Dancing Under the Red Star (8 page)

Papa came home one day with tears in his eyes and told my mother of the atrocities he had seen in the factory. He said the Russian workers were stealing the leather conveyor belts from the expensive imported machines in order to repair their boots. He sat with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, and he said, “Elsie, what can I do? I just don’t know. They come to work but never to really work, only to steal. There is no integrity with them. They are all infidels and idiots! This can’t continue.”

With her usual calm strength, Mama listened very carefully, then spoke softly: “Carl, my husband, you mustn’t let it get to you so. All you can do is to do what you can. Time will take care of the rest. It is not always your job to turn everything upside down. You are only one man. Please don’t make anyone angry there. Remember that you have a family here who loves you and believes in you. Just do your job and then come home to us. I want us all to be happy, that’s all.”

Carl Werner was a man on a mission, but he was misunderstood by his supervisors and the factory hands alike. His views were strong and his words uncompromising. Over time, Papa’s face revealed that he was losing the vision that originally had brought him to Russia. He forgot how to smile; he began to look so frail that Mama and I feared for his life. His outrage escalated to uncharacteristic fury. “They are all renegades, rebels, and hypocrites,” he would rage. One day he came home and told us, “The traitors are everywhere—liars and thieves, selling themselves and everyone else for pennies.”

“Papa, just be careful, okay?” I often urged, but I don’t know if he ever listened.

Both of my parents aged rapidly under the pressure. Life was very hard, but some things improved in time. We were finally given a two-room apartment in the village, with a kitchen and a bath and a small garden behind the building that included a shed where I could house a few pet rabbits.

My father was later promoted to chief instructor of the tool and die design shop, so he became more involved in training and oversight and less involved in daily production activities. Sam Herman, another Ford employee from Detroit, became foreman in the body shop, and he and my father became good friends.

The Herman family—Sam and Rose and their children, Victor, Leo, and Miriam—lived in our apartment building in Gorky’s American Village. Victor worked in the tool and die department at the factory with my father. He was about eight years older than I was, and though we would exchange casual pleasantries in the village now and then, we had separate activities and groups of friends. Victor eventually became an aviator and sky diver, was dubbed “the Lindbergh of Russia,” and later broke the world free-fall record. In 1936 he was sent to Spain with the Russian military to participate in their civil war. One year later he returned to the Soviet Union, where, less than thirty days after my father’s arrest, he was arrested for treason and anti-Soviet propaganda.

We also met two American brothers, Victor and Walter Reuther from Detroit, who lived temporarily in the apartment above ours. I developed a younger-sister, older-brother friendship with Walter. We took a liking to each other from the very beginning. He was an extremely kind and thoughtful man, and I always enjoyed his company. Mama and Papa spoke with him quite often too; they thought he was a wonderful man.

Walter always looked as if he knew something below the surface of things, something no one else knew. It was clear he was a man of forethought, with something definite in mind. I could tell he always had a secret or knew something out of the ordinary. His eyes had a certain gleam about them.

We often ice-skated together in the village. And before he returned to America, he gave me his skates because they were better than mine.

“And since I’m going back to the States anyway,” he flashed a warm-hearted smile, “keep these skates until you no longer need them, and then you can return them when you get back to Detroit. Call me when you come back home, and we’ll go skating.” But I recall the look on his face that day; Walter never really expected to see his skates, or me, again.

Many friendships in Gorky during this time formed quickly and then ended abruptly. One day life was normal, and in the following weeks and months, people literally disappeared. Just like Papa, many were arrested for no apparent reason. Even as a child, I realized that Gorky had too many abrupt changes. Many times there would be no warning before a person, or even an entire family, simply moved under cover of night, sometimes escorted elsewhere with no explanation. I lost many friends this way. There were too many people, too many human tragedies to adequately detail them all. But I will never forget.

We had been in Gorky for a year when my father was granted a one-month vacation in 1933. We were allowed to visit relatives in Austria and Czechoslovakia. And Papa would see his mother for the first time in twenty-one years. We were all excited to have a break in our drab routine. Joyfully we packed and left Gorky by train.

A stop in Moscow provided time for us to purchase a few small gifts to take to our relatives. Papa chose a beautiful filigree antique vase for his brother, a well-known collector of antiques. But the vase was confiscated at the border and held until our return because the export of antiques was strictly forbidden. Papa silently rolled his eyes in disgust. Nevertheless, the trip renewed our spirits immensely. Mama was exuberant, Papa was revitalized, and I hoped this time would last forever.

We finally arrived in Vienna, home to my father’s sister, Eva, his other brother, Richard, and their families. For the only time in my life, I got to meet some of my aunts, uncles, and several cousins. I immediately felt at home, relaxed and comforted. I was too young to remember everyone. Although I have no records left, and the names have escaped me, I vividly remember the happy, loving faces. I could play the memories back right now, as if they were scenes from a heartwarming movie.

With a new joy in his heart, if but for a season, my father proudly gave us a grand tour of his beloved city. We visited a very famous amusement park called The Prater, which also had a museum of natural history. We were thrilled by the wonderful food and pastries, for which Vienna is known. The whole city was breathtakingly beautiful, radiating majesty and splendor; it is one of the most gorgeous cities of the world, and I did not want to leave. “Papa, can we stay?” I pleaded to no avail. So after two short weeks, we bid our dear relatives a reluctant farewell, and sending a telegram ahead, we left Austria for Brno, Czechoslovakia, where my grandmother and Uncle Friedrich lived.

