Journey into another World

It was in late 1952 that Mum found out Dad had died in Buchenwald Gulag in October 1947. Since the Gulag did not officially exist the authorities weren't too forthcoming with information about inmates. Their logic was quite compelling: No Gulag - No Inmates!
There was an outfit in West-Berlin called the 'Free Lawyers' - free as in liberated, but also free in the other sense of the word - they didn't charge for their services. Returned gulag inmates were, via the grapevine, invited to come in and go through, what is nowadays called, a debriefing. Things like where they'd been (there were several gulags across East Germany), whom they'd been with, who had been released and who died.
Once this outfit had at least three reliable witness accounts of a person's death it was duly recorded and one could obtain a 'proper' death certificate from them. We finally did manage to obtain the certificate, two of the witnesses fortunately (or not) were fellow inmates, doctors who had no resources or facillities to help my sick dad. The certificate was useless in East Germany since there were no inmates - see above.
But it would come in handy later on when we 'defected' to the West - however, that will be subject to another blog.
Mum to her dying day always asserted that she knew when her husband had died, she had a feeling in her bones. It was simply a matter of getting proper confirmation that her feelings were right.
So, there was no mourning or closure required. Mum made plans! The plan was to visit her twin sister who lived outside Munich in a little hamlet called Locham.
Now, things weren't that easy then. You couldn't just hop on a train and go to Munich. First off, one had to apply (in quadruplicate) to the proper authorities for an exit visa. The application was then scrutinised by the Stasi, the local council, the party apparatus, the local police and whoever else wanted to put their sniffer in the matter. Due to German thoroughness, which never changed since Emperor Wilhelm and PM Bismarck were at the helm in eighteen hundred goodness knows when, the proper procedure had to be followed and the application had to pass from one authority to other with the required approval stamp. If one of them disapproved, the application was rejected.
That saga took months and Mum had wisely decided that we would make the trip in July 1953 during my summer school holidays.

Russian Tank in East-Berlin June 17, 1953

As happens often in life, something happened that, potentially, put a spanner in the works! On June 17, 1953 there was a massive workers uprising, especially in Berlin. It escalated throughout the day to cover virtually every major town and region. The response was quite swift - the Russian army mobilised all the tanks they had in East Germany (well as many that were half-way functional) to crush the dissidents.
That, of course, did not go down well with our travel plans. Mum was afraid all travel to the West was going to be suspended for the time being. With our departure only four weeks away she hastily wrote a letter to her sister (no telephones then) to warn her that we might not be able to travel. Luckily, her concerns were unfounded since the powers that be decided that everything should appear normal, both internally and to the outside world.
On our appointed day we went into Berlin and boarded the 'Super-fast steam powered long distance train' - super-fast meant it could do more than 70 kmh!
Another quirk was that we were allowed to exchange ten East German Marks for ten West German Marks - whooha!! On the black market you had to pay ten East Marks for one West Mark. The banks in West Berlin were slightly more generous: they gave you one West Mark for six East Marks - try and find that generosity from banks these days!!
The train journey took, in my view, forever and ever. Mum had packed, what she thought, was an adequate supply of sandwiches and drinks - water. Because of the restricted money allowance we weren't able to purchase anything on the train since you had to pay in West Marks for anything once the train departed West Berlin. We arrived at Munich Central and had to catch another train out to Locham. But to do so we had to purchase tickets at Munich Central, the cost of which had to come out of our meagre allowance for 'hard currency', i.e. West German Marks.
Mum went up to the ticket counter (a heavily screened hole in the wall) to purchase the tickets and enquire which platform the train would depart from. The heavy-set, late fifties Bavarian on the other side told her something she didn't understand! She had to ask three times before she got the gist of what he was saying. I was flabbergasted because mum originated from Bavaria and after these few years, well thirty anyway, she could not understand the Bavarian dialect anymore.
When we were all done, tickets in hand and directions in brain, as we walked away Mum and I heard the man saying 'Saupreissan' - which means 'Bloddy Prussians' - Prussians and Bavarians have had a 'love-hate relationship' for at least the last thousand years. It has not changed to this date, I am sure, but might be more subdued nowadays because of our hankering not to offend anyone.
We soldiered on to Locham (then a separate village outside Munich - now one of it's suburbs) where we were met by Auntie Maria and Uncle Jackel at the station. The last time I had 'seen' Uncle Jackel (not that I could remember that) was in late 1944 when he visited Neue Muehle on his last furlough. I'd never met Auntie Maria before.
Once we got to their home she gave me the once over! "Theress, that boy needs some feeding, he's as scrawny as a scarecrow!" Well, Auntie Maria went to work over the next two weeks. She fed me all sorts of horrible foods - well, not quite horrible, but food I wasn't accustomed to. Like Bread so white it looked like snow - and it had no substance in it. The bread I was used to was heavy, gluggy rye bread. Chocolate and cookies that tasted yuk - anyway very sweet. Strange fruits and drinks - like something called Coca Cola - a most amazingly disgusting drink!

Uncle Aluis in Macedonia - 3rd from left

Auntie Maria kept feeding me - just as well I like food a LOT.
After two weeks in Locham we started on our journey back to Berlin. Of course we had to stop in Augsburg, where mum's big brother, Uncle Aluis, lived. He was then a sergeant in the local police force. From stories I'd heard about him he was the most fascinating person I'd ever wanted to meet. Uncle Aluis was one of those unfortunate people that had to 'participate', entirely voluntary of course, in both world wars.
Uncle Aluis was a big man, about six foot two in English money and 185 cm in European measurement, he must have been six axe handles across the shoulders and the most fortunate man I'd ever heard of.
In WW I he was deployed to Macedonia first and to the French battle lines fighting the English. Being a very clever country boy he soon figured out that 'if I got shot in the leg, or somewhere non-lethal, I'd be sent home for mending and recuperation. Maybe, with any sort of luck, I could see out the war in some nice German hospital'.
So, the silly bugger would leap up during battles, go on top of the trench and fire away at a rapid rate with his 'automatic' three shot rifle. Well, he was standing there till the dying days of the war. Unlucky bugger, he never got hit.

Uncle Aluis - after WW I playing the 'fiddle'

- first left in back row

Upon the end of WW I he  returned to Augsburg and joined the police force, then called the ';Schutzmannschaft', where he even got drafted into their marching band - quite a feat for somebody as tone-deaf as our family is!
When WW II got really going he was politely asked, conscripted, once again to join the circus. Where was he sent? To the Western Front of course. So, he tried the same caper and again to no avail whatsoever. Had to see it through to the bitter end, eventually being captured in the dying days of the war.
Once more, he was lucky though. He got captured by the Americans, who carted him off to a POW camp in England. The Yanks were in control of Bavaria then and needed personnel in their area. They checked out his credentials and 'misdemeanours', couldn't find anything untoward and promptly shipped him off to Augsburg to re-join the local police force to maintain law and order.
Whilst visiting Uncle Aluis he showed me his hand gun - a fascinating piece of machinery for a ten year old. He let me handle it and play with it. I scared the living daylights out of mum one afternoon when I came into the living room with this big pistol, hardly being able to hold it steady, and announcing "I have a gun". I'd never seen mum so scared and drained! But Uncle Alois had made sure there were no bullets in the chamber or the magazine.
The journey back to Berlin and on to Neue Muehle was rather uneventful. I was stuffed to the gills and in serious need of some R&R to recover from the ministrations of the relatives.
Pretty soon life returned to normal - no special treats, school every day, getting wood for the fire as winter approached and lugging coal upstairs to keep the fire burning overnight.