Dancing Under the Red Star (37 page)

The night before our attempt, we each dressed in two sets of underwear and two sets of outer clothing and a raincoat for the wet, cold weather. It was like a scene in a spy-thriller movie, with one great difference: the personal cost of this production if we blew the scene was death, and we knew we would only get one take, one chance to get it right.

Despite the sufferings of my life, something deep inside me was still childlike and adventurous. This night I remembered the innocent games I used to play with my friends at night, outside my home in Detroit, while Papa was inside reading and Mama was doing her chores. I now felt the same exhilaration and excitement, tinged with fear. I felt a great freedom, despite the gravity of our risk, because I felt I had nothing more to lose.

We left virtually everything we owned in our apartment. My mother and I each took a purse with our documents and a few valuables, and I carried a small bag with some of Karl’s clothes and diapers. We only took one large item, a portable sewing machine: the prop.

It was still dark and very cold at five in the morning. We took a taxi all the way to East Berlin, some sixty-two miles away. We asked the driver to drop us off at the Soviet Embassy, ostensibly to extend our passports, which had to be periodically stamped by the East German and the Soviet authorities. When the taxi departed, we hurried away on foot toward the subway station. Our plan was to board a train for the Zoo Station at the border in Berlin. There a mutual friend was awaiting our arrival.

Before we reached the subway, we stopped to rest and to rehearse the crucial elements of our strategy. We had only one chance at this; we had to be flawless. Günter proposed that he go down to the station first to evaluate the situation. When he returned a short while later, he was pale and shaken. Günter was always very confident, but now he wanted to change his mind. His voice shook with fear and indecision.

He said, “Maidie, there are at least ten VOPOs down there, patrolling the station! They are doing heavy interrogations on everyone. There’s just no way, Maidie! I don’t think we can make it. Not now. We better go home and maybe try again later, at a better time, okay?”

Would I have to go into the subway station by myself? I still loved Günter, and I knew that, in his heart, he wanted out of the country too. I didn’t know how much time together we actually had left. He’d already blown it for us as a couple, and I was fairly certain we were heading for divorce. So whether he would still be my husband didn’t matter to me now. I knew what I wanted: to get across the border and back to America. I wasn’t going to allow him to disrupt my life or my happiness for one more day. For this operation, he was simply my accomplice. I needed him, and he needed me in order to pull this off.

I believed this was the most advantageous time we would ever have, and we knew people were successfully making it out. And my mother would go with me wherever I went. That sealed it for me. I looked him straight in the face. He could see I was ready to try it alone, if that’s the way it had to be.

I was adamant. “Günter, my husband, listen to me. We have no better time than this! Our time together is running out as it is. I know you want this as badly as I do. It’s now or never!”

I had swayed him. I could see the life return to his eyes. We were going for it. Now it was raining hard on the cobblestone street. It was cold and it was still dark, and I could feel my knees shaking. Günter had conceived our escape plan, and now we put the drama into action.

Mama and Karl waited upstairs in a public area while Günter and I made our way down the stairs to the commandant’s office at the gate. The plan was that I was to pose as a Russian who didn’t understand a word of German. I had an imaginary brother named Alexander in the Russian army, stationed in Potsdam. I was taking this sewing machine to him and his wife, and I had to travel across West Berlin to get to Potsdam. Günter had given me a slip of paper with Alexander’s ostensible address, but he thought the officials would be convinced by my sense of loyalty to my brother.

Günter started to explain the situation to the woman in charge. But despite the best acting job I had ever seen him do, she was not buying it. She was impatient and indifferent to the story he was spinning. This was not in the script. It was nerve-racking, but it was now my turn. As planned, Günter began a second laborious explanation to the woman, and I became very agitated, repeatedly interrupting her and Günter with angry questions—all in Russian. Günter translated, shrugging apologetically,
“Sie sprecht kein Deutsch.”

The woman was becoming nervous, and as I went on scolding, she was definitely getting upset. I believe she feared making the wrong decision. So I helped her out a bit more. I continued my routine, pointing to the sewing machine, looking very distraught, crying and cursing…only in Russian.

From their nearby posts, three or four guards were watching this scene, and they started to move in our direction as we continued our act. They stopped directly in front of us. In confusion and frustration, one of them asked,
“Was machtst du? Was ist los hier?”
(What are you doing? What’s the matter here?) But the woman official promptly and decisively took charge:
“Es ist kein problem.”
Everything was fine, she said. Evidently she didn’t want the guards to think she couldn’t control the situation. “It’s all okay,” she said. “No problem.” She motioned them away; she would take care of it. Günter and I could see that our performance was making the desired impression.

Our fate was now up to this woman. She was the judge. She still hadn’t let us through, but I knew we were close. Günter and I had to do this together, and together we seemed to have nearly pulled it off. His acting was absolutely wonderful, deserving of an Oscar! He said the same about mine. Even in the dismal state of our marriage and life together, this joint cause felt like a major victory. I thought,
Now if only we could cooperate as well in our marriage.

Though she was our judge, this woman was really just a player in this drama. I knew there was a higher judge in the case. God, and not she, would make the final decisions and determine the outcome of my life. As I stood sniffling and Günter tried to calm me down, the woman at the gate finally pulled out a form from her desk drawer. She took down our names and destination, signed and stamped the paper, and all four of us boarded the next train, carrying the sewing machine.
We made it out!

