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Kosovo Refugees, Memories of 1945

by Traute Klein, biogardener

Kosovo evokes memories of the exodus from east Germany in the winter of 1944-45. My personal experiences are illustrated with photos of the parallel Balkans problem of 1999.

In honor of Remembrance Day, November 11, this article is my contribution to peace on earth.

I have seen it before. I have felt it before. I have been there.

February 5, 1945. The earliest date in my life which remains fixed in my memory. We had been under continuous heavy bombing for the last 24 hours. An incendiary bomb had hit the corner of our apartment building, only a few meters from where we were huddled in the basement. It had not ignited. The contents of the bomb had spilled over the road. Yellow powder covered the cobblestones. What a pretty color! All of us children had to investigate the feel and smell of this novelty.

What we had been dreading for weeks was about to happen in the next few days. The Russians were coming. We could hear the shelling. Let's get out of here! But how? All transportation systems had been disabled by the bombing.

My mother was alone with three children aged 1, 3, and 9 and no transportation except a little handcart which she would not be able to pull alone. During the late afternoon my father appeared. Everyone got clothed in several layers of our Sunday best. The two little ones were packed into the cart, and away we went. Where to? Nobody knew. Nobody asked. Nobody cared. Let's just get out of here! The Russians are coming!

How did my father get here when we needed him desperately? He was supposed to be supervising a prisoner of war camp several hours away by train, and the trains were not running. I had visited him there during the previous month by train and cross-country skis. All by myself. Those prisoners showed me so much love. They took turns holding me on their lap. They had not seen a real live child in months. They cooked donuts for me. I had never even seen a donut. Never having eaten anything deepfried before, I promptly got sick.

Some of the soldiers were able to translate for the others and I heard stories of their families, of their own little girls in other countries, speaking other languages. They also told me that this was the first camp in which they were treated humanely. My father was good to them. One of the soldiers was working on a pair of hand-made leather boots. My father had very small feet and those would be the only boots he would ever own which actually fit him.

Now his family needed him, and my father let all the prisoners go free. If he had been caught, he would have been hanged from a tree as a warning to all. I saw boys hanging there. Fourteen-year olds. One boy to a tree. They had deserted under the first fire and had been promptly executed by their own people. We paid no attention to them. All we wanted to do was get out of here. The Russians are coming.

How did my father manage to get home at a time when East Prussia had no functional communication or transportation system? I have no idea. No one ever asked him.

My father was wearing his brand new custom-made boots, a labor of love from a grateful prisoner. I was not so fortunate. My store-bought boots got unglued on the third day of the endless trek. The right sole flapped hungrily with every step I took on that long sandy trail. Every day, every minute, every three seconds.

How can a child keep on walking day after day, hour after hour with only the food which other fleeing refugies were willing to share? No baby survived the ordeal, because mothers soon ran out of breast milk. To my knowledge, my 15-month-old sister is the youngest survivor from those days.

Our goal became the Baltic sea port of Danzig (Gdanzk). We hoped to be able to catch a train to the west from there. Unfortunately, the Russian army had cut off the western land access. Only the sea route was left. We could have tried to get on one of the overloaded boats to the west, but we were not prepared to leave our father behind. That was our salvation. We later heard that every one of those refugee-laden boats was torpedoed.

So we waited.

The Russians came. March 10, 1945. Within minutes, one soldier spied my father's boots. He motioned for them to be handed over to him. My father put on the soldier's Russian boots which were in worse shape than mine. They had no soles at all. He soon got his own boots back. He got them back several more times in the months that followed. They did not fit any except the small feet for which they were made.

The Russians drove the entire population out of the city onto ploughed fields, partially snow-covered. We spent the next few days huddled around each other without shelter and without blankets until we mustered up enough courage to venture into the adjacent forest. We heard the few remaining buildings in the city being blown up. We heard the united screaming of women whenever the soldiers came to take them away. I was too innocent to know what the word Vergewaltigung (rape) means, but I heard that a girl my age had been raped. Thank God, I was small and looked much younger than my age.

I spent my 10th birthday on that field. No birthday cake. No candles. No food. No shelter. Just snow to combat the thirst. And my father and mother and the two little ones safely beside me. I was grateful. Many children had lost their families. Many of them never found them again.

Kosovo. Memories of 1945.

My husband teases me about my short size. I just smile knowingly. God knew what he was doing when he created me shorter than most people my age. He was preparing my protection for 1945.