The Jewish Observer

When you suffer the consequences of war, its end brings emotional if not physical relief. You feel that better times are about to come; and even if they are not immediate, you at least have a moment of celebration that a period of fear has passed. So you would think.

At the end of World War II, Charlotte, her mother and her siblings were living in the Sudetenland. This became part of the Russian zone of occupation so the Red Army moved into their area. This only triggered a new round of atrocities, especially the first day they arrived. Women were raped. People were abused. The conquering victors had arrived. Margarethe had her daughters lay down on the top level of a bunk bed, curl themselves very small, and put their thumbs in their mouths to appear as childlike as possible. The Russian soldiers came into their room, shone their flashlights, saw the children lying there and left. It was a close call.

There was a song the family knew from the Karnival celebrations in Cologne. (Karnival is a winter festival celebration held every year in Cologne, much like Mardi Gras in New Orleans.) The lyrics said, “when you are homesick, you should travel on foot back to Cologne.” The family was homesick, so in early summer of 1945 they began a journey on foot back to Cologne. The Romberg family travelled with another young women and her two children. Age 13, Charlotte was the eldest of the children. Every day they walked. At night they slept in a different place; sometimes a barn, sometimes a school, sometimes the ground. They foraged the fields for food or depended on the kindness of strangers they met along the way.

One day they came upon a farm house and the farmer’s wife was outside churning butter. They asked if they could spend the night in the barn and the woman told them “no.” As they were leaving they met up with a Red Army officer, as the farmhouse had been commandeered to house a group of army officers. He spoke German and asked them what they wanted. They told him the just wanted to sleep in the barn for the night, but the farmer’s wife had told them no. He then forced the farmer’s wife to give them a bedroom in the farmhouse reserved for a Red Army officer. For the first time in weeks they slept in a real bed, were able to wash and to have real meals. They stayed there for several days.

Charlotte and her family were able to hitch a ride with a Red Army truck headed for Carlsbad. The driver let them off a bit before there and when he said goodbye gave them some tins of food for their journey. They made there way to the border of the American section near the Eger River, but the border was closed and they could not pass. They took shelter in a kind of makeshift refugee camp in the ball room of a guesthouse near the border. Every day brought the possibility of starvation unless they could successfully forage for food from the farmer’s fields in the area.

One day, Charlotte’s brother Norbert found a farmer’s cellar filled high with potatoes. They formed a plan to steal potatoes in which the brothers crept into the cellar with a bag and Charlotte kept watch. Back in the ballroom there was a small oven with a rough surface. They scratched the potatoes and put them onto the oven to make them more edible.

Finally there was a train organized to take refugees back to their homes in western Germany. After an overnight in Braunschweig, then another in Hanover, they finally arrived in Cologne in December of 1945. They were home at last in their beloved city – only to find it almost completely destroyed by allied bombing. They were placed in a bomb shelter near the Great Cathedral of Cologne. But in a devastated city there was no work or apartment for a widow with 4 children. They were evacuated to Pivitsheide where Charlotte stayed for the rest of her childhood.

When a war ends the soldiers look forward to a homecoming. The victorious side has parades to celebrate the heroics of the young soldiers. Families are reunited. Tears of joy are wept. Old romances are rekindled, new romances are found. An exciting new life begins for the returnees from the front. But for Charlotte and her family there was no homecoming. There was only a long journey, mostly on foot, the worry of starvation, and the sorrow of seeing the home that they loved in ruins.