By now all the cities along the Pomeranian coast were either occupied by the enemy or under siege; Stettin was encircled, but Swinemunde was still holding out. Farther to the east, Danzig, Zoppot, Gotenhafen had fallen. Toward the coast, units of the 2nd Soviet Army had cordoned off the Hela Peninsula near Putzig, and farther to the west, at the Oder River, Kustrin was already the scene of fierce fighting. The Greater German Reich was shrinking on all sides. At the confluence of the Rhine and the Mosel, Koblenz was in American hands. But the bridge at Remagen had finally collapsed.
Along the eastern front, Heeresgruppe Mitte reported further withdrawals in Silesia and the increasingly critical situation of the fortress city of Breslau. To make things worse, the attacks by squadrons of American and British bombers on the large and medium-sized cities continued unabated. While to the delight of Britain's Marshal Harris of the RAF, the ruins of the city of Dresden were still smoking, bombs fell on Berlin, Regensburg, Bochum, Wuppertal… Repeated targets were reservoir dams. And refugees streamed in all directions, but with a general thrust from east to west. They did not know where it was safe to stop.
Mother, too, had no particular destination in mind when she managed to get out of Kolberg with me, her most important piece of baggage, constantly whimpering because of the lack of mothers milk. Mother got caught between the front lines, managed to make some headway at night, hitching rides for short stretches in freight cars or in the Wehrmacht s bucket cars, but also often on foot among others toiling along with less and less baggage. She kept going, frequently having to throw herself to the ground as dive-bombers swooped down, trying to get as far as possible from the coast, and — always on the lookout for mothers with surplus milk — made her way to Schwerin. She described her escape route to me sometimes one way, sometimes another. Actually she intended to continue on, crossing the Elbe into the West, but we got hung up in the undestroyed capital of the Reichgau of Mecklenburg. That was at the end of April, when the Fuhrer did away with himself.
Later, as a journeyman carpenter and surrounded by men, Mother would say, when asked about her escape route, “I could write a novel. The worst was the bombers, when they came in real low over us and pow-pow- pow… But I was always lucky. I'm telling you, it would take a lot more than that to do me in!”
That would bring her back to her main topic, the everlastingly sinking ship. Nothing else mattered. Even the cramped conditions in our next temporary housing — another school — weren't worth complaining about, since by now she knew that she and her Paulie had found refuge in the birthplace of the man after whom the ill-fated ship had been named in times of apparent peace. His name was everywhere. Even the secondary school to which we had been assigned was named after him. When we came to Schwerin, his presence could not be missed. On the southern bank of the lake, that grove of honor with the glacial boulders was still standing, and in it the large block of granite placed there in '37 to honor the martyr. I am sure that was why Mother stayed in Schwerin with me.
It's still striking that in those realms of the Internet where I usually roamed nothing stirred for a while once the ship's sinking had been celebrated retroactively, yet as if it were a current event, and all the dead had been counted up, accounted for, made to count, depending on the accounting principles used, then compared with the number of survivors, and finally contrasted with the much smaller number of those who died on the
This time pictures dominated the site. In fairly grainy reproduction but captioned in bold letters, the towering block of granite presented itself for the whole world to admire, with the name of the martyr chiseled into the rock beneath the jagged S-shaped rune for victory. The martyr's importance was illustrated by means of a chronology, a list of his organizational accomplishments, testimonials embellished with exclamation points, all incorporated into the ongoing project, leading up to the day and hour of his murder in the famous health resort for tuberculosis sufferers, Davos.
As if on command or under some other compulsion, David spoke up. Initially his topic was not the monument but the martyr's murderer. David announced triumphantly that in March 1945 things took a positive turn for David Frankfurter, incarcerated for over nine years by then. After a futile attempt to have his case reopened, the Berne attorneys Brunschwig and Raas submitted a petition for clemency, addressed to the Graubunden parliament. My son's adversary had to concede that the request for reducing the eighteen-year sentence to time served was not granted until 1 June 1945, in other words, after the war was over. He explained that the decision had to wait until Switzerland's grandiose neighbor was brought to its knees. Because David Frankfurter was expelled from Switzerland after his release, he decided to go straight from the looms of Sennhof Prison to Palestine, hoping for a future Israel.
