EAST GERMANY (July - October, 1945)

They have the baby buggy, the wagon and their few belongings.  The train takes them only 35 kilometers to Schönberg before they get off and walk.  With Ernst on crutches Mutti must pull the wagon and Marianne and Heiner must push the baby buggy.  They can only walk about 20 kilometers per day.  Jürgen rides high in the baby buggy on top of some of their belongings.  Jürgen is a good baby with a pleasant disposition and does not cry much.  They pass through Waldenburg on their way toward Dresden.

They stop at a farm and ask for something to eat.  The owner tells them that some Russians just left that they had had to feed and that Mutti’s family was welcome to anything that was left.  They are led to a separate building where farm hands normally eat and there are plates still on the table with scraps of food still on them.  They eat everything that was left.  The woman asks Marianne her age and Marianne doesn’t remember.  This upsets Ernst and he sends her away.  Marianne sits on a hill and wonders whether she should return or go on.  In the meantime Mutti is washing diapers and other clothes. 

They are always hungry.  Mutti is painfully aware of the ration cards left back at the garrison in Sternberg.  Everything is rationed and they have no ration cards.  In each town they come to Ernst tries to locate the town’s mayor to ask for some.  The mayors are newly appointed by the communists and seem to be ignorant unpleasant sorts.  Most of the time Ernst is refused because they are not residents of the town.  So they must ask for handouts.  Heiner especially does not like it when he and Marianne are sent out begging.  One day they are given four eggs and Heiner drops one.  Marianne tells on him and Heiner is spanked.  Another day they stop in a field near a farmhouse and a woman brings them food hidden under her apron.

They reach Dresden.  It is a terrible wasteland.  It had been demolished in by Allied bombs in February.  It seems the only place they can walk without stumbling over rubble is in the cemeteries.

One of the many rumors that Ernst and Mutti hear is that a ship is coming.  They go to the pier on the south side of the Elbe River in the hope of catching it.  They wait, sleeping on the concrete pier.  It is very cold and they don’t have enough clothing and blankets. They cook and try to keep warm with a fire, burning wood taken from the rubble.  They get water from a nearby cemetery and boil it.  The pier is too high for Mutti to reach the water so she must cross a bridge to wash Jürgen’s diapers.  They wait three days.

A boat arrives and it is already crowded with passengers.  A Dutch man helps them get aboard.  The passengers watch as Ernst on his crutches, Mutti with the baby buggy, and Marianne and Heiner manage to squeeze on.  Some passengers spontaneously let out a cheer for them.  They sail about 100 kilometers northwest to Riesa.

Near Riesa a woman offers them shelter for the night so that they can cleanup and get a good night’s sleep.  She is very sympathetic because her son has also lost a leg.  When she hears about their destination she suggests that Mutti leave Jürgen with her.  It would make their trip easier and they could send for him later.  Mutti considers it but decides to keep Jürgen with them.

They stop by a stream near a farm one night and there are chickens running about.  Mutti says how nice it would be to have some chicken to eat.  Ernst hits one with a crutch and they eat chicken that night.  There are gypsies camped across the stream and Mutti and Ernst figure the gypsies will be blamed, if the farmer realizes a chicken is missing.

They come to the bank of the Mulde River southeast of Leipzig and hope to get across.  There are others there who want to get across.  There is a railroad bridge with a footpath on the side, but everyone is afraid to cross for they have been told that the bridge is mined.  They hear that a man had been shot trying to swim across the river the day before.  They find a deserted farmhouse and move in only to have someone come and make them get out, because it is on the line between the Russians and the other allies.  They leave and find another bridge to cross the river. 

Jürgen gets a bad case of diarrhea.  They get to a medical facility full of wounded soldiers and civilian bomb victims.  The doctor treats Jürgen and sees that Mutti needs diapers.  She is taken to a sewing machine and given some gauze bandage material.  She sits down and makes some diapers.

As they walk through a town they are startled as a large box lands on the ground near them.  They look up and see a woman at an upstairs window.  The woman says, ”yes, it is for you”.  It is a carton full of brand new underwear.  One night they are staying in a barn.  They lay down on straw to sleep.  Mutti sees a mouse and can’t sleep, and this irritates Ernst. 

They ride a few trains but only for short distances.  The rest of the journey is by foot.  The final border between east and west is agreed to.  It means that Mutti and Ernst are still in the Russian controlled east.

They ask for shelter for the night.  The woman welcomes them.  She is living there with her three daughters.  She sees how well Ernst deals with the local government, and invites them to stay longer.  Mutti and Ernst accept her invitation and they live there for a few days.  Then some communists come and evict the woman, so Mutti and Ernst must move on.

After about eight weeks from the time they left Sternberg, they reach the home of Ernst’s Aunt Alwine and her children in the village of Schiedungen in Thuringen, 75 kilometers east of Göttingen.  Alwine lets them move into a summer cottage.  Mutti works in the fields.  Ernst finds some work for the village council because he can read and the newly appointed mayor can not.  However to get the job, Ernst has to sign up as a communist.  He also finds some work for the Russians in the nearby town of Nordhausen.  The job is administering the sorting out of some German war archives.  He takes a train to work each day. Life is fairly stable and bearable for the next two months.

Ernst is offered a house in the town where he works.  It had been occupied by a Nazi, who now has been evicted.  Mutti is tired of moving into houses only to be evicted, so they refuse.

Working through the archives, Ernst becomes aware that they include the V2 rocket records.  He knows it is only a question of time until the Russians will be taking the archives to Russia.  He figures that they will take him and his family along.  So Ernst and Mutti make hasty plans to move on.

Arrangements are made for Mutti to take the children and get across the border to the west.  Ernst will continue to work until he knows they are safely on the other side.  Then he will follow and meet them there.  He is afraid that if he gets caught with them, they will all be sent to Russia.

It is mid October when Mutti takes the children to a farm on the border between the Russian zone and the British zone. The farmer has fields on both sides of the border and is allowed to cross.  He poses Mutti and the children as his wife and children.  He covers their goods in the back of the wagon with manure.  He smuggles Mutti and the kids across the border for 300 marks.  The Russian practice is to take a head count going and coming.  There are many people in the west that want to go east, so the farmer says he will pick up four people for the return trip and wait till the guards change shifts.

They are let out in the British sector at a large barn.  There they wait for Ernst.   There are many displaced people living in the barn.  A man happens to get shot in the stomach nearby and is being transported toward the west to a hospital.  A woman tells Mutti that there is no other transportation out of there, and that the truck taking the man west will go a long way.  She suggests that Mutti should take the children and go in the truck.  Mutti is concerned that Ernst will show up and find them gone.  Mutti writes a message for Ernst on the barn with chalk, and they get on the truck.

Mutti is now alone with her three children.  She has left all her family in the east, is separated from Ernst, and is traveling to unfamiliar territory.  She is headed for the address of Ernst’s father, a man she has never met.  She and the children are carrying all that they own.

The truck takes them all the way to Kassel in the American sector.  In Kassel Mutti sees, for the first time in her life, a person with black skin, an American serviceman.  Mutti and the three children catch a train toward Frankfurt.  As the train gets close to Frankfurt it must stop where the tracks have not yet been repaired.  They get off in the middle of the countryside and walk to Heddernheim, a northern suburb of Frankfurt.  They ask for directions to Oberursel.  They are told to cross the rubble of an autobahn bridge, and on the other side they will find a streetcar that will take them to Oberursel.  They go to the other side of the bridge but miss the streetcar.  They walk to Oberursel.