Prologue Part 3 - The Last Daughter of Prussia

  This is the final part of the prologue which will be published in my upcoming novel The Last Daughter of Prussia.

My great-grandmother Magdalene von Sanden at her home in East Prussia.
She was a true daughter of the land, deeply spiritual in the sense of being connected to all things,
nature in particular.
Photo (c) Gottlieb Property–Familienbesitz Gottlieb

I went back to search for the estate home (now Poland) and found her grave hidden in the forest.
 It is quite amazing that the headstone is still standing after all this time.
Photo (c) Marina Gottlieb Sarles

  I hope what I have written in the first two sections of the prologue helps the reader understand the turmoil of those final winter months of WW2. As my research unfolded, I realized that I had to write a love story – one that was set in this tumultuous time and gave expression to the agony and inspiration that lovers from different ethnic backgrounds experienced. I wanted to include their triumphs and tragedies as well as those of their families. And how could I leave out the Trakehner horses whose determination on the trek was the purest expression of courage and love?

Pythagoras a famous Trakehner sire prior to WW2

  I wanted to make the story interesting for readers who perhaps wouldn’t read history books and who might lump all Germans together without sympathy for the plight of the East Prussians.

East Prussians fleeing on the great trek

  Having said that, I must confess that despite all the digging up of facts I did, the book often wrote me. Many nights, I encountered ghosts hovering by my bedside, their silent voices imploring me to bring their story to paper. I’m a writer but I have also dedicated many years of my life to the healing arts. I find it possible to walk the threshold between reality and the spirit world. However, for this book, my intention was to stay grounded in factual details.

Nevertheless, the ghosts came. Looking into my dreams with hollow eyes, they urged me to view the columns of starving women dragging their children through the snow. I saw babies frozen to death in carriages, old men shivering by the wayside, hearts so broken at the thought of leaving their land, that they could not take another step forward. I heard the whine of bombers, the blasts of artillery and guns and I watched the horses falter and fall on bloodstained fields of ice. Each time I awoke, I found myself feeling more and more obligated to remembering. I felt a moral responsibility to these people who never dared to speak of their ordeal because they were German. I felt the need to give a voice to those who could not talk about their vanished land because the memories were just too painful.

The crescent-shaped island in the middle of the Guja Lake, East Prussia.
It was a view they saw every day from their verandah
 but once they fled, the island was only a memory swept away on the tide of war.
Photo (c) Gottlieb Property - Familienbesitz Gottlieb

  I began to understand my grandmother and her dream to return home to East Prussia, the land of golden amber and green forests full of elk. In her heart she knew the dream would remain unfulfilled for as long as she lived. She would never stand by the sparkling Guja Lake and watch the swallows soar against the sapphire colored sky. The yellow wood anemones pearled in dew would droop low to the ground without her ever picking one again. When she turned to look up her house on the hill, the heavy oak door to the foyer would stay closed.

Yellow wood anemone painted by my grandmother Edith von Sanden
Photo (c)  Gottlieb Property - Familienbesitz Gottlieb

  Perhaps, her loss is justified in God’s eyes for in some miniscule way it helps maintain the balance on the scales of devastation where the corpses of genocide are piled high. But does the judgment that decrees, ‘Germans deserve every awful thing they got,’ lessen her loss? I think not.

  I honestly hope that the readers will not think I am diminishing the ungodly cruelty of the holocaust. I am profoundly aware of the atrocities committed by Germans against Jews and others who were murdered and forced into death camps. While researching the camps, I felt my own life force dwindle to a tortured breath. I felt the piercing shame and terror deep in the DNA of my own German bones. Still, at the risk of being condemned, I want to say that the people of East Prussia were also victims.

Photo (c) Christine Matthäi

  My grandmother has been dead a long time, but from her unseen place of refuge I still hear her whisper, “Tell the story so that others may know what happened. Tell it so that people remember and have compassion for anyone killed in hatred, prejudice and war. Tell it for the Jews, the Germans, the Roma gypsies – every slain tribe and forgotten soul, and for any unjustly slaughtered animal in the history of humanity. Tell it so that healing may happen in all hearts. I have done what she asked, to the best of my ability.

(c) All content and photos are the private property of the Gottlieb family, unless otherwise stated or linked,  and may not be used without permission.

(c) Privatbesitz Gottlieb Familie

Prologue (Part 2) The Last Daughter of Prussia

   For Part Two of the prologue to my soon-to-be published book The Last Daughter of Prussia, I hope to give you, my faithful blog readers, some insight into the background of the novel and what the times were like when my heroine, Manya, a bold aristocratic woman and her lover, Joshi, a charismatic young Roma gypsy, were struggling to survive.

 A Roma gypsy couple at a German concentration camp during WW2

  The Roma gypsies in East Prussia faced disaster during WW2. The idea to make Joshi Karas a Roma came as I was reading my grandfather’s book Schicksal OstPreussen – East Prussia’s Destiny. I learned that there were gypsies living on my family’s estate with whom my mother and my grandparents were very friendly. (See my earlier post - The Forgotten Holocaust.) One night, they disappeared. When my grandfather went to the police to inquire about them, he was warned that associating with ‘asocials’ was a crime punishable by death. Later, he discovered that his Roma friends had been shot or carted off to a concentration camp. I based Joshi’s story on this account. Many Roma were sent to Auschwitz, however, the closest death camp was Stutthof and as it was located near Danzig (the port city on the Baltic coast to which many refugees, including Manya, were headed) I used it as his ill-fated destination.

