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But one day I saw a Russian trying to climb over our fence. In that moment a great fury came over me. I ran to the gate and yelled at him to get down immediately. And he really did, descending with a culpable expression. I had found it. Not to have fear. Fear would not help at all, but yelling would. Each strong man was once a little boy, who had been hollered at by his mother. And he still obeys especially when he is up to something that he should not have done. You only had to play the stern and strict mother. It worked every time.

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But one morning there was a soldier standing in front of the gate. He was holding a gun and demanded in a harsh tone to open up. My method seemed too risky for a man with a pointed rifle. He was searching for partisan (resistance fighter). I had partisan. He wanted to come in my house. He wanted to look for partisan. At that time any Russian soldier still could shoot any German with or without a reason. This one had an official appearance and I was not sure what to do and had to let him in.

But suddenly I had it. I knew what I had to do. I lifted my head very high and proudly told him with a sovereign expression and an arrogant gesture. Doesn't he know that I am the girlfriend of the commandant". I had noticed that the only person the Russians were afraid of except their mothers was the commandant. The soldier looked alarmed. It seemed that his ears moved tight against his head and he left quickly and quietly.

I had found the solution by coincidence. First of all one should under no circumstances show, or better yet have any fear and secondly play a respected person or better yet pretend to be the girlfriend of a respected person. To my advantage was also that in all my life I had always done just the opposite of what everybody else was doing. All women had made themselves as unattractive as possible. What had it helped? Absolutely nothing. Some women they raped had been eighty years of age and older. So I figured why not try the opposite. I put on a pretty dress and curled my hair in long Shirley Temple ringlets, the ones I had always worn in Schöneiche and I painted my lips. This really worked. The Russians looked suspiciously at me. I seemed an unreachable being from another world and the story that I was the girlfriend of the commandant seemed credible.

Despite all precautions to protect myself from the raping, it happened to me nevertheless and it had horrible results. But that was much later. And I also will tell about it.

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We were constantly hungry and forever on the search for food. If only we had not buried the kidney fat in the garden. In the house it would not have disappeared. For a long time Fritz tried to catch a stray dog that was still running around. But the poor thing must have suspected something and would not come near him. But soon he disappeared. Somebody else must have souped him. All cats were gone a long time ago and mice and rats or any other animals were nowhere in sight either. They all might have been eaten. There was absolutely nothing around anymore. We never thought of worms. Lately I got the idea when I was digging in the garden and saw the chicken picking them up. Maybe if you cook worms long enough. You never know. But all this you can only understand when you lived at that time. Not even when you lived in Berlin but in Woltersdorf or any part that was not country and was for many months declared as a self-raising-food district.

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There was one possibility to get some food. You had to get it from the Russians. But very soon the Russians themselves had not much to give away either. Now they saved their spare food to exchange it for items they wanted. But all that we could exchange for bread was given away already, a gold ring- a bread, a coat- half a bread. a dress- a portion of bread. And we didn't own many dresses. You did not own many in the Hitler time. And how long will a piece of bread last anyway if you have absolutely nothing else to eat.

Wristwatches were the only thing you could exchange for some food. But our watches were gone a long time ago. It was the first thing they had taken away from us. Many Russians had their whole arm full of these treasures. They must have been afraid that some comrade would steal them.

Then Fritz got the idea of repairing watches for the Russians, even though he did not know how to and had no parts either. But mostly he only had to wind them. They did not know that this was necessary. But when they opened the mechanism and tried to fix it themselves it was usually hopeless. Once a soldier came to Fritz. I must add that he definitely did not look stupid or retarded. He even spoke some German and he brought an alarm clock and told Fritz to make three wristwatches from this, two for him and the third one Fritz could keep as payment for his work.

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They mostly spoke some German words and they seemed to have come from a strange world. They admired our electricity. I have heard of cases where they took the bulbs to have this kind of light at home. Water faucets and most of all toilets were mysteries for them, a puzzle, a real miracle. They marveled: "In German houses clean water out of wall, and dirty water into wall." They never used our toilets. They thought that we are dirty people to make our business inside the house. Often they cut a hole in the living room of the occupied houses, used the hole as a toilet and the clean ones rolled a carpet over it.

But one thing surprised me very much. Nobody wanted to be a communist. That was the biggest insult you could do to them. "Nix communist" they shouted furiously. But - of course - I did not ask the first Russians this question. This certainly never entered my mind. And I am sure that they would have been much too intelligent to give an honest answer. I met only one soldier who told me proudly that his mother was the director of a large children's home. With this one I spoke only about the weather in his country. The simple Russian soldier had in general no fear of stating his political opinion. We in Germany would not have dared a thing like that in Hitler's time.

Unfortunately they did not understand at all why we had nothing to eat, that only the war had destroyed our food. They were under the impression that the Capitalists had it even worse than they themselves. Some Russians spoke a rather good German, even when they knew nothing else. They must have had this subject in grade school. We tried to learn some Russian too. First, of course, the most important words. Good day, bread, hunger, food, thank you and good by.

