March 14, 2007
By CJ Schuler
In the closing months of the Second World War, Ida, a young mother of three, is living in a farming village in East Prussia. The farthest-flung corner of the German Reich - its capital Königsberg (now the Russian port Kaliningrad) was 600km from Berlin - the province was separated from the rest of country by a strip of Polish territory. The opening chapters of The Flight are a lyrical evocation of the rural life and culture of this remote region, with its mysterious forests and amber-strewn coast. Many inhabitants had roots predating its medieval conquest by the Teutonic Knights. The author's surname is a Baltic one, also found in Lithuania.
The Flight
Bryan Malessa: An unsentimental account of the refugees we weren't allowed to pityBy CJ Schuler
In the closing months of the Second World War, Ida, a young mother of three, is living in a farming village in East Prussia. The farthest-flung corner of the German Reich - its capital Königsberg (now the Russian port Kaliningrad) was 600km from Berlin - the province was separated from the rest of country by a strip of Polish territory. The opening chapters of The Flight are a lyrical evocation of the rural life and culture of this remote region, with its mysterious forests and amber-strewn coast. Many inhabitants had roots predating its medieval conquest by the Teutonic Knights. The author's surname is a Baltic one, also found in Lithuania.
But all is not well in this apparent idyll. Ida's husband is at the front, her eldest son Karl in the Hitler Youth and the town's remaining Jews have disappeared. As the Red Army advances and the sound of artillery fire grows closer, she realises that she must flee their ancestral home and guide her other children to safety.
They set out on foot through the forest, crossing enemy lines amid confused fighting. The enormity of the situation becomes apparent when one of the boys climbs a water tower to see a long column of people trudging along the frozen river Pregel to the coast.
These refugees are among the first of some 16 million Germans forced to flee eastern and central Europe between the end of the war and 1948. The half-century of silence about this enormous ethnic cleansing - known in Germany as the Flight - is understandable. In Communist countries, criticism of Soviet policy was impermissible, while in Western Europe it was widely thought that any sympathy for German refugees would be tantamount to an apologia for the Third Reich.
Only since the fall of the Iron Curtain has the subject begun to be discussed, and it remains highly sensitive. The Flight joins a small but growing body of literature on the subject, but the novel does not seek to exonerate the Germans. Through the character of Karl, it examines the East Prussians' complicity in the fate of their Jewish fellow-citizens, and the day-to-day indoctrination of hitherto decent people.
Recounted in sober, restrained prose, The Flight is unremitting in its depiction of the brutality of war and conquest. But there is something uplifting in the way Ida endures her terrifying journey with quiet courage, determined to protect her children at all costs.
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The Indenpendent, UK