A Woman's Rise to Courage

Book excerpt: March 13, 1945. Thea had just given birth to her fourth child at a hospital under blackout. Her husband defended the Vaterland in Berlin, uncertain if he would ever see his family again. Her hometown Dresden had been reduced to rubble during a two-day bombing by American and British allies. The Russians were on the move, and so was 32-year-old Thea with her four children hoping for temporary shelter. On the road, she encountered the brutal reality of war. Defeated soldiers marching amongst demoralized people on the road to Poland. A warmhearted woman took in the family in the town of Rippchen. Two brave souls, united in fighting Mongolians, that terrorized and raped its citizens. Thea reunited with her mother and sister months later in Dresden. Devastated by the hopelessness she faced, with her children starving, she connected with black marketers to sell X-ray films to hospitals in West Germany. It was a dangerous but lucrative task, prompting the Russians service suspicion of her improved lifestyle. She was sentenced to work in the uranium mines at the Erzgebirge, with her children taken to a communist operated child center. The mines were known as a brutal mining camp, its prisoners doomed for life with no way of escape. But they couldn’t break Thea’s will to survive She cautiously planned her getaway and manipulated her children’s release from the children’s home. Within days she prepared for an escape to West Germany, only taking her two oldest children on this risky journey. Making them believe they were going on a long walk that ended in crossing the Russian border from East Germany to the West. A courageous woman’s escape to freedom against all odds.