Voices of Germany [Y1-I5]
Deutschland-Stimmen
Source Documents: German Scan
Note(s): None
Title: Voices of Germany [de: Deutschland-Stimmen]
Author: The Editor, Anonymous Letters
Issue: Year 1, Issue 5 (October 1947)
Page: 308-316
Voices of Germany
We are ever thankful for submissions of European letters, personal accounts, newspaper clippings, poems, and photographs. All contributions are handled with the utmost confidentiality. Yet, we bear no responsibility for the accuracy of their contents or the opinions they express.
The Night of Horror
Human language holds many words for terror and dread. The dark source of suffering has poured its torrents of words into the language of humanity. Countless pains are reflected in its grim depths. If one could gather all the terms for the fearful and the gruesome, all the desperate cries of anguish and groaning whimpers, the most devilish horror and the most pitiful shock, everything called hell, torment, inferno, into a single, terrible expression—well, it would be the night of September 12, 1944, in Darmstadt. Yet it is impossible to even half-convey the horror of that night and what lay behind it...
The final moments before the catastrophe were tinged with a peculiar irony. In the morning, a requiem was held in the grand Ludwigskirche, where the old organist played what would be his and the church’s swan song. In the afternoon and evening, I was with many young people who gave no hint of death or destruction. Late in the evening, I listened on the radio to some songs from the sensual Rococo world of Strauss’s enchanting music in Der Rosenkavalier. “Without me, without me, every day would be so anxious for you; with me, with me, no night would be too long.” For many, that night would become an eternity. I briefly listened to the news and went to bed.
Just before midnight, the siren wailed. The house jolted awake. Lights flashed, bleary-eyed people opened doors and descended to the cellar. As they had done hundreds of times before, suitcases and baskets were set down, and people wearily took seats on chairs and benches. I tried to go back to sleep. A laugh flickered up—the last laugh for days and weeks. The attempt to sleep failed. I pulled the blanket down again and brooded dully. Then the radio announced: Bomber squadrons over the Bergstraße, heading northeast, and near Oppenheim, eastward. It dawned on many what this might mean. After a few more minutes of tense anticipation, one of the most horrific attacks began. A heavy droning in the air made us listen intently. The droning grew stronger, circling ominously above us, greedily seeking prey. Within seconds, the night was illuminated as bright as day by the attackers’ flares. A flying army of death hovered over the city. Houses and towers stood paralyzed in the glaring light. Hundreds of minds in the machines heard a command, hundreds of arms reached for a lever, and coldly, the sleek bombs detached, hurling fire and destruction upon defenseless helplessness.
We heard a rushing in the air. Eyes fixed and petrified, then the shattering crash! Crashing and bursting, shuddering detonations, blazing flashes of fire. Stones and beams whirled, shattering glass fell, the cellars swayed and shook. Columns of dust rose like fountains, lights went out, and houses collapsed. The inferno was unleashed, a mechanical dance of death directed by human hands. Waving wings of death roared through the air, wreaking gruesome destruction. People fell before the nameless horror, ducking their heads in senseless protection. Screams, prayers, groans wrenched from tormented souls. Heart palpitations, weakness in the knees and stomach. In our cellar, the people were relatively calm. A child screamed loudly with each impact. Its mother soothed it. But in an endless chain, it fearfully repeated the cry: “My Jesus, mercy, mercy!” Gas masks and steel helmets were donned, cloths were moistened and held over mouths and noses, dust and smoke seeped in, and through the cellar windows glowed the red light of fires.
