Out of the Darkness: Growing up in Wartime Germany

OUT of the

DARKNESS

____________

Growing up in wartime Germany

SABINE CHRISTODOULOU

Copyright © 2013 by Sabine Christodoulou.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 12/05/2013

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CONTENTS

A Shaky Start

Seaside Holidays

Freedom on Two Wheels

A New Chapter in My Life

On the Emminger Estate

A-Levels ’39, Skiing Holiday, and Labour Service

Social Service at the Bartmanns’

Work Experience in Trier

Holiday in Italy

Venice

Back to Reality: Life in Wartime Germany

Holiday with Toni

Walter

Student Life in Prague and a Lonely Christmas

New Year’s Eve with Walter in Kielçe

Klanowiçe

The Year 1944

The End of the War: 1945

Life in Walsdorf and Our Return to Gerolstein

Gerd

1947—Students in Mainz and Bonn

Wedding in Immendorf

The Operation

Commitment

A New Beginning

Out of the Darkness

Dedication

To

My mum, Else Scherhag née Winter, who wrote her memories down for me and made it possible to shape them into a book, first the German version Helle und Dunkle Tage, which was then followed by the English version

Out of the Darkness.

*     *     *

A special thank you to everybody who supported the project for patiently listening to different versions and helping with proofreading and editing.

My husband, Costa, and my son, Alex

My daughter, Helen, and her partner, Adam

My dear friend Pamela

A SHAKY START

I t was absolutely freezing in the Eifel region when I was born on 8 January 1921. My mum and dad were overjoyed as they had almost given up hope after years of trying for a baby; having a baby girl must have been like a late Christmas present for them. Our house in the small garrison town of Gerolstein had the pharmacy on the ground floor, while the living quarters were on the first and second floors. My dad, Ferdinand Winter, ran the pharmacy, and my mum helped him with the accounts and did some over-the-counter selling as well. Back then nobody had central heating, and we had to survive arctic temperatures in our bedrooms by using thick feather beds and hot water bottles. Despite my mum’s best efforts to keep me warm, I got bronchitis within the first month of my life. For three long weeks, I had to be carried around because I couldn’t breathe lying down. When I turned blue in the face anyway, my dad rushed out in slippers across the snowy road to fetch our GP Dr Levi, even in the middle of the night. The doctor used to come back to our house in his dressing gown and give me an injection. My parents must have been utterly exhausted but also immensely relieved when I was finally better.

As I got ill so soon after my birth, my survival had been a priority over my name. And so it happened that Dad came home one day with a surprise for Mum: he had registered me as ‘Else’, as a sign of gratitude to her, but without her consent. I don’t imagine she was very angry, though. After my illness, I was fine until I started walking. It was then that my parents noticed that I wasn’t using my right leg properly. Our paediatrician in Trier diagnosed hip dysplasia and referred me to a specialist children’s clinic in Kassel that was run by a very capable Jewish consultant. In order to stabilise my hip, I had to be in plaster for nine months and wasn’t allowed to get out of bed. Kassel is a long way from Gerolstein, but luckily, my mum’s sister, Frieda, lived there with her husband, Paul, and their little girl called Ursel. Auntie Frieda came to visit me every day, and my cousin, Ursel, came along to play with me. When my mum finally managed to get away from work and came to see me, I didn’t recognise her at first. Apparently, I surveyed her critically for a while until I suddenly beamed and said, ‘My mummy!’

Unfortunately, my mum couldn’t stay with me because my baby brother, Hans, needed her and my dad couldn’t serve his French customers without her assistance. She used to take Hans to the pharmacy and interpret at the same time. When I was older, I started feeling responsible for my baby brother, which, up to a point, relieved my mum of looking after him. Two years later, I even saved him from drowning. Mum had made friends with the family of Count Schulenburg, who had taken over the Gerolstein mineral spring. Their two grown-up children liked swimming in the local river Kyll in the summer and invited Mum as well as Hans and me. While the older ones splashed around in the water, we had been deposited on a small island in the middle of the river, where we could play and pretend we were on a boat. Suddenly, I felt little Hans slipping off our ‘boat’; all I could do was grab his shorts and hold on for dear life. He lay on his back, completely stiff like a wooden plank, and I screamed for help as loud as I could. Needless to say, our rescue team came swiftly.

Little Hans didn’t talk much, but his actions spoke louder than words. Once, we were invited for a festive occasion at the mayor’s house. I remember watching Hans look at his plate repeatedly and then focus on the mayor’s wife, who had a considerable bosom. A plan was materialising in his brain, but what was he going to do? Suddenly, he picked up his plate and put it on the bosom of the mayor’s wife with the epic words: ‘I can put my plate on that.’ The guests were thunderstruck; then everybody burst out laughing. Mum wished the ground would open and swallow her up.

