“The Americans wouldn’t give in to the Communists so easily,” Jaroslav said. “The commandant said we’re going to Tyrol. I hear the French are running the D.P. camps in Tyrol.”
“You think we’re going there?” Lana asked.
“Why not?”
“The Russians are taking all the Ukrainians back. They took a whole regiment of Cossacks that were fighting for the Germans. Sent them to Siberia,” Basil growled.
“We’re with the Americans.”
“The Americans agreed to hand over any ‘Soviet citizens.’ Something called the Yalta Agreement,” Basil answered. “They’re supposed to send all the Ukrainians to the U.S.S.R.” He turned to Maurice. “If you want to go to Canada, don’t tell anyone you’re Ukrainian.”
The train crawled slowly up spectacular mountain ranges, through a high pass and then along switchbacks. Waterfalls sparkled over the bluest lakes Maurice had ever seen as they traversed Tyrol, Austria toward Landeck.
But none of the Poles or Ukrainians could appreciate it. They all dreaded being sent east to Soviet-occupied territories.
D.T.P. 148 Camp Landeck
Landeck, Austria, 1945–1946
Another soup line, Maurice thought, shivering in the winter cold. At least this time, I have a bowl. He absently tapped it against his thigh, thinking of his mother.
The United Nations Humanitarian Relief Agency had taken a German army base in Landeck, in North Tyrol in Austria, and turned it into a refugee camp more than twice as big as Kufstein. Clapboard buildings, most with sloping roofs like lean-tos, and tents sprawled for what looked like a mile. Behind the town, green-covered mountains rose to snow-covered peaks. Trucks drove in and out of the gates continually, bringing food and other supplies, taking refugees back to their homes, or to whatever was left of their towns and villages. The French were nominally in charge, but the guards at the gates and the cooks in the kitchen were from the U.S. Army. Volunteers from the U.S. and Canada doled out food and blankets, and American medics and nurses gave pills and needles.
Maurice heard a dozen languages just walking between the barracks: the twangy English of the American GIs, French, German, Italian, Russian, Czech, Polish, Latvian, others he could not identify—and even Ukrainian. From the lineup, he idly watched a man playing an accordion in front of a barracks building. A small crowd had gathered around him, including a young American officer. Behind the barracks, the snowy Alps seemed to protect the peace of the place, like a high wall against chaos.
Beside the accordionist, a young mother held her little boy by the hand. How are you, Mama? This war is over, yet I still cannot see my mother.
Fucking communists.
He had offered to work in the kitchen again, but the American lieutenant in charge had just shaken his head with no explanation. So Maurice spent his first few days looking for ways to fill up the day, when he wasn’t writing and posting letters to his father in Montreal, or to various Ukrainian and Canadian organizations. He needed more than just a Canadian birth certificate to travel home: he needed two different permits from the occupying forces in Austria, plus money to buy a ticket.
“Maurice Bury!” boomed out behind him as someone slapped his shoulder. Maurice sprang forward, dropping his soup bowl into the mud. He started to run, but looked over his shoulder to see…
Ivan Babiak, his neighbour from Nastasiv in what was once eastern Poland and after Stalin’s re-drawing of the borders was now in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
“Easy, Maurice, easy!” Ivan laughed.
Ivan. Not the NKVD. Not the Communists. Maurice straightened. His mind whirled. Not the Communists, he thought over and over. “Ivan,” he croaked. “How the hell did you find me here?”
Ivan looked mystified. “I wasn’t looking for you, believe me. I was as surprised as you—well, not quite as surprised. I didn’t shit my pants, at least!” He laughed again.
Maurice picked up his soup-bowl and tried to wipe the dirt off it. Moving forward to keep his place in line, he said “Never sneak up on a person like that!” He stopped himself from saying “I thought you were the NKVD.”
“We’re heading west, away from the commies,” Ivan said.
“We?”
Ivan pointed into the crowd behind him. “My brother and my cousin are with me.”
“How did you get out of Ukraine?”
Ivan shrugged. “When we heard the fighting was over, we piled stuff in a wagon and cut across fields at night. We managed to stay away from the Reds by hiding during the day and moving only at night. We nearly made it to the Swiss border, and then we saw a Red Army camp there. We turned back and followed a bunch of other people here. What about you? I thought the army took you. That’s what people said in the village.”
Maurice ignored that. “What about the rest of your family?”
Ivan looked down. “We’re going to Canada, and when we get settled, we’ll bring them over. Come on, they’ll love seeing you. One thing, though. Don’t mention Michael’s mother.”
“Why not?”
“The communists took her.”
“Took her where? Why?” Maurice didn’t feel horror, though. He had seen too much to be horrified.
“They wanted to draft Michael, but he hid in the country. So the Reds shipped his mother to the gulag. Siberia.”
“No!”
“Yes. There was nothing we could do. After they took her, the rest of us took off.”
I’ve left my mother behind, too, Maurice thought. Neither of us had a choice.
“So, Maurice, how did you get here? Weren’t you in the army? This is a civilian camp!”
“Shut up about the army, will you?” Maurice growled. “I’m a civilian, just like you. Look—don’t you see ‘Canada’ on my cap?”
Ivan looked at Maurice’s hat. “Where did you get that?”
“Listen to me, Ivan, keep your voice down. Better yet, don’t speak Ukrainian.”
“Why not?”
“Have you heard of the Yalta Conference? All citizens of the Soviet Union are going to be sent back there. Whether they want to go or not. So speak Polish or German.”
“I can’t speak German.”
“Then stay with Polish.” It was still risky. All displaced persons were supposed to be returned to the country of their birth. Stalin had shifted Poland’s borders to the West, so that Ternopyl and L’viv, within Polish borders before the war, would now be within the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Ukrainians had dreamt of united Ukraine, but under Stalin, it would be a nightmare. They all knew of the famine that Stalin had engineered in Ukraine in 1933, by taking all the harvest out of the country. Millions had starved to death, collapsing in the streets.
As the line moved up, Ivan chatted on in Polish. Maurice just nodded and grunted replies, trying hard not to look like he was scanning the camp for NKVD or Red Army soldiers. He didn’t notice when a Red Cross volunteer ladled soup into his bowl, and Ivan had to take a piece of bread for him.
Ivan carried two bowls. Walking carefully so as not to spill his soup, he led Maurice to a small wagon where his brother and cousin waited. They were both short and stocky like him, and like him wore torn and battered clothing. Maurice glanced into the wagon, which held cloth bags with a few extra clothes, some basic tools, a ball of twine, a fry pan and a bandura. Twine secured a wooden box to the side of the wagon.
Pathetic. Why bother with the wagon at all?
“Maurice Bury!” said Michael, the youngest Babiak, the one they usually called Mihach. “I don’t believe it!” He smiled broadly. Mihach always had such white teeth, Maurice remembered and ran his tongue over his own still-tender gums.