My very first memory is of Kristallnacht and the day after - at age 3! I've always wondered why. We lived in the downtown area of Pforzheim, Germany. Across the street was a Jewish owned department store, and there were many small Jewish shops in the immediate area. I remember waking up to the sound of glass breaking and people shouting. I rushed to the window and saw people being herded together, screamed at and beaten up on by brown shirted people in the street below.
My mother immediately pulled me away from the window, warning me not to go to the window again. The next day my mother took me with her to the weekly open food market. On the way back I noticed people on top of a church, tearing it up. I asked my mother what these people were doing. She grabbed me, jerked me down the street, and told me to shut up and keep moving. (I now know that it was a synagogue, that was being destroyed.) Obviously I'm not Jewish, or our place would've been destroyed, too.
My family was middle-class, on my mother's side being "lesser" nobility (von Roßwags) and farmers from the Black Forest area. My mother and grandparents were the only ones of her immediate family still in Germany, with most of her family having emigrated to the US and Venezuela between 1870 and 1900, including 2 of her 3 sisters who had come to the States right after WW I. My father's family originally came to Germany from France. They were Huguenots, and got kicked out of France.
They were artisans and artists, and most males of my father's family, including my father, were gem engravers. (I don't have a better word for it. It's engraving coats of arms, monograms, etc., into the gems of very expensive rings, i.e. like rubies, emeralds, etc.). There were only 3 of that profession in Germany at the time of my father's death.
Two of my father's great-uncles emigrated to Wisconsin in 1856 to get away from the Prussian draft. One of them was the founder of a large family branch in Wisconsin, and got rich, the other got killed at Gettysburg. I only had a total of 3 cousins (from 8 uncles and aunts) - 2 male and one female cousin - from both sides of the family. (Stick with me, there is a reason to this maybe boring history.) One cousin was KIA in Russia in 1942, the other was drafted into the US Army in 1950.
My female cousin married a Czech in 1941, after big problems to get permission from the Nazis to get married. They were both (involuntarily) assigned to work at the Volkswagen plant. He, of course, had been "imported" from Czechoslovakia, as many other people from Nazi occupied countries who were brought into Germany as laborers for the Nazi war machine. My father was KIA, also on the Eastern Front, in 1/45. Our home and everything we owned, as well as the whole city, was destroyed on 2/23/45, 6 weeks (!) before the city was occupied by the Allies.
When the war ended, my sister was in a KLV camp in the BlackForest, my mother and younger brother ended up close to theGerman/Austrian border, and I, a few days short of 10 years old, ended up ata farm on Lake Constance (Swiss/German border) all by my lonely self after also having been sent to a KLV camp in 1/45. My mother thought it was much safer for my sister and I to be in a KLV camp than in Pforzheim. But we were still lucky -we had survived.
WWII starts:
Right after it got dark I could hear people talk loudly and all excitedly in the streets. My parents were in a loud discussion with several neighbors. The radio was playing military music, special announcements were coming on, and excitement was in the air. Hitler had invaded Poland. WW II had started.
We had recently moved from the downtown area into a more upscale part of town into a large, two apartment house. A beautiful city park was right in front of the house, and the city's main Protestant Church was next to the park. The houses in the area were all spacious apartment type houses, 2 or 3 stories high. About a 100 yards to our left and right was a scenic river. They combined into a large river about 200 yards downstream from our house. Behind us was the city's hydroelectric powerplant, which blended into the residential area in such a way that you really couldn't tell it was a power plant, as all of the water was coming underground from the two rivers into the plant. Little did I know then that the beautiful spire of the church and that power plant would have such a profound impact on our lives.
Initially, other than the fact that my father was drafted and gone within a week after Hitler invaded Poland, I didn't notice much difference in our lives. There were no shortages of food or other supplies. That all came later. My father was taking infantry basic training at age 37 at a local Kaserne, and due to his age, I guess, was stationed close to home. I got a brother in '42. My father got a safe job transporting horses on rail all over Europe. That must have been quite a job for an artist and city-slicker to be on a freight train taking care of horses. We did see him frequently until 1943, when he was assigned back to the infantry as they were running out of younger bodies.
I started school in '41. We watched a victory parade of German troops returning from France. I started to read the daily newspapers and propaganda books by the end of the first school year, listened to the daily news on the radio, watched propaganda movies of the "glorious and victorious" German Army and "genius" of the Führer and "justness" of the Nazi cause. He became an idol to us kids. I followed the daily military situation (front lines, etc,) on sand models and maps displayed in public buildings and stores. Hitler's pictures were everywhere. In every home, in every restaurant, office, store, public building. You name it, and it was there. Swastikas were all over. Everybody was wearing a uniform of some type, from the local Nazi official, to the ten year old (and up) boys and girls doing their "duty" as organized Hitler Youth groups, to the various military and paramilitary organizations.
