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You are here: Home > Story Shelf > All Authors > Ruwen Rouhs > Kalli, the Days of...... | Ruwen Rouhs

Kalli, the Days of......

by Ruwen Rouhs

Kalli at the age of 10
@copy Ruwen Rouhs
All rights reserved

Invasion

1

The faint scent of the air changed. Kalli's nose no longer detected the fragrance of sweets and candies, but the earthy scent of potatoes. With the sweet smell the brightness in the room had slowly disappeared. The further he advanced into the darkness, the more uncertain he became.

Kalli had been the first to enter the storage cellar under his grandma's store, followed by his mom, who held little Traudi, his younger sister, by the hand. His older sister Hanni followed, on whose shoulders his grandmother was leaning. Mitzi, the housekeeper, shuffled cautiously through the dark followed by her one-armed husband Anton.

He hardly remembered the locked door in the far corner of the cellar with the heavy bolt secured by a lock, the key of which he held in his hand. He had never ventured this far into the cellar on his own, having read too many stories about robbers, children-eating witches and ghosts with rattling bones. He had only ever ventured this deep into the cellar once before and that had earned him a serious scolding from his grandmother, Grandma Stiller. But today was different. "Go ahead, Kalli!" his Mom had ordered, "Unlock the lock and push open the door to the stairs. They are leading down to safety!" Reluctantly he turned the key in the lock, pushed back the catch and pushed open the door to the dead mine in the underground of the town.

The cold drought rising up from the depths enveloped Kalli like a cold sweat-soaked bed sheet after a nightmare. Looking down, he found out the staircase ended on a landing from which another staircase went down further. The staircases were lit only by a single lamp that twinkled when the power went out at irregular intervals. He groped for a handrail. But there wasn't one. Therefore, he pressed his right hand to the cold stone wall to steady himself, as the rough and irregular stone steps were damp and slippery.

The scent coming up from the depths was different from the one of the storage cellars. It was damp, cold and smelt of iron. He looked back to make sure the others were following. As he turned his head back, he slipped, but managed to brace himself and continued into the depths. The next set of stairs was followed by the third and even now he didn't know how far down the stairs went into the darkness of the mountain. All he knew was, miners had dug for silver more than two hundred years. They had undermined the rock underneath the whole town like woodworms an oak cabinet. However, since mining had become unprofitable about two hundred years ago the mining has stopped. Since then town had developed into a small trading community. Now trade goods were now stored in many of the tunnels.

The third staircase ended in a wide hall where the flickering light didn't reach the ceiling. Right next to the path to the opposite end of the hall was a sheet of water, an underground pond or a deep well. The light of the lamp was reflected in its dark smooth surface. His mom suddenly commanded "Wait! Kalli, wait!" He stopped, turned around and noticed that his mother had fished an object out of her carrier bag, something black and shining metallic. With a flick of her hand she threw it into the middle of the body of water. After the object had vanished in the water, he realized that it was a gun, the hand-gun he had found the day before in the bedside cabinet in the room where he and his sisters slept till around midnight. For a moment he was outraged and wanted to protest, "I need the gun, don't throw it away!". But as it was too late, he kept his mouth shut, turned around and walked on.

At the end of the hall, a few steps led up to another, smaller hall. Only a single light was on. It was even darker as on their way down and up the stairs. Wanting more information about the situation Kalli tried to pierce the darkness with his eyes.

For a moment goose bumps ran down his spine, because mummies seemed to be lined up along the walls. His head told him he was in a former mine and not in a vault, therefore, he let his eyes wander from mummy to mummy. In one corner of the hall he noticed a dot of light that grew brighter from time to time. Then he detected a second and a third one. Sniffing he smelt the smoke of cigarettes. These three had to be smokers; they weren't mummies, at least not these three. If they were smokers, so the mummies were people also, who had wrapped themselves in blankets.

He looked for Schorschi, his friend living in a house at the opposite side of the street. But he didn't see him. Not one of the mummies looked like him. Probably, his mother had sought refuge in another part of the dead mine.

Kalli snuggled between his sisters on the hard, wooden bench, leaned back against the cold stone wall, closed his eyes and looked through his closed eyelids at the flickering light on the opposite wall. In the dark the light seemed like that of the sun when he was in the narrow courtyard of Schorschi's house squatting against the warm wooden wall and squinting into the sun light. He dreamed back to the hot afternoons when they played with marbles in the sand, barred ant-trails, picked petals from the roses in the corner to make beds for their tired toy soldiers or just were sitting there singing "Auf der Mauer, auf der Lauer…… !"

2

Noise came in through the open window. Kalli remembered the noise. Where did he know this sound from? Pondering, it flashed back to him. The noise had to be the snorting of horses, their soft neighing, the pawing of hooves on the cobblestones of the street below. But how do horses get into the narrow alley below the window? He had never seen horses there before!

The neighing and snorting reminded Kalli of the summer four years ago. Back then, when he was three, his father had taken the whole family on a trip to a small village. At his father's friend's farm, they had taken him to the stables and put him on horseback. Kalli had panicked. So high up on the horseback! So far from the safe ground! "Down! I want down!" However, his father and his friend just laughed, "Scaredy-cat! Pat Lisa on the neck! She likes it. She is a good girl!" After they finally put him back on the ground, his father made a comment to his friend, "That's Kalli! What a sissy! Always with his nose in his books! He'll never become a man!" Then it even got worse. The farmer's dog came, the dog's snout came, the dog's snout came right into his face. Kalli started to scream and his father and his father's friend laughed at him.

Kalli slipped out of bed and walked over to the window wearing still the clothes from the night before in the dead mine, but no shoes. Someone had taken off his shoes. The window sill was too high up in the wall for him to stand on the floor and look out onto the alleyway in front of grandma's house in the Schillergasse . He dragged a footstool to the window. Now he could look down into the alley.

