AN EXCERPT FROM DAISIES LAST FOREVER BY LIZ TOLSMA, AVAILABLE MAY 2014
February 8, 1945
Bright red and orange explosions lit the dark, deep winter East Prussian evening. Gisela Cramer hugged herself to ward off the chill that shook her. Her warm breath frosted the window pane and with her finger she shaved a peep hole. She didn’t know what she expected to see. Maybe the Russians surging over the hill.
An icy shudder racked her. She couldn’t block out the sights and the sounds of the last time the Russians had found her.
Behind her, Ella’s two small girls giggled as they played on the worn green and blue Persian rug which covered the hardwood floors.
A Russian mortar shell hit its target not far from them in the city and rocked the earth beneath her feet. The vibrations almost buckled her legs. Her heart throbbed in her chest. How much longer could the German army hold them off?
Almost at the same instant, an urgent pounding began at the door, accompanied by Dietrich Holtzmann’s deep voice. “Gisela, Ella.”
Gisela spun from the window, tip-toed over and around the children’s dolls and blocks, and answered the door for their neighbor. “Come in out of the cold.”
The breathless older man, once robust, now gaunt, stepped over the threshold. The wind had colored his cheeks red.
“Let me get you something hot to drink. Some ersatz coffee maybe?”
“I don’t have time. We’re leaving, Bettina and Katya and I. Tonight. Whoever is left in the city is going west, as far and as fast as possible. By morning, the Russians will be here. You and Ella need to come with us. Take the children and get out of here. It is safe no longer.”
Gisela peered at the girls, who now clutched their dolls to their chests and stared at Herr Holtzmann with their big gray eyes. Gisela repressed a shudder. She knew all too well the danger they would be in if they didn’t leave before the Red Army arrived.
Her cousin Ella stepped into the living room from the tiny kitchen, wiping her cracked hands on a faded dish towel, then tucking a strand of blond hair behind her ear. “We knew this time would come.”
The cold wrapping around Gisela intensified. “They will be here by morning?”
Dietrich nodded. “You can’t wait for daylight to flee. By then it will be too late. Pack whatever you can and get out of here. My sisters and I are leaving within the hour.”
Gisela rubbed her arms. “Can we get to Berlin?” She needed to be with Mutti. Even though she was twenty-two, she needed her mother. And Vater would keep them all safe.
Dietrich pulled his red knit cap further over his ears. “Right now, go. Head west and worry about the final destination later.”
Gisela turned to her cousin. “We should have left sooner. Weeks ago.”
“The Red Cross needed me. Still refugees pour into the city.”
“I am not concerned with them. I know what the Soviets do to women and children.”
Ella stepped to Dietrich’s side. “We will be ready in an hour.”
She ushered their neighbor into the frigid night, then came and held Gisela’s hand. Another nearby blast rocked the house, reverberating in her bones.
Closer. Closer. They were coming closer.
In her memory, she heard them kick in the door. Heard screams. Gunshots.
She clutched her chest, finding it hard to breathe.
They had to run.
An hour. They would leave in an hour. She drew in an unsteady breath and steeled herself. “We can’t let them catch us.”
Ella nodded, deep sadness and fear clouding her. “You leave.”
Gisela let go of Ella’s hand and took a step back. “What about you?”
“What about the refugees and those who can’t leave? They will need the Red Cross and that means I must stay.” She squared her shoulders and straightened her spine.
Gisela glanced at Annelies and Renate playing once more, now pulling a tin train on a string. “What about the girls? They can’t stay.”
“I want you to take them.”
Had Ella lost her mind? She couldn’t be responsible for a five-and a three-year-old. She couldn’t leave her cousin here alone to face a horrible certain fate. Those young girl screams she had heard once rattled in her brain “Nein. I will not leave without you. Let’s get packed.”
As she stepped toward the kitchen, Ella grabbed her by the shoulder, her fingers digging into Gisela’s flesh. “You are not listening to me. I’m not going.” Annelies and Renate ran to their mother who lowered her voice. “I will help you get ready and give you whatever money I have, but you have to be the one to take my children. For now, I am needed here. And when the war is over, this is where Frederick will come looking for me. If I’m not here, he won’t be able to locate me. Bitte, bitte, take my children to safety. I will join you as soon as possible.”
Gisela dug her fingernails into her palm. The pleading, crying in Ella’s voice pinched her heart. Should she take the girls and leave her cousin behind? “You know what happened the last time I was responsible for someone’s life.”
“Gisela, you have to do this. For my sake. Save my girls. Take them from here. It’s their only chance.”
The fluttering in Gisela’s stomach meant she would never see Ella again. They both knew the fate which awaited Ella. “Think about this. Your girls need you. Their father is gone and you are all they have left. They need you. I’m not their mother. I’m not enough for them. You have a responsibility to them.”
The color in Ella’s fair face heightened. “And I have a responsibility to the people of this area and a vow to my husband. This isn’t easy for me to send my children away, but remember, your parents did it. I am asking you—begging you—to do this for me.”
Thoughts whirled like a snowstorm through Gisela’s mind. How could she take care of the girls? Even if she got them to the west, what would happen to them after the war? Their father would never find them.
Ella drew Gisela’s stiff body close and whispered in her ear. “I trust you. I have faith in you. Bitte, for my sake, for the girls’ sake, take them.”
“I won’t separate them from their mother. If you don’t come with us, I won’t take them.”
Ella released her hold and Gisela fled up the steep stairs to her second floor bedroom. The pictures of the East Prussian countryside on the wall rattled as another shell hit its mark. They had no time to waste.
The room was tiny, with little space not taken by the bed and the pine wardrobe. A small, round bedside table held her Bible and a picture of Mutti and Vater.
Without thinking much, she grabbed all of her underwear, a red and green plaid wool skirt, two blouses, and a gray sweater and stuffed them into a battered, well-traveled pea-green suitcase. From her nightstand, she took her leather-bound Bible. She opened the pages to the book of Psalms until she found a daisy pressed in between the pages. She touched the brown petals before she slapped the book shut and stuffed it into the suitcase as well.
Hurry, hurry, hurry. The words pounded in her head in time to the pounding of her heart.
A coffee tin hidden in the back of her wardrobe held all the money she had in the world. She withdrew it and removed the small wad of Reich marks, counting them three times to make sure she knew what she had. Or didn’t have. Never would they get to Berlin on this.
She folded the cash and slipped it into a pocket sewn on the inside of her dress, much as she had two years ago when she traveled to East Prussia and to safety, away from the Allied bombs. The war had caught up with her when she stayed with her aunt farther east in the country.
And it had caught up again.
Lord, please keep us safe this time. Let us escape.
The story continues in Daisies Last Forever
by Liz Tolsma, available May 2014