Early Childhood, Wartime and Post-War

This is a collection of incidents and impressions, as I remember them from the years between 1938, my year of birth, and 1949, the year of our emigration to the U.S.  Of course, I was too young to actually remember anything from 1938-41 or so. My memory may be somewhat faulty too, with likely erosion over the years, and with there being very few who are still around who shared those times to confirm them or to correct them. 

These were formative events for a young child growing up, and so had their impact on me. The usually carefree childhood was replaced by dislocation, destruction, and scrabbling for the necessities of life; it all meant some early growing up. 

As much as I would like otherwise, those experiences engendered less interest than I would have expected or hoped. The fact of having my lived through the war years in Germany doesn't seem to trigger much in the way of questions or comments (and not just from new acquaintances); I've also found that even when the subject does come up, listeners generally move on fairly quickly to the next usual subject. That may be one reason for my great interest in post-war German literature ("Trümmerliteratur").  

Note added May 2026: 

Now that I've been part of a senior living community (Lasell Village) since May 2022, this has changed significantly. Maybe it's because we're all approaching a late stage of  life in which we look back on our past, or maybe it's the greater amount of time spent together.  Also, in this community there are others who experienced the war years in Europe. 

Writing these reminiscences, then, has been like having a willing, interested, empathetic, but silent, listener. Some time ago, I wrote a brief summary of my WWII Memories for my college, which asked alumni to describe their experiences during the war. I hadn't realized before starting how cathartic that would be. Here's more, with no particular order of importance, but generally following time order:

Notes added March 2004:

Our house was bombed in the evening of November 18, 1943, which turned out to be a historic date in the war. Just recently I read more details about that evening in "Berlin Diaries, 1940-1954" by Marie Vassiltchikov (Vintage Books, 1988). She was a Russian princess, known as Missie, who worked in the German Foreign Office in Berlin, and kept a daily account of life during the war, in English. On this particular day, her entry reads

"Thursday, 18 November ..... In the middle of supper at home ..... there was suddenly a lot of violent shooting. As there is no cellar, we took refuge in the kitchen, which is half underground, its windows overlooking a small garden, and sat there for two hours. There were several fires in our neighborhood and it became quite noisy. We later heard that several hundred planes had reached the outskirts of Berlin, but only about fifty got through the flak barrage." 

"Air-Marshall Harris' attempt to 'smash Germany to its knees' consisted of a number of major air battles named after their main target. ... By the fall of 1943 Harris' bombers were poised to tackle their prize target - the capital of the Reich. Unsuspectingly, Missie has just described the opening shot of what was to become known as the 'Battle of Berlin'."

The second excerpt (in italics) is an annotation by her brother. 

The starting date of the 'Battle of Berlin' is confirmed by an excerpt from an online RAF Bomber Command Nov. 1943 diary entry (page no longer available):

18/19 November 1943 

The 'Battle of Berlin' begins 

440 Lancasters and 4 Mosquitos were dispatched. Few German fighters intercepted the force. 9 Lancasters were lost, 2.0 per cent of the force. Berlin was completely cloud-covered and both marking and bombing were carried out blindly; Bomber Command could make no assessment of the results.

My own piece of writing about that day:

War Story  (May 2019)

Pictures of the house  before and after the bombing. 

After we lost the house, my mother and I were put up by a family friend in Aue, a town in Sachsen (Saxony) near the Czech border. It was a family with two children so I learned to adapt to being a house-guest, walking and talking quietly and being deferential. It was there that I first went to school, and also learned the local dialect, Sächsisch. Then 1944 became the year in which I caught one childhood disease after another: chickenpox, measles, scarlet fever, and whooping cough among them. My mother and I were effectively in isolation in one small room as she nursed me through one illness after another. 

After the war, back in the Berlin area in the Soviet zone, food was probably the prime concern. I remember my mother saying how wonderful it would to eat until one was full again ("Man möchte sich mal wieder richtig satt essen können"). 

To be able to gather food whenever there was an opportunity, people would always have a rucksack or carrying bag with them. Train tracks were prime territory for potatoes or pieces of coal that might have been dropped, especially during unloading. 