No one met us when we arrived at the train station in Brno, so we took a taxi to my uncle’s home. It turned out to be a penthouse apartment with a wonderful wrought-iron balcony around all four sides of the building. The garden on the balcony was filled with plants, primarily cacti. Gardening was the hobby of my eighty-five-year-old grandmother. When we rang, a maid promptly opened the door and showed us inside. She explained that my uncle was not home yet but grandmother was here, alone in her room, playing cards. At the entrance to her room, my mother and I waited in the background, permitting Papa to approach his mother by himself.

“Mama?” he called.

She slowly turned from her game of solitaire. “Who’s there?” she asked.

Then my father, in his extremely dramatic and animated fashion, crept up behind her and softly whispered in her ear, “Your ssson, Caaarrrl.” A most profound frozen silence filled the room.

The old lady sat there motionless for what felt like an eternity, stunned, visibly overwhelmed, and noticeably shaking. The advance telegram had not yet been delivered. It finally arrived later that afternoon, after emotions began to settle. Now Papa’s mother had tears rolling down her wrinkled cheeks and could only say, “Oh, my son, my Carl. Where have you been so long?” It was an unforgettable reunion, and I was so happy to meet my only surviving grandparent! I wanted to stay there and live with her forever.

Uncle Friedrich was the vice president of a very successful cosmetics factory. When he finally arrived home from work that day, he was speechless and deeply glad to see us. He was quite an emotional man, like my father. “Ahhh, and this is your beautiful little pumpkin, I guess,” he said to Papa, hugging me as if there were no tomorrow. I instantly fell in love with Uncle Friedrich! We spent a very close and loving two weeks with them in their home in Brno. Again, I did not want to leave; neither did Mama. “Papa, let’s stay here… Let’s stay, please.”

“Carl,” Mama added, “we could stay, you know. Friedrich said there’s room for us. What do you think?” But despite my many pleadings and Mama’s hopeful eyes, despite Uncle Friedrich’s offer, Papa’s mind had long since been made up. He paused, with signs of serious consideration on his face, but after a long sigh, he shook his head slowly and said, “I’m sorry, but we must leave in the morning.”

Perhaps it would have been difficult for us to return to the United States at this time because of Papa’s prison record—his 1917 refusal to be drafted during World War I. Perhaps not. We didn’t know. But we could have easily stayed in Czechoslovakia with
family
that loved us. I was sure Papa wanted to stay too. Why did he fight against his inner man, his spirit, which must have been warning him about returning to Russia? But we did not stay, and we never saw either of these dear ones again. My grandmother died in her sleep about five years later. Uncle Friedrich, I later learned, committed suicide when the Nazis occupied his beloved country. Fear of certain death by execution drove him to choose his own fate.

We went back to Russia to stay. Returning to Gorky, we moved into a housing commune and were given two rooms, one directly across the hall from the other. It was far from comfortable, but still I felt satisfied to some degree, because once again I had a room all to myself. Mama joined the kitchen crew and did everything imaginable to improve the daily menu and to make the most of the food and supplements available to her. She had a God-given flair for making something out of nothing. And she never complained.

Mama spent much of her free time gardening and cultivating, and she managed to provide us with a fairly decent assortment of food. In 1934 some of the residents created a “closed” food store within the village, available only to foreigners who had the necessary passes. It stocked such rare items as white bread, butter, eggs, meat, sugar, candy, flour, and cereals. Usually my family could not afford these luxuries. When we had a few extra dollars not slated for other necessities, a very rare and special treat was to purchase some
real coffee
from a store in the city about twenty kilometers away. Coffee never tasted better to me.

In the meantime, I graduated to the fifth grade. One day we were abruptly informed that all our classes taught in English were being immediately terminated. From then on, we were going to take our classes with the Russian students…and
in Russian!
Henceforth, we would take English as a foreign language. We were dumbfounded. The news felt like being hit hard in the stomach and having the wind knocked out of you. I was just thirteen at this time, but I remember feeling that a major season of change was beginning. They were only talking about the language for now, but I wondered what changes would invade our lives next.

None of us really understood the language sufficiently to cope with the complexities of studying mathematics, science, physics, literature, history, and geography. We soon discovered that the Russians are not a very subtle people, and sensitivity to our needs was not a pressing concern to them. Compassion was not a strong suit with most Russians I knew. Most of us kids struggled greatly. All in all, there were about twelve subjects in our new school curriculum. Since we were being forcibly merged with existing Russian classes, already numbering more than thirty students each, there was no time for individual tutoring or attention for us foreigners.

We drifted along for the first few weeks, barely holding on, while most of the Russian kids snickered at how we were struggling to learn their language. I remember it seemed overwhelming at first, but eventually it somehow made sense, and learning Russian actually turned out to be faster and easier than I had feared.

After a few months, things seemed to lighten up a bit for us in school, except that the Russian children genuinely hated us with a sort of vengeful and jealous disdain that we couldn’t ignore. Mama said it was probably because of our well-nourished appearance and the ample lunches we brought to school. For Russian children, lunches were just a bit of black bread and perhaps a raw onion, if they were lucky. Their clothes were crude, not very clean, and smelly; it was clear they also envied us for our usually clean and fresh attire.

“We should have pity on them, Maidie, and help them with whatever we can, for this is what God would want. And be thankful for all you have, for we have been blessed,” Mama would say. Sometimes I’d say it, and sometimes I wouldn’t, but the question I wanted to ask her was, “What do you mean, ‘blessed,’ Mama?”

What I remember most about this time is feeling constantly deprived. Compared to the Russian children, my life must have been filled with good things, but you couldn’t have convinced me of that then. The Russian girls in particular didn’t care much for me, because the boys usually picked me first for their games. No other girl seemed to have the level of agility, stamina, or ability to keep up with the boys that I had. And all of the Russian boys liked me pretty well, so I was shoved and bullied around plenty during school—mainly by jealous girls—but I was tough enough to endure it.