I went for
coffee on Sunday, after my book signing out in Transcona…a part of the city so
far from where I live…it feels like another city. While out there, I met a
friend of my parents…a recent widow who seems to appreciate my company once in
a while. I, in turn, enjoy connecting with someone who shares memories of my
parents. A little German baking adds to the appeal. The fresh ground coffee and home-baked
streusel kuchen with whipping cream was wonderful. But what made this visit
especially delicious, was her company. Here I am researching about East Prussia
during and after the war, and at this kaffee klatsch were two people who'd lived through it. My friend’s guests each had fascinating firsthand accounts of
surviving the Second World War. Doing a quick blog post certainly doesn’t do
them justice. So this this is just a summary of two incredible histories that I
had a glimpse of yesterday, over coffee.
The older
gentleman, still recovering from recent hip surgery, told of how he was sent to
East Prussia as a child to escape the Allied bombing of Berlin. By January,
1945, of course, East Prussian civilians were fleeing by the millions from the
Soviet attack. As a youngster, he came very close to becoming one of the 'wolfs-kinder'—who hid in the woods and lived off scavenged foods. It was pure serendipity that led to an aunt
claiming him. Otherwise, he too, would have been forced to be on his own, like
many of his fellow child refugee orphans...some of whom grew up never knowing who they really were.
His wife, also
survived the East Prussian flight (see the controversial movie "March of Millions") when she was not quite six years old. Her father
happened to be the locomotive engineer, and he insisted that she and her siblings board
a freight train—the last train running through the (then) German city of
Allenstein (today Polish and called Olsztyn) back in January, 1945. While she escaped the front, but there were
still years under Soviet occupation ahead of her before she came to Canada.
We sipped
our coffee and dug into our streusel kuchen. War stories. Memories. History matters. And then the conversation slip-slided into current politics…
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