Can We Return to Berlin?
Straupitz, Spring, 1946, Age Eleven
Upon inquiry, Mom found out that we could get permission to move back to Berlin because we met all three criteria: 1. Our father had returned from being a prisoner of war in Russia. 2. We did not demand a place to live because Grandma offered to share her tiny apartment (one room and a kitchen) with us. 3. Mom did not need a job.
Consequently, Berlin would let us back in — if the Kommandatura of the Russian occupation zone gave approval to let us out. That was the big question mark! Luckily, things were not so strict at that time. Mom found out that there were three scheduled time periods for which permits to move out of East Germany were issued. All moves were to be completed before the end of 1946.
Mom was undecided. She loved her job at the railroad and life in the country. What was waiting for her in Berlin? A bleak, destroyed city, moving in with her mother-in-law who saw in Mom a rival for her son's love, and a marriage that was no longer quite intact.
Mom had often turned to me for confirmation of a decision she had made, or to get my point of view before making one. While I was much more serious and responsible than a child of my age would normally be, at eleven I was still too young to help make weighty decisions which would affect our lives. However, Mom valued my second opinion, and she somehow seemed to find it helpful to either have her own thoughts confirmed or to consider another course of action.
At this time Mom asked me whether I thought we should move back to Berlin, and gave me her reasons for wanting to stay. I wanted very much to move back. Despite enjoying the magic of living in the country, I still missed the big city with its hustle and bustle as I remembered it. Little could I imagine that the hustle and bustle had been bombed out of that city! My objective now was that I wanted the four of us to be together again and be a family. I had fond memories of celebrating holidays, especially Christmas, as a family with Papa present, and I dared hope that it would be that way again.
Mom really would have liked to have stayed in Straupitz. I, being half a gypsy by now, wanted to move back to Berlin. While I had loved living in the country, we had been there long enough as far as I was concerned, and I wanted to go home.
My reasoning against Mom's was that we may not like all of the circumstances — I was quite aware of the conflicts between Mom and Grandma Stanneck — but at least we would be in the West (West Berlin). What we had seen of the Communist system so far was enough to turn us against it. Mom's intuition told her that this fact alone by far outweighed all the others, and that it would be wise to get out of the Russian occupied zone while we still could. Years later, when East-West relations deteriorated, Mom told me how her intuition had connected with my words “at least we would be in the West,” and how she knew instantly that the move would be the right thing to do.
We started to make plans. I was happy. However, I could not share my happiness with my friends because Mom told me not to say anything to anyone. There were always envious people, and our permit to leave for the West might be in jeopardy. It could even be revoked after having been granted. We had already learned that nothing was for certain. Under the present administration, rules and regulations were changed arbitrarily at the Soviets' whim. Mom thought it necessary to be so cautious that we did not even tell Peter about moving back to Berlin, feeling that he was too young to be trusted with keeping it from his friends.
Mom had to travel to Berlin to collect the necessary papers for permission to move into the American sector of Berlin, where Grandma Stanneck lived. Those papers had to be presented to the Soviet Military Headquarters in our village before an exit permit was issued. We were then assigned to the third and last exit block with a departure date of November 30, the last day on which our permit was valid.
For fear of anything going wrong at the last minute, Mom did not want anyone to know about our leaving. She did not quit her job, but just stayed away from work. Peter and I did not show up at school on the day we planned to “disappear” from Straupitz. Once again I have to marvel at Mom's intuition, about her feeling that we needed to be super cautious and not trust others in matters which concerned our fate so profoundly. During the year and a half under Soviet administration we had learned a lot. We knew better than to trust a “final” regulation, or a piece of paper with the word “Permit” on it.