With the refugee crisis still a human and political issue, my thoughts have been with my own experiences and memories as a refugee toward the end of World War II.
I was born on October 3, 1944 in Schoenwiese,the last in my family to be born in East Prussia. Schoenwiese, translated it means “beautiful meadow”, and is now known as Wojimany, Poland. Schoenwiese was located about 30 km from Koenigsberg, the capital of East Prussia. After the war it was renamed Kalinigrad and is part of Russia.
My ancestors lived in East Prussia since the 13th century. East Prussia and Brandenburg made up the State of Prussia. In 1871 the King of Prussia, Wilhelm I, united all of the German states and became the first emperor of Germany. Up to that time Germany was broken up into many independent kingdoms and Dukedoms without a central government.
The majority of East Prussians were farmers. East Prussia was known as the wheat chamber or bread basket of Germany but also for its Prussian military history. One of its soldiers, Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben played a significant role in the revolutionary war, bringing Prussian discipline to the revolutionary soldiers. I am sure you are familiar with his story.
Father never knew anything else but farming and raising thoroughbred horses. Then at the end of World War 2, our family and all East Prussians became refugees. After the war ended, East Prussia became part of Poland. Brandenburg became part of communist East Germany with Berlin divided into East and West Berlin, later separated by a wall which stayed in place until 1989 when East and West Germany were again reunited.
During WW2 Father was a soldier like all healthy German males. He was fighting on the Russian front. `My parents had met in Norway where my mother was a Red Cross Nurse and my father was recuperating from battle wounds received on the Eastern front.
Mother, my brother and myself, my grandmother and 14 year old aunt, along with the farm workers lived in relative peace in East Prussia until the end of 1944. At that time the situation was already looking very bleak for most of Germany and its people. My mother, the optimist par none, named me Gudrun Siegfriede. Siegfriede translates into “victory peace”, a middle name which I never mentioned to anyone while I was growing up. I felt embarrassed that my mother had given me such an awful middle name considering the Nazi history.
Toward the end of 1944, the world as people knew it in East Prussia was disappearing fast. Russian troops invaded East Prussia and horrible stories of atrocities were spread. Some true, some Nazi propaganda. As it turned out, most of the stories were true. Russian soldiers during and after the war raped and killed German women and children who were living in the Russian occupied area of Germany by the millions.
In January of 1945 people started talking about the Russian troops getting closer to Schoenwiese .The Russian army was advancing faster and already were occupying large areas of East Prussia. Not wanting to meet up with the Russians, my mother started to plan her escape. On February 2nd 1945, a day after my brother’s birthday, my brother and me left the farm to try to make it to the Baltic Sea. My mother packed everything she could on a large sleigh pulled by 2 horses. February in East Prussia is still bitter cold and is covered in snow. Cars were useless since gasoline was non existent. She loaded up as much food as possible along with clothing, featherbeds, household items, etc. She also took along silver and jewelry for bartering. She had sewn all her valuables into the seams of coats and clothing.
My grandmother decided to stay on the farm with my aunt and the farm workers. Her motto was “I have lived in East Prussia all of my life and I am not afraid of the Russians”. It took my mother four weeks to reach the Baltic seaport of Pillau. It was a horrible experience for her and many others fleeing their homes and seeing dead women, babies and children along the way. Pillau was on the “Haff”, a lagoon, and ships had to anchor further out since the lagoon was frozen and not deep enough for big ships. In Pillau she met up with my grandmother and aunt.
