"The Road Leads On"

The Way

Friend, I have lost the way. —

The way leads on.

Is there another way?

The way is one. 

I must retrace the track.

It's lost and gone.

Back, I must travel back!

None goes there, none.

Then I'll make here my place,

(The road runs on),

Stand still and set my face,

(The road leaps on),

Stay here, for ever stay.

None stays here, none.

I cannot find the way.

The way leads on.

Oh places I have passed!

That journey's done.

And what will come at last?

The road leads on.

    On the road to the former Kroeger clock workshop (Rosenthal)

The above poem by the English (Orkney Islands) poet and novelist Edwin Muir (1887-1959) describes some of my feelings as we boarded an overnight train from Kiev to Zaporozhye on our Poland-Ukraine trip. This past October Hardy and I went to locate the places where we were born, Hardy in Poland (see previous post) and I in Ukraine.

In 1943, leaving all its worldly goods behind, the Neufeld family, like so many others at that time, fled from Ukraine to Germany, via Poland. The family consisted of a baby, a toddler, two young parents, a grandmother and an adolescent (my uncle). As a four-month-old baby, I of course remember nothing of this flight. We were fortunate to go by train, rather than fleeing on foot as so many others were forced to do.

On this trip, with TourMagination, I was going in the opposite direction, back to the place I was born, the village of Chortitza, on the Dnepr River near the Black Sea in southern Ukraine.

I wished so much that I could recall that first train trip out of Chortitza. I tried to imagine how everyone must have felt . . . 

My parents left behind a small but comfortable house my father had built when they got married in 1940. Mom loved that place. 

My grandmother (Katharina Kroeger) didn't want to leave. She had received new courage after her husband was cruelly taken away from her in 1938, falsely accused and imprisoned, never to be heard from again. She was growing and nurturing an orchard of plum trees. It was her birthday. She had just harvested new potatoes and was preparing a special birthday supper.

Her teenage son was surely wondering where all his friends were.

My two-year-old brother was probably restless, cooped up in one place, wanting to use his legs to run and explore.

The Neufeld family home in Chortitza before the Russian Revolution

                                             

 The house Dad built for his new bride in 1940

And what about me, the baby? I remember nothing. At least I think I remember nothing. However, memory is a strange thing, stored somewhere in the deep recesses of one's brain, jumping out when least expected, creating havoc with one's emotions.

When our tour group arrived in Zaporozhye (the city that now surrounds Chortitza) the next morning, everyone complained about the discomfort of this train ride. Even though all of us had sleeping berths, people had felt the jolts and bumps as the train stopped and started, had constantly awakened from the noise of the whistle, and were worried about getting the luggage out in time, etc., etc. I however had slept like a baby! The rocking of the train had made me feel comfortable and cozy, as if I was in my mother's arms in a rocking chair. Then it occurred to me: that is how I must have felt on that desperate flight out of Ukraine. Secure in my mother's arms, I blissfully knew nothing except warmth, comfort, food within close reach, the beating of my mother's heart and the rocking of the train. The memory had come back to me, triggered by the motions and sounds of the train!

Although my family was without a home for the first four years of my life, I don't remember feeling homeless, neglected or hungry. In fact, I have no memories at all until we settled down in the Paraguayan Chaco. I wanted to stay there forever, but "the road leads on" and my life changed again.