We became completely brainwashed. It's hard to explain to somebody from the USA how there was such complete control of the people's daily lives by the Nazi machine, and the total population control imposed on the people. The same population control, of course, existed or still exists in all of the various Communist countries, and in most cases in an even worse form or shape. I noticed many people wearing yellow stars. Actually, we had a family with those stars living across the street from us. I noticed the abuse those people wearing stars had to take from everybody. I thought that it was right and just! The constant bombardment of the Nazi propaganda against the "dirty, filthy, traitorous Jews and enemies of the State" had done it's job well. They had no civil rights, no police protection from the abuse. Several of us kids even participated in harassing the 3 kids of the Jewish family living across the street from us.
One day my mother took me and my older sister aside and asked why we were acting so nasty and mean with those poor kids. She explained how unfortunate they were. We were ashamed, and stopped the spitting and hitting, and actually played with them at times when their parents thought it was safe to let them out of the house. My mother actually had taken a big risk by talking to us. Had she been reported to the officials, she could've been in big trouble. We had already been drilled into our little heads that the Führer and the State was more important than our parents, and anything mentioned that could be construed as being inflammatory against the State must be reported, even if it was your parents you had to report! And I, and all my friends believed in that!
By that time every house, every block had an informer and an official party representative (a warden) whose job it was to report anything of that nature to the Nazi officials. Then, in the spring of '44 police vans showed up all over the city, and the family across the street was loaded on a van. We never did see them again, or any more yellow stars in our city from then on. We all know now what happened to those people!
Our school day started with a good "Heil Hitler" to our teacher, and then with a good patriotic Nazi song. I think it was the "Horst Wessel" song, paying tribute to a low-life with a criminal past who got himself killed in a brawl with a bunch of other criminal elements of the Communist persuation. That made him a martyr for the cause. He was typical of the other criminal elements who found a home in the Nazi Party. That song was also played every time in a public place or restaurant after a radio announcement of a Nazi "victory" or a speech by Hitler or other Nazi officials. Everybody had to stand up, give the Hitler salute and pay homage to the Fuehrer.
Every teacher at the school was a member of the Nazi Party. They had to be. If not, they would've been on the Eastern Front or digging ditches. Discipline was tough, but we learned our ABCs well, along with what the Nazis thought was important for us to learn. The school dove-tailed with and expounded the daily doses of propaganda. Germans were the smartest, most noble, honest people in the world. Germans had invented everything of note in the world, from cars to medicine, from electricity to poetry. They had the best soldiers, the most intellectual people. Everything the Germans had or did was better, not to mention that anything but Aryans were scum. Everybody from Eastern and Southern Europe was inferior (including German Allies like the Italians, Rumanians, Hungarians, etc.), especially Russia, not to mention Africa or other continents, and without even mentioning the trashbin of humanity - the Jews.
I guess only the Northern Europeans along with the people of Saxon or Viking descent in England and in America counted, even though we were at war with them. Strange, though, most of the propaganda to scare the people to fight and support the War effort was against Russia and the Communists, not the US or England. They only called those two "Terrorist Bombers". Yes, that was pounded in our heads, and soon we believed it. Soon we thought Hitler and his disciples were supermen, always right, and we came to adore them as the gods who could do no wrong. We, certainly I, were ready to lay down our lives for the noble cause. We certainly greeted everybody we meet with "Heil Hitler", and certainly let them know if they didn't come back with Heil Hitler that they must! I know that some of us kids turned in several adults to the ever present Party members - every house, every block had one to keep the people straight - if they didn't use the Nazi greeting, plus other crimes against the Fuehrer, such as saying that the war would be lost, or anyother derogatory comments against Adolf.
We started school real early in the morning, but we finished at 1 PM. But every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon we had to go collect herbs in the woods or fields for the war effort (used to make medicine), or we had to go to farms to pick the potato bugs off potato plants. That was for the kids under 10 years old. Everybody over ten, boys and girls,had to report for "duty" with their organized Hitler Youth groups (Jungvolk), doing military drills and games, marching in parades, or doing other things for the Fatherland. That was compulsory at age 10.
After age 14 everybody became part of the real Hitler Youth (HJ), with real serious military training, war effort work like digging shelters and fortifications, and of course at the end of the war came the active and crazy military duty for those 14 year or older ones - if they weren't already on active military duty! Your parents got into big trouble if you didn't do your "duty". My sister skipped a couple of days one time, and my mother got a visit from the police and local Party official.
All of the kids on "duty" wore pretty uniforms, which, of course, the parents had to buy. I and my friends loved to see those uniforms. And we loved the "duty", marching, and games these 10 year olds were playing. As these groups took volunteers younger than 10, I pestered my mother at age 8 to buy me a uniform so I could join them. At first she countered that she had no clothing coupons to buy me a uniform. However, after they let me join without a uniform and let me march in civies, she relented and bought me a uniform, and let me officially join. I was one happy kid then, and proudly marched for the Fuehrer. But the hardship of war, including the killings and horror from the bombing as in the big cities and industrial areas, had not really reached our area yet. But it would catch with up with us soon.
