April 30th, 1945. It still matters..

Seventy-four years ago, today, Hitler killed himself in a Berlin bunker. And while he took the easy way out, for others, there was a huge mess to clean up. A bunch of crazy German men destroyed countless lives. 

What a sad, difficult time my family had. And it affects people to this very day. It affects me. After all, why am I going to Europe this summer if not because of Hitler? That’s where my parents spent the first thirty-five years of their lives . . . where they met and married. . . where they grieved and dreamed. That’s where my two half-brothers lived and died. 

 

So, while it happened long ago and far away, for me, when I look at the photo of my dad and his brothers—he’s eighteen and in his Luftwaffe uniform—I know that Hitler still affects my life. When I look at the photo of his young son’s grave in some conquered Polish city, I know that little Winnfried’s 1942 death impacted my life growing up here in the middle of Canada. Maybe Dad spoiled me . . . just a bit. . . because of Winnfried? 

We’re still cleaning up Hitler’s mess. I guess that’s why I still write about the old days. . . still trying to figure it all out. How did a whole nation get swallowed up by Hitler and his perverted ideas? What evil do we have to keep watching out for, today in 2019? 

Signed!

Contract signed! My book, Finding Amber, (tentative title) will be published by Ronsdale Press from Vancouver, BC.  I'm feeling honoured and excited!

The story's set during the late thirties in the former East Prussia. I'm doing things backwards with the travel happening after I've written the story. But I'm so thrilled with how things have worked out.

I promised them I'd be more active on social media...so I'm trying!

Thomas Mann and Nida

On my Baltic biking itinerary is an overnight stay in Nida, Lithuania—a small beach town on the Lithuanian half of the Curonian Spit. The Germans called it Nidden, and it was the summer retreat of Thomas Mann. His books were later banned by the Third Reich—in spite of being a recipient of the 1929 Nobel Award for Literature—and he left by 1933. Supposedly the Nazi government mailed him a charred copy of his novel, Buddenbrooks, and he quickly got the message. 

Wojsyl, 2005

In 1939, Herman Göring confiscated the house as a holiday place for injured Luftwaffe personnel. Nowadays, his restored cottage holds the Thomas Mann Cultural Centre and the community hosts an active writing colony. His grandson, Frido Mann, released My Nidden: On the Curonian Spit in 2012. Another book to read to help me appreciate the tortured history of this beautiful area. 

JonasS at Lithuanian Wikipedia

I studied Thomas Mann years ago when I majored in 20^thcentury German Literature. It’s crazy how all these years later, I’m still reading his work. Thomas Mann loved the landscape on this Amber Coast…the sand dunes, the salty wind, the Baltic. 

In my WIP, my character—Katya—loves it, too. And I’m on pins and needles with anticipation to experience what I have until now only imagined. 

World War Two Still Relevant

I’ve been listening to the Canada Reads discussion on CBC this week…finding some mundane chore to keep my hands busy as my mind follows along. Usually, I spend my mornings word crunching my own WIP. I haven’t yet read any (!) of this year’s shortlist…but I have every intention to read them all because each one sounds compelling. The conversation, as the panelists defended their choices, kept me sweeping and washing the kitchen floor. I even made cookies one morning…something I never do…just to keep my ear glued to the radio. (Don’t ask about my other options…the CBC has always been relegated to the kitchen.)

I’m delighted, although surprised, that By Chance Alone (Max Eisen) won. After all, there’s been so much written about the Second World War. Haven’t we heard enough? No, apparently the topic still needs attention. Now, just because I’ve been obsessed with this topic since my own youth, I didn’t assume that others would still find it so relevant. The participants of that hellish time are fading fast. Now is the time to listen to those personal experiences. 

For my personal journey, the focus in not on the victims, but on the perpetrators. Both my parents were active in the war…as Germans. For me, to understand the enemy, is to understand my family…is to understand myself. That’s why I’m saving my pennies and my nickels for this summer’s adventure overseas. I need to understand how my father, at eighteen, joined the Luftwaffe. I need to understand how my mother walked through the East Prussian winter to escape the Soviets. I need to understand why they left that bombed out world to start again in this country…a country that has itself been ravished by the violent usurpers who now govern.

So I have to read By Chance Alone and I have to read the others books. They’re relevant to my life and to the lives of my children who can’t help but take for granted all this good stuff…this free thinking and free moving society. The Canada Reads book discussion gives me hope. We aren’t all just navigating traffic around shopping malls. We're trying to understand why any of this matters.