In front of the "White Swan", the inn on the opposite side of the street, four-wheeled carts were lined up, each with a horse between drawbars. The horses were only loosely tethered. They were small, much smaller than the horse he remembered. The wagons were smaller too, much smaller than the hay wagon he remembered also. He pondered scratching his head. Suddenly he knew it. The name of the small wagons was panje-wagons.

Panje-wagon! Now he understood! Russians had conquered his hometown. The Red Army had invaded the city in the early morning hours, when he took shelter in the dead mine! Now the enemy was there, the vanguard, the strike force, the rearguard. These soldiers down there must belong to the rearguard, should be foot soldiers. As far as he had heard, foot-soldiers followed the motorized units to the front line in the panje-wagons.

Because of the wagons the soldiers must be around there also, but he didn't see any, at least not at first. Then he recognized one. He lay on top the wagon wrapped up in blankets, sleeping it off. Then he recognized more soldiers sleeping on the other wagons as well. Then one of them woke up, stretched, climbed out of the wagon, stepped against the wall of the inn and peed.

Suddenly Kalli had to pee too. He tiptoed across the room, past the bed where his sisters were still asleep, through the anteroom to the toilet. When he had finished in the bathroom, his stomach began to rumble.

3

The kitchen window was still darkened. The light-proof shutters were closed so that the light could not tell attacking aircrafts that people were living here. As Kalli entered, he sensed the tension and anxiety of his mom and grandma sitting silently at the kitchen table staring into their coffee-pots. Their breakfast was still untouched. He grabbed a jam sandwich from his mother's plate, who didn't seem to notice him. Mitzi, the housekeeper, was busy with pots on the stove, but these seemed to be empty. She nodded to him, came over and placed a glass of milk on the table in front of him. He shook his head, "Coffee please! Have you forgotten that I don't drink milk? I never do! Milk gets me sick!" "You need milk, drink it Kalli, try it, for my sake! Today might be the last time there's any!"

Kalli shrugged his shoulders. Always the same, he thought. He hadn't drunk any milk since he was weaned, whether it was from cows, goats or sheep. Everyone in the family remembered that milk made him sick, only Mitzi couldn't seem to wrap her head around it.

The awkward silence was interrupted by a loud banging on the front door of the apartment. Everyone in the kitchen froze. When the banging on the door didn't stop and swelled to a deafening hammering, Kalli's Grandma got up and went to the door. She looked through the peephole and went stiff.

Kalli went after her. While almost fainting, she breathed inaudibly. "Russians! Russian soldiers!" Before she had even pushed the double bolt all the way back, the door was forced open. Two young soldiers pushed their way in, sub-machine guns at the ready. They pushed Grandma aside and scanned the anteroom with their eyes. "Eto tocno! Caracho!" one of them called back over his shoulder and another four pushed their way in, submachine guns pointing at the people in the room.

Meanwhile, Kalli's Mom and Mitzi had also entered the anteroom, staring panic-stricken at the intruders. He himself kept his stand beside his Grandma and wondered whether he should be afraid or approach the youngest of the six because he looked like a boy at play and not like murderous enemy. He was small, not much taller than the fourteen-year-olds in his school and had stilted eys. The gun he was holding looked like a toy. A vicious toy he had been told, called Kalashnikov, one with a big drum magazine holding dozens of dozens of deadly shells

But the invasion of his families' privacy was no joke. Kalli quickly understood the seriousness of the situation when they tore open the door to the room where his sisters were hiding in the bed under the covers trembling. The soldiers forced the four of them into the room. As soon they discovered his crying sisters, they had to rise. Now all were ordered to line up facing the wall. Daring a glimpse over his shoulder Kalli detected two of the soldiers stayed behind to guard them while the other four scattered to search the apartment.

Kalli was nervous and anxious, but not anxious enough to glance over his shoulder from time to time. One of the guards, probably the oldest of them, had rolled up the sleeves of his mustard-colored blouse. In his right hand he held a stinking cigarette, the ashes of which he carelessly dropped on the carpet. Kalli gaze was drawn to the soldier's left forearm. He stared amazed at the forearm, because the soldier wasn't wearing one wristwatch only. No, he had bound five aligned at his arm. His forearm adorned three large men's watches and two smaller ones, ladies' watches, one of which shimmered gold. Had he bought them at a clockmaker's shop, found them in abandoned flats or had he stolen them? Was he a robber? Kalli asked himself and was sure he knew the answer.

Kalli was still staggered and pondering what the soldier needed five watches for when the door to the room burst open and the older soldier's comrades dragged over the heavily bleeding Anton, Mitzi's husband. Kalli guessed the Russians had tracked him down in the pantry, where he was hiding. They dropped the one-armed down like a bag of flour. Immediately Mitzi knelled down beside him, took him in her arms and began to sob out loud.

In the meantime, the two of the soldiers who were searching the cupboards and lockers of the room tore out the contents and threw them on the floor. Suddenly one of them started shouting. Kalli quickly averted his eyes in terror and turned his head to the wall, realizing from the confused shouting that all the intruders had gathered in the room. The excitement of the soldiers and their discussion was so deafening he had to hold his hands in front of his ears and close his eyes.

When Kalli finally tried to look around he saw that the smallest of the soldiers, whom he had found the least daunting, had dumped the contents of a bedside drawer on the bed. Letters, pens, a note-book, an assortment of coins and a torch light were distributed on the bedcover. To his horror, he discovered military insignia among the items, an Iron Cross, Medals of Honor showing SS runes and other military awards he had never seen before. All the stuff had belonged to German army officers who had been billet in his Grandma's apartment. The cowards had fled from the advancing Red Army three days ago.

Suddenly Kalli felt a chill run down his spine! The hand-gun! The pistol! The pistol had been in the drawer also. He had found it the previous day and proudly presented it to his mother. He had been furious when she took the gun away from him and told her "I need it, I want to defend you now that dad is dead!" But she didn't listen to him and took it without a word. Now he was happy she did.

