thought for them—had they fled ahead of the Russian tanks or had they been taken captive?—as she ate her fill, almost weeping from relief and euphoria. She was free. Liberation had come before death after all.
She was free.
In the days that followed, Soviet officers interviewed the former prisoners, made sure they were fed, had the ill and injured attended to by their medics. Some of the women were terrified of them; after Operation Barbarossa began, the Nazi propaganda machine had filled their heads with harrowing stories of women and girls viciously raped by invading Russian soldiers. But the troops who liberated Schloss Waldheim harmed none of the inmates. Whether this was because these particular soldiers were exceptionally well disciplined, or because they considered political prisoners their comrades, or because nothing about the frail, wretched figures they beheld inspired either violence or lust, Greta could only wonder.
When the commanding officers discovered who Greta was, they accorded her great respect and admiration, and offered their deepest sympathies for the loss of her husband and friends. They asked her to help them manage the prisoners, many of whom wanted nothing more than to return home to their families, many of whom had no homes to return to. Greta agreed, but as the days passed and she steadily recovered her strength, she was overcome by an urgency to reunite with Ule and her parents. The Soviet troops could not linger; their orders were to push on deeper into Germany toward the capital. They asked Greta to stay, to remain in charge until another division arrived from the rear to take over, but she respectfully declined. “I have been separated from my son too long already,” she said. “I will not delay any longer than absolutely necessary.”
“Where has your son been all this time?” the officer asked.
“Living with my parents in Frankfurt an der Oder. That’s where I intend to go, as soon as I can.”
He shook his head, his expression grim. “Comrade Kuckhoff, you won’t find your family there. The citizens fled before the advancing Red Army, and the empty town was burned to the ground.”
For a moment Greta could not breathe. “Then I’ll go to Nikolassee,” she said, voice trembling. “My son’s legal guardian lives there. My parents and Ule probably sought refuge with him, but if not, he will know where they are.”
She found some forgotten uniforms in a storeroom and swiftly pieced together a dress, cutting it narrow, for she had lost more than twenty pounds since her arrest. When it was complete, she made her farewells to the commanding officer, thanking him profusely for her freedom. Before she departed, he gave her a special pass verifying her identity and authorizing any Soviet soldier to help her however she required. Even then, he warned, she should try not to be caught out alone if she could help it.
She packed a bundle of food and set off on foot for Nikolassee. Sometimes she fell in step with other refugees, women, children, the elderly, all walking away from horror or toward a distant loved one or some imagined place of safety. Greta scarcely recognized the war-ravaged landscape. Roads were pockmarked by bomb craters. Railroad lines had been reduced to scorched, twisted heaps of metal. Bridges were gone, with only traces of stone rubble left behind, forcing her to alter her route again and again.
She walked for days, finding shelter for the night in abandoned cottages or dilapidated barns. Once she hitched a ride with an old farmer, his wrinkled, age-spotted hand gripping the halter of an old nag hauling a load of firewood or straw. Sometimes she passed farms that had miraculously escaped destruction, and the aromas of ersatz coffee or baking bread or frying potatoes would drift to her through the open windows, making her stomach rumble. She did not stop and beg for their hospitality. She was just as likely to be shot as to be offered kindness.
Hungry, exhausted, aching from exertion after so many years of confinement, she persisted, one foot after another, driven by one thought—to find her son.
At long last she came to Nikolassee, and with her waning strength she knocked on Hans Hartenstein’s front door. His wife, wan and timorous, answered, but at first she did not recognize her visitor. Then, with a cry of wonder, she brought Greta inside, sat her down, brought her food and drink, but even as Greta gratefully accepted all of it, she repeatedly asked for Ule.