Someone on the train struck a match and lit a cigarette. A man snatched it, stubbed it out, and pressed the blade of a stiletto behind the smoker’s ear.
“Perhaps you’d like to radio the Russians to meet us in Tolkemit?” he growled.
The train had no blackout shades; every lightbulb had been removed. Katie smiled to herself. Another fine example of Wehrmacht efficiency.
She worked for the provisioning office of the OKH, command center for the Eastern Front. No one spoke of defeat on the Friday before Christmas 1944, but every officer warned her not to go home.
A frigid wind blew through the carriage. She wore slacks under a skirt, blouse, pullover, cardigan, wool coat—and still felt the cold. An old woman swaddled in scarves nudged her.
“Trink dees brandy. Make you varm. Shtop de cashtanets,” she said, imitating Katie’s chattering teeth. “I haf granddaughter your age.” She thrust a flask toward her.
The cheap brandy burned a path down Katie’s throat. “Thank you,” she said, returning it. Exhausted from a week of late-night air raids, she nodded off to the train wheels’ steady clack.
Strange men in uniform—German, Russian, American—tormented her dreams. They all marched around the Berlin depot, snatching cigarettes from travelers. The German grabbed her and pressed a knife to her throat. She screamed—waking to the old woman shaking her.
Outside, Tolkemit lay blanketed in six inches of fresh snow. Katie squeezed the woman’s arm. “Merry Christmas,” she called, racing for the door.
The wind whipped as she stepped down. Nanni’s grand house, last before her mother’s stone cottage, loomed ahead. An empty stork nest perched on the tile roof. Old wives’ omens be damned—had storks brought Nanni luck? Her family had escaped last September. Were they safe? Alive?
Katie pushed through the pull of childhood memories: Greta the fishwife with her basket of fish heads, flirting with deckhands in the harbor. Maybe this spring the storks wouldn’t return. She slogged the last steps to the cottage, a tear stinging her cheek—whether from cold or old grief, she couldn’t say.
Inside, she found no decorations, no baking smells—only her mother folding clothing and bedding into the old steamer trunk.
“What’s going on? Why are you packing?”
“The rumors are terrifying. The Russians are in Tilsit, and they will come here next. They burn the houses, rape the women.”
“The officers say we will force them back to Russia.”
Her stepfather, Klaus, limped from the bedroom. “Foolish child. Get back on the train. Don’t get off in Berlin.” He handed her a slip of paper. “My sister is in Heidelberg. We will be there—if it is still there.” He smashed a wooden chair against the cast iron stove, feeding two legs into the dying embers. “Go. Get on the train.”
Katie stepped toward her mother, arms outstretched. Rosa shoved the family Bible into her hands. “Go. Now. Be safe.” She returned to folding.
Katie found herself back on the train, unsure how she’d gotten there. Surrealism belonged in Berlin, not Tolkemit. She stared out the window at the waterfront, the fishing boats in the harbor. She pressed her palm to the glass and watched dark masts dissolve into snowbound trees.
Listless, she opened the Bible. Several pages in, a 20-Reichsmark note. She fanned through the book—two hundred marks in all. At the back, tucked into Revelation, a photograph of her mother and the fine gold cross she always wore. Katie clasped the cross around her neck. Her mother had known she would come home for Christmas.
When the train arrived in Berlin, Katie secured the Bible and its hidden treasures in her handbag. Her papers marked her as OKH staff—too dangerous to flee—so she got off the train.
Week by week, the Wünsdorf compound where she lived and worked emptied. The wind carried a breath of early spring when she reached her workplace to find chaos. Ordered to the commandant’s office, she hurried to the rear of the building. The back door stood open. A massive fire burned several meters away.
Someone pulled her into the file room. Hilde, another clerk, sorted files into two piles while the commandant, posture rigid, approved which to burn. Officers hauled armfuls to the fire. The commandant pointed Katie toward a file cabinet. “Start there.”
They worked all day and most of the night until only six boxes remained from two large rooms. Exhausted, Katie collapsed into bed still in her work clothes—only to be woken by air raid sirens.
A neighbor pounded on her door. “Hurry up, Katie.”
“I’ll be right there,” she called, pulling the covers over her head.
The door crashed open under Herr Schmidt’s boot. “Now, Katie! The flares are on top of us.” He dragged her down the stairs. The stairwell shuddered as the first bomb hit. Schmidt lifted her and leapt the last four steps into the shelter.
The heavy door clanged shut. A dim bulb cast shadow over thirty frightened faces. Another bomb’s percussion rattled the stone. Schmidt’s calm hand on her knee reminded her of Nanni’s father.
“For every time we’ve descended into this hell, we’ve risen like the Phoenix,” he said.
A deafening crash snuffed the bulb. People tumbled from benches. Dust filled the air.
“We should call roll,” Schmidt said, touching Katie’s arm.
“Zwei. Katie Kemkowski,” she answered, passing the count to the next.
When the count reached thirty, silence settled. The bombs moved further away, but the all clear never came.
After nine hours in darkness, a scraping sounded overhead. “We should shout,” Schmidt said.
“What if they’re Russian?” Katie asked.
“I’d rather be alive with Russians than dead here,” another man muttered.
They shouted until metal tapping answered—Morse code. Schmidt laughed. “We come.” Then, four short taps. “HH?”
“It means we’re being saved by the Fatherland,” Katie said flatly. The shelter erupted in cheers. Katie clutched her mother’s cross.
Hours later, rescuers knocked like Sunday visitors. The lever shifted, and sunlight poured through the doorway where the first floor had been.
Katie’s knees buckled. Hilde ran to her.
“Katie! Thank God you’re alive. We must hurry. There’s a train waiting.”
“But I have no suitcase—no clothes—nothing.”
“I found your bag in the rubble. Clothes are gone, but everyone contributed something. Your Bible is still inside.”
At the train, Katie’s suitcase was loaded into the baggage car. She sat on it. Six boxes of files huddled in one corner. “Are those the documents that didn’t burn?” Hilde nodded.
The train stopped daily for food, water, and to empty chamber pots. After three days, the commandant summoned them to the passenger car. Katie opened her Bible as if reading scripture, planning instead for Munich: a room to rent, a job, forged papers.
That night she dreamed the war was over—until American planes roared in real life, strafing the train. Bullets tore through the carriage. She dove to the floor, wedged between seats, trembling until the danger passed.
When they reached Pasing, someone handed her suitcase back—a fresh bullet hole in its side. “Holy Mother of God. I sat on that.”
The commandant sat her down. “They’re gone. The Russians have taken East Prussia and Pomerania. They’re heading for Berlin.” Tears slid down his cheeks. He pressed an envelope into her hand. Inside lay a single capsule. “If they take you—don’t let them.”
Katie slid the envelope into her coat without touching his hand. She picked up her suitcase and walked out. Two German officers waited in a black Mercedes. She slid into the back beside Hilde, her mind racing as the car headed toward Munich.
Author’s Note
While Escape from Tolkemit is fiction, it’s inspired by my mother’s true memories of growing up in Tolkemit and making her last trip home in December 1944. You can see real film from Tolkemit—shot just months after she fled—in the Visuals Room at the Ink and Ember Studio, where some of our family was still living at the time.