In the meantime, another soldier had broken into the closet in the corner. He threw everything out onto the floor. In the far corner, he discovered a zippered garment bag. He opened it and inside was the dress uniform of an SS officer. It was black, with collar patches showing silver SS runes, medal clasps and a red armband with the swastika.

The soldiers were irritated and upset because they had searched the entire flat and had neither found a soldier nor a SS officer. Now the soldiers pointed the guns to their captives still lined up at the wall. The boyish soldier, who had discovered the Iron Cross took the big torch. He didn't seem to know its purpose. He switched it on and pointed at the lined up. As he watched Kalli looking back to him, he took the torch and pressed to his head. Kalli nearly peed into his trousers not knowing if the soldiers intended a game or if it was for serious.

The older soldiers seem to become more nervous and angrier by the moment. Their leader pulled a pistol out of his pocket, pressed it to Anton's temple and peppered him with questions in Russian language. Anton began to stammer. First in the German language, "No, no! Not me. I am an old man. Look here, I'm an invalid!" pointing to his arm, which was missing up to elbow, "I am an old man!" Then he tried the Czech language and finally another Slavic language. After some minutes he was successful and the soldier removed the gun from his temple.

Mitzi, who had been clutching her husband before, let go of him when the soldier put the pistol to his temple. She screamed! She screamed heartbreakingly. She didn't stop, till she got out of breath. Finally, she collapsed, became quieter, wailed like a toddler.

Grandma's housekeeper Mitzi never recovered from the shock. A few days later Anton had to take her to a hospital. Kalli never found out whether she got healthy again or whether she went crazy and ended in a sick house.

While all were looking at the heap of misery that was once Grandma's housekeeper, the apartment door flew open and a Soviet officer entered, accompanied by a foot soldier. He carefully checked the found items, especially the dress uniform. Then he approached Anton and questioned him for a long time. Satisfied with the answers, he had the awards and uniform packed up. With a short bow, he left taking along the items. Later there was a sticker on the outside of the door. It said "KOMANDA ----- KOMMANDANTUR" in Cyrillic and German writing.

4

When the fright over the invasion by the Russian army had died down, other problems suddenly came to light. For more than seven centuries two ethnic groups had lived side by side in the town, the German speaking people and the Czech speaking ones. With the rise of nationalism in Europe at the beginning of the 20^th century, the antagonism between the two groups intensified. Since the Nazi invasion of the country in 1939, they became enemies, because invaders discriminated the Czechs and regarded them as subhuman, just a little above the Jews, who were persecuted and deported.

Now the Czech saw the Russians as liberators and friends, while the Germans, even the Non-Nazi, feared them as enemies. This new reality now came to bear by the confiscation of Kalli's grandma's business as well as the one of Kalli's mom, the tailor atelier.

As soon as Kalli found out that Grandma's grocery store was closing, he pestered his mother to go back home. "I want to go back to my books, mom. I want to go home. It's boring here. Look, Traudi and Hanni want to go back also." To emphasize his arguments he added, "And you, you don't have to help Grandma in the store anymore."

On their way home Kalli crossed the main square of the small town holding his smaller sister by the hand. The square, which he used to cross happily the weeks before, now frightened him. The foreign soldiers had set up camps besides their panje-wagons. Heavy trucks lined the nineteen century townhouses surrounding the square paved with cobblestones. Tanks guarded the roads leading from the square.

Kalli felt being watched. He felt eyes following him along the way, some threatening, some curious. However, the tank guns frightened him more, some even seemed to follow him along. He held Traudi tighter and sped up the pace.

Finally, they turned into the street, where the tailor atelier of his father, now run by his mother, was located. Kalli breathes a sight of relieve. He simply left Traudi at the junction of the road to wait for his mother and ran to the house where their flat was located, in the Brünerstraße 10 .

The 19th Century corner building was big, not only providing space for their flat and the tailor atelier at the second floor but also for a boot-maker shop in the ground-floor and a pub with beer garden in the back. The front door of the house was wide open and through the long hallway he could see the empty beer garden at the other end. The staircase to the second floor, where their flat was located, was dark. Being excited Kalli climbed the steps, nearly stumbling at the last one.

A glance into the hallway in front of their flat made him stop in his tracks. The door of the flat was wide open and his father's grand piano was now located in the floor landing. One leg of the instrument was missing and replaced by a nightstand and books. The lid of the piano's keyboard was broken, the back part of the lid tilted up and broken strings were sticking out the corpus.

The hallway was a mess. Chairs, broken or whole everywhere, empty beer crates, brandy bottles and rubbish were spread all over the place. Registering all the changes brought about by the unwelcome guests, he hurried straight into their apartment. The first big room was used as a tailor's workshop. The cutting table and the sewing machines were no longer at the position they had been before. The soldiers had moved them back against the wall probably when they had pushed the piano from the next room, father's sacred music room, to the hallway. To get through the door between the two rooms they had had to tilt the grand piano on its side. Trying this they had broken away the leg. He took a quick look into the music room, where the piano had stood and string instruments had hung on the walls for as long as he could remember. Then he turned away, sad, indignant, foaming with rage. Nothing was as it had been just a few days ago, the flat was a disaster, totally ruined.

Kalli didn't want to stay in this room for longer. He hurried to the children's room, to his books, fearing the worst. He was right. The bookshelf was empty. The books thrown to the ground, some open, some still closed. He looked for his favorite book, the book he had started to read before the Russians had invaded the town. He didn't find it in the pile of books. Looking around his stomach cramped up. He sprinted to the toilet.