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Journey To The Town Of Halle

I can't tell you how great the feeling was to know that we did not live in the East Zone anymore but in Dahlem, the American Sector. The Russians had ravaged Dahlem too after the taking of Berlin. Dahlem was the part of the City where the wealthiest people were living. Some very high ranking Nazis had houses in Dahlem. They all had left in time- of course- but their houses were still filled with the finest food and alcohol. Their wine cellars were loaded with the best. The house of the foreign minister Ribbentrop was not far away from where my parents-in-law lived. Ribbentrop's wife inherited the immense Henkel Champagne empire. So for days the soldiers drunk nothing but the best champagne. And I told already that Dahlem was not a bit destroyed by bombing or artillery. Here the Russians found the capitalistic paradise completely undamaged. After the first friendly fighting troops had left, the inhuman ones arrived. And they found what they forever were looking for "Woman and Vodka." The raping under the influence of alcohol was always worse. I heard from a friend that it also happened to my mother-in-law. In general nobody would speak about it. In Dahlem this horrible time was never ever mentioned again. I just overheard and later on read one report about house Dahlem. House Dahlem was a well known charitable Catholic institution run by nuns, located just around the corner of my parents-in-law. The nuns took care of destitute, mostly unmarried women who did not know where to go to give birth. It was a maternity hospital. The Russians did not only rape all the nuns but also all the women lying in the hospital ward. All the pregnant ones and all the women who had just given birth.

They raped them in hordes and for days.

Now seeing that Russian I thought of all the horrible events which had happened throughout of Berlin. Some women were killed when they refused, others were killed anyway. Some of the savage beasts would just beat the women heads in. They would slit the women open after raping. They would rape and mutilate them so that they would bleed to death. Whole hordes would continue raping them often without noticing that the woman was dead already. Anybody who intervened during the raping was shot by the Russians. There were reports that sometimes they even shot their own Russian soldiers if they tried to stop them. Since months had passed there was a little bit of contact between the population and you heard that many persons you knew had perished, killed by the bombs, killed by the artillery, but many also by the raping Russians. A great number of German people had committed suicide, often as a family group because of the raping. Dreadful stories came to my mind and I observed with horror and disgust this metal inhuman looking soldier. But this was something I should not have done, because suddenly he turned around and looked in my direction. He put the rifle on his shoulder and marched toward me. "Passport" he shouted.

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The Dear Money

It was an unusual and bizarre time this 1945. The money was both important and unimportant, worth and worthless. Most banks were destroyed, there were no social security payments, no pension payments, practically no government help. Some people had nothing anymore, had lost all, while others had kept a lot. The government froze the prices for the rationed food ( nearly starvation level) and forbade the raising of the rents. All others could go wherever they wanted in the free market policy. Butter without coupons was 600 Mark a pound, and a pound of coffee went to 500 Mark. The high price of cigarettes fluctuated like the stock-market today. But wages stayed at their old level, since there were too many people looking for work and there was no work.

The only work available was cleaning away the stones and rubble of the destroyed city. Mostly women were doing this strenuous work. There were not too many men left in Berlin after the war. The women had to clean up the stone which could still be used. They hammered the cement away and they had to put the rubble on pushcarts and pull them by hand to other places. It was also dangerous work since you could find unexploded bombs between the fallen houses. All the rubble was then transported to completely flattened places in the city to build mountains. One of the largest is in Grunewald. This one is 400 feet high and you can look from its peak all over the city of Berlin as far as to the land Brandenburg. The mountain is called "Teufels-berg" (devils-mountain). This mountain consists out of our destroyed beloved Berlin, of its broken stones, cables, windows and doors frames, shattered bathtubs and roof-shingles and tiles of stoves, where grandmothers used to tell fairy-tales. This mountain also contains splintered and burned parts of our killed friends and neighbors. Smashed pieces, all of that what was left from our Berlin, our beloved Berlin where our parents lived and where we spent large parts of our life. That majestic and poor-fated Berlin which was once full of humor and laughter and which was once one of the world's greatest cities.

Berlin was hit harder than any city in Germany. But soon the people started to rebuild, very slowly - of course - but after a while some started to employ already. And our lamp producer proudly announced that his factory already owned one million marks. One day however Fritz brought the incredible and sad news that the man's workshop was closed. He had used up all his lamp shade material and could not get any new paper. He might have bought too optimistically metal and now he was bankrupt. I thought of the time when this had happened to poor Papa.

But what could we do now? We were suddenly without any income and we had no savings whatsoever. We had given all we had to the man for the flight out of the East zone. We had no profession. We lived in an expensive apartment. We had two children, and neither of us had any experience in making money. But I must say that we were not overly concerned. We were still so glad to be alive after that gruesome war that nothing could actually frighten us. Even to-day it is still the case, whenever we are hit by something bad we always say Oh - that is nothing, because when you survived that gruesome war you are able to survive anything. By the way at that time it was the general attitude of most people in Berlin.