April 1, 1944. We were up in the attic of our house watching a formation of US bombers flying back to their base in England after an air-raid on Munich. There were five of us. My sister, who carried my almost two year old brother, two other kids my age who lived in the house, and myself. It was a beautiful day with great visibility. We could see each plane and the long condensation trails of the planes. I was counting the planes aloud. "One, two, ..., twenty-nine, -- look, there is something coming out of those planes!" It sure was. It looked like tiny sticks at first, but then they got bigger and we heard a terrible, screaming noise. We knew then what was coming.
We ran down the stairs to get into our air-raid shelter in our cellar. We heard a big bang, and glass from the windows in the stairway was coming at us. Plaster from the ceiling was falling on us. Actually, it was a miracle that we all reached the shelter without a scratch, even as it seemed to be an eternity before we made it into she shelter!
A 500 lb bomb had hit about 20 or 30 yards in front of our house and the big church, putting a huge crater into the road. It had missed the house! However, It did knock several holes into the wall of one of our bedrooms, as well as into our living room. A big piece of bomb shrapnel was lying flat on top of our piano, but did not damage it! All of the windows in our house, as well as in the church and neighboring houses were blown out. The roofing tiles on the church and on our house were also gone.
From that day on we would practically live in our air-raid shelter until we (my family) left the city, while most of those living in our house who didn't leave would die in that shelter. Actually,the planes were only getting rid of some bombs which they couldn't drop on Munich that day.
Up to this day we had scarcely paid attention to the air-raid sirens, as the planes always flew by or over without dropping any bombs. At night we went back to sleep once the sirens woke us up. Sometimes on a clear night, we would go outside to watch the planes, especially if they were caught in air-defense searchlights.
In the daytime we would always watch the formations of bombers fly over us as we did on 4/1/44. They always came to bomb some other place. We didn't think our small city, without any war industry, would be a target. Sure, Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and all those places where they were making tanks, ammo, planes, etc,. but not Pforzheim! But that changed, starting with that day. As soon as the sirens sounded we now made it down to our shelter.
By the end of '44 we basically lived and slept in the shelter. We had a very sturdy, fairly safe, well constructed air-raid shelter. The city now got bombed almost daily, day or night, by (usually) planes on their way home as a secondary target. Damage in the city was not extensive, nothing like the big cities, but the bombs were falling all over town, and especially close to our neighborhood as the (small) city power plant was a secondary target. I remember that on Christmas '44 we had a bunch of nuns staying with us, as their monastery was destroyed on Christmas Eve. After July '44 the bombings intensified as the Allies established air bases in France which were within short range of us.
Often planes would sneak into the city without an alarm being sounded. One day as we were playing in the park in front of our house we suddenly heard the sound of a fighter bomber (you can't miss that sound), diving in our direction. We ran into our house, trying to get down into the shelter before the expected bomb would hit. We were running through the house lobby when we heard the sound of the bomb whistling towards our house. Miraculously the bomb didn't explode, but came through our roof, penetrated the wall of the adjoining house, and landed on a bed as a dud!
In September '44 the schools closed for good due to the dangers of the air-raids, not to be opened again until the Fall of '46. In January '45 my mother made a decision that would probably save our lives. She decided to move to our grandparents' house in the outskirts of town, and with access to a very safe, concrete, above ground bunker available to all the residents of the little subdivision.
On the night of 2/23/45, about 7 weeks before the Allies captured the town, the city of Pforzheim was completely destroyed by 500 British Halifax bombers in a 25 minute air-raid. An estimated 28,000 people of an estimated city population of about 60,000 at that time died. In my house, 19 people died. Only 2 kids and one adult came out alive of those who had been in the shelter. Although the house took two direct hits, the shelter was still intact. They died of smoke inhalation as apparently the airtight constructed doors had not been closed properly when some people from next door came into our shelter once the bombing started.
The suburb where my grandparents lived was not touched.
KLV = Kinderlandverschickung. They sure tried to make good little Nazis out of us. Our age group, in our camp in the Black Forest, was from 9 to 14. In 4/45 (!) they evacuated us to Lake Constance (Bodensee) to wait for the "Endsieg", and to get away from the Allies. It took us a week to get there. Part on foot, train, truck, and horse-drawn wagons. And taking cover in ditches and tunnels during strafings.
About a week after we got there (Hagenau), of course the French got there, too. Our leaders (all Party members) departed, and left us stranded there. I walked back home to Pforzheim on my own, after staying with farmers for a couple of weeks. Got back home with just the clothes I had on my back, about a month after my 10th birthday. A pair of shoes, no socks, a short pair of pants, and a long-sleave shirt. Amen. But that was the easy part. How does that sound for a fun adventure? But good training for US OCS later on! Just think, how many millions of lives could've been saved had somebody gotten rid of Hitler before at least by 1938!
