Chapter Twenty-Four
Fischbeck Camp, British Zone, Germany

It was a relief not to have to run anymore.

The British camp we settled on had many Ukrainians. Despite their pledge not to forcibly repatriate us, I didn’t want to take a chance. I told them I was from Lviv. So did Luka.

The year ended and 1946 began. Then’47 and we were still refugees. The camp became our home by default. Where else could we go? No country wanted us.

My nimble hands and keen eyesight ensured me steady work over the years, and I didn’t mind being paid in food. Refugees liked to be tidy. They needed to look clean and eager when they went for their interviews with the immigration officers from different countries. I always had a long list of people waiting for my services. I amazed myself at what I could create with the limited materials at hand. Out of old Soviet and Nazi uniforms I fashioned decent suits, coats, skirts and blouses. We never went hungry again.

Luka apprenticed to a German pharmacist in town. It was never his plan to stay in Germany, but he needed to hone a skill to impress the immigration officers.

I tried not to feel discouraged, but it was frustrating to still be on German soil this long after the war. The ramshackle camp school and church looked nearly permanent. We DPs had been at the camp for so long that we put on plays, had elections and a camp newspaper.

Still, no country wanted us. I watched every day as the mail was distributed. I watched people’s faces and envied their joy when a loved one was found, or a distant relative in Canada or Britain or America agreed to sponsor a lost soul.

But who would sponsor me, and who would sponsor Luka? We had no family. Sometimes I wondered if the whole camp would empty out and no one would be left here but me and Luka.

The Germans were friendly, and many had little to eat and their bombed-out homes were no better than the barracks we lived in. But when I went into town, I looked into the faces of women and children and men. I remembered how they looked at me when I was a slave. I didn’t know what they saw when they looked at me now, but they made me uneasy.

I always searched the faces of blond girls in town and I always dreamed of finding Larissa. One day, I made up my mind to tell the woman who visited from the Red Cross everything that I suspected. I told her about seeing a girl who looked like Larissa with that Nazi family. I told her about the flaxen-haired boy with the black mark on his wrist.

“You think the same thing might have happened to your sister?”

I didn’t reply right way, but finally I said, “Yes.”

Then the woman sighed. “It could be very difficult to find her if she can’t remember her past. All we can do is look out for a blond girl with blue eyes who looks like she was born in about 1938. We will do our best.”