Military buildings were also favored, for begging military personnel who were, after all, well supplied. There might well be thrown-out left-overs. We hit paydirt once when some large metal containers of strawberry jam were thrown out - we were able to scrape a good deal from the sides and bottom. 

Russian soldiers had the reputation of being sentimental or brutal, with little between. My father had found work carrying heavy sacks at a military officers' building. One day they invited him to share some vodka with them. My father explained that he couldn't because he hadn't eaten. So just to have him join them they brought in a full meal for him. 

We were in the fortunate position of still having our piece of land in the Berlin suburb of Neuenhagen, and could grow fresh fruit and vegetables there. These were in invaluable for bartering for staples. That was how we once were able to have two whole loaves of white bread, which we ate a slice at a time. 

One time my mother and I went foraging in the fields for cabbage heads. Besides having more hands for carrying what we might find, having a child along also had the purpose of playing on the child-friendly sentiments of guardian soldiers. This time, a Russian soldier saw and stopped us. Although we didn't understand what he wanted when he said "Du tsaptsarap?" (my phonetic reconstruction), we guessed that he asked whether we stealing. Fortunately for us, he was distracted by a passing bicyclist, and waved us on. We suspected that the bicyclist lost his transportation, because the Russians loved to acquire watches and bicycles. 

In those days, fat was precious rather than something to be avoided during the present times of low-fat and no-fat food. Back then, when there was little to eat, it meant energy and satiation. A prime find was wax paper with fatty remnants on a garbage heap - boiling got rid of dirt and contamination and provided some fat for cooking or spreading on bread. 

Of course not everything from a trash heap was good to eat. Potato peelings, even with skin removed afterward, had rotted, so we got sick from that. It took some time here in the U.S. to enjoy the now popular treat of filled potato skins. 

It's fascinating to look back on the days of food privation, and what effect that would have on us in the land of plenty. I still look at food as something sacred and hate to see any thrown out or wasted. My mother could take the same experience to conclude that it was now OK to be picky. 

School continued in Neuenhagen. I can recall walking 3 km to school and then back. Schoolwork proved to have no difficulty for me; I used to get finished first and then make a nuisance of myself making others laugh at some antics, something teachers didn't appreciate. One other time a few of us didn't return after the lunch break - we had gone to the local tavern and enjoyed some malt beer. 

My father had two sisters, one of whom (Annie Rühle) lived with her husband and two sons in Bremerhaven, near the North Sea, the other (Thea Heesch) in New York City, where she and her husband owned a Walt's Luncheonette in the Woolworth building. When we fled from East Germany in 1949, we went to live with the sister in Bremerhaven. I don't know whether the plan already was for us to be brought to the U.S., or whether that was decided later. 

It was in Bremerhaven that I learned how swim, being taught by my father. This took place at the "Baggerkuhle", i.e., a gravel pit filled with water that was a popular swimming site. I remember a lot of time under water, but also passing the final test by swimming along-side my father across the pit. Then, tired, I walked back. 

Streetcars were a great diversion, fascinated as I was by them. One line passed right in front of the apartment house in which we lived. It was fun to put coins on the track to see them get flattened. 

During this time there was the great devaluation of German currency. Suddenly one day, 10 marks became only one. People spent lots of the old money beforehand. 

I went first to one school and then the Oberrealschule, which was the highest level in the school system. Among other schoolwork, I remember being given the task of taking a few assigned words and writing sentences that were as long as possible with them. Only in Germany! 

Very shortly after my 11th birthday, on October 14, we traveled by air to the U.S., to New York City, being vouched for and paid for by Thea and her husband Erich. The carrier was SAS, and the plane was a DC-6. We took a flight to Prestwick, Scotland, and then began the overnight trans-atlantic flight to Gander, Newfoundland. This was the shortest distance, necessitated by the plane's fuel capacity. Between the bouncy flight, the nighttime, the drone of the propellers, and the dislocation I had a very bad night. Finally, between Gander and New York, I was able to eat something. When we arrived in New York, a kindly gentleman pressed a note on me as a welcome; I found out afterward that it was a 20-dollar bill.

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