Julia Brooks

Uncertain Survival Julia Brooks

Uncertain Survival... My family can no longer remain in our centuries-old German settlement in Rumania as the changing tides of the Second World War threaten our safety. Although I am only six years old, I am aware that my mother plans to administer poison to us all if we are overtaken by the advancing Russian army, and experience a paroxysm of fear at each of the many set-backs as she flees westward with me and my sisters. We find uncertain refuge in Austria and endure near-starvation as the native population hoards its plentiful food. At war's end, my father locates us and we learn of his own flight, the interruption of his search for us by his forced induction into the German army and his eventual desertion from it in order to safeguard his principles. Our extended family is reunited at a bleak displaced persons' camp in an inhospitable Germany, and in spite of suffering severe deprivation, my parents keep to their moral compass until the threat of tuberculosis makes my desperate father enter the risky black market for cigarettes. With the ensuing improvements in our own circumstances, his selfless generosity to those in need elicits both my dismay and admiration. The venality of those in power shocks him, but when tales of German war atrocities surface, he cannot bear the pain of disillusionment. After arriving in the United States, my family struggles to get a foot-hold. In spite of snags and set-backs, and occasional humorous conflicts of culture, we persevere and eventually are able to fully participate in our new society. In the process, I manage to overcome my long-standing fear of disappointing my father. When evidence of German atrocities overwhelms me, my mother convinces me there are good reasons not to force my father to acknowledge that the ancestral ideals he has been cherishing are illusory. Twenty-five years after leaving, I revisit our former home in Austria and conquer some long-festering feelings. The story ends with the discovery of