Wild Children

My mom had it tough as the Second World War wound down on the eastern front. I explore the failed winter exodus from East Prussia in Crow Stone … my YA release from Ronsdale Press, from back in 2022. Of the three sisters, fictionalized in the novel with the names of Katya, Sofie and Marthe, only Katya (inspired by my mom) is taken into the Soviet Union as a forced labourer. She went through some difficult times in the open pit mines of the Urals near Chelyabinsk. 

But what happened to her two younger sisters? I understood little about their experiences. Things were just too terrible to remember, they’d tell me. Let the past be forgotten, they’d say.  I knew rape and starvation were common under the Soviet occupation. I knew they weren’t allowed to leave the former East Prussia, renamed Kaliningrad, until 1948. I knew that others in my immigrant church community had similar experiences … but no one would talk about it.

So now I’m reading The Wolf Children of the Eastern Front, Alone and Forgotten, by Sonya Winterberg with Kerstin Lieff. It’s a heart-wrenching testimony of the horrors that lost children experienced in those stark years after the war. Unlike the dates in history books … the end of war doesn’t end the suffering. 

As a curious side note, the introduction to this book is by John Kay, the lead singer of the Canadian rock band called Steppenwolf. Born in Tilsit, East Prussia (now Sovetsk, Kaliningrad) in 1944, he narrowly escaped a similar fate that 20,000 young East Prussian children experienced. John Kay (born Joachim Fritz Krauledat) ended up in Canada in 1958 and went on to create memorable hits like “Born to be Wild.”  

Many children scavenged like wild animals in the desolate, bombed-out East Prussian countryside. My two aunts, fostering a lost toddler, and my teenaged cousins no doubt would have crossed paths with the orphans as they foraged for food trying to avoid Soviet revenge near the Lithuanian border. 

Kirsten Boie's novel about post-war friendship

Just finished the middle grade novel, Heul doch nicht, du lebst ja noch, by Kirsten Boie published by Friedrich Oetinger Verlag from Hamburg in 2022. Fast paced, engaging characters with unique points of view. 

First off, I opened this novel because of location. It’s set in Hamburg, the biggest city in the most northern state of Germany, Schleswig Holstein.  I'd grown up listening to Hans Albers’ music about the Reeperbahn, Hamburg’s notorious red light distract. It’s the area that my father came from and I visited back in the seventies, wanting to know more about his background which I considered risqué and possibly immoral (compared to my evangelical upbringing). 

As a child, I was fascinated with my dad’s low German dialect … different than the Mennonite dialect spoken here in southern Manitoba … and yet similar. I knew that the windy, flat plains of northern Germany are close to Friesland where Mennonites originated.  

A second reason I wanted to read this book is because of the time. It’s not just set in Hamburg, it’s set in the ruins of Hamburg … in June, 1945 … after the war. Massive bombing by the Brits (or Tommies in book), reduce Hamburg to rubble. (Eerily similar to too many places in our world today.)  How does healing begin?

I also appreciated the 3 different points of view … kids between 10 and 14.  First there’s the Jewish boy Jacob, ‘a mischling’  who had called himself Friedrich to keep his identity hidden. His mother was a blonde Jew, like him, and his father an ‘aryan’.  Jacob viewpoint confuses the reader because he’s unaware that the war’s over … that it’s safe for him come out of hiding. Then there’s Hermann, with an angry father who lost both legs while fighting. Hermann has to help his father use the bathroom several times a day robbing Hermann of any hope for his own future. Then there’s Traute, whose family hosts a refugee family from East Prussia ... not unlike my mother's East Prussian refugee family.

All three kids want friends and somehow connect in the bombed ruins of post-war Hamburg. The author, Kirsten Boie, does an amazing job of showing the German point of view after the war. Even with my rusty German, I was able to gobble this book up. Highly readable and, unfortunately, still so relevant to our current violent world.

Loved this quote at the start of the novel ...
the past is not dead ... it hasn't even passed.

Orange

This past Monday was Truth and Reconciliation Day. This is the first year it's been recognized as an official holiday in Manitoba.  It’s more popularly known as ‘orange shirt day’ in memory of a little Indigenous girl who was so proud of her orange shirt for the start of school and yet forced to give it up when she went to a church-administered residential school. The last such school closed in 1996. Reconciliation can't be limited to one day ... it's a process.

Germany has worked on this process through Vergangenheitsbewältigung.  The long words of the German language may look intimidating… but this compound word means ‘making sense of the past.’  Germany accepts responsibility for the crimes of its Nazi past and promotes healing through awareness and education. The past can't be changed but future atrocities might be prevented.  Is it enough? Of course not. But what are the alternatives? That's why we need to keep telling our stories, writing our books, sharing our secrets.

Secrets of a lurid past continue to haunt former Soviet zones who have not reconciled with their histories. In Russia, gulag museums once highlighting Soviet atrocities are now closed and history textbooks for their youth are being re-written to better fit Putin's agenda.

