Edelweiss - Part 2

I had just become a teenager when my grandmother took me to her home town. Aachen was a charming city -- the winter home and final resting place of the great ruler Charlemagne and frequented throughout history by people seeking healing from its natural hot springs. To this day, I remember it vividly.

There was a massive cathedral in the center of the city. My grandmother told us it was the oldest of its kind in all of Europe and that Charlemagne himself commissioned its construction. Protruding from the wall in the vestibule was a statue of an open lion’s mouth. When Gran Gran was a child, Omi used to tell her that if she put her hand in the lion’s mouth, the beast would magically come alive and snap her fingers off. Truth be told, it was a frightening figure to see in a church.

Our hotel was called The Quellenhof. It was old, resembling a British palace. My cousin Scarlotte and I loved walking up and down the enormous wooden stair case to our room. We would hold our chins high and tell each other we were Deutschland princesses. It was at The Quellenhof that I was first introduced to the bidet. One evening, my grandmother found Scarlotte and me turning on the water full blast, sending the stream straight up to the ceiling. She was mortified.

One morning after breakfast, we walked through a small park that served as a supersized median between two streets. In the center of the park was a large circular flowerbed full of purple, white, and yellow blooms. It was protected by a brown steel railing that came up to my knees. I did not think much of it. Germany was full of flower arrangements and lush city parks.
Gran Gran walked up to the railing and stared at the dirt as if she could see right through it. After a moment, she looked over her shoulder and called for me to come. I walked up beside her. She looked very sad and almost instantly weary. After a moment of uncomfortable silence, she spoke.

“Do you see those flowers, Elissibiss? Beneath the flowers is a bunker. Omi and I used to run to this place during the air raids. We would run down that street, you see?” She pointed with a frail, wrinkled finger. It was as if the bombs were falling then and there. “It would be so loud,” she whispered, “and I would run as fast and as hard as I could. ‘Komm schnell,’ Omi would scream.” Come quick!

It was eerie. An underground bunker, but now somehow befitting: unmarked, but all covered with flowers. A grave lavished with blossoms to cover the scars of the past.

My grandmother turned from the flowers and began to walk towards the street. When she reached the curb, she looked up at the roof tops of the adjacent buildings and like a bloodhound, locked her senses onto a target. This time, she did not have to call my name. I had remained close by her side.

“Look. There. On top of those apartments. Do you see it?” She lifted her arm and pointed her finger to direct my view.

It looked like a black soldier’s helmet stuck on the top of a pole. Its silhouette cut through the blue sky like a shadow in a spotlight. It stood over all the passing people and cars and cast down moments best forgotten.

“That’s an air raid siren,” she said. “I guess they never took it down. Maybe they kept it just in case. Just in case it should happen again. They would sound the sirens, and usually in the middle of the night. That’s how we knew it was time to hide. Sometimes, if the bombing wasn’t too bad, we would just hide in the basement we shared with our neighbors. Aachen was one of the first cities to be bombed.”

Traffic slowed, and we crossed the street. We walked a couple of blocks down rolling brick streets until we reached an intersection with a nice-sized corner store. “Schorn” was written above the glass frontage, and all kinds of miscellaneous merchandise were displayed in the windows. Above the store was an elegant home decorated with sculptures and chiseled ornate designs. Through the windows, I could see fine drapes. Even the hardware on the door was nicely polished.

“This was my home, and that was my family’s store. My cousin, Hans, runs the shop now, and I have no idea who is living in the house. See that top window? That was my bedroom. And that one, right there, that was our kitchen. And see the big curved windows that wrap around the corner? That was our living room.” Gran Gran paused for a moment.

“One night, through that window, a bomb came in. We were all down in the basement hiding, but my friend, Manfried, was in that room. He was hit by the bomb. It exploded around his body. You see, Elizabeth, he was Jewish, and we could not take him into the basement with us. People would know he was a Jew, then he could no longer hide upstairs. The living room was as close to the ground as he could get. It was just the way it was back then. People did not understand and accept other people like they do now. I will never forget …”

I did not ask any questions, and she did not offer any more explanations. Fear seeped into my stomach.

“Come on.” She said.

We walked across the street and into the shop. Cousin Hans was waiting.

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My final exam for senior social studies was not an exam at all. It was an essay on the effect of history in our own personal lives. The assignment was to look into our families’ past, then find an interesting person to interview. We were to write about this interview in a final essay. Many of my classmates interviewed their parents about civil rights, Vietnam, Woodstock, and the Cold War. One kid even bragged that his grandfather was a D-day survivor.

