Lieselotte

True World War II Story by Gisela Cooper

Lieselotte was born in Hamburg. I met her when visiting my brother Dieter in Leipzig many years ago. At the moment I am writing a few memories and thought her story fits in really well to sit in my web site next to the others.

There is my account, besides Rebecca’s and Hildegard von Waldenburg’s story. Hildegard has written her own story and excerpts can be read linked from my web side. There is also an article I have written as an Editorial, called: The last days of war, which I had been asked for by the Italian Newspaper "La Stampa."

From all the Propaganda Documents and Films taken and published by Dr. Goebbels, it gives a false impression of many German’s views of the Nazi Regime. I have not selected special people, but have met people quite casually, to listen to their experiences. It is still world-wide quite unknown about personal feelings in Germany. It even surprised me to find so many people opposed to Nazism, but at that time they could not utter one word of discontent. It is absolutely true that people would be send to Concentration-Camps if they were overheard saying anything against Hitler. Everywhere one went, spies were placed, even in trams. I was nearly napped once, when I mentioned that I heard Marlene Dietrich singing on a German Soldier’s Station in Italy. You were not even allowed to listen to that! Everyone learned quickly to keep mumm.

They brought Heil-shouting masses to attend, when needed, from Bavaria, especially to Berlin. Hitler did not bother to re-visit Hamburg or Leipzig a second time, because hardly anybody came out to greet him. I think it is time someone is writing about this, because it is still hanging like a black cloud over Germany, accusing all Germans of little Hitlers. Of course many were, but what the real percentage was, I really don’t know.

I hope you like my stories, which have been told to me word for word and are entirely true. Nothing has been added.

This is what Lieselotte told me:

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I had been just eight years old by the outbreak of war. I attended school in Hamburg at that time until 1941. Then I had been sent to a children’s Holiday home (This was the name for this undertaking) in Waltershof, Fichtel-Gebirge. On arrival at the Station I had been taken by a friendly family to their home. I stayed with them for a whole year. I really liked it there. The family treated me like their own child, and they would have liked to keep me, as they had lost their own daughter not very long before. I was sent back home in 1942 and we started to go to air raid shelters twice every night. Because of the constant bomb attacks, I was evacuated with other children from Hamburg to Czechoslovakia just outside Prague. We lived and were taught in one large building, but it was not a boarding school. The staff, except the teachers, was all Czechs.

One day the cooks sent us children to pick blackberries, which they then cooked for us. After we ate those, we all were violently sick and felt very ill. The cooks tried to poison us. Doctors were called. The place was closed within a week.

We were split up, and I was sent to Bavaria. After 6 months, I was sent home again. Then the bombing really started.

My parents had some lifelong Jewish friends. The husband was a tailor. We had all our clothes made by him. One day we went to see them, but they had gone. Their house was empty. By then we had continuous bombing, it never stopped. In 1943, we had the big fire storm. We stayed in the air raid shelter for three days and nights without any food or water supplies. We could not leave the shelter, because of the huge fire and intense heat. When eventually we came out, we could not see the sun, but the whole sky was completely fiery red.

We were very fortunate to find our flat still intact, which was in a complex of 300 apartments. All around everything had gone. One could look for miles in all directions and not one building was in sight. Roads did not exist anymore. Dead people were lying everywhere. Some died in the cellars, some were burned alive. I heard some people screaming. Everyone, who was saved from the inferno, was trying to dig people out from under the rubble with their bare hands. It was chaos. A few minutes away from our air raid shelter, was another. This shelter was not quite completed, but people had taken shelter in there just the same. It took several hits. All 400 or more people were burned alive. Burning people jumped into the Wansee-Canal.

My aunt was an eye witness. She was very lucky, because usually she went to this shelter, because it was near her house. This particular day she stayed in her own cellar. We now had no Gas or Electricity. Everyone burnt paraffin lamps. Water was daily delivered by a van. With food and fuel we were well provided for, as my mother had the foresight to fill our cellar with coal, potatoes, and shelves stacked with tin food. If we needed anything else, we had to go to the black market.

One late evening after "The all clear" sounded, we went to see my aunt, to make sure she was alright. On our way home we stepped into some phosphor and it splashed and burnt holes in our legs. I still have the scars today. My mother who has passed on a few years ago, had a hole of 2 ½ inches in diameter burned into her ankle. It had never healed, but the phosphor went deep into her bone. At the time we did not know that it had to be scraped out. In the end my mum could not walk anymore and was in constant pain for 41 years. I don’t know how she kept going in all those years. There was no doctor or any medical help available. Everything was in utter chaos.

We did not realise at first that we had stepped in phosphor until we found our floorboards starting to smoulder, where we had stepped. We had brought the phosphor into the house on the soles of our shoes. The next day, a van with a loudspeaker came past, warning people not to leave their house, to alert them of the phosphor outside.

