The Last Green Valley Read online

  She watched Bill and his sons build Martel Construction into a vibrant enterprise with residential and commercial projects in the United States and abroad. She also saw Bill and her grandsons give back for their good fortune, partially paying for and building, among other things, an addition to Montana State’s Bobcat Stadium. In gratitude, the school named the stadium’s football gridiron “Martel Field” after Bill.

  In her later years, Adeline became more and more homebound, though she would continue to entertain her friends and family in her kitchen, where she would feed them her famous apple cake. If they were lucky, they’d hear snippets of her harrowing adventures on the way to the last green valley or one of her frequent observations about life.

  “You know, I used to think life was something that happened to me,” she told one old friend as she was beginning to fail. “But now, I know life happened for me.”

  They were out in her garden, and she was smiling at how it teemed with life.

  Looking back, Adeline said she could see the entire incredible arc of her journey, how everything that happened to her and Emil had indeed seemed to prepare them for the next, more difficult challenge, both of them learning and adapting the entire way.

  More than fifty years had passed since she and the boys escaped the Soviet Occupation Zone and reunited with Emil, but she still marveled at the events of that day.

  “If that old woman had given us water from her well, we never would have been warned by the man driving the milk wagon to hide in that shed, and we probably would have walked right into that Soviet patrol,” she said. “And if we hadn’t gone for the border when we did, so close to the patrol passing with the prisoners, the Soviet soldiers in the guardhouse would not have thought we had the correct documents to cross the border and would not have sent that muddy angel of a man to help us get the wagon to the train station. The border guards would have stopped us, and who knows what would have happened?”

  After marveling over that story, her friend asked Adeline to describe the most important things she’d learned over the course of her long and remarkable life.

  Adeline thought about that for a little while before saying, “Don’t chew on the bad things that happen to you, dear. Try to see the beauty in every cruelty. It sets you free. Forgive hurt if you want to heal a broken heart. Try to be grateful for every setback or tragedy, because by living through them, you become stronger. I see the hand of God in that.

  “I also see his hand in every right step and every wrong one we took in our lives, all somehow moving us forward, but sometimes around and around and around like a leaf I’ve always remembered seeing blowing in the wind the first day of the Long Trek. We were blown along like that leaf, dancing, spinning, and rolling toward this life we were dreaming of. And here I am so many years later, still living that dream. It really is a miracle, isn’t it? And now the only miracle left for me is to die and be taken in the arms of God.”

  Nine months later, on April 5, 2006, some two weeks shy of her ninety-first birthday, with Bill and Walter and their families gathered around her, Adeline Martel passed on as all great and wise heroines eventually do, her soul leaving her body on her final breath, thrown to the cosmic wind only to be guided by grace, a refugee spirit soaring toward salvation, her Lord, and her beloved Emil, waiting for her in a new and permanent Eden.

  AFTERWORD

  I hope you were as moved, inspired, and transformed by the Martels’ story as I was hearing it for the first time. Working on their tale over the past two years has been one of the great honors of my career, and I will remain forever grateful to the entire Martel clan for trusting me to bring Emil and Adeline to life.

  A question I hear a lot is how much of my historical fiction novels are based on fact.

  Without dissecting every twist and plot turn, in the case of The Last Green Valley, I can tell you that Joseph Stalin did indeed starve more than four million Ukrainians to death during the Holodomor of 1932–33. Stalin also imprisoned and enslaved millions of people in the aftermath of World War II. Under the Soviet dictator’s orders, many of the ethnic Germans who went on the Long Trek ended up being shipped to Siberian work camps. Untold numbers of those prisoners never returned.

  Historians believe that between twenty and twenty-five thousand ethnic Germans perished on the Long Trek from Ukraine to Hungary, and on the trains that took the refugees north from Budapest to Lodz, Poland, which became known as the Ellis Island of the Third Reich.

  The SS processed more than three hundred and fifty thousand ethnic Germans in Lodz under purity and immigration laws crafted by Heinrich Himmler and enforced by his “Reich Commission for the Strengthening of Germandom.” The majority of these refugees were given clothes and homes that once belonged to Jews.