The toilet was a mess too! Here he it was, his book, Robinson Crusoe. The book was the reason why he had been in such a hurry to get back home. It was laying on the floor, open, the pages of the middle section missing. He looked around. Kalli recovered two pages with colorful prints of his hero, one plate showing Robinson and his friend Friday, the other Robinson fighting cannibals. What did the soldiers do to the other missing pages? Used it as toilet tissue? Wiping their asses? Imagining the later, Kalli began to sob.

The following days went by in a blur. Kalli's mother was straightening up the flat, getting used to the new situation as stranger in her own flat, in her own town, in her own land. The new authorities had ordered to hand over the tailor studio to a new owner belonging to the "right" ethnic group, a Czech. Kalli knew him. He was a former employee eager to take over the studio including the entire valuable inventory. Their saving accounts were withdrawn as well, appropriated to the new authorities. The same happened to Kalli's grandmother. Her grocery store was expropriated as well as her house and all her possessions.

Two days later Kalli was woken up by the noise of marching in the street in front of the house. He rushed to the next room, a small storing room, with windows to the street. To have a better look out of the window he had to scramble up a big box of cardboard. This box as well as a smaller one besides smelt of mothballs.

As he looked out of the window, his gaze fell on the row of houses opposite and as if by itself to the store with the boarded-up shop windows. The first line of the big board above the store entrance said " Furriery Sa…..F..nk…….", and the second, "Furs of all kind, Fur Coats, Fur Collars".

Part of the former owner's name was erased, but Kalli knew it, it was Samuel Finklstein . The name of Uncle Finkl, as Kalli called him. The uncle he liked more than his real uncles. The uncle he could always go to if he had a question or was sad or just wanted a lollipop. And then one day the windows of the store were smashed and Uncle Finkl was gone. He just vanished! It was shortly after the swastika flags were hanging from every window. All what was left of him were the two boxes with furs s smelling like Uncle Finkl's store had smelt, like mothballs.

Looking down to the street Kalli could hardly believe his eyes. Coming from the town square a nearly endless column of heads passed in front of his eyes: shaven heads, heads with long hairs, bandaged heads. He took a closer look at the men who belonged to the heads: young men, young men in uniforms, young men in civilian clothes, with army boots, with civilian boots, without boots. Some seem to be healthy, others wounded and still others limping on crutches. The column of disarmed German soldiers was marching eastwards, the defeated Nazi-army, now prisoners of war, POWs.

There seemed to be no end to the column. Kalli watched the marching column from early morning until midday and even late in the afternoon. Their guards sat on horses, the small panje-horses he had seen before. If one of the prisoners stopped from fatigue, they drove him on with blows.

he prisoners of war, marched past the house from morning until late in the afternoon. As the day progressed, the sun rose higher and higher, burning down more and more intensely, and the thirst of the captured soldiers increased with each passing hour. Compassionate neighbors stood by the roadside with buckets of water and gave the POWs a drink. However, these were not allowed to stop and had to drink while marching on. When Kalli's mother saw that one of them had no shoes left and limped into captivity, she went upstairs into the apartment, fetched some of Kalli's dead father's shoes and gave them to those who were being driven past barefoot.

Detention

1

Only two days later an order was issued that all of the people belonging to the "wrong" ethnic group, the German speakers, had to gather in the municipal soccer stadium. All morning long, men, women and children, the infirm and the healthy made their way to the stadium across the city. There were only old men in the crowd, as the young one where either still at the front as soldiers or had already been driven east as prisoners of war.

The Germans had to wear armbands so that they could be distinguished from Czechs. They were not allowed to use public transportation, not even the sick and children.

By lunchtime, the bleachers of the stadium were filled to capacity. The new authorities had set up a platform at one end of the pitch. The members of the new authority didn't introduce themselves to the crowd. One of their leaders began to recite the new regulations and explain what the new authorities had decided to do with the citizens of the "wrong" ethnicity, the German speaking people. The city was to be cleansed of them. They were to be sent to a detention camp, a kind of concentration camp and as soon as possible expatriated. Kalli understood nothing of this, however noticed that his grandmother collapsed.

Then some militiamen dragged a man to the stage. The man was tied up. The crowd recognized him. It was a representative of the former city administration. The new authority staged a court hearing however with accusers only and no defense attorney. They accused him to be a Nazi, to have been persecuting members of the "right" ethnicity, the Czech, of having deported Jews, Gypsies, communists and democrats, gays and lesbians to concentration camps. The man, trembling like espen leaves, was not allowed to defend himself, he was not allowed to speak at all. Without discussion the accusers announced his death sentence.

When a man approached him with a pistol, Kalli's mother covered his eyes with her hands. He only heard the peng, peng, peng of shots. With the shots the horrified groans in the stands died down, followed by a long silence and then groans of horror.

2

The iron-shod wheels of the handcart clattered over the cobblestones of the main square. Kalli had to bend almost to the ground as he struggled to pull the packed wagon up the incline of the main square past the fountain with the statue of the Virgin Mary. His mother pushed the cart while his sisters were walking besides holding hands with his grandmother.

They weren't the only ones rushing up the square. From all the alleyways, people with packed handcarts or baby carriages fully loaded with suitcases, trunks, bags, bedding, cloth, pots and dishes streamed onto the square and towards its north-eastern end. From there a wide road led out of the town to their new home, a former work camp run by a Nazi youth organization. The people had not set out voluntarily. They were following the orders of the new authorities. Compliance with the order was monitored by the militia. The militia included men of all ages. They did not wear uniforms, but their everyday clothes and identified themselves with an armband in the new national colors.

Kalli legs burned. He was exhausted, not only because he was pulling the fully packed cart, but also because he was carrying a big rucksack stuffed with his clothes. His sisters also shouldered rucksacks, as did his mother and grandmother.