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Mother worked in a Military Hospital in Hamburg, where the fresh casualties from the front came in. Whenever she could she slipped the slave workers some food, putting herself in great danger. After a few more bomb attacks my parents decided to leave Hamburg.

My elder brother Henri had already been evacuated to Bavaria. They took my sister Helen and my younger brother Peter, 2 years of age at the time, and me. We set out to the Pferde Markt (Horse Market) in Wansbeck-Hamburg. We had heard that people were from there collected to be transported out of Hamburg. We found already thousands of people waiting for transport, and had to wait the whole day for our turn. Open lorries were provided for the transportation. Then we travelled for many hours and finally arrived in a small village, and stayed on a farm. Our family were invited to the house, but everybody else had to sleep in the barn. We intended to stay for at least a week, but after a few hours sleep, we were bombed again, as if they knew we were there, because the village had never been bombed before.

The next day we started walking. The lorries had to go back to pick up others. We walked all day with our few belongings. Little Peter sat in his pushchair, which my sister was able to get for him before we left. We came to a railway station. The Red Cross gave us food and little Peter some milk. From there we travelled in a cattle train for four days and nights. The train was packed. Some people sat on the roof, and some were standing on the bumpers between the wagons. Inside we could hardly move. We could not leave this train and had to use a bucket inside the wagon. Surprisingly all the people with us kept their courage up. Eventually we arrived at our destination "Obervichtag" to where Henri had already been sent a few months ago to stay with a family.

Our family had been allocated to a small Hotel. The Hotel owner took all our ration cards, and he hardly gave us any food in that time we stayed there. We had some bread given, no butter, margarine or meat. I can’t remember having a meal there. Peter had some milk daily, but not the amount he was entitled to. We were so hungry that in the summer months we went into the woods every day to pick blueberries and wild strawberries which we washed and ate. We also picked mushrooms later in the year. We had to eat them uncooked, as we had no cooking facility at all.

After we first arrived in Obervichtag, we went to see my brother Henri. The family, he was staying with, told us that they did not want to keep him any longer. We thought it very mean, as he now had to starve with us. We found people who lived in the village very resentful. For them war did not exist. They did not show any compassion. Refugees did not get sympathy anywhere.

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We stayed for a year, except for my father. He had to go back because of his work. He was also an air raid warden.

When he returned to Hamburg, our flat, the whole complex had disappeared. There was just rubble. All he found was the metal part of our sewing machine. After we returned, our aunt took us in with three other families. My aunt had 5 rooms in her house, and each family, including my aunt, had one room to live in. We were able to fit two bunk beds and a wardrobe into our room. There was no sitting room, and with all the other families we shared the kitchen and an outside toilet. While we existed there, my father was busy creating a new home for us. Eventually we were given a Behelfsheim. (A make-do home for bomb victims) Many had been built for this purpose. It had two rooms. In the small bedroom, two beds and a wardrobe fitted in, and the other was a kitchen-sitting room combined. No bathroom, only an outside toilet with a bucket. The good thing was a piece of land was attached to it, for creating a vegetable garden. It served its purpose at the time, but looking back, it was really a very cramped living condition.

Father and all the other men, who lived in these Behelfsheims, started to build their own houses, beginning to add rooms around it, to keep it in the middle, to keep the cold out. We children were sent out to collect all the good bricks from the rubble to bring them back in wheel barrels. Gradually the house grew in size as rooms were added. My mother lived in this house for many years. We all loved it. It was spacey and comfortable.

My father died when I was 17 years old. He was never too well. He suffered from gas poisoning during WWI. He had been a prisoner of war in Russia. Between 1942 until 1945 there was no school in Hamburg. I was only able to attend school when I had been evacuated.

It was now 1944. The day and night bombing still went on. Henri, my elder brother showed serious symptoms. He could not stop blinking and only with great difficulty could he drop off to sleep, and when he slept, we could not wake him. Mother decided to take him to my aunt in Schmolde Mecklenburg, where she had a farm. After a few months, my mother fetched Henri back to Hamburg. The bombing still continued and fighter-planes appeared, came down and shot into windows. By then mother had enough and took Henri and myself to Schmolde. On the way, we met many refugees coming from the East in endless columns, walking or with horse and cart, moving West- Wards. It was a pitiful sight. If one sees this on Newsreels, it has not the same impact as actually witnessing it. Many of those people left rich farmland behind. Most of those farms where of considerable size. Now that part of Germany belongs to Poland. (Originally before WW1 it had been Polish. Poland had been divided by Russia and Germany before.) At the time the farmers did not know that they could never return. They had left, as the Russian Army approached. I have heard later that many of those refugees found and lived for years in air raid shelters. Blankets were hung up on washing lines to give each family some privacy. Their teenage boys found work on building sites, illuminated to work through the night. All the money earned, helped their families, as most men were dead or prisoners. Other refugees w ere allocated to individual families or farms after arriving at certain destinations.