Again and again, waves of low-flying aircraft plunged over the defenseless city, tearing gruesome furrows into the stony field... On the entrance stairs, there was a clattering of footsteps tumbling down. A Dutchman who had previously lived in the house stumbled down the stairs with disheveled hair. Through burning streets, he had fought his way through the hail of bombs. Almost breathless, he reported: “Everything is burning, everything, only the church and your two houses are not.” That brought some reassurance. How long had it been? Had hours passed, minutes, or eternities? Only three-quarters of an hour since the first impact. I crept to the exit in the adjacent cellar and looked out. The first thing I saw: the church was ablaze. Flames shot from the large round dome. I knew the church’s fate was sealed, for the dome’s structure was made of wood... Now, as I wanted to step out, I hesitated. Had a new wave of attacks begun? I heard stronger detonations in the city area. And a droning and humming as from aircraft. The cold air and the heat of the fires created a howling storm. But the detonations? The Dutchman thought they were collapsing houses. I thought of delayed-action bombs. The reality was that a munitions train at the south station and a munitions column on Rheinstraße had been hit. With powerful explosions, they were blowing up, wagon by wagon. These two trains and the raging storm treacherously claimed thousands of lives. For many wanted to go outside immediately after the attack, but the storm and exploding trains feigned a new attack. Frightened, most retreated back into the cellars. When they tried to leave the cellars again after some time, area fires and collapsed houses blocked their way. Back into the stuffy cellars, lingering for hours, suffocating on carbon monoxide. Others tried to fight their way through burning debris. But heat, fear, and lack of oxygen made them collapse unconscious. They charred on the street. Thus came that apocalyptic death toll, which the gravediggers—the most qualified counters of this gruesome harvest—estimated at fifteen thousand! Fifteen thousand people from life to death in one hour! What are the armies of the dead from weeks-long battles, what are the guillotined of entire revolutions compared to this terrible number?
In our cellar, there was no staying any longer. With the Dutchman, I had climbed to the first floor. From the apartment, blazing flames met us. Stealthily, like a thief, the fire had broken in above our heads while we sat unsuspecting in the cellar. Spellbound, we stared into the licking glow. Extinguishing or saving valuables was utterly hopeless. In the next few minutes, the fire could burn through to the ground floor. We rushed back down. I suggested fleeing through the exit to the square behind the church. For at that moment, it was only about saving bare life. But it was decided to seek the cellar of the rear building, which was not yet burning. With difficulty, the door opened against the pressure of the storm. I strapped on my backpack, my faithful “storm luggage,” quickly grabbed a valuable book from my cellar bookshelf, took two suitcases, and out we went as fast as possible. The courtyard ground was littered with fiery pieces of wood, fallen masonry, and shattering glass. Sparks whirled like a raging hot snowstorm around our heads, crashing beams collapsed all around... I climbed to the attic, poured water on the staircase, others did similar, fetching bedding and clothes from the upper floors to the cellar, extinguishing small fires. In the attic, there was furnace-like heat. I looked out the dormer window: all around, houses were burning... After a brief council, an unconditional departure was proposed, the call shouted down to the cellar. I quickly dipped my jacket in cooling water, grabbed my backpack, and stormed ahead with another man. Over the burning courtyard, between the inferno of the ground floor, through the large gateway. Smoke, flying sparks, rubble, and falling stones were our companions. Finally, the open square was reached. In front of a garden fence, we sank down, catching our breath. For a few minutes, we both rested. The burning circle of the church powerfully outshone the surrounding house fires. Devilishly beautiful was this sight! The square was deserted. Like a fiery snake, the red blaze writhed, rising and ducking before the glaring beacon of the imperiously flaring church.
I stood transfixed in this fiery circle. Fire, only fire, and again fire! A blazing and burning, a flickering and licking, a crackling and crashing. Red, greedy jaws of hell devoured their prey. The flames shot up to the stars. To the stars? If there were thinking beings up there, could they see the reflection of these earthly fires? No, this sea of fire would be nothing before the dimensions of the universe. The little humans rage, the elements rage, but the stars continue their cold orbits, and the eternal spirit thrones in sublime calm. Our fate unfolds like marionettes...
Apathically, people lay around. An old grandfather and a young woman whimpered softly from their burns, which were only hastily bandaged. Acquaintances met at the wall. A father with his son was saved; wife and daughter dissolved in the flames... Someone pointed out a fountain basin that must be in one of the gardens. I set off. A flaming villa served as my guide. The glittering surface of a water basin shimmered. Like a deliverance, I jumped into the cooling flood, clothes and all. It reached up to my hips, and I poured water over my upper body. Wonderfully refreshed, I climbed out of the basin and filled my steel helmet with water. Over the rubble, I went back... Gratefully, people dipped their cloths into the helmet, cooling their lips and foreheads. Others rinsed their mouths a little. Again, I stumbled back to the basin... About twenty times it went like this until all were refreshed. At the water basin, a man found his wife again. As if after years of separation, they embraced, reborn...