The wide road leading out of the city was overcrowded and the various carriages were getting in each other's way. Fortunately, the road led downhill. He didn't remember ever having walked it down. So, he was surprised when it led to a traffic circle from which other roads branched off in a star shape. On the central island, suitcases, bags, bedding and countless other things lay wildly heaped. Kalli looked at the jumble in amazement as he quickly realized what was happening in front of him. The militiamen fished out people of the traffic and began to examine the luggage on their wagons and in their backpacks. When they discovered nothing useful, the people were subjected to body search.

As soon as Kalli reached the militiamen with his handcart, he was stopped at gunpoint by one of them. Two others began to ransack the cart without a method. When nothing useful was discovered, one of them pulled his grandmother to the side. He searched her backpack, but found nothing of value. Then forced her to open her coat and began to search her. He turned the coat pockets inside out, and when only a few coins came to light, he became angry. Swearing, he began a body search. Kalli's grandmother began to protest. That actually inspired the man. He suspected that she had hidden jewelry on her body. He tore the scarf from her neck. Grinning sadistically, he found a thin gold chain around her neck. He didn't ask her to open it, but ripped it off her neck. Then he felled out a small pocket watch that she had put in a pocket of her dress. That was the last time she saw the watch. At first, Grandma endured the search bravely and seemingly unmoved, but when the militiaman ripped the chain off her neck, she began to cry and finally screamed, "You better shoot me!"

While Kalli's grandmother was searched and plundered, Hanni and Traudi stood crying next to his mother and clung to her. In the meantime, Kalli thought desperately about what he could do. He remembered the gun he had found a few days ago. If only I had that gun "I'd shoot them all" he thought. But deep inside he knew that he couldn't do anything against these violent men.

During the body search of Kalli's grandma the other people forced to go to the detention camp also had built up behind them with their cart and baby carriages. That was their rescue. The militiamen had to let them move on unwillingly.

3

The once white camp sign above the entrance gate in the man-high wooden fence with the barbed wire crown read in black: RAD-Abteilung 4/368 IGLAU. The characters RAD had been painted over slopply with white paint as well as the Name of the town. Kalli was still able to decipher them, RAD and IGLAU. RAD meant Reichs Arbeitsdienst (Reichs Labor Service) and Iglau was the German Name of the small town he lived in. In Czech its name was Jihlava. The RAD-emblems to the left and right of the inscription had been removed, but Kalli could still clearly see the places where they had been attached.

Militia men guarded the entrance to the camp riffles over their shoulders or in the ready. Kalli's stomach involuntarily cramped. He didn't want to pass the guards, he didn't want to walk into captivity, Kalli wanted to stay free. But he had to. They threatened him with their nightsticks.

With tired legs, he pulled the cart past a brick house with the inscription "Administration". He was so tired that not only his mother but also his sisters had to push the four-wheel cart. Besides the administration the building hosted the militia station and the kitchen, as he learned soon.

The crowd of exhausted people came to rest on a gravel place between wooden barracks arranges in U-shape. Small doors led from the single-story barracks to this assembly area. The entry doors of the barracks stood open. They alternated with narrow windows. The area was already crowded by the detainees, with their handcarts, baby carriages and other means they had used to transport their belongings.

Kalli was exhausted from pulling the cart for nearly the whole morning, totally exhausted. He sank to the ground next to the handcart and asked his mom for water. Then he fell asleep and only woke up when orders were announced over a loudspeaker. He didn't fully understand the orders, but he understood that the former RAD camp would be their home for the next weeks.

His mom, grandma, sisters and he were allocated a room in a barrack at one end of the U-shaped ensemble. Their new home was small, with two windows overlooking the meeting place. It was furnished with four double bunk beds only. Otherwise it was empty, no tables, no chairs, no lockers. The double bunk beds were placed next to each other so that there was a wide upper and a wide lower sleeping area.

Four more families were accommodated in the small room. This meant that each of the families was entitled to one lower and one upper bunk. After a brief discussion, the adults agreed that the children should sleep on the top bunks and the adults on the bottom ones.

Fortunately for Kalli, his family was allowed to occupy the bunk bed at one end of the row. While mom and grandma made themselves comfortable in the lower bunk, Kalli and his sisters did this in the upper one. After a few days, the three settled into an arrangement where Kalli slept at the foot of the bed, while Traudi and Hanni had to sleep next to each other at the head end.

The first night, it was hard for Kalli to fall asleep. The straw mattress was too hard, the blanket too warm and the panting and snoring of the roommates unfamiliar. When he woke up the next morning, he had forgotten all that, even that he was now living in a camp. It was only when he had to climb down the ladder to go to the john that he remembered the previous day. Finding of the toilette was easy, as a queue of people was waiting to take their turn. Without further ado, he turned around, went behind the barracks and peed in the green.

They ate breakfast in bed. Grandmother had smuggled some food into the camp, bread, sausage and rusks, which Kalli and his sisters gorged themselves on. They only had cold water from the tap to drink, as it was not possible to make tea or coffee here. There was no milk either. His mother only took a rusk although her stomach growled. Grandma smoked a cigarette. This was the last food for the day, as the camp kitchen had not yet been set up. This happened three days later.

Over the next few days, they had to rely on their grandma's supplies, which quickly dwindled. Grandma didn't seem to mind the shortage of food, what was worse was that her cigarettes were running out, and neither these nor food could be obtained in the camp or from the other inmates.

The smokers, including Grandma, immediately began to discuss which plants could be smoked as a substitute for tobacco. It soon became clear that the leaves of the blackberry, raspberry, nettle, hazelnut tree would be suitable. There wasn't much choice in the camp. As Kalli had already explored the entire camp with other boys, she asked him and he had the knowledge. He hadn't seen any hazelnut bushes or raspberry bushes, but back closed to the fence, there was a whole field of nettles and blackberries growing by a rickety barn. "And where do you get paper for rolling cigarettes?" He asked his grandma, "There're only old newspapers available." Kalli's Grandma thought about it, "Then I'll take those!" she decided. As nettles had stinging hairs, Kalli, Hanni and Traudi offered to pick blackberry leaves. Other smokers had the same idea and soon the blackberry vines were bare.

