I'm heading to Germany in a week and a half and have spent any spare time trying to piece together endless details for a 2 week, last minute trip! I spent yesterday surrounded by people I love, cup of coffee in hand, listening to stories illustrating our family history. My grandfather (Adolph Berke), born and raised in Germany, was drafted for the german army just before WWII. After fighting in WW2, escaping a POW camp, he then fled to Western Germany to seek asylum from the invading Russians and their communist regime. Having fled once, leaving practically everything he owned behind, he snuck back into East Germany to find his wife and take her to Western Germany. Together they crawled through fields and forest during moonless nights constantly aware of the life-threatening nearness of the Russian army. At one point, they stopped in their tracks after seeing a light under a tree-a Russian soldier lighting a cigarette. If they would have continued without seeing him light up, the soldier would have heard them making their way through the brush and likely would have shot them.
In Western Germany they settled, refugees in a village called Roessing. Dirt poor, my grandpa hired himself out to weed other farmers fields and eventually worked in a salt mine, which was the most dangerous job at that time. Being desperately poor, at times he would steal potatoes from a field in order to feed his children and wife (my aunt, father, and grandma). After 9 years he sold everything they had to come to America. A church in Wisconsin sponsored them, similar to the way a person can sponsor a child with Compassion. They packed a trunk, set out on a 10 day boat ride, came through Ellis Island, and began to try and make ends meet in America. My grandfather became a carpenter, building his own house and others, my grandmother cleaned houses.
In a week I will be able to put face and places to these stories. Both of my grandparents are gone, but some of their siblings still live in Western Germany. I will be spending a few days hearing their stories, (recording it all...), learning more about my grandparents and their experience, and enjoying Germany. Then I will go to the village where my father was born and find his old house, the school, and the salt mine where my grandfather worked! Then it's off to exploring the rest of Germany...
Part of my earthly heritage exists in the lives and memories of these 2 refugees..Adolph and Ruth. poor, victims of war, and wanting a better future for their family....they became displaced people. This puts a new spin on my view of refugees and internally displaced people in the world. now, in a small small small small way, i can connect with their stories a little bit more than I could before I understood the experience of my grandparents and father. I wonder how many of us have this type of a heritage. Many I am sure! Maybe you can connect with your story? I value this information so much because I know that If I didn't hear these stories that they would not be remembered or passed on after my generation. (in my case, literally..none of my second and third cousins in Germany had ever asked the older generation of family to share about this and they all were eager to hear the stories once we got started...) We are all students of history, keepers of history, and makers of history. Who will tell these stories if we do not?
I really am a refugee even now. I am a displaced person, a vagabond. I do not belong here.I am becoming something everday, something better, something stronger, at times, something weaker,...but never becoming to belong. I am becoming but not belonging.
Final thoughts: I started this blog intitially to be able to post a bit as I travel and share the journey with anyone that wanted to be in on it! I'll keep it up especially as I travel overseas longterm for update purposes.
