An inside perspective of Hitler's Germany (3)

I thought that since so many around the world are contemplating this anniversary of Kristallnacht that I would write about the rest of my mother's witness during World War II in Germany.

My grandfather, her father, had served in World War I, yet he was sent to work in a munitions factory in the south, in the Harz Mountains region. That was how it was in Germany, for no one had normal jobs, nor was retired. At any time as they became desperate for men they plucked boys and older men who were not in the military and sent them to work in factories. It was not only the enslaved who had to do this. So my grandfather had to leave his wife, their widowed daughter (my mom) and her infant son behind and go to work in that arms factory.

When Germany fell, the Allies had worked out which country's army would invade and occupy what area, and the right to enter Berlin was given to the Russians. This was understandable as the Russians had lost millions of people most cruelly in this conflict caused by Hitler. However, the civilian population of Berlin knew full well that the Russians would bestow the gift of cruelty on them in return for what the soldiers had done. So many people, especially women and children, who were pretty much all who were left, fled Berlin in advance of the Russians, especially as they heard the news that their worse fears were true. For example, they learned that some Russian soldiers would make civilians kneel in front of a table, extend their tongue, and the Russians would drive a nail through the tongue, nailing them to the table.

My grandmother refused to leave her house, even knowing this. She knew that they were also burning and looting, and just flat out refused to leave. Incredibly she survived by hiding where they did not find her. In those days attics were often reached by huge wood ladders. My grandmother climbed up the ladder to the attic and then somehow found incredible strength to pull the ladder up after her, hiding it in the attic with her, thus making it look like no one could have gone up to the attic (and with no ladder, no one thought to check). She lay silently as the Russians went through the house (they could of course have shot with their guns through the ceiling if they heard her, so she could not move or make any noise). They stripped just about all they could from the house, including the doorknobs off of the doors. But she was alive and that was what counted.

My mother, as a schoolgirl, had done a genealogy of our family as a school project, which was easy to do as all the churches had great church records of events and occupations. She was able to trace our family to the 14th century. Her uncle, who lived next door, panicked when hearing of the Russians coming and burned anything that made the family "look German." I mean, duh, who else would they be but Germans? But he thought the genealogy of simple carpenters, farmers, and small crafts people might look "patriotic" and he burned the entire thing, along with (wisely) the obligatory copy of "Mein Kampf" that just about everyone was expected to have. We really mourn the loss of that school work of my mother's because with the destruction of so many of Germany's churches, even if anyone had the heart to do it, we could not reconstruct even a fraction of it since, like I said, her uncle burned everything and we had really nothing left regarding the family, as modest as it was. He and his family survived too, but relations were never warm, even though they were neighbors.

My mother took her son and fled along with thousands of other women and children, all on foot, all heading south. She figured to walk to where her father was at the munitions factory. They were programmed by Hitler in the schools to think that the British and the American soldiers were "savages" and so they were afraid to encounter them, but had no choice, as the British were advancing from the south. When they met my mother said she and all of the others were astonished at the kindness of the British soldiers. They helped them with food and supplies, and when they could spare vehicles they would pack refugees in them and help them in their journey south. My mother said she would never forget their kindness. Nor will I.

Sometimes the refugees were able to jump onto coal trains, sitting in the coal. Needless to say people were tattered in their clothes, and impossible to keep clean. When I was young my mother never let me wear play clothes; I had to always dress nicely and never make a mess (and thus was incredibly restricted in play). Only once when I was an adult did she tell me that was not her just being obsessive, but it was because she could not bear to see children, as she did during the war, wearing torn and dirty clothes. She swore no child of hers would ever have to wear tattered or dirty clothes again, and boy, she meant it.

She was, as I explained, widowed in 1942, her police man husband who had been drafted into Hitler's Army being killed in Poland one week after his son had been born to my mom. In fact, he got the news in a letter from her, and he and three comrades were ambushed by partisans and killed on their way back from posting mail in reply to their loved ones. My mother got the official news that he had been killed, and then days later, she received his letter. He had been a devout Catholic, a farm boy, an altar boy. At least he died knowing that he had a son.

All that she had of him was his bayonet, and to quote her, "I must have been a little bit crazy during that time, because I took the bayonet with me, not for protection, but because I could not bear to lose the only thing I had left from him. I would have been shot on the spot if I had been found with it, but I kept it wrapped in cloth and it was not found." We still have it in our family and my brother has it.

She made it to the south and was reunited with her father, my grandfather. They stayed there for a while, her and the many other refugees, but all of them were in terror of worry about those who remained behind in Berlin, such as her mother, my grandmother. And so, yes, you guessed it, many refugees just could not stay in the south and wanted to go back to check on their loved ones. Remember, no one but the Allies had any way of having any news, and things were chaotic, so no mail system, certainly no telephones, the infrastructure of Germany was largely destroyed. So all the women worried and imagined about the fate of their loved ones in Berlin and other areas. So many of them turned around and started the trek back north.