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While in Schmolde it was very peaceful. If not so many refugees had arrived, one could think there was no war. We had plenty of food, no shortages at all. Schmolde was a farming village, and every farmer took refugees in, who in turn helped on the farms. With the school we went to collect stinging nettles and other leafs in large sacks. They were used to make medicines.

On my aunt’s farm, I was assigned to look after the cows in the field. Just before returning to Hamburg, I was about 3 miles away in the field with the cows, when I saw lots of planes in the sky. I was very frightened being by myself. I tried to drive the cows back to the farm as quick as possible, but they just would not move. I hid in a ditch. To my relieve the planes moved on. This was the only frightening incident I had when living in Schmolde, where we lived a normal and enjoyable life. Mother had long gone back to Hamburg. After a few months she wanted to take us back home again, but Henri was in no state to go back yet.

We always travelled by train. This time it was only me and my mother. Near Wittenberge the train was attacked by bombers and low flying fighter aircrafts. The train stopped, and mother and I hid as good, as we could under the seats. Most people got out of the train running across a field, trying to reach the nearby wood. The train was not hit, but lots of people were shot and killed by the low flying fighter planes, trying to escape.

At home again in Wansbeck-Hamburg, when ever the air raid sounded, we sheltered in an old chimneystack. A door had been fitted into it, and we went deep down inside. There was room for about 12 people, sitting in a circle.

I always went shopping with mother. We had to queue for 3 to 4 hours each time. Usually when our turn came, all was sold out. I fainted very often. Once I went with my aunt to the Horse-Market to buy meat, we stood in the queue all day long, and again it was sold out before it was our turn. While we were waiting, the sirens sounded, and we hid under the lorries. The roads were bombed but nobody was hurt.

We children often collected nettles and mother cooked them as spinach. It was a substitute for the greens we lacked.

By now we had hardly any clothes to wear, and I had no shoes at all. Mother went to the Contribution Centre, asking for clothes- and shoe coupons. This Centre was run by Party Members, who told my mother that she could not have any. Everyone who had joined the Nazi Party wore the Nazi Broach. Mother did not wear one that is why they refused her request. Mother was still pressing her point, when they told her to leave immediately, or they would ring a bell, which was underneath their desk. The bell summoned other Party Members to arrest anyone and take her to a Concentration Camp. Mother replied: "be free to do so, you Nazis, just wait until the war is finished, and see what happens to you," and left. To this day I don’t know how she got away with this remark.

Several times the Gestapo turned up at our house and warned mother to send me to the B D M, (Hitler youth branch for girls) or she would be arrested and taken to a Concentration Camp. It was the usual thing to threaten people, who did not do as they were told. I only went once to make sure mother was not taken away.

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Towards the end of the war the German soldiers, Army and Navy, came walking along the main road from the Eastern Front. It was an endless column reaching back for miles. One could not see the end. Their uniforms were in tatters. Some were limping, some bandaged, and some wore no boots or shoes. It reminded me of Napoleon’s Army returning from Russia. History repeating itself!

We heard on the radio that Hamburg was in British hands without fighting. We were not allowed into the streets, but stayed in our garden. The British soldiers marched in, and there was a curfew after dark. We were glad to see them and to know that the war was over. British soldiers came in their scout cars and knocked on our doors, asking for fresh eggs and butter in exchange for chocolates, sweets and cigarettes. We had not seen chocolates in years and were very pleased.

People with children received Red Cross parcels. We had several containing clothes. One parcel contained vests, which my mother gave to me. When she washed them, they dissolved. They were made of paper. She only found the straps. My girlfriend’s family received a parcel with shoes from America. She gave me a black pair, because I had no shoes at all. They were size 9 or 10 and were very long and narrow. I had to wear them even so they hurt my feet and they looked funny being so long. In 1947, my aunt, uncle and their son, who owned the farm in Schmolde, were disowned by the Russians, and they left East-Germany. Their elder son and his wife stayed behind as farm labourers, just in case one day the farm should be given back to the rightful owners.

Coming to the West, they had to go to a Refugee Camp in Rahlstadt-Hamburg before they were given proper accommodations in West-Germany.

We did not know they had left Schmolde until they turned up on our doorstep. Later on they found a new home in Solingen.

Gradually life became normal again. The rubble was cleared away, roads appeared and buildings sprung up. Also food and clothing was back in the shops again.

In 1949, Helen my sister, her husband and I went on a hitch-hike holiday along the river Rhein. It was a lovely experience. How beautiful it was after seeing nothing else but rubble for years. Living in Hamburg, I did not know such beauty existed. On our way back, we avoided the roads and walked through fields and woods, and found three German soldiers graves, still with their helmets propped up on their rifles. I expect that they were reported missing.

This ends Lieselotte’s story. I was much moved by her experiences, as I have been spared nearly all bombing.