Hans was very stubborn and never shook hands with anybody who came to visit. He was even less inclined to recite poems, not even for his mum. For Mum’s birthday, we were required to do just that, and I said mine. Hans looked gloomy and said nothing at all. When prompted, he didn’t say the expected words but changed them from ‘Dearest, dearest mother’ to ‘Evil, evil mother’. Mum picked the little rebel up, and he was never again asked to recite a poem.

When I first went to primary school, I didn’t know anybody, and to make matters worse, I was the only Protestant child in a catholic school. As nobody had noticed that I was short-sighted, I wasn’t exactly a brilliant pupil. After this had been sorted, I turned out to be best at spelling and poetry recital. The other girls liked me, which was documented by the fact that I was always allowed to be the princess when we played at break time. One day, our teacher intervened, removed me from the game, and told the other children not to play with me again. I didn’t understand why it was such a crime to be Protestant.

It was only when I made friends with a girl called Maria Weyand, immensely popular and one of the best friends I ever had, that the other children didn’t mind any more. As a Protestant, I was an outsider in religious education, of course, and joined the three Jewish children in our class, also outsiders. They invited me home to their families to eat ‘Matzen’ and other traditional Jewish food. Maria had a Protestant grandmother, which was why the whole family had a more tolerant outlook than the rest of the predominantly catholic town. I was often invited to sleepovers at their house and enjoyed it very much. Maria had two sisters, and all of us got on very well; our friendship was going to last a lifetime.

My most vivid childhood memories originate from the years between 1927 and 1935. They are mainly about things we did with our friends, such as bicycle trips and annual seaside holidays with my mum. I have decided to deal with the two topics in separate chapters, although they overlap chronologically.

SEASIDE HOLIDAYS

W hen I started school at the age of six, I was still not very healthy. I didn’t eat properly, and Mum took me to see our GP about it. He recommended holidays by the sea as the salty air would improve my appetite. From that year onwards, we went to the same small town on the Baltic Sea every summer holiday. Dad used to stay home, but Mum needed to get away from household chores and pharmacy. The journey to Dahme was long and took all night. We used to catch the special holiday train from Gerolstein to Travemünde. For the last bit of our journey, we had to go by ferry from Travemünde via Grömitz to Dahme, and when we were older, we used to enjoy the crossing as part of our holidays. When we went for the first time, my mum decided to break up the journey and let us stay with our grandparents in Hagen for a week.

Hans and I liked it in Hagen as our nan spoilt us and our granddad enjoyed watching her fuss over her grandchildren. Their flat was in a very quiet neighbourhood at the ‘Humboldt Square’, where we could safely play with the other children. They were very pleased to see us, and this time I could show them something new. Flat on my belly on the pavement, I demonstrated breaststroke, and they promptly copied me. Not surprisingly our summer dresses were ruined. There was a three-pronged metal street light in the middle of the square, and I chose it as a climbing frame and a challenge to the other children. This was another bad idea.

At that point, Nan decided that Granddad had to entertain us. He took Hans, me, and the other children on an outing to a limestone cave called ‘Deschenhöhle’, which had a lot of stalagmites and stalactites. We also got a train journey, a long walk, and a picnic, and everybody was happy. The following day, Nan had to take us out. She didn’t like walking, so she got us on the tram, and we travelled through the entire town to the terminal and went to a café in the woods, where they served cream cakes. Nan found me too skinny and wanted to fatten me up that way.

Then Mum came to collect us and continue our journey to the seaside. Before we set off, she quickly washed our clothes as we had got through the lot. Our train journey was uneventful until the train from Hamburg to Lübeck was delayed, and Mum worried about missing the connection to Travemünde. When we arrived at the platform, the train was still there, but the conductor was about to give the signal for departure. He spotted Mum with her huge suitcase and children, hastily opened a door, and handed her the luggage and little Hans. The train left promptly. When the conductor turned round, he saw a little girl who cried bitter tears because she had been left behind. He realised what he had done, of course, and took me to his office. From there, he rang the station in Travemünde to tell them that he would put me on the next train. He found two nice old ladies who promised to look after me and deliver me safely to Mum in Travemünde. Mum was very relieved to see me—she had been worried sick. The last part of our journey was to become our favourite bit in the future: the boat trip on the tourist steamer from Travemünde to Dahme.

I remember our first impression of the long-landing stage when our steamer arrived. Later, we would go there for evening walks or use it as a diving board to show off to new arrivals who were also taunted about their pale colour. Somebody had taken the trouble of composing a rhyme about already tanned as opposed to untanned holidaymakers. When we came across this kind of welcome for the first time, we found it ridiculous and rude. Later, we admittedly joined in the fun. On the promenade, hotel porters with luggage carts were waiting to collect guests. Our porter wore a cap saying: ‘Hotel Reshöved.’ The hotel was all the way at the end of the promenade behind the dike. My mum’s parents must have paid for our stay as it was a three-star hotel, and the pharmacy wasn’t doing particularly well yet. During the following days, we explored the beach and the fields behind the dike, where you could play a variety of sports, but the evening was our favourite time of day, when we could play with the other children until dark.

