The Flight

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BRYAN MALESSA

On 15 June 1940 a celebration took place on the small Platz, the square, in Germau in front of Karl’s parents’ shop. The previous evening’s radio broadcast had carried news of victory in Paris. The villagers nervously set up their goods to sell, hopeful that victory would quickly translate to peace. Early that morning Ida had asked her father, Günter, who had walked over from his village, to slaughter one of the few remaining pigs for the party. He wasn’t much good at butchering, but she couldn’t worry about that today: she was preoccupied with thoughts of her absent husband.

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Soon a side of pork was roasting over the open pit beside the slaughterhouse where a group of men had gathered. Each generation had its favourite songs and as the afternoon wore on the villagers began to sing. Even the boys on the square stopped playing and started to sing a Hitler Youth song they had learned from the older boys at school:

We march for Hitler through the night.

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