  According to Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Memorial, some eighteen thousand Jews were massacred by the SS’s Einsatzkommando 12 of Einsatzgruppen D in fields and ravines outside the town of Dubossary in early to mid-September 1941. Ethnic Germans who were members of the Selbstschutz, like the character Nikolas, were said to have participated in that atrocity and dozens of others across Ukraine after the German invasion.

  Later in her life and after Emil’s death, Adeline told one of her granddaughters that several weeks after they returned to Friedenstal in mid-August 1941, Emil took a trip with the horses and wagon to buy roofing supplies for the house he was building. She said Emil returned two days late and was as shaken as she had ever seen her husband, who told her he’d been forced by the SS to bury Jews and refused to talk about it ever again. Adeline never said where Emil went for his supplies, but Dubossary was and is the closest large town to their village.

  Emil Haussmann was a captain in Einsatzkommando 12 of Einsatzgruppen D at the time of the Dubossary massacre and served under Lieutenant Colonel Gustav Nosske, who was later tried at Nuremberg and imprisoned for his war crimes. Haussmann was promoted to major in the SS for his efforts in the early days of the “Final Solution” and the so-called “Holocaust by Bullets” that unfolded in Ukraine and Transnistria after the German invasion in June 1941. Three years later, Haussmann was part of an SS team that traveled with and protected the pure bloods of the Long Trek. He did kill himself before his trial at Nuremberg.

  In the months prior to the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Heinrich Himmler did watch political prisoners being shot as a test for implementation of the Final Solution. Himmler was reportedly so shocked, he vomited, and later issued an order that no one be killed or sent to a concentration camp for refusing to murder Jews. He wanted true believers behind the guns.

  During the Nuremberg trials, multiple Nazi war criminals tried to claim they were forced to participate in the Holocaust, that they had no choice at all. As part of that defense, their own attorneys searched repeatedly for evidence of anyone who had refused to kill Jews and was subsequently murdered or imprisoned under Hitler’s reign. They were unsuccessful.

  Historians believe that western Allied soldiers may have raped as many as eighty thousand German and ethnic German women during the last part of the war and its immediate aftermath. They believe Soviet soldiers may have raped more than one million German women in that same time period.

  Beginning in 1952, as the Iron Curtain lowered and as part of an effort to stop people in East Germany from fleeing west, the border at Oebisfelde where Adeline ran for freedom was hardened to include watch towers, fences, walls, anti-tank ditches, and minefields. After the fall of the Soviet Union and Germany’s reunification, the fortifications were torn down, and the fields she and her sons crossed were restored enough that I was able to walk much of Adeline and the boys’ escape route, though the terrain and vegetation had no doubt changed.

  In mid-May, Southwest Montana’s Gallatin Valley is indeed a landscape painted in greens and one of the most beautiful places in the world. At the east end of the valley, where I live, double and triple rainbows often form after thunder-and-hail storms at that time of year.

 
; Bill Martel is eighty now, retired, a widower, and still lives part-time in Bozeman, where I met him for the first time in November 2017. Walter Martel is eighty-two, retired, and still married. He and his wife moved farther west to be near their children and grandkids. They live in Hamilton, Montana.

  In August 2018, after I retraced most of the Long Trek’s route through Moldova, Romania, Hungary, and Poland, the aging brothers and I went to Ukraine, where we drove ten hours up a terrible road to Friedenstal/Tryhrady to visit the ruins of their childhood home. Seeing the exact place where their run to freedom had begun, both men were cast back in time and overwhelmed with emotion at the incredible distance they had traveled in their lives.

  Two days later, in order to save them a thirteen-hour drive one way up an even more terrible road, I chartered a plane to fly us from Odessa to Poltava to see the site of the former prison camp. We found the city hall where Emil had eaten and the hospital he’d helped rebuild.

