Finally, Barth, Germany

My sister Nitalynn and brother-in-law Bruce Sigman and my husband Richard and I left Arkansas very early on the morning of September 25, 2013. We flew the largest airplane I had ever seen from Chicago and found Air Berlin to be more modern than any American airline. Crammed in with 400 other people wasn’t too bad, but travel these days is only for the determined. When we landed the next morning, we took a bus to the fancy Berlin train station/mall and from there a train to near Leipzig. The tracks ended for repairs, and we had to take a street car to the central train station near our hotel. Let’s see: that was more than 28 hours traveling by five different modes. I thought of my father flying the “Nita-Lynn” from Long Island, New York to Miami to Puerto Rico to Trinidad to Belem in the Amazon of South America to Brazil. Then they flew across the Atlantic to Dakar, East Africa on to Tunisia and finally to Cerignola-Stornara, Italy in so many days. Our trip was nothing.

I had been in Leipzig in 1968 when it was a dark, drab East German city. Today, it is vibrant, and we enjoyed exploring its museums, monuments, restaurants and stores – mainly absorbing the German culture (Currywurst, anyone?). Richard (and Bruce one day) attended the International Motorcross of Nations in Teutschenthal for two days - our reason to be in Leipzig.

One of the astounding facts we learned is that prayer meetings in St. Nicholas Church there eventually led to the downfall of divided Germany in 1989. Life in East Germany, as we discovered in the Stasi Museum (secret police), was harsh. We also went to a concert at Bach’s church, St. Thomas. As I sat there listening to a wonderful concert, I wondered about the audience. How many of them had parents in the Nazi party?  Or later, in the East German secret police?

Now we can finally get to go to Barth. On Monday, September 30, we woke excited. After all these years of saving and planning, we would go to Barth where our father had spent 13 months of his life. We boarded a train, changed in Berlin, and ended in Stralslund where we rented a car and had an exciting drive (not many speed limits in Germany) to the Pommernhotel in Barth. We learned later that the hotel was on the road where the freed POWs from Stalag Luft 1 had walked to the airport during three days in May 1945 to be flown to France and England. Our father had walked down this street (as it turns out several times).

We also learned that we were lucky to get a hotel as it was crane season (see the cranes in the field) in Barth. That’s right, the birds, and people come from all over to see then fly through Barth. That night, we celebrated being in Barth and eagerly anticipated the next day meeting Helga and Grete and seeing Stalag Luft 1.