I made friends with a little boy from the town of Essen. He was blond and usually wore a red tracksuit. Soon we were inseparable and played ball together or watched the janitor preparing vegetables or other things for the meals of the following day. One evening, we were horrified when a headless chicken fluttered past. The janitor explained to us that the chickens were actually dead and didn’t feel a thing, but how come they could still fly? Our mothers made sure we didn’t witness this kind of thing again.

One evening, we decided we had enough of playing outdoors and went back to the hotel. We were intrigued to find a sailor sitting at one of the restaurant tables having his dinner all by himself. Children are inquisitive, and we gradually moved closer and closer to the stranger who was watching us with a smile. He invited us to sit with him, and after we had introduced ourselves, he was ready to answer our numerous questions. He worked on board a minesweeper that anchored at the beachhead. Before that, he had sailed around the world with the barque Gorch Fock. I said, ‘Around the whole world? To America and Africa and India?’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and it took us a whole year!’ We asked him where he had liked it best, and he replied, ‘In India.’ And then he told us about India, the palaces of the maharajas, elephants with their ornamental attire, slowly and majestically walking along the roads, beautiful women in their colourful saris, and fakirs with their flutes and dancing snakes. We listened to his stories with shining eyes and glowing cheeks and wouldn’t go to bed for ages. I have always been fascinated by real-life stories, although I must admit in hindsight that he probably embellished his stories for us children; they call it ‘sailor’s yarn’. We saw the sea in a different light in the morning, its vastness and mystery, and somewhere out there was India. How we longed to be able to travel and see faraway places!

In the following years, we stayed at different hotels, but the beach with our wicker beach hut and our sandcastle stayed the same. We got to love the sound of the lapping waves on the beach, the warm sand under our feet, the tangy smell of the water and the seaweed, and of course the sensation of floating. When we were older, we were allowed to go sailing and to row a small boat by ourselves. The seaside became part of our lives.

On 30 March 1930, our baby sister, Renate, was born. I was nine at the time, Hans was seven, and Mum was thirty-nine years old. We were very happy about the cute little addition to our family, of course, who proved to be quite easy-care as well, but unfortunately, we couldn’t go to our seaside resort that year as she was too young to travel all that way. So we organised the summer holiday with our friends at home. Together with my friend Maria and her sister Gertrud, we went to a spring called ‘Möllenborn’ in the local hills. We used to take a three-litre jug that the Weyand parents had brought back from Lourdes in France and that originally contained holy water. It was decorated with the pictures of saints and of people cured in miraculous ways. We had learnt about the Stone Age at school, and now we were trying to live like cave people, with beds made of leaves and an open fire. There was a cave called ‘Buchenloch’ nearby that must have inspired us to play that game. My dad’s hobby was archaeology; that summer he was busy excavating an ancient temple dedicated to the Celtic goddess Caiva, and we helped him sometimes.

Our next seaside holiday was two years later, in the summer of 1932, when Hans and I had just recovered from whooping cough, but our little sister had caught it and was still quite poorly. Mum was hoping that the climate change would help with Renate’s recovery. Unfortunately, we weren’t welcome in Dahme with a contagious disease. We were allowed to come in the end but under the condition that we live in a remote house away from everybody else and our wicker beach hut had to be on a different beach. Mum agreed to everything, and Auntie Hilde came on our holiday to help look after us. Mum and we children had a big family room, and whenever Renate had a coughing fit, day or night, Mum picked her up to help her recover. After a week or so, she started getting better, and three weeks later, we were allowed back to civilisation. Hans and I had to get used to being amongst people again as we had been perfectly happy on our own, without the rules of polite society. We didn’t have to get changed for meals and wore our swimwear all day long. There were millions of interesting things along the rocky coast: a variety of seabirds nesting up high, down in the water starfish and crabs, and beautiful shells hidden under seaweed.

I had read all the volumes in Else Ury’s Nesthäkchen series in the previous years. Now I was into Karl May, and my uncle Rudi gave me the epic Winnetou to read, the story about the friendship between an Apache chief and ‘Old Shatterhand’, an American ranger, which I devoured. I was staying with Uncle Rudi in Hamburg for a few days before the family was due to go home. When poor mum arrived to collect me in a taxi, with a seasick Hans and a seasick Renate, I emerged at the window to inform her that I couldn’t possibly come down yet: ‘Winnetou is dying!’ Uncle Rudi resolutely interrupted the last words of the noble chief and bundled me in the taxi, and we were off to the station where our holiday train was waiting to take us home. We travelled overnight, and we used to take the suitcase out of the luggage compartment to replace it with Renate’s cot. That way we could use the top of the suitcase to play cards on. Dad was happy to have us home again, and