Already at the end of the thirties, incitement against the German race started in America. They too used their film industry for their propaganda, with one of ‘those nasty Germans’ replacing one of ‘those nasty Red Indians’. Uncountable numbers of those films flooded the screens in the western zones after 1945. Everyone could see spine-chilling and gruesome stories on celluloid, for the brainwashing had begun on the screen!
The American high command possessed, of all things, a Psychoiogical Department! The Chief of this department readily admitted having manipulated and falsified stories, including parts of Hitler’s speeches.
Upon her arrival in Detmold and before I had left Breslau, Brigitte had written to my parents on my behalf. Her letter was the first contact with my parents in which she could but did not mention my name, although she informed them that I was alive and well, and that we were befriended. One must remember that letters were censored. It was in September 1946 that she received an answering letter, from my younger brother Cornelis. He had written that every member of my family had been interned. He wrote that under no circumstances was I either to return to Holl and or even write to my family. Those few words confirmed my fears and my opinions of the political situation back in my homeland. A second letter was to arrive in Detmold. This time it was from my eldest sister Louisa and contained very sad news for me. Brigitte had to in form me that I had lost two very dear members of my family, my father and one of my brothers, the eldest.
My father had died just a few weeks before she had received the first letter from Cornelis. He had died in the Dutch Internment camp in Amersfoort on 27 August. There were only bare facts because of the censorship. Therefore there were no details on the death of my brother Jan, other than that he had died eighteen months before in Assen, on 3 March. I had seen both, for the last time, two and a half years before, but had heard nothing from my family since the end of 1944. My brother Jan was just 27 years old when he died. The news was very bitter for me, very painful. My father had died in an internment camp at the age of 62. For days I could only read and re-read those few lines. I turned to stone trying to imagine the cause of his death, for those lines filled me with fear. For days this brought me to tears trying to assess the cause of death of both my father and my brother. And I could not go home? I could not write? I could not give any support in what had to be a terrible time, for the ominous warning from Cornelis had been clear enough. It was only later that I was to learn of the dimensions of the tragedy, of the Odyssey that my parents, my five brothers and my two sisters had had to suffer in my absence.
My longing to go to my family was replaced with that of wanting to go to Brigitte and it gave me no peace. However, she warned me against a visit to her in the British zone. It was too dangerous. Thousands however had managed to escape from the Russian zone, and from the organisation of their distribution. They wanted to escape from Communist rule, and did so in such numbers, that on 5 July 1946 the borders were closed. One could only travel from one zone to another with a special permit and by train. This ‘inter-zone’ permit was impossible to obtain.
Despite being trapped ‘behind the Iron Curtain’, a term first used by Joseph Goebbels and which was thereafter used also by Winston Churchill, there were escape routes, but one had to find them. I had to find them, for I was not going to be deterred from my visit to Detmold. With a map, and advice on a possible route, I started an illegal journey over the border, to an area that was called the ‘Green Border’ and checkpoint. It was still dangerous, despite its description, but did not have a minefield, barbed wire, or the wide coverless strip called the Death Strip, in full view of the guards. There were however patrolling Russian guards.
Such spots were well-known to the German Police on the other side, and by criminals too. Particularly in the winter of 1946/47, there was heavy criminal activity at the checkpoints, leading even to murder. Criminals, released from German prisons and concentration camps, returned to their former professions that had put them there in the first place. They lurked in the darkness to rob the refugees of all that they had. They were all using the protection of the popular ‘politically prosecuted’ status.
I had not known any of this as I arrived in the British zone at the end of October. My route had taken me through Berlin, Magdeburg and Halberstadt. There, prior to reaching the station, the train stopped, having used up all of the coal allowed for the journey. The passengers had to alight from the train and walk the rest of the way along the railway tracks. So far, so good. I was in the Harz region and the next stop was Dedeleben, which I reached through thickly wooded slopes, on foot. In the railway station there I had a wait of ten hours, before the next train left at two in the morning. In order to hold on to the little that I had with me, I hooked my bags through my trouser belt as I slept. Dedeleben was the end of the line, with no other connections to the West, and so there were few using the train. Those that did, were like me, on their way to the ‘green border’. I found out the way after requesting directions from the railway porter, on leaving the train at five in the morning.
We were a group of around 30 people. All were heavily laden, like mules, with bulging rucksacks, baby-prams and little carts. I looked, with my coloured and checked coat from Breslau, like a pauper in contrast. It just seemed to happen that I became group-leader, possibly because of my orienteering talent. I warned the others of obstacles and Russian patrols, although I did not know exactly where we were going. Our route away from this ‘iron curtain’ was not easy, and more than once some stumbled into holes in the ground, and our shoes and socks were wet through, for it was still dark. That was all the better for one’s target, when shooting at something or someone, was harder to hit.
When on the road through the woods we could hear the sounds of motors, long before the Russian patrol lorries reached us, we had time to hide. We hid from the strong searchlights mounted on the lorries and after the pause I gave the order Gepäck aufnehmen, ohne tritt marsch. Not in parade-style of course, but it did not take them long before they behaved like a regular army recce patrol. Once a Russian soldier saw us, as we crossed a well-lit open space, and we heard Halt! come here!” which we ignored. The group followed my order not to stop, but to disappear as quickly as possible into the woods on the other side. There were two shots and then silence. He did not attempt to follow us, possibly because he was on his own.
We then, unbeknown to us, walked in a complete circle, not knowing that we were so close to the British zone, which we entered, and left to return to the Russian side and where we were seen by two Russian guards. The unbelievable happened, for they looked, saw and indicated with a nod of their heads, that we should continue on our way! We did.
One of the group, a woman, was much older than the others, and was exhausted. The journey and possibly the tension were so great that she wanted to give up. So I supported her for the rest of the way, while others pushed her small wooden cart, with her possessions in it. At daybreak and with the rising of the sun behind us, I knew that we were nearly at our destination. We saw a farmer on his bike, and as he approached us we asked if we were already in the British Zone and he answered in the affirmative! Not long after, at around seven in the morning, we reached the transit camp in Jerxheim, where we had a friendly reception, not from soldiers but German police, once again black-dyed Wehrmacht uniforms. They inspected our luggage for ‘hot wares’, i.e. cigarettes and alcohol. One man in our group was a handler, he was the man that had his hands already in the air as he had heard the two shots when in the woods. He had a good stock of vodka in his baggage, which was immediately confiscated.