In January 1946 we heard of an opportunity to get out of Parchim to West Germany by train. We wanted to get out of the Russian occupied Zone and risked our first escape attempt. After a long time we found a farmer whom we were able to talk into driving us a distance of 30 km, with his horse and wagon, to a railway station. The wagon was loaded early in the morning with bed clothes and laundry. We didn't have anything more than this. My mother with her baby, my grandmother, my older brother, and I, climbed onto the wagon.. In front the grumpy driver who didn't look round even once.

The weather was ice cold, with snow and black ice, with a temperature of minus 20° C. The horse slipped twice and was laboriously unharnessed and again reharnessed. The driver put cloth round the hoofs of the horse. The cloth was of course our towels. My mother tried to protect the baby from freezing. My brother and I were allowed alternately, to stick our arms under our grandmother's arm pits. Nevertheless, we suffered that painful sensation whenever cold hands are warmed. Finally we just could not endure the cold on top of the wagon. In order to warm ourselves we both then ran behind, after the horse cart, weeping.

Late in the afternoon we arrived at the lonely railway station. On a siding here there were three cattle wagons full of people. They had already been waiting a week for a train engine to which the wagons were supposed to be hitched. The inside walls of the wagons were covered with a layer of ice. The people did not feel exactly uplifted when we moved into the wagon with them. For days the only warm place was the little attendant's house at the level-crossing. All the people pushed themselves in here, warmed themselves up and cooked their food. Here I had my head shaved because I had head lice.. The people thought I looked like a Russian child. I was so ashamed of myself.We endured this for two weeks. A train to which we could be coupled came and didn't leave. We lost our nerve and finally rode back the same way with the same horse and wagon to Parchim. Not until a year later did we find out that three days after we returned to Parchim, the wagons had been hitched onto a train and the people arrived in the longed-for British Zone.

At the beginning of 1947 my mother received an inter-zone pass, a travel permit, and the approval to move to Hamburg. My older brother had already travelled back to Hamburg with a friend who had originally been evacuated to Parchim after being bombed-out in Hamburg. He should not go to school in the Russian zone. Anyway, from Parchim to Hamburg is 138 km.Now everything went very quickly. I marched once more to our Business premises, which had been confiscated, and proudly told the embarrassed employees that we were now going to travel to Hamburg. I was brought home. My mother was very annoyed and sent me off to bed.

It was a fine early spring day when we made our departure from our good Mrs. Rieck, who had selflessly accepted us into her home. We now travelled in a normal fashion from Parchim train station, in a packed train, through Wittenberge and Stendal to Göttingen, and from there to the Friedland refugee camp. Here we were issued with new papers--"West papers". We had to wait more than a week here. Then we went in a packed train to Hannover. We spent the night here in an air-raid shelter under the railway station. The shelter was jammed to the doors with people. There were two-tier or three-tier beds wherever one looked. The next morning my grandmother got up from the lower bed and at the same time my mother and we two children crashed with the upper bed down to the floor. The entire shelter was wakened by the noise. Thank goodness nothing had happened to us..

Finally the train was in Hamburg. We rolled over the Elbe Bridge. Everywhere one looked there was rubble, ruins, and debris. One could see as far as Hasselbrook. In the cleared streets there were semicircular corrugated iron huts, which served as emergency accommodation for those bombed-out. Many streets were completely blocked off. My mother cried. My grandmother sat silently stroking my head. The concourse of the main Hamburg railway station was still only a skeleton. Right behind I saw a diesel train...a new train without an engine. I could not believe that a train could travel without a locomotive. We travelled by the suburban railway to Blankenese. We were expected here. We all fell into each others' arms. We cried. We had finally arrived in the West.

Translated from the German by John Milloy (nimso@aol.com)

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© 2002 Heiner Fosseck