One Bridge Too Many (Double Crossing, by Erika Holzer)

ONE BRIDGE TOO MANY

It ends as it starts, on the Glienicker Bridge, which is half in East Berlin, half in West Berlin. The East Germans call it the Bridge of Unity, but back then, in 1945, GIs stationed in Berlin called it the Bridge of Freedom, since Germans caught in the East at the end of the war could slip over it to freedom in the West. They called it that until the day that five Ukrainian children—survivors of a Nazi concentration camp, who had been freed, befriended, and hidden for a while from the Soviet authorities by an advance American patrol—died there. As they were being marched across the bridge to captivity, the oldest child, a 12-year-old girl, broke free from her Russian guard and hurled herself over the balustrade into the river, still clutching a three-year-old in her arms. Three more children followed her to their deaths. Watching, horror-struck, was a 19-year-old American soldier, Pfc. Kurt Brenner, the man who betrayed them.

PL

About the Author

Priscilla L. Buckley

ONE BRIDGE TOO MANY

It ends as it starts, on the Glienicker Bridge, which is half in East Berlin, half in West Berlin. The East Germans call it the Bridge of Unity, but back then, in 1945, GIs stationed in Berlin called it the Bridge of Freedom, since Germans caught in the East at the end of the war could slip over it to freedom in the West. They called it that until the day that five Ukrainian children—survivors of a Nazi concentration camp, who had been freed, befriended, and hidden for a while from the Soviet authorities by an advance American patrol—died there. As they were being marched across the bridge to captivity, the oldest child, a 12-year-old girl, broke free from her Russian guard and hurled herself over the balustrade into the river, still clutching a three-year-old in her arms. Three more children followed her to their deaths. Watching, horror-struck, was a 19-year-old American soldier, Pfc. Kurt Brenner, the man who betrayed them.