The Death Gate through which my hero Joshi passed
when he arrived at Stutthof concentration camp.
(Photo M. Gottlieb Sarles)

Roma gypsies arriving at another concentration camp (Belzec)

While the female warden, Elisabeth Martens is a fictional character, sexual exploitation of prisoners by both male and female wardens has been documented in accounts about concentration camps. It is estimated that 1.5 million Roma gypsies were murdered in Germany from 1935 to the end of the war. These gifted people, so unique in their ethnicity, were victims of yet another holocaust – a forgotten one. I wanted them to be remembered.

Lastly, in this chaotic arena of Nazis, marauding Russian soldiers and fleeing humanity were the Trakehner horses – East Prussia’s symbol of excellence and beauty, bred on the land for over two centuries. Loyal to the end, they struggled through that bitterest of winters without food or shelter to save their owners. My mother owned such a horse. I have attempted to reveal his bravery and big-heartedness in both Aztec’s and Shambhala’s characters.

My mother Owanta Gisela von Sanden in Guja, East Prussia
 on her Trakehner Dandy before the war.
 He was an amazing horse. She taught him to lie down while she was on his back.
He did not make it to the west.
Photo: (c) Gottlieb Property

The stables where Dandy was kept  before the war.
Photo (c) Gottlieb Property

The stable building in Guja as I saw it in 2008.  Though completely dilapidated, it is still standing.
I took this photo when I returned to my roots to find my grandparents' estate.
Photo M. Gottlieb Sarles

  The more I read about the Trakehners, the more I felt that they were the true heroes of the trek. Undeterred by race, creed or nationality, they hauled everyone across the ice including Russian and Polish prisoners-of-war and any remaining Jews or gypsies who had survived the Nazis. Obviously, the mass of refugees was German, but the horses weren’t interested in cultural differences, nor did they care about political beliefs. Surely, on that trek there were many Germans who sympathized with Hitler, but there were also many, like my grandparents, who did not. It didn’t matter to the horses. They focused on survival. Sadly, only 25 of the herd of 1200 warm-blooded thoroughbreds from the famous Trakehner Horse Farm in Trakehnen, made it safely to the west. The rest perished along the way, were eaten, stolen or shot in cold blood by Russian soldiers whose leader, Josef Stalin, had given orders to annihilate anything German, no matter how beautiful.

Fetysz Ox,
the famous Trakehner stallion who was tragically shot by the invading Russian Army,
but who nevertheless left his legacy as even Olympic competitors carry his valuable blood today.
This horse greatly influenced my writing of The Last Daughter of Prussia.
I could not imagine that anyone would kill such a beautiful animal
and when I learned of his death, a plot about escape began to form in my head and I started writing and
bringing in the characters, the land. the horses and the war.

 Thanks for reading. There is one more part of the prologue to come, so please stay posted!

– Marina Gottlieb Sarles

(c) All content and photos are the private property of the Gottlieb family, unless otherwise stated or linked,  and may not be used without permission.

(c) Privatbesitz Gottlieb Familie

Synopsis: The Last Daughter of Prussia

  

    
   For those of you who keep asking to know more about my recently completed novel The Last Daughter of Prussia,  here is a short synopsis that will hopefully leave you wanting to know more...

    In January, 1945, in the final winter of World War II, Manya von Falken, a self-possessed young woman of the East Prussian aristocracy and her family, famous breeders of Trakehner stallions, are caught between the advancing Russian Army and orders from Adolf Hitler forbidding them to leave.

    Near the home of the family blacksmith, Manya is almost raped by Golitsin, a Russian Major determined to become a member of Joseph Stalin’s inner circle and under orders to kill all Germans in his path. A skilled huntress, Manya badly wounds Golitsin, slicing his arm from shoulder to fingertip before escaping with her horse, Aztec.

Fetzy Oz, the horse that inspired Aztec

   
 Fearing for their lives, she and her family defy Hitler’s orders and flee. Before they leave, Manya shares her escape route with her lover, Joshi Karas, a gifted and charismatic twenty-six year old Roma Gypsy who has broken with tradition to become a medical doctor. When his clan is murdered in a Nazi raid, Joshi is captured and taken to a concentration camp.

 While Joshi fights for his life, Manya travels north to the Frisches Haff, a frozen part of the Baltic Sea, which she and her family must cross to get to the west. However, the journey across the ice holds an even greater danger. Golitsin is just behind her. His goal: to track her down and kill her.

Will Manya and her family reach safety? Will she reunite with Joshi?  And what happens to the people of East Prussia and their beloved Trakehner horses?

 (c) All content and photos are the private property of the Gottlieb family, unless otherwise stated or linked,  and may not be used without permission.

(c) Privatbesitz Gottlieb Familie