134
NON F ICT ION
Bavaria and Berlin 1945 By Claudia Simone Franklin
From: A Cartography of What Is Left: A German Lyric
Because the Russians were coming on foot and the Americans were bombing relentlessly from above, my father was put on a train to the Black Forest. His school was relocating and, for a fee, would take along as many kids as possible. The Black Forest was safe. The Black Forrest was safer. It was February of 1945. My grandmother was a widow; my father was her only child — she wanted her son out of Berlin. Although the distance was less than four hundred miles, the trip took four days. The tracks and bridges had been shattered, blown up. On the train, Father held onto a teddy bear and cried all the way to Bad Krozingen outside Freiburg. He had just turned eleven, skinny, small for his age. His father had died some months earlier. The Russians were coming. Why couldn’t he stay in Berlin with his mother? Of the seven hundred kids at the school in Berlin, less than one hundred went to the Black Forest. My father was the