Finally, the authorities announced the opening of the kitchen the next day at 11 AM. Already at 6 in the morning a long line of hungry people gathered at delivery counter. Every stomach growled. Children whined and the adults shifted impatiently from one leg to the other. Spoons were clattering in the tin bowls or army kettles.

Kalli was late, that is he joints the line at around 7 AM, while his mom, his Grandma and sisters had already lined up half an hour before. He couldn't stand queuing. Like the other boys, he soon became impatient craning his head in every direction possible. When he couldn't stand waiting any longer, he started playing tag with other boys.

The militiamen guarding the crowd quickly became angry at the boys running around ants. At first, they just scolded them and when that didn't help, everyone they could get hold of got one behind the ears. Kalli got one too and afterwards rejoined his mother in the line of peoples. The slap was so hard that he wanted to cry. But he suppressed crying, because he didn't want to begrudge the militiaman his triumph.

Back in the queue, Kalli dreamed of a stew with potatoes and meatballs, like the one Mitzi cooked for him when he visited Grandma on Saturdays after school. When he finally stood at the serving counter, he peered into the large cauldron from which the food was being scooped. All Kalli saw was a thin broth with a few pieces of potato floating in it. The woman with the ladle took notice of his disappointed face, smiled at him and shrugged her shoulders helplessly. She filled up his army kettle and gave him two slices of bread. That was his food for the whole day.

The allotment of food for the detained people alternated between two kinds of soups, a thin potato soup and an equally thin barley soup. The soup was always accompanied by two slices of coarse rye army bread. The bread was never served with butter or margarine, in exceptional cases, however, with a dollop of jam. The kitchen never served meat to the inmates of the camp and Kalli and his sisters never got meat after Grandma's reserves of sausages were used up. His stomach was growling constantly.

It was boring in the prison camp. The daily routine soon was waiting in line for food in the morning, playing with the other children between the barracks in the afternoon and sleeping as soon the sun went down.

Kalli's diet improved slightly when his mother was assigned to forced labor, as were the other detainees. In the morning all the younger women and the men capable of walking left the camp. Kalli's mother was assigned a job with families where she had to work as a domestic help. On the first evening of the job, she returned in tears. She had been assigned to a family who had appropriated the home of a German family. She had to toil like an animal and was only given a few slices of stale bread to eat. She complained and was assigned to another household, but here she was no better off. She was luckier on her third work assignment, when she was assigned to a family of lawyers. It turned out that the lawyer's wife was a former client of her tailor's atelier. They treated her decently. The workload was hard, however she was given reasonable food and even allowed to take back to camp what she saved from her mouth.

4

With the days of the ice saints at the end of May, the weather became treacherous and chilly. Despite the drizzle Kalli and the other children couldn't stand it in the overcrowded barracks. Originally the rooms had been intended for eight RAD-men only. But now 20 to 25 people were locked-up in each of them. In the room Kalli and his family had to live in, six women and sixteen children from 4 and 13, had been crammed in it.

During the rainy days Kalli tried to entertain the other children by telling stories he liked. He knew a lot of stories by heart, some he had read by himself, others his mother had read to him before he attended school. He had an extraordinarily good memory. He only needed to hear or read a story a single time and she was burnt into his brain. This wasn't fun for his mother, because went she read a story a second time to him and just change a single word, he got upset and corrected her, "Today you are reading something different than last time. Have you read something over? Today you are wrong!"

Kalli's story-telling hours were a success with the girls when he stuck to stories about princes, princesses, kings and queens, witches and sorceress, that is Brother's Grimm stories. His special friend Seppl, a teen of thirteen, preferred other stories, like the Nibelung sagas. Listening to the stories of Siegfried, Gunther, Hagen and Krimhild, he began to rave about his time as pimpf at the Hitler Youngsters. He raved about the outings, the nights around the fire, the nights in the tent with his friend. "We slept in small tents," he explained, "real small ones. We slept in the nude, as pajamas are girlish."

Kalli didn't understand why Seppl was raving about sleeping in a tiny tent with a friend. He was sure he would have preferred to sleep in a big tent all to himself. Kalli hated the cramped conditions in the camp, hated sleeping in a room with twenty other people.

As soon as the cold rain had subsided, the children stormed out of the room, led by Seppl, the oldest. "Let's play hide and seek!" he suggested. Kalli's sister Hanni protested. "The grass and the shrubs are still too wet. Let's better play tag!" As Kalli chased Seppl, he almost ran over a man who must have suddenly turned the corner of the barrack and stood there like a statue. Kalli was startled. He wondered what the man was doing here, as the men's barrack was at the other end of the detention camp far away of the ones reserved for women and children.

The other children were also startled and stopped to watch the stranger. It got even creepier when the man unbuttoned his fly and took out his noodle and started playing with his it. Kalli was fascinated because the man's noodle seemed to grow by the second.

Kalli and the boys sometimes peed outside also, but then, especially when girls were around, the boys went to the fence or to the shrubs. They always turned their backs to the girls. Kalli stared at the stranger, horrified and interested at the same time. Then one of the girls shrieked and took off. All children followed, including Kalli and Seppl.

That evening, Hanni told her grandma about the incident. She got really upset. She gathered the children together, "That was a bad man! You have to watch out for him. If he turns up again, call me, I'll chase him away with a broom."

5

That wasn't the last disturbing event of the day. Kalli had often woken up in the morning to find his mother lying between his sisters in the narrow bed. He always suspected his little sister had been crying and that mom wanted to comfort her.

This night, however, he observed something strange. He was woken up in the middle of the night by a knock. "Knock! Knock!" pause "Knock", twice short and once long" he heard. This message was repeated again and again. Suddenly the bunk bed shook and his mom came crawling up. She squeezed herself between Hanni and Traudi and pulled the comforter over her head. He also heard noises from the other punk-beds, as if the mothers were climbing up to their young ones hiding between them.