  The Poltava Museum of Local Lore was there, too, restored but closed to the public when we tried to enter. We walked around and found the museum director, Oleksandr Suprunenko, who at first refused to let us in due to ongoing construction. Then he learned that Emil had been a prisoner there, worked on the burial detail, and had sold the cooks firewood before escaping. The director laughed, told us his mother was one of those cooks, and led us on a private tour of the museum.

  Suprunenko showed us photographs of gaunt and haunted prisoners rebuilding the museum. He took us to the basement and told us that, due to rampant diseases and death, the Soviets closed the Poltava camp in mid-1947, just a few months after Emil’s escape. The few survivors were sent to other camps to the east, some as far as Siberia, before other prisoners were brought in to live on another site and to finish rebuilding the city. Hearing that in the room where their father had slept before and after his daily trips with the death cart, Bill and Walter broke down crying.

  They said that Emil rarely spoke of the prison camp, but there was no doubt that he left Poltava a far different man than the one who went in. Before his imprisonment, Emil had done little of note, doubted God, and believed that the best way for him and for his family to survive the Communists and the Nazis was to rely on himself, keep a low profile, and have little apparent ambition. After Poltava, however, their father turned deeply spiritual and daring. Emil seemed to see miracle and opportunity everywhere he looked and took massive risks that he was rewarded for throughout the rest of his life.

  “Something or someone changed my dad in that camp,” Bill said. “What? Who? How? I don’t know. He wasn’t a big talker. But he had to have had allies in the prison camp. One or two men he could talk to and trust. I guess you’ll have to figure out a way to explain it.”

  I already had a sense of what, who, and how, because the month before, in Barlad, Romania, I interviewed ninety-eight-year-old Gheorghe Voiculescu, whose experiences and outlook on life would form the basis of Corporal Gheorghe’s character. Mr. Voiculescu was sharp, funny, and truly seemed to glow and radiate goodwill as we spoke.

  He distinctly remembered talking to and helping ethnic Germans on the Long Trek as they went west in the spring of 1944. Before then, Voiculescu had fought at Stalingrad in the brutal battle at the Elbow of the Don, where he was concussed and wounded by shrapnel from a mortar bomb. He told me he woke up from the blast and knew with absolute certainty that he was blessed, that he was going to live through the war, and that he was going to become a beekeeper. Voiculescu did walk through the rest of the battle unscathed, with Soviet soldiers and tanks running right by him, when so many around him died.

  At the end of the war, Voiculescu escaped from two Soviet prison camps before being sent to a high-security camp on the Sea of Azov. He was released after four years of hard labor. Upon his return to Barlad, Voiculescu was hailed as a hero for being one of the few survivors of the Elbow of the Don. In recognition, he was promoted to and retired from the Romanian army with the rank of colonel.

  Voiculescu worked for a time in a factory after his release but used much of the money he earned to finally fulfill his dream of becoming a beekeeper, which was a lifelong passion. Constantly extolling the wonders of honey, royal jelly, and beestings, he outlived three wives and celebrated his hundredth birthday in April 2020.

  The real Corporal Gheorghe was, without a doubt, one of the more remarkable and enlightened individuals I have ever had the privilege of meeting.

  Two mornings after we visited the prison camp and wondered about Emil’s transformation, Walter and I were leaving Ukraine to fly to Germany and Poland to follow Adeline’s escape route, and Bill was going home to Montana.

  At breakfast at the airport before our flights, the Martel brothers told me that no matter what had really happened to their father in Poltava, they felt like they’d come full circle in their own lives, at peace with all they had endured, blessed for all they’d been given, in awe of their parents’ love, courage, and determination, and profoundly and endlessly thankful for the long, perilous journey they took as boys, when their family risked everything and ran with the wolves in search of freedom.

  Sitting there with Bill and Walter at the airport in Kiev, moved and inspired, and just a few days before I started writing down the story of Emil and Adeline Martel, I scribbled in my notebook the words that I’ll use to finish their tale.

  “This is an American story, an immigrant story, a spiritual and universal story. May we all dare to chase such dreams, experience such grace, and lead such miraculous lives.”