I wanted to interview Gran Gran. Her story was sure to impress my teacher. I knew that not every student had a German war survivor hanging from a branch of their family tree. I needed an A on the final in order to make an A in the class, but it would not be the end of the world if I didn’t get it. I had already been accepted to college.

The problem with interviewing my grandmother was that she hated to talk about The War, and even more than that, she hated people knowing she had been a part of it. Maybe she feared Barbara Walters and a camera crew would come knocking on her door, or maybe she was afraid that the people in Opelika would look at her somehow differently. Maybe she feared the equation that might be applied to her: World War II + German = Nazi. She enjoyed being part of society’s woodwork – just a quiet little old woman walking her dog through Municipal Park.

She had already overcome adversity in America, and I don’t think she wanted to open old wounds. Small-town Alabamians did not greet her with their infamous southern hospitality when she first arrived after The War. After being seasick for a week and shoved through Ellis Island, she had hoped Opelika would bring a clean slate and a new life in the land of liberty and justice. In many cases, she would have been better off a black woman drinking from the white fountain, than a German, fresh off the boat, living next door to a soldier’s grieving mother.

It was a hard phone call to make, but I did it despite my anxiety. I asked her if I could come over and interview her for a school project. She was hesitant, but eventually agreed. I drove over to her house with a tape recorder and a notebook. My teacher had given us a list of sample questions to ask in our interviews, but I didn’t bring it along. Talking about The War with Gran Gran could not be prompted. It just had to flow out. That’s the way it always was.

I sat on a footstool, and she sat in her recliner. She asked me to please not hand in the tape, and not to let other people have it. I promised her that I would only keep the tape for myself. She leaned back in her chair, took a long sip of cranberry juice and Sprite, and began to speak.

“In late November or early December 1944, Omi and I had fled Aachen across the border into Belgium. We thought it would be safer there. It was early winter, but the snows were already very heavy. It was extremely cold, and food was hard to come by.

“We could not have chosen a worse time to flee. Have you ever read or heard about the Battle of the Bulge, Elissibiss? I think it was Hitler’s last major stand against the United States and Britain. Omi and I got stuck in the middle of it.

“We found a potato cellar in the Belgian countryside to hide in. There were other people hiding in the cellar with us. I think that most of them were from Belgium and maybe one from France. We were all afraid, hungry, and desperate.

“One day, we all felt the ground shake and the cellar rumble. It was different from the bombings we had become accustomed to. This was a constant roar. The people started screaming and chaos filled the cellar. A woman looked out and saw tanks coming from the west. It was the Americans.”

She took a troubled sip of cranberry and Sprite.

“The people in the cellar began to murmur for someone who knew how to speak English. Omi spoke up and told them I could do it. She told them I had been privileged enough to attend fine schools in Aachen, and that I could speak bits and pieces of many languages, but was very fluent in English.

“They gave me a white handkerchief and told me to stand in front of the oncoming tanks. I was supposed to tell the Americans that we needed their help. I was so afraid, Elissibiss. The tanks were enormous and deadly. I was only eighteen.

“I walked out across the snow and into the path of the oncoming tanks. With my heart pounding and my entire body shaking, I closed my eyes and shook the handkerchief in the cold air. I felt certain they would run me over without a thought. I had made it through air raids, train bombings, and interrogations, and now I was going to die at the hands of the people who had come to liberate me.

“To my surprise, the lead tank stopped, and a very hard spoken soldier came out. I wept and begged him for mercy and for help. I told him I was German, but that I was no harm to him. He asked me how many people were in the potato cellar. I was so scared that I bumbled and mumbled and could not recall.

He screamed, ‘Listen to me, woman. How many Germans are in that cellar? I want you to think long and hard about that question, because if you lie to me now, I will cut your head off right here in the snow.’

I hesitated. I could hardly think. I told him that the only Germans in the cellar were my mother and me. But Elissibiss, I did not really know for sure. I prayed that none of the people hiding with me had been dishonest. I didn’t know for sure. A group of soldiers infiltrated the cellar. My body fell limp as a dish rag when it was finally confirmed: I had told the man the truth.

The Americans helped us all that day. They took us into their caravan, and I think they set people up in protected refugee camps once they got into Germany. As for me and Omi, once the Americans discovered that we were not Nazis and that I spoke both German and English, they set me up as an interpreter for General Patton and his forces, and let Omi live and travel with me.

The Americans took good care of us until The War was over. We had food and shelter, and once, when I became very ill, they got me penicillin from a ration reserved for their own troops.”
Her focus returned from visions of the past, and she was looking at me again.

“Do you think that’s enough for your paper?” she asked.

“Yeah, I think that’ll be plenty.” I said. I smiled at her.