On this topic the sniping between the two grim online opponents remained fairly moderate. Konny conceded generously, “Israel is okay. It was the perfect place for that murdering Jew. He could make himself useful, on a kibbutz or something.” All in all, he had nothing against Israel. He even admired the toughness of its army. And he completely supported the Israelis' determination to take a hard line. They had no other choice. When dealing with Palestinians and such Muslims, you couldn't give an inch. Sure, if all the Jews would just pack up and move to the Promised Land, like that murdering Jew Frankfurter, he would be all for it: “Then the rest of the world would be Jew-free!”
David accepted this horrendous notion; he agreed with my son in theory. Apparently he was worried: as far as the safety of the Jewish citizens of Germany was concerned — and he included himself among them — he feared the worst; anti-Semitism was increasing by leaps and bounds. Once again one had to think about leaving the country. “I, too, will be packing my bags soon…” Whereupon Konny wished him “Bon voyage” but then hinted that it would give him pleasure if the occasion arose for him to meet his bosom enemy before the latter s departure — not just online: “We should get together, check each other out, preferably sooner rather than later…”
He even proposed a meeting place, but left the date for the desired rendezvous open. At the spot where the block of granite had towered above the others in the memorial grove, and where today hardly anything preserved the memory of the martyr, because desecrators had cleared away the rock and the hall of honor — in that very place where, in the not-too-distant future, a stone monument would have to be erected once more, in that historically meaningful place they should meet.
The sniping promptly resumed. David favored a meeting anywhere but in that accursed location. “I absolutely reject your historical revisionism…” My son added his own fuel to the fire: “He who forgets his peoples past is not worthy of it!” David agreed with that. What followed was sheer silliness. They even allowed themselves to make jokes. To one of them — ”What's the difference between e-mail and Emil?” — I unfortunately did not get the punch line. I logged out too soon.
I've been there numerous times. Most recently a few weeks back, as if I were the perpetrator, as if I had to keep returning to the scene of the crime, as if the father were running after the son.
From Molln, where neither Gabi nor I could find much to say to each other, to Ratzeburg. From there I drove east, passing through Mustin, a tiny village just beyond which the border had been located, complete with death strip, cutting off the highway. One still sees a three-hundred-meter gap in the chestnuts planted long ago on either side of the road: not a tree to right or left. The place gives one a feel for the multitiered efforts the Workers' and Peasants' State undertook to secure its people.
Once I left that scar in the landscape behind me, Mecklenburg's sweeping farmland extended all the way to the horizon on both sides of the once more tree-lined highway. Hardly any undulations, few larger stands of trees. On the outskirts of Gadebusch I took the new bypass. A strip of home improvement stores, shopping centers, flat- roofed auto dealerships, trying with strings of drooping pennants to revive business. The Wild East! Not until close to Schwerin, where the road was now lined with smaller varieties of trees, did the area become hilly. I drove past larger wooded stretches, the radio tuned to channel 3: the classical request program.
I then turned right onto Route 106, toward Ludwigslust, and was soon approaching the Grosser Dreesch housing complex, thrown up in several stages and once home to fifty thousand citizens of the GDR, and parked my Mazda by unit 3, right next to the Lenin monument in the curve at the end of Gagarinstrasse. The weather held; it didn't rain. Now renovated and made presentable with pastel colors, the apartment buildings lined up in a row.
Every time I visit Mother, I am amazed that this bronze statue, which grew so large under the hands of its Estonian creator, is still standing. Although Lenin is gazing westward, he was denied any gesture that might indicate a destination. With both hands in his coat pockets, he stands there like a man out for a stroll who is