Unspeakable are the night scenes that unfolded all over the wide city area. The usual course of dying was this: people stayed too long in the cellar because of the munitions train and the storm. When they finally wanted to get out, there was no way through. The cellar became a death chamber, a grave, and often a crematorium. For the dying, death was not always as gruesome as the survivor sees it in retrospect. Only fear of death and cries of despair came from some cellars. People whom death had only roughly ripened, who had already become unconscious, told me how the lack of oxygen and the inhalation of carbon monoxide caused faster heart activity and a certain oppression. It wasn’t really pain. Just a frequent sinking of consciousness into the bottomless. — Where a direct hit destroyed the house, death usually came very quickly. Others left the cellars, pushed through several streets, but smoke gas and heat robbed them of consciousness. They fell to the ground, and in the morning, they were found as charred mummies.
A man rescued eighteen people from a cellar after finding his wife and son dead there. A couple with sons fought their way through several cellar breakthroughs. One son remained unconscious along the way, was rescued; the parents and the other son perished. A pharmacist was found with his throat cut, the bloody razor still in his hand. The house had collapsed over him due to air mines, the others in the cellar killed by ruptured lungs. He stood alone, trapped in this death cellar amidst the lying corpses. Desperate horror pressed the knife into his hand. All variations of fate raged. Soldiers returned from the front and were the only survivors of large families. For weeks, people searched for their relatives who were missing, as if vanished from the earth, perhaps caught in other cellars during flight, buried by collapsing masonry, slumbering unknown until the Last Judgment. — On the Kapellplatz, many people were saved by the fire brigade, who ceaselessly doused them with water. On another square, there was a shallow water basin where about fifty people wallowed. At their heads stood the sword-supported monument of Bismarck. Motionless, it gazed upon the blazing fires and the agony of the people. Fifty climbed into the fountain; only twelve rose from this grave monument in the morning! In a large cellar on Rheinstraße, the heating pipes burst. Boiling water hissed over the bodies of the sixty trapped! When men descended on rope ladders in the morning, they found only completely boiled human parts! But the most gruesome happened elsewhere. Two young women, who were expecting, collapsed unconscious on the street. With their bodies burning, they gave birth prematurely. The new life, emerging from dead bodies, also burned. Reverently, this horror was left lying on the street for another day. Woe to the hopeful mothers in those days! Can the pen describe this gruesome thing? All that is gruesome, dreadful, and horrifying? Will art become chaos again, dissonance, stammering screams, and helpless babbling? As it was after the first great war? Will finally, from the blood of the killed and the charred bones, a millionfold cry rise against the madness of war?
This night, too, passed. A pale dawn heralded the coming of the new day... Among the scattered branches, I found a sturdy knotted stick and set out on a first tour through the ruins. The fires had burned down everywhere, the houses had collapsed, and a thick fog of smoke lay over the city... I wandered down the hill toward the city center. On the streets lay the charred corpses. In the gloom, one had to be careful not to stumble over them. — A young woman lay there like a poorly made sculpture. Her legs, with charred high-heeled boots, stretched upward behind her, her arms raised as if in defense. The face, still vaguely recognizable but charred, the mouth wide open with brownish rows of teeth, so that one didn’t know if this countenance was laughing or screaming. Like a black tailor’s dummy, this human remnant lay on the ground. In other places, corpses lay about, recovered from the cellars. Unburned, bloated blue-red. For another eight days, many lay at such collection points. The face covered with stone-weighted cardboard, some with bouquets of flowers laid down by a compassionate friend. People searched for their relatives among these often foul-smelling corpses and did not find them.
