CHAPTER TWO

Shelter from the war

It was the 20th of August 1939. After we had left Sapowice with a heavy heart, the adventure before us made us forget the past. We were all sitting in the train, which clickety-clacked steadily towards the Polish-Free State of Danzig border. Vater came with us to deliver us safely to Steegen, only to go back again.

"Klärchen, why are you getting up and down from your seat all the time?" I asked her, for she was obviously not her usual calm self.

"Never mind", she answered; "but look at Opa, he is walking up and down the corridor of the train like a wounded hare. I wish he would sit down."

I looked at Oma. She was as calm as always, nothing seemed to be able to ruffle her. Günter, Bernd and I tried to pass the time with some games, but our hearts were not in it. We too were feeling tense. What if they didn't let us through the border? They might put us in jail straight away? A child's imagination has no limits, but something similar must have gone through the minds of the adults too.

Looking out of the window I noticed the train slowing down. It came to stop at a station called 'Tczew'. In German we called it Dirschau. This was the border town.

"Everybody must get out here Ñ Border control," came over the loudspeakers in Polish.

We followed Vater who knew the way. "Men to the left, women to the right!" Facing the border guards fearlessly, we were asked: "And where are you off to?"

"We are going on our summer vacations to Steegen," was our rehearsed reply in fluent Polish.

"Well, then, have a nice holiday," and we were through in no time. They searched nervous Opa, who much rather would have travelled on a Belgian passport. He and Oma were both born in Antwerp, Belgium. Opa had bought the estate in 1888, when it was part of Germany. After the first World War he had to become a Polish citizen, in order to keep the estate. But he was never comfortable with his Polish passport. His Polish was atrocious, and at every opportunity he would say that he was Belgian. At home he even had a Belgian flag, and he and Oma would usually converse in French. But poor Opa couldn't do that here at the border, because here

18