Wednesday 28th March 1945 was the day that the city of Danzig fell to the Red Army as World War Two in Europe was drawing to its inevitable end. Danzig had been separated from Germany in 1919 and created as a 'Free City' under the auspices of the League of Nations, guaranteed to provide the newly re-created Poland with access to a sea port. The Free City of Danzig was the first state to be occupied by military force by the Nazis in World War Two, and within a few days it was re-incorporated into the Reich in September 1939.

The terrible invasion, occupation and destruction of the city that began 60 years ago today severed the land connections between Königsberg and East Prussia with the rest of Germany. It also gave the Königsbergers a very stark and horrible warning of what was in store for them if their city also fell to the Red Army.

British historian Antony Beevor has described the fall of Danzig in this way:

“Danzig was under heavy assault from the west. The defenders were forced back bit by bit, and by 28 March Danzig also fell, with appalling consequences for the remaining[1.5 million refugees and] civilians. For German officers, especially Pomeranians and Prussians, the loss of the Hanseatic city of Danzig, with its fine old buildings with distinctive stepped gables, was a disaster. It signified the end of German Baltic life forever. The fate of civilians was terrible. Their culture was also exterminated as churches and old buildings went up in flames. A Soviet commander complained that it was 'absolutely impossible to stop the violence'. Red Army soldiers did not bother with official euphamisms for rape, such as 'violence against the civilian population', or 'immorality'. They simply used the phrase 'to fuck'. German women developed their own verbal formulae for what they had been through. Many used to say 'I had to concede'. Soviet soldiers once again demonstrated an utterley bewildering mixture of irrational violence, drunken lust and spontaneous kindness to children.” (Beevor, Berlin: the downfall 1945, Penguin 2002: 121-123).

Worse was to come for the Danzigers. A fortnight later Königsbergers suffered their own version of the story. On this day I remember the people and their fate, a fate that was fully supported by all the Allies. The high rhetoric of fighting fascism had degenerated into base revenge as a substitute for justice. What is the legacy that we live with today?

My guiding spirit, or guardian, or whatever you want to call it – I've always felt it was there, but never had a name for it. At the same time I have had a long obsession with the Baltic city of Königsberg. Why? I've never really known, but recently began to teach myself Tarot and I Ching to explore these feelings. The result: I have a guiding spirit who watches over me, a woman, who used to live in Königsberg. Why would she want to watch over me? I don't know, but at last I have something to go by, to look for, to respond to. I have looked at many pictures and maps of Königsberg, the Samland peninsula and the Kurische Nehrung. It looks very much like the place I grew up – windswept sandhills along a low, flat coast line, shallow lagoons and estuaries, silvery seas, an old town on a river – but at the same time there are many differences between an ancient Hanseatic city and a tiny old colonial fishing village on the other side of the world.

This year (2005) marks the 750th anniversary of the founding of Königsberg and the 60th anniversary of its violent capture and viscious occupation by the Red Army when the city was expropriated and its people killed or expelled. It also marks the 155th anniversary of the founding of my home town of Dongara in Western Australia, itself based upon the expropriation of a place from its native inhabitants.

I am dedicating this blog to my guiding spirit who I have called the Lady of Königsberg, and I will be using it to remember and commemorate her times, and to explore all the things that swirl through my mind that seem in some way to be connected to the Lady and her sage teachings or inner explorations. Join me on the journey if you wish, I don't know the route and have no idea of the destination, just a conviction that it will be worth it and that I can no longer avoid it.