Because God Was There. Belma Diana Vardy

stampeding in confused terror past our store. Screams came from every direction. Opa opened the store’s door and stepped out. “What’s happening?” he yelled. People were too terrified to respond. Bursts of staccato machine-gun fire intensified the shrieks and piercing screams as Russian soldiers on horseback pounded the pavement in pursuit, trying to kill or capture the unfortunate ones.

      My grandparents reacted quickly. Opa grabbed sheets of plywood to board up our store windows and make it look like no one lived there.

      Just as quickly Oma, who during the war had seen soldiers kidnap and abuse little girls, grabbed scissors to cut my hair short. I knew she was protecting me. I didn’t object to the haircutting. I hugged my bunny close and stifled a sob. My teeth were chattering. I was trembling all over. She put my hair into a ponytail and cut straight across. I covered my face with both hands and didn’t even see it fall to the floor.

      Reassuring me that everything would be fine, Oma dressed me in boy’s clothing and stuffed me in the laundry hamper.

      Because of all the chaos, I am not sure of some of the facts. I had the impression that down the street, great slabs of concrete were being lowered from cranes to form a wall between East and West Berlin. So much yelling! So much terror!

      Homes and families were ripped apart that night. If a house happened to be in the way, the concrete was dropped right through the middle, either killing the occupants or separating family members who happened to be in different parts of the house.

      Those sleeping in one part of the house were instantly in East Berlin. They were tossed on trucks like sacks of sludge and taken away to be slaves. People in the opposite part of the house were now in West Berlin. If the divided families ever saw each other again, it likely wasn’t for 29 years—the lifespan of the famous Berlin Wall that now secured the border separating East from West Berlin.

      Minutes after Opa finished boarding up the store and we had hidden ourselves, we heard the Russians at the door. The slamming of their fists could have smashed it, but they were kicking it with heavy boots. I was quivering from panic and must have been whimpering because Oma shushed me from outside the hamper. I was sure they would hear my heart pounding if they got in.

      Their voices were cold, harsh and merciless. My grandfather had learned to speak some Russian during the war, and he understood them to say, “It’s all boarded up. Nobody lives here.” The banging ceased. The leaden footsteps paused and receded. Terror left with them. Relief flooded us, and I felt I could breathe again. We were alone once more.

      HIDDEN

      We continued to hide. Throughout the night we heard yelling, screaming and gunshots. It was horrible to know people were dying on our street.

      Afterwards, for three tense weeks we lived like moles in narrow elbow-to-elbow passageways that my grandparents had dug under the store and used during the war. Wherever they turned a corner, these dark tunnels formed small claustrophobic spaces no bigger than two bathtubs. One of these served as our living quarters. It had a long wooden bench on which Oma and I slept. It hurt me that Opa had only the rough, humid stone floor.

      Surrounded by spiders and moist concrete walls, we sucked in lungfuls of stale air that smelled of damp earth and longed for a breeze on our faces. We didn’t know if it was day or night. Except for periodic thick, low-pitched booms from above that shook the earth around us, it was like living in a tomb. All the while Opa sat with his ear to the radio to hear what was happening while Oma and I spent the time together making up poems, rhymes and stories and playing games. One day Opa said he thought it might be safe for Oma to walk me to school.

      DEATH IN THE STREETS

      It seemed we emerged into another world. Nothing was the same. I was unsettled and scared. To avoid being noticed, I hid my face and walked with my head down. When I dared look up, I saw the wall. Our house was only half a kilometre from the river where it stood. It was very high. Barbed wire spiralled along its top. Little guardhouses on stilts stood at intervals beside it, and men with machine guns looked out from them. German shepherd dogs were everywhere. Soldiers on horseback patrolled the streets, and most horrifying, people were hanging from trees—dead! They had been murdered by the Russians and left out in the open as a warning.

      On the walk to school that day I saw things a little girl should never see. I don’t know if Oma thought we would make it there, because the soldiers circled and taunted us like wolves seeking prey. It was horrifying. When we reached the school, we found it surrounded by barbed wire. To get in, we had to find a way around it.

      In the school half the children and teachers were missing. We never saw them again. Some had been from the east, but many of the missing had been from West Berlin. We feared they had been kidnapped by the Russians. That day all the classes were amalgamated. I felt confused and bewildered and was grateful that Oma stayed at school with me.

      We were to be under the protection of the United States and the Allied nations, but John Kennedy, the president of the United States, was on holidays, and the other countries weren’t in any rush to protect us. After all, we were Germans—the nationality associated with Hitler, who everyone said had started the war. The nations didn’t like us. As a result, with no protest from anyone, the Russians had freedom to do what they wanted, and we never knew when they might invade the school to beat us up, attack us or violate and haul away our teachers. They kidnapped people to rebuild their decimated labour force and make up for those who had fled from East to West Berlin. Many disappeared.

      After that I always felt anxious to have to go to school. For safety and lack of teaching staff, school hours were only from 8 a.m. to 11:20 a.m. It wasn’t long before Oma stopped taking me and taught me at home.

      One thing remained constant with my schooling. Whether I studied at home or at school, I always enjoyed Oma’s loving care. She was there for me. She sat with me every day and helped me with homework. She had an open heart, and I felt safe with her. I could talk to her about everything. To Oma I was “mein kleines Schätzchen” (my little precious one). She esteemed me, and it made me feel like a valued human being.

      WAR ZONE

      I felt safe in our little home, but outside on the street Berlin was a war zone. We weren’t allowed to talk about the terrible things that happened. Everything had to be a secret because we didn’t know whom we could trust. I remember hearing of a time when Russian soldiers burst into the home of a family we knew and forced the children to watch as they shot and killed their father. They left him bleeding and dead. The family, horror-stricken and grieving, had to dispose of their loved one’s body.

      On another occasion, I inadvertently got myself in trouble. There was a peephole in the plywood that boarded up our store window. I liked to look through it to see what was happening outside. My grandparents told me repeatedly not to go near it, and I learned a very hard lesson.

      One day I snuck into the front part of the store and peered out when Oma wasn’t watching. At that moment, a monstrous thing happened. The apartment building across the street disintegrated in all directions with a blast that deafened my eardrums. Bodies flew and fell amidst screams of the injured and dying.

      I was undone, frantic, hysterical! The Russians had planted a bomb in the apartment building where my little girlfriend lived. My mind screamed in horror, What happened to my friend? Is she hurt?

      I ran into the kitchen howling and wailing, and when my grandparents, frightened themselves by the sound of the explosion, realized what I had done, they were very upset. In fact, it was the only time I got a spanking. I promised I would never disobey again, and I meant it. I was so ashamed.

      That day affected me deeply. I never saw my friend again.

      In retrospect, I don’t think it was coincidence that at this very young age I happened to be in Berlin to see the atrocities that took place as the wall went up. God was shaping and mapping my life long before I was five years old. Had I not been there, I doubt I would be here to share my story. Let me start from the beginning.

      Chapter 2

      Beginnings

      If