Yes, they encountered the British again. To quote my mother, "They said to us, are you crazy? You have just walked hundreds of miles to escape Berlin and now you want to go back?" But yes, the women insisted, and again the British helped them with giving them rides whenever they could spare some capacity. My mother and her son, my brother, made it back and found her mother, my grandmother, alive and well in the house. Eventually my grandfather was able to return too.

When I visited Germany as a child for the first time in 1962, I saw the bomb shelter where my mother and my brother would run during air raids. She also showed me where she had slept in the house and one morning awoke to find shrapnel in her pillow.

During the war they sometimes learned the truth about the progress of the war and Germany's increasing number of defeats because someone had a precious radio, and they could hear the broadcast of the Allies. It was a death penalty to have a radio (for that very reason) in Hitler's Germany, so it was listened to by German civilians at great risk to their lives.

When the Americans arrived and took over the sector of Berlin where my family was, they all just about fainted at how nice the Americans were. Like I said, it sounds stupid now, but when they were youngsters under Hitler he had ordered the schools to teach that American and British soldiers were both savages and also hired savages. Needless to say it was a great relief to the surviving civilians that just like the British, the Americans were fine. The man who would become my father was an American paratrooper and he was stationed near where my grandparents lived, and so that is where he met my mother when she would walk with her son to get rations and milk. Everything was incredibly scarce, as you can imagine. My father was there only for under five months, I think, before being sent back to the USA to demobilize. He actually got a compassion leave because his father was ailing and dying, so my father missed the great victory parade of the paratroopers in New York City, as he was home with his dying father.

As soon as my father's mother and sisters learned that he had a German sweetheart they went to work. My father's youngest sister in particular started her own personal supply lines of packages to my mother with food, powdered milk and other essentials, including things for my brother, like comic books (which were an unimaginable treasure in the ruins of Germany for a child). She also always sent a can of coffee which was more valuable than any gold or money. Rather than drink it my mother sold it on the black market so that they could get money for clothes and other necessities. My mother adored the ground that my aunt walked upon, and she was known to be "an angel" (not in an occult way, but just the expression for one of those extraordinary people who change the world with their day to day kindness). My mother and brother did not leave Germany for another three years after the end of the war, for a number of reasons, to come to America and marry my father. It just about killed her parents, my grandparents, when they left. Remember, travel and communications was not like it was in more modern times, and so they were losing their one and only grandson. They did not see him for many years, until they were able to afford passage on an ocean liner to visit in America, in 1956. I was a toddler but I remember that visit very well, when I met my grandparents for the first (and best) time.

So that is information that I can share with you about "what it really was like" in a time that few can imagine. We used to love the old movie "I was a Male War Bride" (with Cary Grant, my favorite actor) because it contained some humorous look at the many marriages and emigrations that took place after the War.

My brother is one of the most likable guys you can imagine, never looking for trouble, but trouble found him when he was a German kid in American schools after the war. He assimilated quickly and post war anger died down, but for a few years he got called a Nazi and beaten up regularly. He used to come home beaten up and tell our mother that it was the result of football practice injuries. My mother was upset but believed him, not realizing until several years later that football practice did not occur every day year around, and usually did not result in black eyes! When I came along even though I had a slight accent picked up from my mother (which then got speech corrected in school) I had no real trouble at all. Just one day in third grade or so someone left a scrap of paper on my desk with "Nazi" written on it, but that was it. I think it was a kid who was "trying out" prejudice just once, if you know what I mean. But by the late 1950's there were plenty of German families and no one got worked up over it, understanding they were refugees, not perpetrators. But my brother did have a rough couple of years.

Oh, I just remembered another story. Once my mother's German husband took her to the firing range to let her fire his Lugar. She was absolutely knocked on her rear end by the kick back. So a gun totting super hero defending her family she definitely is not.

Ah yes, I just remembered another story to share. Right after the big attempt on Hitler's life my mother was in a Berlin hospital, suffering from either dysentery or cholera. She looked out the window and saw Hitler's people hunting down anyone they thought was part of the coup, shooting them right there in the street. To quote my mother "You see, communications was so bad that when the bomb went off, they thought they had succeeded, and that they had killed Hitler. And so the people in the underground came out of hiding, even telling that they had killed Hitler on the radio. And so they were out in the open, and I saw them being hunted down right from my hospital window."

Speaking of hospital, when her son, my brother, was born in 1942, there was no medicine or pain killers, all had been sent to the soldiers. She was told that old saw, and they actually meant it, to "Bite on a bullet." The birth was such a mess that they told her that she could not have children again, certainly not without an operation. And there was obviously some truth to it because she did not become pregnant again for many years, thinking that she could not. Thus when she became pregnant with me it was a total shock, much more for her than for my father!