Humanities Club Journal Fall 1998 [antikvár]

6 • Clara Blau My second year with a story for the Anthology. The setting: the American Zone of occupied Germany after World War II where I worked for five and one-half years as a social worker with Displaced Persons. The story is true. Unorthodox Diplomacy The two-hour ride from Ettlingen to Aglasterhausen on that warm summer Saturday morning in 1947 had been an educational roller coaster. There were few other vehicles on the single-lane road, and those that were moved over out of respect or intimidation for the olive-drab jeep flying the official blue-and-white United Nations flag with the large white letters IRO stenciled on its side. The International Refugee Organization, a member agency of the UN, had as its role the care, resettlement, and repatriation of displaced persons left in Germany when World War II ended. I was the IRO social worker for the children7 s center, a displaced person's facility in Aglasterhausen; and I was on my way there on this beautiful Saturday morning in answer to a hysterical phone call, "Come quickly, come quickly, the Russians are coming!" Kleopow, my Ukrainian driver, a displaced person himself, had talked nonstop all the way about Russian treachery and brutality, cautioning me to be bold and decisive in dealing with them. A fervent nationalist like most DPs from Eastern Europe, he hated the Russians and was doing his best to infuse me with a similar hatred. Throughout the drive, he had told the most harrowing stories of Russian deportations in the dead of night to gulags and labor camps for no crime other than being an intellectual. I was deeply disappointed to be going to Aglasterhausen, a sleepy hamlet near Heidelberg, to meet the Russians instead of my planned excursion to BadenBaden, an ancient spa at the foot of the Black Forest in the French Zone. I would miss gorging myself on Michelin Star cuisine and luxuriating in the Román baths. Kleopow would miss visiting a childhood friend from Kiev now in a French DP camp near Baden-Baden.