I groped my way further to the Ludwig Monument. The gaze fell on the burned-out post office, swept the round of the square where the ministry and offices stood. Down the great Rheinstraße, not a single house remained standing. The castle, too, was prey to the flames, gone the thousands of books of the library with their valuable collections... Finally, after half an hour’s wandering, I came upon the first undamaged houses at the Elisabethenkirche. There it became clear to me that the largest and most essential part of the city was destroyed. In the north, there was still an intact patch, which was heavily damaged a week later. I wandered further to the west. In the few preserved houses, people now slept after the horrors of the night... I came to the industrial district near the main station, which was badly hit two days later. There, too, much was destroyed. Only the factory chimneys stood like towering beacons of a technologized civilization that had committed a suicidal harakiri that night... I ended my tour to the south and came to the realization that eight-tenths of the city were completely destroyed. Of the eight Protestant churches, seven were no longer usable; it was similar with the Catholic ones. The prison stood almost undamaged amidst the burned-out old town. Not a hair was harmed on any of the prisoners (!!!)... Chaos, disorder. All laws were suspended. One rode without a ticket on the running boards of freight cars. One cycled on the sidewalks, against one-way streets, over the flower beds of the parks. The railways had no more windows, the running boards bent by the daytime attack on the station, the tracks often barely passable. No doctors, no school, no department stores, no post office, no telephone, no telegraph. One seemed completely cut off from the outside world. Even worse was the lack of individual necessities. No water, no light, no fire. A candle became a precious commodity, a draw well a treasure. From the chaotic, however, the primitive, the improvised, the simple was born. A bus became a post office, a wooden typewriter case a mailbox. A symbol of an entire era, when we are forced by violence from refined over-refinements back to the primordial. Man, become essential! Possessions and property are also experienced anew. With tremendous force, one feels possessions as something lent from above, terminable at any time. There is no absolute right of ownership. Many people lament the loss of their belongings, others smile grimly about it. Only a few have the inner freedom of the great poor, Francis of Assisi, who strides singing into the bright morning. But one thing is certain: an entire city has become proletarian overnight! Yet another thing is gratifying: brother, human. Meeting a friend is the happiest experience. The survivors draw closer; people are brothers again. — I close the circle of my tour. There, over the burned-out facades and smoking ruins, the fiery sun rises and illuminates this smoldering image of a pale apocalypse even more eerily than the blood-red flames did at night.
From: Darmstädter Echo.
We are searching for Düsseldorfers around the globe!
At our urging, the Düsseldorf Tourist Association (VVD) has breathed new life into its once-thriving search and connection service. Mindful of its duty and steadfast in its commitment to lend a hand wherever positive values and genuine aid are at stake, the Dürer-Haus in Buenos Aires has taken up the mantle of this endeavor for the whole of the Americas, appointing Der Weg as the voice of this noble mission.
We call upon all Rhinelanders, especially all Düsseldorfers, to return these efforts in kind. Those seeking lost relatives, friends, or acquaintances, those longing to restore broken business ties, those yearning for news from Düsseldorf or the Rhineland, or those desiring answers to questions, doubts, or fears, should turn to the Dürer-Haus. Every request will be met with individual care and processed by the Düsseldorf central office.
Beyond this, we propose that every Düsseldorfer abroad begin a correspondence with someone back home. Düsseldorfers! Weave again the threads across the seas, for your brothers at home languish in such forsakenness! The current of heart to heart fortifies, granting strength to bear and dare anew, yet the vast desolation weighs heavy. Forget this not! The Dürer-Haus offers you addresses—write to those who sit alone. A letter, a book, a magazine—how much they can achieve! If your brothers do not aid in rebuilding, who then shall?
Düsseldorfers, lead the way!
We hope soon to widen this circle. Below, we present the text with which the Düsseldorf Tourist Association summoned those at home to join this cause:
When, half a century past, on April 22, 1897, the Düsseldorf Tourist Association was born in the Tonhalle, founded by a handful of farsighted and idealistic Düsseldorfers, they were stirred by a beautiful vision. On one hand, they sought to forge an instrument for our beloved city, a force to propel progress and growth in every corner of civic life—art, culture, tradition, trade, and industry. On the other, they aimed to draw our fair hometown nearer to the world, both in spirit and in commerce. The Düsseldorfer of true caliber has ever been a citizen of the world, his Rhenish largesse and openness woven into his very being. Thus it is that so many sons of our close-knit homeland have ventured forth across every latitude and longitude, proving their mettle and mingling with the finest of other peoples.
Yet this is also why the First World War dealt our city such a grievous blow, sundering old ties of family and friendship across borders, a calamity crowned by the Second World War, which left our once-glorious homeland in ash and ruin. Scarce is the house or family among our wreckage that does not mourn a cherished kin, friend, comrade, or companion—those who, even now, two years after the guns and sirens fell silent, search in vain for ones lost to the great, blood-soaked deluge.