  —Mark Sullivan, Bozeman, Montana, July 21, 2020

  The Martel family, before the Nazi invasion, Pervomaisk, Ukraine, March 1941.

  The Martels, shortly after being reunited, Alfeld, western Germany, March 1947.

  DISCUSSION GUIDE

  The Last Green Valley is a work of historical fiction, inspired by a true story. Do you feel that the story is authentic? How well do you think the author told a compelling story while also sticking to historical facts?

  Have you or your family members lived through World War II? Have you or your family immigrated to the US? How do your memories or family stories reflect the emotions in this book?

  Given the hardships the Martels had already endured, what emotional reserves do you feel they had to call upon to remain hopeful and stay on their trek to freedom?

  Rese almost dies after suffering through a horrific accident. Emil almost starved to death and faced an unforgivable ultimatum at gunpoint. The family endures unimaginable peril on their journey and at the hands of the Nazis. What does it mean to be brave in the face of death?

  There is a moment when Major Haussmann helps Rese after her accident. What do you think the author intended by choosing to portray such an evil man in this light? How did you feel about Haussmann’s action in contrast with the ultimatum given to Emil?

  Karoline is sometimes very cruel to Adeline, who is the mother of her grandchildren. Why do you think this is? What do you think of their reconciliation before they part ways?

  What are your thoughts on Corporal Gheorghe’s philosophy of life and how it influences Emil?

  When Emil and Adeline are torn apart, what gives Adeline the faith and strength to carry on? What makes her so sure they will be together again?

  What is your “green valley”?

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am hugely indebted to a host of people who helped me in the research and writing of The Last Green Valley.

  Foremost in that group were Bill and Walter Martel and their families. I thank the entire Martel clan for sharing their Emil and Adeline stories with me. I pray I did them justice.

  In Romania and Moldova, my enormously resourceful guide, Florin Burgui, was able to track down a handful of people who either survived or witnessed the Long Trek of ethnic German refugees in the spring of 1944. They included Victoria Chmara, age ninety-one; Nicolae Hurezeanu, ninety-five; Ioan Muth, ninety-five; Gheorghe Voiculescu, then ninety-seven; and Victor Caldar
ar, ninety-six. Thank you for sharing your memories.

  I was also aided by Flavius Roaita at the National Museum of Romanian History in Bucharest, Ottmar Trasca of the George Baritiu Institute of History in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and Ramf Dan, a Romanian historian who interviewed more than two hundred and fifty survivors and witnesses of the German retreat from Ukraine. Historians Corneliu Stoica, Dorin Dobrincu, and Lutz Connert helped me understand the plight of people sent east by the Soviets after the end of World War II and those who never returned.

  In Hungary, historian Eva Kuierung gave me insight into the transit of ethnic German refugees through Budapest on their way to Poland. In Ukraine, Dr. Sergey Yelizarov, an expert on ethnic German colonies, guided us to the remains of the Friedenstal colony, and to Poltava, where Oleksandr Suprunenko of the Poltava Museum of Local Lore helped us understand the conditions and challenges of the prison camp during the time Emil was held there.

  Red Famine, Anne Applebaum’s book about Stalin’s starvation of Ukraine, gave me a good idea of what the Martels went through before the war. I was aided in my understanding of the Holocaust and Soviet and German rule in Ukraine by the works of historians and writers Wendy Lower, Gail Gligman, Alexander Dallin, Joshua Rubenstein, Ilya Altman, Eric C. Steinhart, Diana Dumitru, Ray Brandon, Daniel Joseph Goldhagen, Gerald Reitlinger, Sefer Zikaron, Walter Koenig and Avigdor Shachen. Thank you all.

  The writings of Dr. Alfred de Zayas gave me a deeper understanding of the expulsion of ethnic Germans across Central and Eastern Europe between 1944 and 1948. The research of Dr. Eric J. Schmaltz of Northwestern Oklahoma State University gave me insight into the SS transfer of ethnic Germans to the Warthegau region of Poland and their indoctrination into Hitler’s Greater Germany. I appreciate the guidance.