They had left just a couple of days after us via the same mode of transportation. A Russian military advance group came to the farm. According to my grandmother, they were officers and were very polite. She was told that she would have to leave since they could not guarantee what the troops would do when they arrived. She had no choice but to pack as much as possible and leave with my aunt. In the meantime thousands of refugees, mostly women and children, were waiting in the port of Pillau to be taken to Danzig, (now Gdansk, in Poland). Along the water there were mountains of featherbeds, household items, clothing, horses, wagons and so on. People were only allowed to take things that they could carry on their bodies. Reaching the ship was a risky undertaking. People could only get to the ships at night in total darkness. The Russians in the meantime had broken up the ice with bombs to make it nearly impossible to get to the ships. People had to jump from one ice block to the next. There were screams of “HILFE”(help) all around from mothers and children falling into the icy water. Something that my mother, grandmother and aunt never forgot. They all said that it was the most horrible experience of their journey. They were unable to help anyone. It was strictly saving oneself and in our case, saving my brother and me. My aunt was carrying me across the ice. Miracles do happen and all of us made it to the ship. The lucky ones who survived were stuffed on board like sardines. When we arrived in Danzig, we were told that ships would bring all refugees to Denmark. We were supposed to leave on a ship called” Goya”. Stories were told that a lot of the ships were bombed by the Russians and all refugees were killed. Mother did not want to leave on a ship with thousands of people and the strong possibility of being bombed. So she and my grandmother bribed the captain of a German minesweeper to take us to Denmark. It cost them quite a bit of their valuables but he did agree to take all of us. The ship Goya with which we were supposed to leave was blown up by the Russians with thousands of refugees on board. Once again we were spared. When we arrived in Denmark we immediately were placed in a refugee camp in a town called Tirstrup. There were thousands upon thousands of women and children mainly from East Prussia interned in these refugee camps all over Denmark. Many of them died of diseases and malnutrition.
Once again I had a guardian angel watching over me. Every few months a Danish doctor who checked the children admitted me to the hospital so I could get decent nourishment. My mother always said I was the best fed child in the camp. Apparently I looked like someone in the doctor’s family which was easy to understand. I had blond curly hair, blue eyes and after the good food, fat cheeks! In contrast to most children, i was never sick while living in Denmark.
I have to give credit to my mother who was able to breastfeed me until I was 2 years old. In contrast to me, my brother had every childhood disease possible and was close to death a couple of times.
I have vague memories of the barracks in which we lived. Our rooms were very small. They were 18-19 people living in each room. Each mother, grandmother, etc. had to share a small bed with a child. There was a long dining hall where we ate our meager meals consisting of potato soup one day and barley soup the next day along with some dry bread. The ill treatment by the Danes was understandable. Denmark had been occupied by Germany and besides not liking the Germans, their resources were minimal to feed,house and take care of all these unwanted refugees.
I also remember walking to the kindergarten along a high barbwire fence with razor wire on top and Danish soldiers with guns on the other side of the fence. The kindergarten was the highlight of my young life. I remember the kindergarten teacher very well. She was a nice young Danish woman who was very kind to us. We had some toys to play with and a few children books. For the children it was heaven.
I don’t know the exact time frame when we were told that we would be shipped to West Germany.
You might wonder why we did not return to East Prussia. During the famous Potsdam summit with Stalin, Truman, and Churchill it was decided that no Germans were allowed to go back to East Prussia. The area was divided between the Soviet Union and Poland. Our farm was right on the border of the two countries and our farm was now in Poland. А curious note on that issue, my American passport states that I was born in Poland, not in Germany even though it stillwas Germany at the time of my birth.
Once in West Germany we ended up in another refugee camp close to Wiesbaden. The stay was a short one. I remember hating this place.We were in a huge hall, most likelya gymnasium with hundred of cots. I remember feeling homesick for Denmark and the only life I had known. People in West Germany who had large houses were ordered to give up rooms for the refugees. Obviously the West Germans did not want to do this voluntarily. 1 learned very fast that we were not welcomed and were called “Fluechtlingszores” ( refugee trash) from the East. We were assigned two rooms in a beautiful villa with a lovely garden and lots of apple and pear trees. The village was Michelbach, Hessen, close to the Bad Schwalbach/ Wiesbaden area. We shared the downstairs with a German-Hungarian family. I have fond memories of Michelbach. My brother and I could roam around and feel freedom for the first time in our lives. Life as such was still far from being “normal”. We had ration cards for groceries. I remember waiting in a long line every week for our meat ration which was mainly a piece of fat. To this day I do not eat fat on meat. We also received some items of the care packages sent to Germany from the USA. There was some clothing, canned food, and many more items needed. What a treat that was.
