The Beginning of the End

“Mrs. Erna Leibfried, née von Kügelgen, citizen of the German Empire, must leave Petrograd within three days and will be deported to join her husband in the Orenburg region”

That was the text on the inconspicuous piece of paper that I held in my hand. Horrified, I looked at the “Pristav”, the police inspector responsible for our city district, and asked in a quiet, trembling voice,

“Who me, with my three little girls, now, in January, to Siberia? ….but that’s impossible!”

“People live in Siberia too,” he responded, but I saw pity in his somber eyes.

“In three days to Siberia!”, the words echoed in my mind, making me oblivious to the colorful hustle and bustle around me in the streets of St. Petersburg, the city of my birth. How happily and confidently I had left home earlier in the day, hoping to pick up my permanent residence permit for the city and now….. this totally unexpected turn of events.

News of the World War that was now inexorably pulling me and my three little children deeper and deeper into its perilous currents, had first reached us in our “Dacha”, our pleasant country home in the Novgorod region. As was the custom in St. Petersburg at the time, we, like all other well-to-do families, had “retired to the countryside” for the summer. There, pampered and well taken care of, I gave birth to our third daughter, Erika. The news of the assassinations in Sarajevo had exploded like a bomb into this peaceful idyll.

My husband had immediately put everything into motion to get us out of Russia and into Germany, but in the days and weeks before the outbreak of the war, the process of issuing travel documents was plagued with delays. Apparently, even in the German Consulate, they had been blissfully unaware of the impending catastrophe and had rather tried to calm everyone. Nonetheless, my husband had been successful in at least bringing some money, jewelry and silver into safety before the Russian state could confiscate it. I had myself also been compelled to hastily return by train to the capital under cover of darkness, with my newborn cradled in my arms.

Back in St. Petersburg, now officially renamed “Petrograd”, everything appeared to be the same, except for a strange feeling of foreignness that enveloped me, something I had never felt so strongly before. It was almost as though my German blood was whispering secret, barely-heard things to me. Of course, there was a certain unease everywhere; here and there we saw company signs that had been torn down. Everything that was German, all German inscriptions, every word, was viewed with hatred. It was dangerous for us to speak in our native language, or to otherwise let anyone else know that we were Germans. One of the huge metal monuments that had stood atop our Embassy building was gone; it now lay at the bottom of the Moika river. The Embassy itself was a picture of desolation: shattered window panes and widespread damage due to fires. Only the German steeds, as our oldest daughter proudly pointed out, still stood unbowed on the roof. They had somehow survived the furious onslaught. Good old German quality!