moon, but a frosty, clear sky promised faint starlight. A stiff breeze swayed the trees and added to the chill. They rugged up as well as they could in their worn coats and gloves. Gunther had gathered a kit of survival gear; matches, a stub of candle, a knife, some string, a bandage, a tin mug, and a little compass his father had given him for his birthday before the war. They would each carry a small bundle of food in case they were separated. Through the Church lady, Giesla had arranged for the candle to be in the window of a house which was four kilometres away, across the fields toward the forest.
They left a candle burning in its holder to give the impression that they were at home, and they quietly left by the back door. Next door’s German Shepherd barked a frenetic alarm and they froze. The dog’s owner shouted a curse, the dog stopped barking, and they breathed again.
In the dark, Gunther separated the fence wires for his mother, but she caught her coat on the barbs, and the coat ripped as she fell through. She did not hurt herself, but she hated the slimy feel of freezing mud and grass on her legs and hands. Gunther helped her up, she was wiping mud from her knees and the dog began barking again, but they were on their way.