A Time and Place, first chapter

AUTHOR’S NOTE

A flash and a big bang, a cold cellar floor, and a fear of falling from a window– these are the only things I distinctly remember as a three-year-old.

The air raid sirens, the approach and roar of bomber planes, those memories came alive only, when after 30 years I visited the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. Upon entering a wing of the museum that was dedicated to World War II, sounds of bombers and sirens were being played as a background to the exhibit. Such dreadful emotions were aroused in me that I had to leave. I simply could not cope with it.

A picture of me playing in a sand box and one showing soldiers boarding a train completed the time and place that provided me the recall of the events recorded in the first pages of this book.

1943

Südbahnhof, one of several train stations of Munich, was always busy in 1943. The four-story row house we lived in was facing the railyard and also the south and western sun. The rhythmic sounds of the rail cars and steam locomotives became a soothing accompaniment to everyday life. It also evokes a blue and piercing memory, a feeling of sadness, to think my father shipped out to war from that same station.

The window sills were wide, extending outward, overhanging the building’s exterior wall. They were surrounded by a wrought iron basket like a cage that enveloped the lower half of the window from side to side. Mom used the sill to grow flowers as well as parsley and chives. You could close the window from the inside and have the miniature garden left to be exposed to rain and sun. I was given my first trembling memories of that time and that place when Mom decided that I needed some fresh air and sun and had me, three years old, sit out on that ledge looking three stories down to the sidewalk below. Seems like sister Dagmar, then just an infant, got to enjoy some sun as well.

The air raids of that time made a dreaded imprint in this little fellow’s mind. Often the peace of the moment was shaken by that ever more frequent piercing scream of the siren. It seemed to come through the windows, the walls, the curtains, the ears, the head–straight to the soul. This death blast would come, never respecting whether you were sleeping or just swallowing your first bite of hot cereal. Instantly, Mom, carrying baby sister, and I would, in a state of highest mental and physical agitation, holding on to each other, race down the long flights of stairs to the basement of the tenement. I do not know why, but once down there, I always was looking at that window...one small window up high, probably level with the sidewalk outside, that window that made me tremble so. Mom and us children would be sitting on the damp floor, leaning against a cold wall, looking at that window. There were many other people huddled around the outer walls of that cellar, all mesmerized by one source of light, that window. That light of the moment was not from the sun, since most bombing attacks were at night, nor was it from the street lights, since power was cut off, but from the fires burning. One burning so close it had singed the window curtains in the apartment.

The bursts of orange flashes, accompanied by earth trembling sounds, were a gauge in every one’s mind as to how close every bomb was. They were all close, because no railyard was spared. There were never any tears or screams, because fright is not accompanied by tears and cannot be consoled by one’s own emotions.

The last etching in my child’s soul of that time and place was when the expectation of the worst became reality. A tremendous burst of white light–an earth shattering shock from a hit–the little window exploded amid an enormously hellish flash and was no more. The disintegration of that window formed the final blanket that would put to rest the hell of a three-year old.

Soon after that, the government evacuated most women and children still living in the city. We were allowed to live in a small town in lower Bavaria called Griesbach.

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