After a while, the door to their room opened quietly. Two men came in. Kalli didn't see them and didn't dare sit up to look around for them. But he smelled them. They were soldiers of the Red Army. They smelled of Russian cigarettes, papirossa, of beer and schnapps. They had torches and shone them first at the lower punks than up the upper. When they discovered his sisters in bed, they said, "Spie! Spite spokojno!" Then they checked the others punks and finally left the room, cursing quietly.

The next morning, Kalli asked his mother why the soldiers had come into the room. "They're not doing anything to children, they are not raping children!" she reassured him, "They're looking for women. You don't need to be afraid." But that didn't calm Kalli down.

Later, around midday, Kalli played outside with Seppl. He was still not well rested from the soldiers' visit the night before and was still mulling over these events. They played marbles, but had to use buttons instead of marbles. Just as Seppl was on a winning streak, Kalli noticed two Russian soldiers dragging a woman into the dilapidated shed in the far corner of the camp. The woman screamed, screamed for help. Kalli nudged Seppl, "Look! Look there!" Seppl looked for a moment, "Those beasts, they will rape her! Come on, let's find the guards." Kalli shook his head. He didn't know what rape means, but he knew it was something abhorrible and at the same time, that the guards will not interfere. "Useless! We can't do anything. They've won the war!" Later Seppl tried to explain to Kalli what the soldiers want the woman for, but he didn't get the reason.

6

On most evenings Kalli's mom arrived in the camp exhausted, but with a smile on her face and unpacked the food she had saved during the day at her workplace. Not this evening. Kalli noticed her eyes even before she entered the room, swollen, red from crying. " Mom, have you been crying? Why are you so sad? Did someone hit you?" was Kalli's first question. She tried to smile, but couldn't. "No, no! Everything is all right! I'm just so tired! Go and play outside, it's still light!" Although the evening went on as usual, Kalli knew that something must have happened that had made her unhappy.

After dark, when he had crawled into his sleeping place at the foot end of the top bunk, his mom started whispering to Grandma. At first, Kalli wasn't interested in the whispering. But then he heard the name Hans, his father's first name. Now he was suddenly wide awake, because if mom was telling granny something about his father, it had to be something extraordinary. "Today I met a woman who had to do her forced labor service in the household next door." She whispered to grandma, "She was a customer of our tailoring studio, a very good one. I only knew that her husband had a high rank in the Gestapo0, the Secret State Police. Neither Hans nor I knew him in person." Now Kalli's mother began to cry softly and sobbingly she went on. "One evening her husband came home and told her about an interrogation." With a faltering voice, she carried on, "The Gestapo had summoned Hans that day without informing him of the accusations with which they confronted him during the interrogation. You are an enemy of our state! Didn't our leader Adolf Hitler himself proclaim that all those who make pacts with Jews, support them, help them should be executed or sent to concentration camps? You have helped one of those Jews! You have helped Samuel Finklstein to escape! You have betrayed your people! Traitors to the people will be expelled by the people! Traitors to the people have no right to live on! But we'll give you one last chance to undo the damage. join the army immediately and fight against our enemies. If not, you will die in a concentration camp."

Kalli didn't want to listen any more. He covered his ears and crawled under the blanket. He knew what happened after the interrogation because mom had told him. Dad had come home and packed his stuff without saying a word. He had been sent to the Beskids as a border soldier and from there to the front in Russia. There he was killed in combat near the town of Oryol.

Kalli wracked his brain: So, was it all Uncle Finkl's fault? Father's dead? No! Three times no! It wasn't the fault of Uncle Finkl. They had been friend Uncle Finkl and his father. Friends have to help each other. Uncle Finkl was a good man. He was the best uncle Kalli knew. It couldn't be his fault. It had to be someone else's fault! Maybe of those who smashed the windows of Uncle Finkl's store? Or the ones who had put them up to it? Kalli thought about it for a long time and finally fell asleep.

7

The detention camp had been built for about four hundred RAD-men. Kalli drew a Four and two Zeros in the sandy ground with a stick. Now, there must be living many more people in the camp. He added another zero to the row of numbers. There was now a Four and three Zeros. What is this number called? At school, he had only learned to count up to 100. He didn't know what this big number was called. But surely there were as many or even more people imprisoned in the camp. Toilets and washrooms were also only built for the 400 men. But now they had to cater for far more captive people. The toilets were always dirty and clogged; therefore, Kalli only used them when he urgently needed them. It was the same for everyone.

The camp management had finally decided to build a new toilet, a latrine. Kalli knew it was situated opposite the administration building. He also knew that it was due to open tomorrow. He was curious and he had to use a toilet urgently. He set off, but took a detour to not attract the attention of the guards. He hated the guards like all the other boys. Turning a corner, he had a first view of the back of the building from afar, a long, tall wooden structure made of light-colored, freshly cut boards. And the boards smelled. It was a hot June day and the midday sun was beating down on the pine boards. They smelled of resin, they smelled fresh, they literally drew him in.

Kalli sidled to the front of the building. The construction was a long-drawn-out shed only, with an open front. Three steps led up to the latrine-seat. It stretched from one end to the other. Drop holes had been cut out at regular intervals. They were big enough for an adult's bottom, but far too big for a child's bum. Kalli counted 20 drop holes. Therefore 20 people could take seat to side to side. The drop holes were not separated by partitions. He shook his head imaging the funny picture of a row of people sitting shitting side by side.