Thus, on the day of its fiftieth year, having reached across the seas, the Düsseldorf Tourist Association has, as the pinnacle of its labors for the common good and as a jubilee gift, launched a venture sure to be embraced with open hearts by many in these days of dire need—a venture that may one day bear rich fruit in every field: an international search service for Düsseldorfers the world over.
The Düsseldorf Tourist Association holds firm to this truth: those scarred by war, as lone souls, can scarce muster the strength—amid their grief and daily toil for bread—to seek and mend the threads torn across borders and oceans. Too weary are they, most often. Death and woe have reaped a fearful harvest in our city; across our Rhenish lands and all Germany, broken spirits wander in anguish, their homes razed or themselves cast from their hearths. Parents seek children, children their parents, brothers and sisters their lost siblings or other dear ones. Search bureaus, bound to the same merciful aim, do all they can—yet the endless rolls of the still-missing and unfound cry out a shattering tale: in the wake of Europe’s utter fall and the quaking of the other four continents, they are too burdened to meet every need, grant every plea, or answer each soul’s aching wish to find one swept away by war’s tempest. This, precisely, is what the Düsseldorf Tourist Association seeks with its service: a personal, tender care for each fate, a human touch in matters where the joy or ruin of individuals—and often whole families—hangs in balance. It is the VVD’s will that every seeker find a deeply personal response—for a matter of the heart demands the heart’s own work.
How many among us recall an old friend, kin, or comrade who, long years ago, crossed the Atlantic to meet the world? War blotted out their trails; in its whirlwinds sank much we once held precious. Yet now, many would give dearly to clasp again the hand of one lost to those stormy years or send them at least a sign of life. Does a brother yet live across in America? Where lingers the uncle or cousin, son or nephew—in Argentina or Canada, Brazil or Australia? Did war claim them? Do their kin endure? Do they still recall us? And if they do, how might they find us amid our blasted cities, in a Germany rent by zones, or within the wide, woeful tide of the uprooted, the exiled, the dispossessed? The house where we once met is rubble; the old familiar flat may stand, but strangers dwell there, ignorant of our fate.
Thus, many a letter from afar may have returned undelivered or vanished, and so some of us may be deemed dead or lost to those overseas. The care our friends abroad bear for us is no less than ours for them. This truth now echoes back to us from South America. The Dürer-Haus in Buenos Aires calls to us, asking if we might aid in tracing the uncertain, shifted, or lost addresses of Germans; a heavy unease grips German kin and their families in Argentina—and indeed across the Americas—over the fate of loved ones and friends in Germany. A hand reaches to us from over the sea. We clasp it with joy all the greater, for the VVD once sought a like aim years ago; then, under the banner “Düsseldorfers in All the World,” it strove to forge, strengthen, and cherish the bonds between Düsseldorfers on the Rhine and those afar. It was a fair triumph. But the brutal years of war stalled its growth. This call from Argentina proves anew that our search service answers a deep, worldwide yearning.
In taking up this new, lovely, yet arduous task, we heed a moral call, fulfill a plain and natural duty, and offer to it all the bonds, links, and wisdom wrought over the past half-century. For the common good, we set our aim to strive, steadfast and sure, toward the days before the war, rebuilding the shattered bridges from here to there.
One blessed fruit will surely bloom: our slow return to the great, ceaseless river of thought and trade, of the noblest cultural riches of nations and continents.
Through these reknit threads, person to person, we shall—from a high vantage—draw nearer as one; questions of humanity and kindness will glow in the gentler light of personal warmth. In short: soul will near soul, for the higher good of all.
We offer here a letter from a Banat expellee, a writer not schooled in formal learning, yet from whose lines rings more sound and sensible wisdom than is often heard in the grand conferences of "high politics."
Birkland, May 27, 1947.
Dear Friends!