As soon as we had arrived in Germany my mother registered with the Red Cross in the hope that they could match us up with my father. We had no idea if he was still alive. My father, after returning from a Russian prison camp, also registered with the Red Cross and somewhere in 1949 we were matched up. The day came when my mother told us that we were going to the train station to pick up our father. My brother and I had absolutely no idea what to expect. We were used to being around mainly females for most of our lives, and seeing the man who was supposed to be our father for the first time was a shock to us. There was this thin old looking man who approached us, and even though we were instructed by mother to greet him with a hug and kiss, we could not do it. I just hid behind my mother, never said a word, and my brother said laughingly “You are supposed to be my father?” That was not the reception that he expected. He had never met me and remembered my brother only as a baby.
Needless to say the reunion or first meeting was a disaster. My brother and father never got along. It took me years to have a decent relationship with my father.
The next thing we knew was that my mother was expecting a baby. “Great news!” My sister was born in January of 1951. Like they said, “another mouth to feed!”. In the meantime my father had to go back to school to get retrained as a civil servant since a farmer without a farm is pretty useless.
My father joined the custom administration and became a customs official. My mother’s father had convinced him to join the civil service. His reasoning was that you can always keep your job as a civil servant in case there would be another war. It was not at all unreasonable since my grandparents had already lived through two world wars.
My mother’s family was from the Alsace, which was part of France until the Nazis annexed the area and it became part of Germany. For many centuries Alsace-Lorraine was constantly fought over between France and Germany. After World War II it was again part of France. My mother was born in Strassbourg, the capital of the Alsace. My grandfather was an official for the railroad. During the Nazi era, when the Alsace-Lorraine was once again part of Germany, he was transferred to a new position in Trier on the Moselle River. Trier is the oldest city in Germany, dating back to the Romans when it was called Augusta Trevorum. My grandparents had 4 children, Mother being the oldest. And when Opa was told to join the Nazi party to keep his job, he had no other options but to join. Being from the Alsace was another reason he was pressured to joln the Nazi party. He was the typical example of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Getting back to my story, while my mother was pregnant, she spent almost the entire time in the hospital, not sure if it was actual illness or depression. We did not talk about it. My grandmother picked us up and took us to Trier where she lived in a former military building with many other families. My grandparents’ house was bombed completely and they had lost everything. While being In Trier, I remember vividly visiting my grandfather every Sunday afternoon in prison.
It just so happened that this particular part of Germany was placed under French occupation. Since he was from the Alsace, now part of France again, and since he was a Nazi party member, he was thrown in prison as a traitor to France. He was released sometime toward the end of 1950. He was reinstated as a civil servant and retired shortly after that.
When I was 8 years old, my father received his first assignment as a customs officer and we moved to the border of Germany/Luxembourg/Belgium. This was the first time we lived as a family under one roof and our “normal family life” began. As everyone can imagine, it was everything else but normal. We were used to my mother being in charge and now we were supposed to ask our father. It did not go over too well. There were lots of fights between my parents and I was scared of my father and tried to be invisible in contrast to my brother who constantly provoked him.
As time went on, at least life in general improved. We had everything we needed but that did not include any luxuries. Over the years my Father was promoted several times and we moved every time but stayed in the vicinity of the Luxembourg and French border.
When I was 18 years old I met my husband who was in the American Air Force. He was stationed in France and my family lived in Saarbruecken, a city on the French border. My brother, who was in the German Air Force, brought my future husband home for Christmas in 1962. After a few more visits to my parents, we started dating. I was in nursing school. After graduation in 1965, I immigrated to the U.S. against all advice. We got married the same year and in 2016 we celebrated our 51st wedding anniversary. I consider myself very lucky for the way my life has turned out compared to the thousands upon thousands of refugees during and after World War II.
After the Iron Curtain opened in 1988-1989 several of my uncles made a nostalgic voyage to the “Homeland”. They visited the Farm which was run by a Polish family. Everything was as they remembered except that the main house was burned down in 1945 and the Polish family had turned part of the stables into their living quarters. The most nostalgic part of the trip was seeing the descendents of our horses who looked just like the horses they remembered.
My relatives were treated well by the Polish family but they came back to Germany feeling depressed and made the statement that they wished they would have never gone back. Sometimes it is not good to dwell about the past and what could have been. The one thing I regret is that I did not get more information from my parents and relatives. They just wanted that part of their lives left behind.