Luckily, Kalli was the only one here at the moment. He decided to use a hole at the very end of the latrine-seat, where the wooden wall would protect him from the guards' gaze if one showed up. Pulling down his pants, he sat down and held on tight, because the drop hole was far too big for his bum. For a moment he was happy. He was the first one using the new construction. The new latrine was still clean, it smelled of resin and of not urine and excrement. Last not least he had a clear view to the edge of the camp and to the two steeples of the St. Jakob's Church at the other side of the town, the church he was baptized seven years ago.

Eviction and Displacement

1

As the pre-summer temperatures rose, so did the rumor about the coming eviction. The Czech administration had decided to expel all German speaking people, regardless of whether they had only been living in the country for a short time or for centuries. Every German speaker was to be expelled, Nazis or Nazi-enemies, small children or very old people and all their property was to be confiscated.

The evicted were only allowed to take a small rucksack with one pair of underpants, one undershirt and one pair of socks, no coat, no shirt not even a cap against the sun or the rain. On the morning of the eviction, Kalli shouldered his rucksack. Now it was much lighter as it had been the day he had carried it into the camp.

Kalli took his little sister Traudi by the hand and followed mom and grandma, which lead Hanni by the hand. They had to leave all the items behind that they had brought to the detention camp, the clothes, the blankets, the dishes. In addition to the underwear they were only allowed to take a tin bowl or kettle and a spoon. Nothing else!

A long line of people winded first through the suburbs of Kalli's hometown, then through the hilly countryside, along fields and forests, further and further south to the Austrian border. As they left the city behind, Kalli's mother turned around, took one last look at her hometown and swore, "I will never go back, never, not the these people, not to this city, not to this country!" and she kept her vow.

At noon the sun was beating down, people were sweating, getting more and more tired, getting more and more thirsty, more and more hungry. They would have loved to rest in the shade at the side of the road, but they weren't allowed to. They were driven on. Militiamen drove them on like the shepherd his sheep, but armed with rifles and pistols not with a shepherd's crook.

It happened around lunchtime. The sun was at its zenith and blazed down mercilessly. Kalli, his mom, sisters and grandma had just crossed a hilltop when two small books slipped out of Kalli's pants. In the morning his mom had tucked two savings books under his shirt, which she had rescued of being expropriated. She had expected the trouser belt to be tight enough to keep the books safe. She hadn't reckoned that Kalli had become so skinny in the camp that the trousers only were hanging at his hip bones and not held tight by the belt. The green and red saving books slipped out of his pants and tumbled to the dusty road. Kalli was so tired he even noticed.

Immediately, militiamen walking behind him spotted the saving books and picked them up. They flipped open their find, recognized its value and in the next moment one of them pressed the muzzle of his rifle into Kalli's neck. Kalli didn't know what had happened. He stopped; he froze; became completely rigid; his brain didn't work anymore; he felt no fear. In that moment Kalli felt nothing.

As Kalli woke up from his stupor, he realized that something had happened. He didn't know what. Something had happened, something that shouldn't have happened, but he didn't care. He was just tired, exhausted, thirsty, burned out. Later Kalli couldn't remember how the situation was solved. However, from that moment on, he was convinced that he had turned undying.

Late in the afternoon, the long line of evicted people came across a brook f past some farmsteads. The overheated people threw themselves into the water, drank their fill, washed sweat from their heads and splashed themselves wet.

Two harvest wagons were waiting at the road-site, the kind used to bring in the hay and straw. Kind people had organized the wagons to take the old and the sick to the farmstead where they were to spend the night. Kalli was still cooling his feet in the water when his mother called out to him, "Hanni and Grandma can't walk any more. I'm going with them in the hay wagon. You take Traudi and stay with the crowd. Be a good boy. We'll see us tonight if God wills it." Kalli didn't protest. He knew that Grandma had an open leg and couldn't walk any further. He knew that his sister Hanni had a sick heart and could fall dead every moment. Kalli was confident that if Traudi and he stayed with the others, they could make it.

They had been on their feet since the morning. Kalli's legs were burning, Traudi's legs were burning even more. If he took two steps, she had to take three. They joined the crowd brushing past. They had to. Kalli took his sister by the hand. The column of tired people dragged themselves forward with difficulty. Traudi was even slower than the people. At every bend in the road, she wanted to stop, stand still, sit down. At this speed they would never reach the place they had to spend the night.

When night fell, he knew what he had to do. He threw away his rucksack and squatted down, "Get on my back Traudi, I'll carry you piggyback." His sister's arms were almost choking him, but he had to pus forward. He tried to walk faster, however, they fell further and further behind the column of exhausted people.

The moon was already high in the sky when they arrived at the large manor. The buildings around the square courtyard were already dark. Kalli felt his way into a barn. Inside it was dark as night. He found some straw, laid Traudi on it and lay down next to her. He fell asleep the same moment.

Later that night, his mother shook him awake, "I've been looking for you for three hours. Luckily Traudi is wearing her red dress. People have remembered her."

At a later time Kalli tried to recall the events of the next two days. He couldn't. On the evening of the third day, they crossed the Austrian border. The village road was narrow and dark. The branches of the trees in the gardens hung over the road. A woman invited them to her front door. She offered the children milk. Traudi and Hanni emptied the cups immediately. Kalli shook his head, "No! No milk!" The woman pulled an apple out of the pocket of her apron and offered it to him. Kalli ate the first apple of this early summer, the apple tasted sweet. He fell asleep at the foot of the apple tree.

The next morning, a train was due to leave for a nearly town, called Horn. The train arrived. The carriages were already overcrowded. Mom squeezed Traudi, Hanni and Grandma into an overcrowded compartment. A man pulled Kalli onto the roof of the next carriage.

The locomotive's smokestack spewed soot and smoke. During the journey, the headwind drove the soot into Kalli's eyes. He rubbed his eyes. He had to keep them open! He wanted to survive! He knew he would!

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We support Ukraine — Мы поддерживаем Украину — Ми підтримуємо Україну
We support Ukraine — Мы поддерживаем Украину — Ми підтримуємо Україну