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Alice in Wonderland

Slowly we realized what great luck we have had. Like children we had walked over swamp and quicksand and always by chance stepped on places with firm ground.

It is a strange thing with fear. When you are really deep in danger, you often don't even experience fright. Later on it will become clear to you what could have happened. Now we were aware of all we had brought behind us, and in awe we saw what a miracle it was that we were still alive. The Hitler-time with its concentration camps, the war with its fighting, the bombings, the Russians, the hunger. How small had been our chance to survive.

But now all had passed. Now all had been. Now was the beautiful, the sunny in front of us. The spring of our life, the one we wanted to recover. But at that time we did not know, that there are not only great dangers in war. And that especially for me, something was in store that was worse than all that had been before. But now we were happy, unspeakably happy.

I felt like Alice in Wonderland. Like Alice I had fallen into a deep hole and was rubbing my eyes surprised to look at a marvel that seemed out of a fairy tale. What a different world surrounded me. Steadily our antique store took on a more and more fantastic and amazing shape. Fritz had built shelves and soon two rooms were filled with antiques even the floors and furniture in the other rooms were loaded with treasures.

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Emigration

But Fritz took the big ship the "America." I had persuaded Fritz that it would be best if he went first to look the new country over. And we would come later on. So many things had to be arranged. Papa was still convinced that it was very foolish to leave Germany now. We had a fantastic jewelry store. One, which we should - in his opinion - not leave frivolously for an unknown future in a new country. But Fritz could not be stopped. He insisted on leaving right away and we would follow soon.

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Since we had abandoned our plan to go to a desolate island we had to think of how to make money in America. Surely no more a jewelry store. No antique business either. It should be something where I could also be a real Mommy. But no greeting cards - no - never again. The best would have been - of course - to live from painting. But in order to do this, we probably had to paint sweet little flowers, or landscapes, or ships on the turbulent sea. Also crafts came into our thinking, but too many people were doing this. No. - Black or white. We wanted to do something rare. One day we heard from a friend who had a friend, and this friend had known a family who had emigrated to the States. They were restoring porcelain and doing very well. In a short time they had already been able to buy a nice house on Long Island. That didn't sound too bad. We could probably do this work at home, so I could stay with the children. It seemed a good idea.

The great question was now how on earth do you restore porcelain? But if there was a family who was able to do this, it was certain that soon we would be able to do it too. Nevertheless we thought it might be a good idea at least to know a little bit about porcelain repair.

But nobody we knew could do porcelain repair. At last Fritz heard of a man who repaired porcelain. This man was living very primitive in a partly destroyed house in the Schönhauser allee. He was a typical Berlin original. He was very nice, and was willing to show Fritz all he knew. This was unfortunately not too much. He mostly glued parts together with Hausenblase, a kind of old fashioned substance retrieved from the skin of a certain fish. He had a lot of little pots with colors standing around, Safram and strange names like Dragon-blood, with which he overpainted the cracks.

He repaired mostly in the following way. Porcelain flux was put on the broken pieces. Then he piled everything carefully up in a kiln, closed the door ceremoniously, and then he would sit down and start to pray. Sometimes it helped. Sometimes not. God did not seem too much interested in porcelain. Horrible things could and have happened in this high temperature. But since his porcelain was seldom valuable, it was not such a big tragedy when all the items came out completely ruined. So Fritz learned at least something and that was how definitely not to do it. And that was already worth a lot.

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And Fritz was pretty sure that soon he would find a method of restoring porcelain without putting it in danger. Fritz did not want to take more than 80 dollars along. He simply refused to take more. His mind was set on starting completely from the beginning. He thought that this would be much more fun, and I assure you - it was.

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And one day they said, we will be there soon - will be in America - will be in New York. I was still lying in my cabin, had hardly eaten anything for days, when I heard excited running in the halls and the shouting. New York. New York. I jumped up and ran to my porthole and it is indescribable what and how I suddenly saw her - her - the Statue of Liberty. There she was exactly in the middle of my window. The rim of the porthole surrounded her, better than any picture frame could have done. The famous statue, the symbol of freedom, the symbol of America. And we would be there. We were really in America. I ran to the deck, and between excited people I saw Manhattan for the first time, the beautiful Manhattan, our beloved Manhattan. The island with the ravishing panorama. The famous, gray-glittering, shimmering skyscrapers before the dark ocean.

I stood there for a long time looking at this fairy-tale creation. And what I was feeling in these moments would fill many pages and could very likely become a little bit kitschy. Therefore I will rather write how we soon hastened to our cabin and started to pack. We were here. But that we would leave the ship soon, was a wrong assumption.

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The ship lay at the side of Manhattan the whole afternoon and the whole night. In the darkness we could see the lights of the cars. It was the Ocean Driveway. How often would we glide later on along this road. With what amazement we watched that night the endless row of cars, this never-ending shine. What was lying behind the radiance? What will happen in the new land?

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