Leaving war-ravaged Germany in June 1949 to follow my GI husband to the United States took a desperate leap of faith.  I had many indications that I would not be finding paradise, but it could not be worse, I thought, than what I left behind.  Munich, my hometown, was destroyed beyond recognition, showing only faint signs of awakening from its coma.  I could not imagine that it would rise again in my lifetime.  When I tried to visualize the future, it was like staring into thick fog on a dark winter’s night. 

            My career as a trained classical dancer was dead.  To survive the desolation of the postwar years, I had worked for the US Special Service entertaining American troops and, for the most part, they had treated me well.  But with the rotation of the fighting units came many changes in attitude, conditions and opportunities.  The replacements expressed more hostility toward the Germans, cut out all special privileges such as meals, transportation and housing, and the Special Service brought so many shows now from the US that the demand for German entertainers dwindled. 

            In 1946, desperate to keep on dancing and working, I joined a Hungarian troupe.   During this time, I met Robert, a GI and advanceman for an American show, who took an obsessive fancy to me, found out that I was German, not Hungarian, traveling under a false ID, and took advantage of it.  Crude, brazen, obtrusive, he had the attitude that “to the victor belong the spoils.”  His attentions rejected, he bribed his way into my hotel room one night and under threats to have the troupe and me arrested, added me to his list of conquests.  This marked the end of my career.  I became pregnant and had to be grateful that he admitted to being the father and wanted to marry me. 

            Robert’s stateside family was not at all thrilled to have a so called ‘Fraulein’ or ‘German Nazi’ as a daughter-in-law, who they believed had entrapped their son.  At the same time, German sentiments were no kinder.  Tagged as an Ami-Liebchen, my child and I were branded with shame.  Desperation persuaded me to take the plunge into the unknown and follow my rapist to the United States to be his wife. 

            This is my story. 

So, This is America!

 Chapter 1

Between Worlds

            This was the moment of no return.  My heart pounded in my throat as my eighteen-month-old daughter Luzi and I boarded the plane to New York.  A young, pretty American stewardess came to my aid, took my bags, stashed them under the seats, then pulled down a bassinet attached to the cabin wall where I could put my child down for a nap.  Her courtesy, friendliness and concern surprised me.  Because of widespread anti-German sentiments, most recently expressed by the airport staff during our layover in Brussels, my armor was up, expecting more of the same.  The war and Nazi crimes had made Germans targets for unrestrained hostilities.  On that plane, however, I was treated like everyone else.  It was a hopeful sign.

            Time for take-off.  The plane vibrated as its engines opened full throttle and lifted us into the clouds.  Minutes later, we broke through into the bluest sky I had ever seen.  Below spread a solid blanket of cottony white fluff, almost making one want to jump out and test its softness.  I marveled at man’s inventive genius that had made flight possible, and felt privileged to experience such wonder. 

            The drone of the engines lulled Luzi to sleep.  From time to time, the plane’s captain informed passengers about speed, altitude and weather conditions.  Two stewardesses took turns distributing pillows, blankets, drinks of all sorts, and trays with food.  Fearful I might draw unwanted attention with my German accent and break this spell of amicability, I asked for nothing extra. 

            Once the clouds below us parted, I saw the outline of a landmass amidst a black- blue ocean.  Thereafter, I saw only ocean.  It caused my anxiety to flare.  What if the plane had engine trouble?  In an emergency, I saw no solid ground where it could land.  Every muscle in my body tightened.  Instinctively, I lifted Luzi onto my lap and held her tight. 

            As I pondered our vulnerability, suspended in midair between two continents, without solid ground in sight for a landing, I realized with a chuckle the parallel to my situation – between two worlds without a safe place to land. 

            Luzi, lively and curious, demanded my attention.  I tried to keep her entertained so she would not disturb the other passengers.  We played hand games, looked at pictures in magazines, and recited nursery rhymes.  From time to time she paused, looking and asking for her “Oma?  Opa?” and her dog Baerli. 

            “You’ll be seeing your Daddy and your other Grandma and Grandpa soon,” I said. 

