Fifteen years in a childhood paradise

us to return. They found two holiday homes to rent in Steegen, an old fishing village only about 10 kilometers from the East Prussian border, within the Free State of Danzig.

"When do we have to go?" asked Günter with obvious indignation, when Vater and Tante Margaret came back. None of us really wanted to go.

"Tomorrow," Vater said sternly, "we can't lose any more time." And that was that.

Packing had to be done quickly, and very thoughtfully, as we did not want to raise suspicions at the Polish border. We had to travel as if we were going on a holiday by the sea. In a way that was what we were doing, but we felt more like being refugees or exiles, escaping the approaching war.

The farewell from Mutter and Gerda was hard. Vater would take us to Steegen. When would we see them again? What would the war bring? All uncertainties.

That foreboding sensed under the shade of the linden tree had come over us again. For the last time I went to the tree to hug it.

There the anxiety of the last days vanished. The watershed of our life, until then only vaguely perceived, had become a reality. On the one side lay the dream land of our sheltered life with the period of a slow awakening, on the other lay our unknown future of more mature years, beckoning with tempting adventures, requiring decisions of us. All this against a backdrop of predominantly dark and gloomy colours of an all-consuming war.

For a short while we would experience what life was like without the secure feeling of the linden tree, away from parents, from the familiarity of a childhood paradise. Would that experience strengthen us for the years ahead, or would it leave scars which only time could heal?

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