Back home, as you well know, life has treated us miserably for quite some time; we endured very hard days there too, yet we always clung to the hope of better times. The final days before the German invasion were dreadful for us Germans in Yugoslavia. A relentless storm of hatred raged against us, and we lived with our very lives at stake. From this crushing pressure blossomed a wondrous camaraderie, a unity so rare it’s seldom felt. Then, beyond all expectation, our dreams—ones we scarcely dared to dream—came true. I can say with full conviction: we didn’t return evil for evil; instead, we sought to extend understanding even to those unlike us. Some stayed our foes forever, but others—and no small number—came to see us clearly and lent us their aid. Those were beautiful days, though the work demanded of us stretched nearly beyond our strength; still, we took pride in knowing we had built something worthwhile. In our little, beloved Banat, the governance and conditions of life outshone anywhere else—yes, even Hungary itself. Misdeeds there were, to be sure, but I can declare with a steady conscience that we Banaters bore no share in them. The folks back home know this too, at least most of them, for proof came not long ago in a letter from there, with a slip inside written in Serbian: "Send our Swabians greetings from us unhappy Serbs!" Another of our kin received word from relatives, telling how night after night posters appear, proclaiming: "Give us back our Swabians!"
But what use is all this to us now? Our homeland is no longer ours. Strangers dwell in our houses, sprawl among our possessions, wear our clothes and linens, sleep in our beds, while we have no corner to rest our weary heads. We wander in rags, dragging our gaunt, famished frames with effort, marveling still that we find fresh will to go on. We know wars have always been, and disputes between peoples will flare into violence again someday; yet in their waging, certain bounds ought to hold—and always did—until now, when we gaze, lost, upon this chaos, this hatred, this greedy system barreling toward its ends, heedless if millions perish in its wake. We had the Nuremberg Trials among us, and much will yet be said of them—not just how they unfolded, but what they mean moving forward. There, a staggering burden was laid upon statesmen, a weight that will press on those who bear it, no matter how they twist in time to come. A new doctrine of responsibility took shape, one not just for us Germans but for all who one day act without care. Yet with cunning arguments, they pin every fault on the whole German people—even if a Jew is struck in Poland, the German is blamed, as if only he could cause such things!
Everyone fancies themselves a master now, insisting the German must be molded to a new way of thinking. Each one feels the educator’s gift within: one trusts the lash will do it, another hunger, a third soul-crushing torment—and so spins an endless chain, with all of us as their test subjects. From such folly springs a misery beyond words, a burden we Germans must shoulder for all mankind. This cannot last forever, nor will it. A day will dawn when the reckoning arrives—doubt it not—but that day will carry its own bitterness and cruelty, a prospect we already dread. We stand, without question, on the brink of a new age, not just for Germans but surely for the world. No one can halt this tide; it must break, today or tomorrow. Neither capitalism nor communism holds a rightful claim to life; there must be a middle path, fair to all—the rogue to the gallows, the just to a decent, fitting life. Only the blind can still think people may be used endlessly without consequence; those days are gone. And those who now imagine they can yoke millions to their selfish aims will one day, too late, see with terror that judgment has come. Of our guilt, we’ll have much to say yet—today we cannot—but a time will come when our testimony proves most unwelcome. No peace is struck with us; we remain the stripped of rights, unable to call on law or justice, for we stand outside them, and this state must somehow still endure.
Many—oh, so many—find our hunger a fine trade. I never thought such a thing could persist with a nation of millions. Who will answer for this one day? It’s beyond belief, the scraps of food we stretch to survive. I don’t know where the failure lies, but I and millions more believe this need not be—food isn’t so scarce, after all. Our fields can’t sustain us; their thin harvest falls short. Money to buy food we lack, and earning it is beyond us—our industry is gone, the little left still pried apart and carted off. Raw materials? Next to none remain save coal, and half the world reaches for that. Last winter, thousands upon thousands froze, our coal sent elsewhere, leaving us nothing but our toil—and even that we’re barred from using. Hundreds of cities lie in rubble, the housing plight defies description, and no means exist to mend it. We’d build homes gladly, even bleed our hands raw to do it, but there’s no material—no bricks, no lime, no cement, not even a nail to be had, for none exist. Wherever you turn your eyes, nothing meets them—only boundless misery and want.