            Stroking her blond, silken curls and looking into her sweet, trusting, innocent face, pangs of guilt stabbed my heart for ripping her out of a loving environment and taking her with me into the dark unknown.  She hardly knew her father, and her American grandparents had expressed only reluctant acceptance of her and of me.  Still aching from the painful goodbyes at the Munich airport, unable to banish the picture of my weeping parents from my mind, I tried to justify my decision to leave home by recounting all the reasons why I left and why I had to leave. 

            During times when Luzi quietly entertained herself, I tried to form a picture in my mind of that new world we were about to enter.  My mother, who had spent two years with her sisters in Philadelphia around 1908, described her stay in positive terms.  She returned to Germany only to care for her sick mother.  The photos she had saved and treasured showed life of forty years ago – women in long dresses with corseted waistlines, wearing elaborate hats, or posing by a horse drawn carriage. One was a scene at the beach with my mother in a bathing suit that looked like a sailor uniform with a skirt down to her knees.  I assumed that more than women’s fashions had changed since then. 

            Other images came to mind of an untamed world described by Karl May, a nineteenth-century German author.  A favorite among German youth, he wrote about feather-crowned natives with painted faces, inhabiting the American continent.  On the other end of the scale were the glamour-ads in US magazines of smiling Americans in gleaming new cars against the skyline of high-rise cities. 

            My husband was from Nebraska, “the bread basket of the world,” as he had referred to his home state.  It had neither ocean beaches nor high-rise cities, but cornfields as far as the eye could see.  He was the son of a highly respected, devout Christian family in Omaha, and sometimes showed me newspaper articles about his titled father and honored grandfather.  In contrast, Robert’s behavior had been all but respectable or Christian. 

            I also recalled the visits from my American aunt and uncle in the mid 1930s.  Elegant, generous, and wealthy by German standards, they had never missed a chance to tell us how hard they had to work for what they had. 

            America, to me, seemed an enigma of contradictions. 

            What left the most positive impressions on me were the American GIs.  What I admired was their relaxed self-confidence, their general optimism and great national pride.  Of course, they were mostly young and had just won a war.  But they seemed accustomed to walking a much broader road compared to Germans who had to maneuver along a narrow path of social and political etiquette and restrictions, always afraid to step on somebody’s foot. 

            Time dragged on.  New York was still hours away.  Shortly before I had left home, a telegram from my American Aunt Mathie arrived, saying she and Uncle Richard would pick us up at the airport.  Luzi and I were to spend a few days with them to meet the rest of the family.  As an only child, growing up without grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins, I yearned for family.  I was already in my teens when I met my half brother for the first time.  He was a wish come true.  Tall and athletic, a long-distance runner in the 1936 Olympics, I became his ‘kleines Schwesterlein’ (little sister) and looked up to him with pride.  Less than three years later, he was killed in the war.  That left a hole in my life I had not been able to fill. 

            When we finally landed in New York, getting off the plane and making it through customs with a suitcase, two big satchels with baby things, and a fussing child in sopping wet diapers was stretching the limits of what I could handle.  Alternating between handling the bags and the paperwork, and trying to hold on to Luzi who wanted to wander off, I was a frazzled wreck by the time we got through the gate. 

            Where are Aunt Mathie and Uncle Richard?  I searched the crowd.  No luck.  Maybe they were late?  We waited. 

            Extremely hot, muggy weather sapped my strength.  Luzi squirmed and cried, badly needing a change, and I had no diapers left.  Finally, I dragged my baggage up to a counter and asked for help.  A uniformed woman behind the counter offered to watch my luggage so that I could take Luzi to the restroom, then helped me to contact my relatives.  Since I had only addresses and no phone numbers, it took a while to get hold of somebody.  An hour later, my aunt and uncle arrived, very upset over having been given false information at the airport earlier about the plane’s arrival.  So glad to see each other, we hugged and cried.  Shortly thereafter we were on our way in Richard’s car, first to their place of business, a bakery, and later to their home. 

            Coming from a war zone into a bustling city with blinking neon signs and shops full of merchandise was a dizzying experience, like emerging from the darkness of a dungeon into a bright, sunlit world.  Excitement helped Luzi and me fight off exhaustion.       At the bakery, Luzi, once diapered and fed, passed from arm to arm between my aunt and Richard’s two employees, loving the attention.  Meanwhile, Uncle Richard gave me a tour of his modern shop with its big electric mixers, huge ovens, racks of freshly baked bread and beautifully decorated cakes waiting to be boxed and delivered.  Suddenly, he looked at his watch.  “Oh, I almost forgot.  It’s time for the show,” he said. 

