The German
I recently saw one of my regular patients. She is now in her late sixties. She was born in the former East Germany a few years after the end of the second world war, but her family had been able to move to West Germany. She had immigrated to the United States after getting married to an American soldier posted there.
She had two sons from this marriage. Unfortunately, her marriage ended in a divorce and she brought up her two sons on her own. She worked as a waitress.
The older son was single and lived with her. Her younger son had joined the army, but was murdered several years ago. She had no grandchildren and no other close family in the United States.
She had developed several medical problems, but kept working long hours as a waitress. On her most recent visit, I greeted her in German, “Gutten Tag Fraulein” (good day miss). I had learnt this from Google translate. Frau, not Fraulein, she corrected me. I am not so little anymore, and Fraulein is for the younger single women.
We laughed together. At the end of her visit, I asked her how her family made it to West Germany. I have read about the Berlin wall, and how many people were killed trying to cross the border in those days.
It was the early 1950’s she told me. The Russians and their East German allies were starting to close the borders as large numbers of East Germans were crossing into West Germany. The Berlin wall had not yet been built and crossing the border was still legally allowed if someone needed medical treatment on the other side.
Her mother came up with a plan. They had a family friend who was an ambulance driver who also wanted to defect. He would drive the family across the border in his ambulance on the pretext of getting my patient (who was seven at the time) medical care.
The family of five (my patient’s parents and her brother and sister) got in the back of the ambulance. The children were seated on a stack of down comforters. My patient’s skin was dyed yellow by her mother to make her appear to have jaundice and look sick. She also had a note from her family doctor.
The border in those days was manned by Russian
soldiers. On the West German side were American soldiers. It was still the
early days of the cold war and at that time she tells me the Russians and Americans
were often friendly.
They got to the border and went through the check point. Just as they were about to get through, a Russian officer approached. The ambulance driver panicked and hit the accelerator. My patient was thrown at the back door of the ambulance and it opened and she fell out. She fell into a puddle and stained her dress. She remembers hitting her head and her mother screaming. The ambulance had stopped on the other side of the border. There were three Russian soldiers and perhaps twenty Americans, all heavily armed.
The little seven-year-old girl was not hurt, but the yellow dye was peeling from her skin and all the soldiers were watching. She picked herself up and walked across the border back to her mother. The Russians did not interfere.
Were you scared, I asked my patient? It happened so quickly, that she said that she did not have much time to think. Her family made a new life in West Germany, where she grew up. She eventually moved to the United States after her marriage.
What an amazing story, I said. She just gave me a smile.
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