My grandfather worked in the Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt SS before joining the Waffen-SS and getting killed on the eastern front (somewhere in the Ukraine). In fact. my mom was born in a Lebensbornheim in Klosterheide (near Berlin).
I had a great-uncle who was in the Wehrmacht, but he was injured and caught neurosyphilis from a blood transfusion. By the time I was born I couldn’t ask him about the war.
Of course there are a lot of stories I have heard from my late grandmother. She made a living smuggling goods between the Russian and American occupation zones for a while. She snuck all three of her children and herself from the Russian to the American zone. She was raped by Russians (my uncle is the result) and she was raped by Americans (twenty years in Leavenworth were the results of that).
My father says he still remembers the air-raid sirens and hiding in the bunkers, before he moved to the country (a great uncle had a farm). My mother says she remembers that they were always hungry right after the war. The winter of 1946/1947 was especially tough.
My other grandfather was a fireman and he remembers being sent to Darmstadt the day after the firebombing of that city. He says they found people in cellars that seemed completely unharmed. They asphixiated because the firestorm sucked all the oxygen out of the cellar. He also said they found corpses that were the size of small dogs and the color of charcoal. The trams were actually melted onto the tracks due to the heat of the flames. Here are some pictures from after the raid: Friedensplatz Downtown Darmstadt
Note that there isn’t a single building with an intact roof left. Even the Wilheminenkirche (that round building at the bottom left) was bombed. I have no idea why someone took a picture of a Ken doll in front of the reconstructed church though.
I asked my grandmother about this, since the little town my family is from had quite a large Jewish population. There was a synagogue and even a Jewish school at which Chaim Weizmann (first president of Israel) had once taught. She said they believed the story that the Jews were being relocated to Eastern Europe and were given housing and land there. Most people did not have problems taking over empty houses that had previously belonged to Jews. It was considered normal that stores that had previously belonged to the Sterns and Blums and Davids were suddenly run by the Nungessers and Fleischmanns and Crößmanns. It is really sad to hear what happened to some of these families. Here (in German) is what a high school student was able to research about the life of one woman who was deported (and ultimately killed in Auschwitz) in 1942: Binchen Stern
My mom said they loved the Americans (the Russians not so much). To this day the taste of a Hershey bar (different than the taste of German choclate) can still bring her to tears. She also says it is the first time in her life she had ever seen a black man and it was really fascinating.
In 1991, I was lucky enough to spend a couple of weeks on an exchange program in Berlin. My host family had a lovely small apartment house right on the Ku’damm, and it had been in the family since the 1920s. they were wonderful to me.
At some point, it occurred to me, “these people had to have been members of the Nazi party!” I was aware that most well-to-do folks had to join the party, at least on paper, in order to avoid being targeted. My host dad was maybe 60, making him old enough to at least have been in the Hitler Youth. He was certainly an Aryan type. I have no idea what their actual WWII activities or sympathies were, and I don’t begrudge anybody from joining the party if they felt that they had to.
It was just very strange for this nice Jewish girl from Long Island to realize "hey, I’m probably talking to actual Nazis! :eek: "
Thanks for the stories everyone, they are really fascinating to me and sheds light on a part of the war that we don’t get to hear about much. Hopefully people post more stuff!
Herman and his wife were friends of the family from the Lutheran church I went to growing up. He passed away in the early 1990s, probably in his mid seventies. He was short, had a beard and coke-bottle glasses, spoke softly with a moderate accent and always had a ready, twinkly smile. On one occasion I remember hearing him recount what had happened to him during the war, and it wasn’t a very long story:
After conscription, Herman was assigned to some seagoing duty when their boat ran into trouble in rough water and sank. He and the others clung to a buoy waiting for rescue, and eventually saw a ship approaching. Fairly sure they were going to be taken prisoner, the men prayed that it would be an American vessel…
But it was the Russians.
He was taken to a Soviet prison where he would remain for years.
Playing cards was the prisoners’ best entertainment- he would play hundreds and hundreds of games. It would get very cold. One prisoner went stark raving mad and screamed a lot and they couldn’t do anything for him.
After he was released, he emigrated to America, where everyone initially nicknamed him ‘Herman the German’.
He was German, but met my grandmother in Denmark, where he was staying to finish his training as goldsmith. They eventually settled in Prague, where he built a decent business and they started a family. Of course, all that ended with the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, and a few years later, he was drafted for the Wehrmacht. He was in his early forties at the time, so while they may not have scraped the bottom of the barrel yet, it was evident that things were not going well.
He was extraordinarily lucky in being an avid mountaineer and he managed to talk himself into an assignment to a regiment of alpine troops - which in turn meant assignment to Greece, not the Eastern Front. In Greece, he surrendered to a British unit and spent the last part of the war in a POW camp in Italy. He never talked about it.
My grandmother made it from Prague to the British Zone with her kids (my father and my aunt), Heaven knows how. She never talked about that, either, except in her final years when her mind started slipping and she sometimes thought herself back in those not at all pleasant days. A very tough lady.
My grandfather stayed in touch with one friend from his soldier days: A British soldier (Richard) who was assigned to the camp. They’d exchange Christmas parcels (British plumcake one way, German stollen the other) until Richard passed away. For some reason, that always struck me as a very soldierlike thing to do - swapping some goodies from home at Christmas.
Interestingly, my maternal grandfather risked his life in clandestine work for the other side of the conflict, although never in open combat. But they were both old-school gentlemen and would know better than to bring it up.
Likely going about her day to day activities as best as possible while occasionally sheltering from an allied air raid. Most Germans weren’t taking weekend trips to Poland to help out with the killings…
My husband’s paternal grandfather was in the German Army. Pretty much spent most of his time fighting the Russians and came home, one armed, hating the Russians. The concerns about the Russians were very high. (As he and his young family of 6 children escaped Prussia from Russians invading their small town that was pretty much wiped off the map.) He died in the 80’s, I think.
My husbands Maternal grandfather was a cook in the army. That man never missed a meal in his life. He died about 10 years ago.
I was thinking Pyper’s parents didn’t want em to stirr memories of stuff like being gang raped by Russian soldiers or being forced into prostitution in order to live.
