Strong, resilient women and the scars of war are two important themes in the "Bridge to Tomorrow" Series. Jasha embodies them both.
Ethnically Polish but born in White Russia, she has been a victim of both Stalin and Hitler's racial wars. By early 1948 she is stranded in Berlin, a former slave labourer, now a displaced person, working as a cook for the occupation forces.
Jasha's husband and her teenage son were both murdered by Stalin in the purges of the late 1930s, but her flight to relatives in Poland proves an error when Hitler invades. She "volunteers" for work in the Reich and has the good fortune to land on a large estate owned and managed by a humane nobleman, Graf Walmsdorf. By late 1944, however, the Red Army is approaching and Jasha chooses to flee with the Walmsdorfs rather than submit to Stalin's terror again. Strafed by Soviet fighters during the journey, only Jasha, the coachman Horst, and Graf Walmsdorf's daughter Charlotte survive to reach Berlin. She is there when the Soviets surround and take the city by storm in May 1945 and like hundreds of thousands of other women is brutally gang raped by Russian troops after they seize the city. Yet life goes on....
An excerpt of Cold War featuring Jasha:
Charlotte had spread out three dresses and two boxes with shoes. “Look!” Charlotte exclaimed. “I thought of you when I saw this!” She held up a pretty, navy-blue dress with a white collar and cuffs. “I’m sure it would fit!” Charlotte insisted.
“It’s beautiful,” Jasha whispered, reaching out to touch the material and confirm that it was silk. “But where would I ever wear it?”
“To mass,” Charlotte answered, “or to dinner with Lt. Col. Russel.”
Jasha looked over sharply. Was she that transparent?
Charlotte met her eyes with a smile. “He’s very attentive. Don’t you like him?”
“I like him very much,” Jasha admitted, her eyes caressing the dress.
Charlotte caught her hand and clutched it. Surprised by the intensity of the touch, Jasha turned to look at the younger woman and was horrified to see Charlotte’s face dissolving into tears. “Jasha!” she gasped out.
“What is it?” Jasha asked back, confused by the change in her mood.
Charlotte pulled Jasha into her arms and clung to her as she stammered, “Jasha, I feel so terrible. I never thanked you — not once. I never even asked about how — what — I was so wrapped up in myself. I was so selfish.” She was sobbing miserably.
Jasha felt tears in her own eyes, and she clung to Charlotte. All the barriers she had built against the memories collapsed as if the last three years had never been. It felt as if the rapes had happened yesterday. The women cried in each other’s arms, comforting one another as they had not been able to do at the time.
Slowly, the initial storm of emotion ebbed. Jasha found herself stroking Charlotte’s back and whispering, “It’s all right, Charlotte. I never blamed you. You were — so broken, so shattered and confused by it all. You were a virgin and a lady, after all. You were less prepared than I was.”
“How can anyone be prepared…” Charlotte stammered out, pressing her hands to her face to wipe away some of the tears.
Jasha found a handkerchief in her skirt pocket and handed it to Charlotte. “I have seen many terrible things: a famine that drove men to cannibalism, the Great Terror that made us fear every neighbour, every knock on the door and mistrust even our closest friends, the German invasion, and finally the end of the war. But the worst — My son was only seventeen when they accused him of being a Polish spy. He had never been to Poland in his life. He was utterly loyal to the Soviet Union. Yet they shot him in the back of the head and dumped him in an unmarked grave. After a mother has survived that, a rape is not so terrible.”
“You never told us!” Charlotte reproached her, horrified.
Jasha shrugged and wiped her own tears away. “I don’t like to remember.”
Charlotte sank down beside the pile of clothes, “Do you think — do you think….”
“What?” Jasha settled on the other side of dresses.
“Will you ever want — ever be able to — I mean, with a man you love — could you? Could you love again?”
Jasha turned to look at the pretty navy blue silk dress spread over the heap of things. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I wish I could be married to a good man who cares for me, who is protective and respectful and looks after me. I wish we could have a farm — or at least a garden — together. I’d like to grow things with him and have chickens and ducks, maybe even a cow. I’d like to cook things so good that he eats too much and gets a pot belly. I’d like to grow old and fat together. I’d like to have grandchildren come to visit and laugh and play in my house. But I don’t know about the bedroom part….”
“I’m so afraid of that — and yet afraid, too, that — I might — I don’t know!” she ended with an inarticulate shake of her head.
“But you like Mr David, I think?” Jasha asked cautiously.
“He’s absolutely wonderful! I never thought I would ever feel so much for another man as I’d felt for my fiancée Fritz. But it’s been so long since Fritz disappeared, and David is so gentle with me and so kind. He has made me feel like a lady again — like I am someone worth loving.”
“Of course, you are worth loving!” Jasha admonished. “And Mr David is a good man, I think.”
“Yes, but that’s exactly what makes me ashamed to deceive him. Shouldn’t I warn him that I’m not — not — what I appear?”
“But you are who you appear to be, Charlotte.”
“No, Jasha!” Charlotte shook her head violently and the tears were flooding down her face again. “I’m not a lady any longer! I’m not even a maid. I’m nothing but a piece of trash, kicked about, used by six men one after another and then pissed upon—”
Jasha sprang up and pulled Charlotte back into her arms. “Hush! Stop! What they did to you, to us, doesn’t change who we are.”
Charlotte sobbed into Jasha’s bosom. “Yes, it does! I can’t ever be who I was before.”
Jasha knew that was true, so she did not deny it. She just held Charlotte in her arms until she had calmed herself again. Then she said softly, “No, we’ll never be the same again, but we must try to love who we are.”
Jasha does not feature as a major character until "Cold War."
Berlin is under siege. More than two million civilians must be supplied by air -- or surrender to Stalin's oppression.
USAF Captain J.B. Baronowsky and RAF Flight
Lieutenant Kit Moran once risked their lives to drop high explosives on Berlin.
They are about to deliver milk, flour and children’s shoes instead. Meanwhile,
two women pilots are flying an air ambulance that carries malnourished and
abandoned children to freedom in the West. Until General Winter deploys on the
side of Russia. Buy now!
Based on historical events, award-winning and best-selling novelist Helena P. Schrader delivers an insightful, exciting and moving tale about how former enemies became friends in the face of Russian aggression — and how close the Berlin Airlift came to failing.
Winning a war with milk, coal and candy!
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