In Canada, orange helps us remember. Orange for the children. Orange for reconciliation. Orange for the future.  Every Child Matters!

CBC Interview a Pinch Me! Moment

Ever since I had my own place, back in the seventies, my kitchen radio has been tuned to CBC.  Early shows like Basic Black, Vinyl Café, Writers and Company … current ones like The Next Chapter, Bookends, Q … and so many more incredible, mind-stretching programs. Not to mention the eclectic range of music and clever comedy. That’s where I was introduced to authors like Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Thomas King, Malcolm Gladwell, and so many more. CBC radio made, and continues to make, kitchen chores endlessly enlightening.  I think CBC radio programming has in many ways—for better (some might say for worse)—shaped my view of Canada.  

You can imagine my absolute delight when I had the chance to be interviewed by Nadia Kidwai from CBC Manitoba’s The Weekend Morning Show back in early September. My reasons for writing about shy, imperfect Waltraut got to be aired (and even replayed) on the CBC! It was an emotional experience. Getting some CBC swag just in time for sock season is only a bonus. 

To now have Waltraut included in the CBC’s kids' fall book selection is another one of those pinch me! moments. Who knew that following Nancy Drew’s advice to be curious, kind and brave could give me such opportunity. 

Thunder not bombs

Got caught in a downpour while walking through our local woods yesterday. Wet dog, rolling thunder and warm rain. It was great!  Obviously, I couldn’t take a picture and my words will never do it justice. Let’s just say it was a sensory experience … something to inhale and to savour like fresh bread. The dog, usually terrified of thunder, seemed braver while in the shelter of the gloomy, wet woods. Nevertheless, we didn’t dawdle to smell all those woodsy smells and he very much appreciated the towel rub when we returned home. 

I think of the wars happening on our beautiful earth and how for some that thunder, those stabs of random light, are malicious, angry and filled with hate. When I see an image of another bombing set in our present world … I’m reminded of the past my parents and millions of others experienced. As  survivors of the Second World War pass on, it’s vital we pass on their memories to prevent more war. How did that Patti Smith song go? People have the Power?   A bit of the lyrics: The power to dream, to rule to wrestle the world from fools

Peace on the prairies

Or how about Simon and Garfunkel’s Last Night I had the Strangest Dream.  Taste of lyrics:  Last night  I had the strangest dream, I ever dreamed before. I dreamed the world had all agreed To put an end to war.        

• Why am I so lucky to live in Canada where thunder is only thunder?  In chapter 18 of my new novel, Waltraut, my characters experience a thunderstorm while picnicking in a cemetery. It's a déjà vu moment for Waltraut's mother ... a character inspired by my own mother's fear of stormy weather and of war.

Lake Time

Lake Winnipeg, our inland sea
I should have given Waltraut a photo op here.
Thanks for putting her on Winnipeg's bestseller list!

from Saturday's Winnipeg Free Press

Summer in September is my favourite time of the year … it’s unpredictable and every warm day is now a gift. Storm colours may be moodier and more intense, but nothing beats the blue of September skies, against golden-tinged aspen, with the Canada geese in their v-shaped flocks streaming south filling the air with their squawks of freedom.  Entering the woods is like entering a golden snow globe of scattered leaves.

Tree fungi as colourful as  flowers.

Ha! How can you tell I’m just back my annual fall retreat at Camp Morton? What a place. Totally magical.  Enjoyed chats by the fire, rock hunting along the shoreline, fungal wonders, and, as always, glimpses of another time. Pure magic.

back to school

 

My neighbourhood is filled with schools.  I live close enough to hear the elementary school buzzer.  My kids never had to rely on buses or rides. A ten-minute walk and they’d arrive … whether it was kindergarten, middle years, or senior high. 

While my own children have walked on into adulthood … new kids now pass the house …  I get to witness the body language of young students. Some wear brightly coloured backpacks on their slender backs and skip with absolute glee. “Wait up!” their parents call when they look up from their cell phones. (Yes, it’s a sign of our times).  Other kids, move more slowly, dragging their feet as anxiety weighs them down. 

Middle graders often form small packs … girls quietly talking amongst themselves, boys several feet apart, guffawing and shoving each other along their zigzag way.  Not all of course … there are always the loners, the shufflers, or the ones wearing their headphones, seemingly oblivious to their surroundings. And the cyclists … waving as they pass their friends on the sidewalks. 

Then there’s the senior high crowd. These now are mostly loners. Different start times for different classes. So many ways to drift apart.  Headphones on, unlike their younger counterparts, they don’t joke, they don’t push, and they definitely don’t skip. Cars squeal past driven by older classmates or some, with ‘novice driver’ in the back window, crawl with excess caution towards the overcrowded school parking lot. 

In Waltraut, my protagonist also lives close to a school. A chain link fence surrounds the playground and school patrols lord over a potentially dangerous intersection. You’ll have to read the book to see how she feels about the walk to Riverview Elementary, back in 1965.  In spite of the cell phones, maybe not so much has changed when it comes to getting to school on time.