“In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” Anne Frank
For Stéphane and Natasha
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank writers James Dunphy and Pauline Kaill, who while working on their own material provided chapter-by-chapter ‘bricks and bouquets’ during the early years of my writing.
Also, a special thank you to Brian Ferstman for his advice on developmental and structural areas of the book, which provided valuable counsel.
To my wife Catherine Arsenault, who patiently worked her way through several copy edits and offered help in shaping the final product.
Prologue
Munich, December 1993
My cousin Edi had become the self-appointed family historian in retirement, totally pre-occupied with any scrap of information about the fate of other Sudeten Germans following their expulsion from Czechoslovakia between 1945 and 1946.
“Just a few months prior to her death, your mother asked whether I could help her with some missing pieces in your father’s manuscript. In fact, she left me the only copy, the one you now have. She encouraged me to read it and fill in blanks as best I could.”
“And did you?” I asked.
“It’s so many years back and I don’t recall every detail. But I remember doing some research, finding a few answers. Before I could discuss it with her, she passed away and I returned it to her estate.”
“What was he writing about?”
“Perhaps your question should be ‘Why was he writing....?’”
“What do you mean?”
“I think it was his way to work through unresolved problems. Your father was a pacifist, a humanitarian perhaps, given time and resources. Unlike our grandfather, who was known as a stern and dour man with nationalistic ideals.”
“I had no idea.”
“What about your father?”
“No, no, I remember him as kind, always helping others - I mean our grandfather.”
“I believe your father’s nature suffered under his misgivings. Hugo Sr. could be a tough man on his family even prior to the rising tide of nationalism at home. Naturally, what followed during later years, including Hitler’s troops occupying our town, didn’t help matters.”
“Anything else that he……………
Edi raised his hand, severing my question.
“When you’re ready to read it and want my thoughts, call me. Perhaps you might even want to finish the manuscript for him.”
And so our conversation had ended.
Chapter 1
Halifax, September 2006
The papers had been sitting in the bottom drawer of my night table for nearly ten years after the death of my mother. I had only glanced at them briefly now and again. They had not seemed relevant; life had trumped family history. But that had begun to change over recent years; not as in ‘when I get up in the morning’, but more subtly, from the inside out.
Along with the manuscript, there were scores of barely legible letters, official documents with seals, old photos, identification cards, faded clippings, scribbled notes and a journal. The letters were held together by a yellow silk ribbon. Written neatly in what I recognized to be mostly my mother’s handwriting, they were either single page or several sheets of onion skin paper, twice folded. Some were in faded, smudged envelopes without stamps, bearing traces of an insignia, marked ‘Feldpost’ and the black swastika. Letters from my mother Hedi to Walter, my father, had been written between the time he was drafted in early 1944 and late 1945, just months following Germany’s surrender. They were opened - had gotten through to him somehow - and presumably he had read them. They were mostly her letters to him – few coming back to her.
I was six years old by then, could remember little, except once, much later, when my father had told me about the letters. They had been his reason for living, to keep fighting, he said. Then there was my mother’s extensive journal of the escape from Reichenberg with myself. Clearly written after our escape, I marveled at how she had found the energy to keep notes for it during our perilous and exhausting refugee trek; perhaps that’s what had kept her going. My father had almost lost his life when it was no longer relevant to the outcome of the war, if indeed, it ever had been. His slow recovery from severe injuries had been agonizing for me to watch. I remembered glimpses of him writhing in pain, the trips to hospitals to remove more bone splinters, the crutches followed later by a walking cane.
I placed the letters back in the bottom drawer, and pulled out my father’s unfinished manuscript. There were more than a hundred pages of yellowed and darkened coarse letterhead, many frayed and torn at the edges, type written, single-spaced on both sides. Among all the papers, it was the manuscript that fascinated me the most. A few pages had minor additions. Other passages were revised several times but never completed.
The letterhead read: Freunde Italians • Amici d’Italia
DEUTSCH ITALIENISCHER CLUB - HAMBURG
Fuer Deutsch-Italienische Kulturarbeit u. Verstaendigung E.V.
It was only in early 1946 that my father was able to move about more freely. Starting then, he visited the German-Italian club frequently. The social club had been founded after the war by Germans, many of whom had served on the Italian front. They shared an affinity for all things Italian, particularly the language. Membership included a smattering of Italian nationals living in Hamburg. He had been active in the club after recovering from his injuries.
I recall us moving to the tiny apartment at Kattunbleiche 33 about a year later. The street name conveyed the presence of the cotton bleaching factory across the street. It had been shuttered during the war years and our bedroom window looked out over the factory’s abandoned courtyard. The façade of the old plant with its empty window frames devoid of glass and the broken down vehicles and rusted-out equipment in the yard were a stark reminder of how Hamburg had been savaged during the war. That view, an adjacent living room, the tiniest of kitchens, a storage closet and a two-piece bathroom shared with the old couple down the hall had been our living quarters for nearly ten years. A claw-footed ceramic tub in one of the frigid concrete floor rooms in the basement was reserved for several hours a week for each of the building’s tenant families.
I left Hamburg in 1959, barely twenty. Life there had been hard. Everyone I knew, including myself, had worked just to survive. When I returned a few years later, my mother was recovering in hospital and my father was dead. A stupid, senseless accident.
I had been aware of some of the details of my father’s death for most of my adult life. The confluence of feelings it had aroused had made me push my mother away, at least initially. In later years, I found compassion for the anguish she had suffered in holding herself responsible for my father’s death. It was a strange mixture of feelings on my part for my mother. She had risked her own life during our wartime escape to safeguard my own.
I arrived at her hospital bed 48 hours later; delayed by multiple connections from Winnipeg over Easter weekend 1964. I never got the full story; only that they were on a short trip to Luebeck, just north of Hamburg. They were crossing a street when she remained frozen in the middle at the sight of an oncoming car at high speed. My father was almost at the opposite curb and had scampered back to place his body in front of hers. They were both catapulted through the air like marionettes with him taking the bulk of the impact. She had suffered multiple fractures and some internal injuries; clearly in shock she was sitting up in bed making a list of people who should be notified of my