            Atop a refrigerator, in a partitioned space between store and work area, stood a peculiar looking black box with a glass front.  He reached up, turned a knob, then sat down in a worn, overstuffed chair.  “Come, sit down, and watch.  I’ll bet you probably have never seen television,” he chuckled and pulled up another chair.  Seconds later, the black glass turned gray and I saw a fuzzy image of a funny acting man who had Uncle Richard bending with laughter.  “That’s Milton Berle,” he pointed out. 

            I had run out of “oohs” and “aahs.”  All I could do was shake my head in amazement. 

            Aunt Mathie was preparing dinner.  “We are having lobster tonight,” she said. 

            “Lobster?  What is lobster?” I asked. 

            “See?”  She lifted a huge red, scary looking creature out of a big pot of boiling water, started hammering, crunching and separating the meat from its shell and large pinchers, then put it on a plate and brought it to the table.  Willing to try anything once, I took a bite, dipping it in a sauce as suggested.  “Yum!  I could live on that,” I raved.  Mathie looked pleased.  “You won’t get that in Nebraska,” she said. 

            Overwhelmed by so many new impressions and experiences, nothing seemed quite real to me anymore.  At times, I was not sure if I was awake or dreaming. 

            It was getting dark by the time we left the bakery.  Philadelphia was lit up like a carnival.  What a sight!  We stopped at a store to buy Luzi more diapers, walking between counters stuffed full of merchandise.  For almost a decade, German cities had languished in darkness.  Shops never stayed open beyond six o’clock, even if they had something to sell.  I had entered a wonderland. 

            For the next couple of days Aunt Mathie took me around to meet my cousins and my other aunt Kathie.  Kathie’s house buzzed with activity in preparation for a garden wedding the next day.  The introductions remained spotty as a dozen or more people kept dashing in and out between rooms and the garden outside.  Aunt Kathie, already in her seventies, sat in a rocker on the front porch, alone and crying. 

            “Why is she crying?” I asked a little girl, her granddaughter I assumed, who had taken charge of Luzi, playing hide-and-seek with her between small bushes in front of the house. 

            “She always cries,” the girl explained, shrugging her shoulders and kept on playing. 

            I walked up to Kathie, my mother’s oldest sister.  “How come you are sitting out here all by yourself?” I asked. 

             “They don’t want me.  I’m just in the way,” she said with a wave of her hand that indicated a distance between her and the rest of the family.  Her face had the same drawn-down mouth I often saw on my mother.  Nothing I said could cheer her up.  Comparing her and my mother to their always-cheerful sister Mathie, I could only wonder what it was that made people within one family so different.  None of them had it easy, and all of them had their share of heartache.  I hoped to pattern myself after Mathie. 

            During my short stay, I again met Billy the Greek, a GI who had befriended my family back in Munich, and then here in the United States.  Young, handsome, but quite shy, he had temporarily filled the hole my brother’s death had left.  For the rest of my stay, he hung around, acting like a nanny, entertaining and carrying Luzi wherever we went.  People asked if he was her daddy.  “I wish,” he answered. 

            Time rushed by too fast.  My biggest challenge still loomed ahead.  From letters my mother had written to her sisters and to Billy, they all knew of the brittle relationship between my husband and me, and they expressed concern, offering a landing spot in case my marriage failed.  I had hoped for such support and was grateful. 

            Uncle Richard drove Luzi and me to the airport to continue our journey to Omaha.  Mathie, Billy and several other family members saw us off.  “Let us know how you are doing,” Aunt Mathie said.  “Maybe we can come and visit you sometime.” 

            “If you ever need somebody...” Billy started to say but he left the sentence unfinished. 

            I left a place of sunny warmth and welcome for a doubtful future.  In the sweltering heat of the LaGuardia airport, I felt a sudden chill.  One last hug and handshake, and Luzi and I walked away and up the ramp to the plane, and on to the next phase of our lives.