The rainbow never sets

with running cold water and a flush toilet with a septic tank in the ground. A bath water heater was near the bath tub, which was fired once or twice a week with wood or coal for a bath. There was a staircase to the attic. In the cellar was the kitchen, the laundry, pantry and coal storage room and two rooms where Klärchen, our cook, and the maid lived.

Our parents were still sitting around the table in the lounge, in deep discussions with Onkel Werner (my father's brother), and Tante Margaret, Horst and Bernd's parents. We went straight to them to tell them about our resolution regarding the silver.

"Good thinking, Horst," was the general praise. "You will have to help us when we are ready to bury it."

"Mutter is not going with you to Danzig, where you will be going with Oma and Opa," said Vater. "She will take Gerda to Tante Alice in Bronikowo. This is near the German/Polish border, and we hope the German army will get there on the first day of the war."

Gerda was then only one and a half. "Does that mean that you are going to stay here all on your own," asked Günter?

"Yes," said Vater, "Onkel Werner, Tante Margaret and Horst will be staying in Strykowo. It's not far if I need some help. Also, don't forget, Sapowice is away from the main road and the railway. So it should be even a little safer here than to stay in Strykowo."

"I don't like that," Bernd said to his parents. "You can't stay in our house. You have to go into hiding somewhere."

"We've thought of that," Tante Margaret replied. "The three of us will stay in a little hideaway on a small island in the lake which is surrounded by bulrushes. We should be safe there. And Lumpie is going to come with us. He won't bark if he is close to us, and he can help us keep watch."

These were worrying times. In July 1939 everyone we knew was talking about the war that seemed to be inevitable. In fact, as we later heard, it was welcomed by the German minority in Poland. Since the beginning of 1939 some Germans in Poland were persecuted, because Hitler had invaded Czechoslovakia earlier and now started to threaten Poland with the same. There was also the possibility that the landowning families like us would lose at the next 'dispossession' most of their land, which the Polish government intended to give to poor farmers or landless workers. Our estate would have been drastically reduced from 2400 morgen, approximately 800 hectares, to about 800 morgen. However, the next 'dispossession' never came.

After the Strykowoers had left us, I went back to my linden tree. It had all been too much for me. I longed to go back to the past, to my early childhood, to draw some strength from it.

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