You’re no smoker, so you can’t know what it means to have nothing to light. Do you grasp what it is to scrounge cigarette butts from the street? I felt I’d sink through the earth at times, picking one up, but when craving gnaws at me for days with nothing to smoke, and my eyes scour the ground unbidden, at last spotting a butt—sometimes a good one, sometimes crushed or soaked—I can’t resist. I stoop, ashamed, and pocket it. Alone later, I pull it out, tear a strip of newspaper, roll the scant tobacco, and smoke it with divine relish until dizziness brings cold sweat to my brow.
On one hand, abundance chokes; on ours, a suffering the world has never seen. So I ask: Where’s the flaw? Why must this be? Is it punishment too, or are we all wicked, all criminals? No—a hundred times, no—we are not. Not a whit worse than others, yet the world’s anguish is heaped on us. We’re tortured, plagued, starved near to death—who gains from breaking a brave, great people so cruelly? Is there no spark of humanity left? Fine, they sow hatred, but the fiendish crop rising here will be unlike any before. Too late it’ll be when the pious lift their eyes skyward—then, for all we care, the world can rot with us, for now shortsightedness, greed, hate, and vengeance stumble blind in their madness, missing what looms ahead. I shudder at what’s coming if this persists.
If they keep feeding us as they do, few will last. Those spared by hunger will fall to plagues and sickness. Illness terrifies, for a wasted body can’t fend off disease alone. Enough now of this wretchedness—I’d have loved to write you something glad, but we’re so steeped in hardship that not even a stray joyful thought can slip through. Greet all our kinfolk and thank them for sharing in our misery and need; may God repay them. I don’t know if it’ll bear fruit—your means are slight, and you can’t end this woe, only ease it a touch—but it’s noble and human. We send our warmest greetings to all.
H. and family.
Christian Siegl
Theresienstr. 44
Innsbruck, Austria
September 15, 1947
To the Editors of "Der Weg"
P.O. Box 2398
Buenos Aires
Dear Sirs,
Recently, I received your magazine through dear relatives who, in a touching manner, provide me with food from your country. It was the inaugural issue, and I hope to obtain the subsequent ones by some means as well. For many years, this is the first publication from a distant world—a world that, as we know, does not blindly condemn or disregard us Germans. Can you fathom what it means for a young person to open your magazine and hear warmth, friendship, and even love speaking from every page? Do you realize what this signifies in a loveless, hate-filled time, an era where only the brutal and the deserter seem to prevail?
I will tell you: it means boundlessly much, more than I can express in words. I only hope to soon receive another issue, so that I might grant myself and my friends hours of respite.
And since you have invited your readership to contribute to the enrichment of your magazine, I would gladly do so in my own way; perhaps you will find it pleasing and can make use of a few lines:
The First Care Package
It is a harsh winter, this one in the second year of peace. A daily ration amounts to 700–800 calories, the stove stands cold, the heating allowance exhausted weeks ago. Through windows patched haphazardly with cardboard or cellophane, the wind whistles into the dimly lit room of a student. He was driven from his homeland, stripped of his paternal inheritance, parted from his mother. Shortly after the war, he encountered dear relatives on a country road somewhere in Germany, who brought him to Austria. Here in Innsbruck, he now attends a maturity course for returnees, striving to reclaim the years lost to his early conscription into military service. It is a struggle to focus his mind on unfamiliar intellectual labor; his fingers stiffen, his stomach growls emptily. Hunger—yes, that is what keeps him from finding peace. Again and again, his thoughts circle back to a morsel of bread.
Then, one morning, the postman delivers a promising card; worries, cold, and hunger vanish in an instant. He races down the street, arrives at the care package distribution point, hoists the parcel he has just received onto his shoulder, and returns to his forlorn dwelling. Here he stands now before the array of delights, unable to comprehend it—the multitude of cans, the vividly printed cartons. For years, he had forgotten such things still existed. Above all, though, there are people who genuinely wish to aid him in his need. "Care package"—how much warmth, how much feeling this word holds. His loved ones, known to him only through letters and photographs, have remembered him; this alone suffices to restore the young man’s faith in humanity, a faith he seemed to have lost amid the horrors of the most terrible of wars and the refugee misery of the two post-war years.
A feeling of inexpressible gratitude fills not only our student but all who are fortunate enough to be cared for in this bitter time. The thanks of all extend not only to the donors but also to the nations that, directly or indirectly, take part in these care package efforts.
Signed,
Christian Siegl