Twenty-Four

GÜNTER

A
lthough we were afraid even to breathe abnormally, once we were on the train, we were virtually home free, because the VOPOs did not board the trains. Only minutes later we arrived at the Zoo Station in West Berlin. We were finally free people. We knew that refugees like us were being housed in camps, and we would have to undergo various political screenings by representatives of the English, French, and American sectors of Berlin. But we felt tremendous joy; these things were a small price to pay for the freedom we had just gained. We didn’t worry about these formalities. The major obstacles had already been conquered.

We stayed in various refugee camps in West Berlin, including two months at a camp in Zehlendorf. During our brief stay, we visited the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial at Die Gedächtniskirche, a bombed-out church on Kurfürstendamm, in the center of the town. The Berliners had preserved the partially destroyed building as a macabre monument to the war and the tremendous destruction of the city. For many blocks in all directions, the war-torn buildings bore witness to the overwhelming devastation of World War II.

Moving freely around the city, I was acutely aware of being in a free country for the first time in more than twenty-five years. It was not the United States, not America, but a democratic society nonetheless. It felt wonderful. I saw it as the second-to-last hurdle before I returned to my true home. Berlin was not home, but it was a very tolerable and a very fortunate place for us. I was grateful for West Germany and grateful also to Günter, whose grand scheme had brought us here.

I made a point of visiting the American Embassy in Berlin to ask about returning to America. The regular employee at that desk was on vacation, and a poorly informed substitute clerk advised me that “no procedures can be initiated regarding your return to the United States unless you are in possession of a Western passport.” I learned later that this was a major error on his part, another nearly unforgivable event in this ongoing comedy of errors that made up my life. Therefore, due to this expert advice, I applied for a German passport instead, along with one for my mother. These passports were promptly granted, permitting us to move out of the refugee camp and officially enter West Germany.

The West Berlin Refugee Organization flew us out to a refugee camp called Friedland, where we stayed for a month. In September 1958 we left by train for Hanover, where an old friend of ours from Inta had already helped Günter get a job at the Volkswagen plant. Our railway carriage didn’t have seats for all three of us, so I left Karl with my mother in one car, and I found a space in the next. This reasonable alternative turned into a frantic adventure; unbeknownst to us, our adjoining cars were disconnected at one of the stations along the way. When I got off the train in Hanover, Karl and Mama were missing, throwing me into shock and panic.
Where was my little Karlie?
Once again, awful scenes from my past came up, and I vividly imagined all of the horrible possibilities. Fortunately, there were Red Cross staff at the train station, and they went into action at my frenzied appeal. Two hours later we were reunited, to everyone’s delight and relief.

For the next three years we subleased a portion of an apartment in Hanover. A wonderful family—a husband, wife, and two young daughters—let us use two of their six rooms. The daughters, older than baby Karl, would play with him for hours. There was no kitchen or running water in our living space; we converted an unheated solarium into a makeshift: kitchen, installing a double-burner, propane-gas tabletop stove. In the winters we had to crack the built-up ice and heat water on the stove in order to wash up. These awkward daily arrangements seemed quite tolerable, however, in light of the conditions we had already survived.

Things between Günter and me were relatively peaceful, but much was missing. My child and my mother were being well cared for, but a major part of me was unsatisfied, lonely, and desperately crying out for something more. I didn’t know how to fill that void, and neither did Günter. I don’t think he really tried, keeping very much to himself. We were growing increasingly distant. Our marriage was like a dam that had sprung a leak. If it couldn’t be fixed quickly, it would soon give way entirely; the impending flood would sweep away whatever foundation was left. A part of me still cared, but I didn’t have much left. And I don’t know whether Günter cared anymore or not. Maybe there was nothing left for him to give me.

Perhaps we were both damaged goods and just didn’t know it. Perhaps all the difficult years before we were together had depleted our endurance and undermined our motivation for marriage. Even before we met, our lives had been nearly destroyed, our spirits nearly crushed. We had deep-rooted issues that required attention, but neither of us had the resources to remedy them. It was also possible that, in my haste to start a family, I had married the wrong person. And Günter, well, maybe he shouldn’t have married at all; he wasn’t a man for such commitment and responsibility. I don’t think he really wanted our marriage to continue, and I was beginning to feel the same way. Nevertheless, our life together continued to limp along.

We learned that the West German government was providing special help for returning war prisoners. My husband was entitled to considerable retroactive compensation, a fixed amount of money per diem, counting from the very first day of his captivity until the day he was officially released from the Soviet Union. As a former political prisoner, I too was entitled to a generous compensation and an additional, smaller allotment for my son. We owned only a few worn and tattered clothes and had no furniture, so this newfound wealth was very welcome. Most of it went for warm clothes and necessary home furnishings. Working at the Volkswagen factory in Hanover, Günter was making a reasonable wage and provided us with a relatively decent standard of living. Having our finances on a smoother track helped lessen the tensions between us.

I began to realize that I was missing my good friends in Russia. Those women knew my inner secrets, the longings of my heart, and they had shaped the person I had become. They had always stayed in my mind and in my prayers. Now I felt a serious urge to see them again, but I had to face the fact that this was virtually impossible. I could never correspond with them from the West for fear of jeopardizing their lives and exposing our whereabouts to the Russian authorities.

The Soviets were masters of intrigue and information gathering and still used ironclad methods for handling defectors wherever they found them, in Germany or abroad. They had long arms. They had their ways. It did not matter that I was
and am
an American citizen who had never requested or accepted Soviet citizenship during my long-extended “vacation” in Russia. It would have been foolish for me to reveal my location on paper via letters to friends. We heard terrible stories about individuals and families who had gotten away only to be destroyed by Soviet agents. The Russians never gave up, and I knew they had people looking for us even now. Nothing was worth the risk of exposure. Secrecy was paramount.