The Angel in a Bomb Shelter

My grandmother, Erika, who my sisters and I called Oma, was born in the small city of Hanau in Germany in 1928, eleven years before the start of World War II. Experiencing her preteen and teenage years as a German either during or directly after the war, my Oma collected many stories that she was eager to share with me and my sisters — and share she did. She told us the stories, over and over, memorized down to the word like the pages of a book that were etched into her brain.

I believe now that she told us these stories, with the precision and persistence of a historian with a photographic memory, because she was urgently and desperately trying to make sense of them in the carefully curated quiet of her senior years. The things she endured during her youth — the brutality of man’s ability to manipulate, the sheer violence, the depths of her own strength and selflessness she was forced to dig for as a young girl before she ever should have — were thousands of shards of glass that she was urgently trying to piece together to make the blood and pain and sacrifice mean something. For herself, and for us.

There is one story that Oma told more often than all her other stories. It is, what I consider, the mother of all her stories, for without this story there would be no other stories. In fact, I would not be here, typing this, because I would not exist.

It’s the story of the Angel in the Bomb Shelter.

When Erika was 17, she and her family had already endured years of air raid sirens. They’d been wrenched, countless times, from their beds, from deep dreamless sleeps, by the warbling scream of the sirens . They’d run, shakily, to the bomb shelter below the church in the center of the city. Erika, the eldest of five children, would shepherd her brothers and sisters to the center of the city with their neighbors and climb the steep staircase down into the cold, underground basement. There they’d wait, huddled and breathless, until eventually the sirens would go silent and they’d reemerge from the dark hole beneath the ground. They’d lumber noiselessly back to their dark homes, still intact.

So when Erika dreamed one night of an angel in the bomb shelter, she hadn’t thought too much about it. She’d spent many nights there, terrified, wondering if tonight was the last night of her short life. It made sense that she’d be spending her sleeping hours there too, her psyche building a permanent fortress to house the darkness that she’d carry for the rest of her life.

It was a memorable dream, one that stayed with her long after she’d risen from her bed the next morning to start her daily chores. In the dream, she was in the bomb shelter with her family, the air sirens wailing above them. But this time, there was another noise, too: a deep, guttural rumble, bone-shaking, like God was hurling boulders from the clouds.

Bombs.

In the dream, an angel appeared in the bomb shelter, a bright figure with pure white wings and golden, flowing robes. She came to my grandmother, who was crouched low in the dark recesses of the underground shelter, the rattle of the explosions paralyzing her. The angel lifted Erika to her feet and guided her up the staircase, all the while the sound of the bombs rattling the foundation of the church above her head. The angel opened the door to the shelter, and together, they left.

So when the air raid sirens once again rang out on the night of March 19th, 1945, the sound bellowing and shrieking like a witch flying on the spring breeze, Erika retreated with her family and neighbors to the bomb shelter as they always had. When the rumbles came, even though they’d never come before, they felt familiar to Erika. Fear invaded the bomb shelter like an infestation of ants; at first just a few crawling over their hands and feet, prickling the smalls hairs on their arms and back of their necks. But with every gut-rattling shudder, the fear grew quickly, until it was thousands of black ants, burying the huddled, frightened people, violating their eyes, ears, and mouths.

It was then that my grandmother remembered her dream. She looked up the staircase to the door of the shelter, where a man stood keeping guard. Below the crack of the door she could see bright orange light, dark shadows. The city was on fire.

Erika rose, grabbing her mother by the arm. “We have to go,” she said urgently, pulling her mother to the stairs. Her mother, confused, resisted at first. There were bombs, fire, and blood on the other side of the door. They were safe in the shelter. Why should they leave?

Erika insisted, and somehow, she managed to get her mother and four siblings to agree to follow her. They climbed the stairs to the door, the sound of the bombs heightened to a manic raging. The bombs were falling right outside of the shelter, tearing the world apart.

The man at the door refused to let them through. He must have thought they were mad with fear; he wanted to save them from themselves. My grandmother pushed him aside, and opened the door.

They stepped out of the shelter into Hell. Everything was on fire. Bodies and body parts littered the streets. Erika guided her mother and her four siblings away from the carnage to a street that led out of the city, where they found refuge in a garden. They stayed there for the night, watching their home burn.

Days later, when the bombing was over and the damage assessed, my grandmother discovered that everyone who had stayed in the shelter had died of smoke asphyxiation. Had my grandmother and her family stayed there, they would have all died.

I would not be writing this.

Writing this now brings up a lot of mixed emotions. Pride. Pain. Gratitude. Sorrow.

The angel saved my grandmother from the black smoke that would have stolen both the air from her lungs and her legacy that eventually led to the birth of my mother, myself, my sisters, my children, and my niece and nephews.

But everything has a price, including — maybe especially — life. And while, at the age of seventeen, she followed an angel out of the bomb shelter and survived war, I don’t think she ever really left that shelter.

And I think there are parts of me, my mother, and my sisters that are there with her.

There are signs of inherited trauma. There is a constant, inexplicable fear. An involuntary instinct to imagine the worst possible outcome, to somehow always be prepared for terrible things in a sea of possibilities. There is distrust.

Some of the artifacts of pain that Oma left behind for us are fascinating, even useful. We have stories of shared dreams between us, finding each other on an astral plane to relay urgent messages. We look at each other and see the the grit, fierce strength, and unwavering commitment to making the world a good place that our Oma instilled in us.

I deeply wish Oma could have had a life with less suffering. I wish I could grow wings of gold and fly back to Hanau in 1945. I would take that young girl in my arms and let her cry, let her rage, let her be the kid she was supposed to be instead of the woman she had to be. But that’s not my job in the winding, twisted branch of our family tree.

My job is to remember the bomb shelter. To relive it in every detail so that I can bring it alive for my son and daughter when they’re old enough to see it — without living in it. Then, my job is to lock the door, and keep safe the key. When my children are ready to keep the key, I will give it to them. And they will give it to their children.

Oma lived a long life, dying peacefully in her home at the age of ninety-five. She is our angel now, guiding us out of dark, smoke-filled rooms with the light of the strength and resilience that kept her afloat through all the suffering and joy of her incredible life.

Now when I open the door and walk into Hell, I can trust that I will know my way to my own Garden. I have inherited an angel of fire. I am a young girl leading her family through smoke and fire.

I can survive anything.

Because she survived everything.