Baltic Writers

Günter_Grass_(1986)_by_Erling_Mandelmann

I finished reading Günther Grass’s 2002 novel, Crabwalk, this week.  It’s translated from the German, Im Krebsgang,by Krishna Winston. Now, I might have a masters’ in 20^thcentury German lit, but must admit, I’d never read any of his work. I was probably too obsessed with Heinrich Böll, one of my all-time favourite writers. What drew me to Grass now is Ruta Sepetys’s 2016 YA novel, From Salt to Sea. She includes a wonderful list of resource material at the end of her novel. 

Both books concern the sinking of the ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff. Both books cover territory that my own WIP touches on. Because the German title has the word Krebs in it, which means cancer, I'd missed the war connection. But the title refers to the wobbly, unsteady way a crab walks. And so it is, with the plot. 

I recommend reading both novels, end to end.  What makes Grass’s book so compelling is his ability to connect the dots, and then transfer the issues that led to the 1945 tragedy into a modern and relevant internet-based story. While Sepetys’s book zooms in on the tragedy of specific victims, Grass focuses on the bigger picture. He seems especially drawn to the man for whom the German luxury ship—used for German vacationers through the Kraft durch Freude —(or Strength through Joy program) was named. The man, Wilhelm Gustloff, was a prominent Nazi, who was shot in Davos, Switzerland by David Frankfurter, a Jew in 1936. Gustloff’s birthday was January 30, (1895) —fifty years to the day that the ship went down (in 1945), the same day the main character, Paul, was born, and the same date (in 1933) that Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, twelve years earlier.

Grass received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999. Another Baltic-based writer, Thomas Mann, received the same recognition back in 1929. Grass’s birth town was Danzig (now at #13 Lelewela in Gdansk) Poland while Thomas Mann had a summer home in Nida, Lithuania. More places to add to my Baltic itinerary.  Hope to share photos here on this blog.

Marinesko's Legacy

I’m re-reading Ruta Sepetys’s novel, Salt to the Sea, not only because it’s a really good book but also because it’s set near the Baltic—January, 1945. The story centers on the greatest maritime disaster, the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, when more than nine thousand people (many women and children) drowned in the icy Baltic after three Soviet torpedo strikes.

Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-H27992,_Lazarettschiff_"Wilhelm_Gustloff"_in_Danzig.jpg ‎

I’ll be biking through most of the places Sepetys's that characters travel, but Gdynia, Poland (called Gotenhafen during the Nazi years)—the goal of Sepetys’s four main characters—is not on the itinerary. However, since Gdynia’s only about twenty kilometers further down the coast from Gdansk, perhaps I'll be able to fit in a day trip. Its maritime museums should be interesting.  

Originally part of Poland, Gdynia was once the busiest port on the Baltic. In September 1939, when the Nazis invaded Poland, they renamed it Gotenhafen, (meaning harbor of the gods) and used it as a port for their Kriegsmarine. Crushing attacks in the final months of the war—by both the fleeing Nazis and the offensive Soviets—destroyed most of the city. 

There's a 1960 movie called Darkness fell on Gotenhafen. (Nacht fiel über Gotenhafen) which I will try and hunt down. 

When in Kaliningrad, I’ll be hunting down the bronze sculpture dedicated to the Soviet commander who fired the three fatal S13 torpedoes. Alex Marinesko later ended up in the gulag system because of bad behaviour due to his heavy drinking.  He died in 1963. Decades later, in 1990, he was proclaimed a Hero of the Soviet Union by Gorbachev.

Marinesko is an important character in Günter Grass’s 2002, award-winning novel Crabwalk and over in St. Petersburg, the Submarine Museum is named after him.

Baltic Dreaming

From the Baltic Bike Travel website: www.bbtravel.lt

So excited! Finally, this meanderer gets to do some more off-road meandering. By that, I mean digging around for ghosts still calling for me from overseas. I’ve put down my deposit for a September bike tour from Riga, Latvia, through Lithuania, the Kaliningrad Oblast to Gdansk in Poland. Maybe I’ll find some remnants of my family. An old linden tree, perhaps? Stones, for sure. Amber, maybe. I'll get to hear the rhythm of those Baltic waves pounding the sandy beaches and shiver in the Baltic's salt spray. Can't wait!

For years now, I’ve been immersed in history books, photographs, films and memoirs set in East Prussia of the 1930s and 40s.  I've been digging up my mom’s tumultuous, pre-Canadian, life. 

Biking seems to be the right way to appreciate this natural and historical landscape. Now, if only Manitoba's snow would go away so I could get my cycling muscles into shape. 

Good time for more research. I’ll share some of my reading material soon. Check out the images haunting my dreams here.