Berlin Schools (from Eberhard)

Tom Holloway (xuegx@CSV.WARWICK.AC.UK)
Tue, 26 Mar 1996 22:03:46 +0000 

(This was sent by eberhard earlier, but for some
reason it bounced.  Here it is as I received it
as LISTOwner.   Tom Holloway)
_____________________________

From: Eberhard Weber <eweber@caticsuf.CATI.CSUFresno.EDU>

Dear Mary

This is the Berlin schoolboy - eberhard weber

There were two phases of schooling for me during the war.  One in
Berlin and one when we left Berlin and I wound up in a special
school in the "country", at least it became special.
In Berlin we never heard anything about the war from our teachers,
only the required names of "leaders", their birthdates and how great
they were.  It was required to be taught but I don't recall anything
that reflected a deep commitment by my teachers to enlighten us on
these subjects.

We never had any soldiers come to school. It remained very much a
school as without war, as far as teachers, subjects etc, is concerned.
Of course this was the "Volksschule", up to age 14 and those whose
parents aimed their children towards University study took their
children out of these schools at age ten and they went to the gymnasium
or the humanistic gymnasium, as in my case.

Now then, there was the real world beyond the school which impacted
us more than anything that happened "at" school.  My parent had sent
me to Austria for some stomach ailment which, many years later, doctors
told me was probably stress related.  In the beauty ful Alps in
Austria there were no bombers, none even flew over our area on the
way elsewhere.  I returned to Berlin just prior to turning ten and
things were quite bad then.

No day would pass that we did not have air raids and the basements
of the school would have become a massgrave had we been hit for
the exits were minimal, certainly for a few hundred children
had they panicked.

But we had to change school a few times when the one I attended
was bombed, and the next and the next.  They were bombed out at
night, so it were not british bombers.  We just found ourselves
in front of a burned or smashed building, depending upon how it
was bombed.

But several times there were children I knew who did not show up
for class only to find out later that they had been killed in an
air raid.

Finally the big day came when I left the volksschule to be tested for
acceptance at the gymnasium.  It was just up the street from us.
And one night it was bombed.  Already I had visions of never
having to go to school again and so I was not in mourning over that.
Instead, my parents sent me to a private school in a home for
people or students in "transit" who have no regular school.  I recall
that the son of the german ambassador to Japan was among the five
students there.

But then I was shipped out of Berlin to another humanistic gymnasium
in the "country".  It was a disciplined school, lots of air
raids but no-one wanted to bomb that small town or the school.
But one day we received 100 gr, of chocolate each, courtesy of
Heinrich Himmler.  And shortly after that, much changed.
We had to wear uniforms, not with the hitler youth tie but with
a regular black tie, and we sported proudly a new armband on our
black jacket saying:  SS Heimschule Himmler, Schleusingen".  It
had become an SS school !  When I visited my mother on certain
vacations, I had to wear uniform, we had the same ration cards
as the soldiers had and we had to report to a local military
commander to have our travel orders signed.  I was twelve years
old then.

To be caught travelling without being in uniform was bad!!  On my
last trip home I was caught and ordered to report to some authority
upon return.  But american troops cancelled that arrangement.
But when I travelled by train I came through towns which had been
hit very hard, as had the rail road.  There were locomotives
and passenger cars and freight cars strewn all over the place
as well as strangely curved rails reaching into the sky in
twisted art forms.  At times the train stopped abruptly and nobody
needed to be told why.  Sometimes the locomotive would give off
a rapid sequence of whisteles before stopping.  They were
usually few Mustang-type fighter aircraft who had no more german
planes to shoot at and they raked anything that moved.  It is
an awesome sight to see a 50mm bullet stick halfway through the
pushrod of a locomotive.  The force of these bullets is awesome.

At the "himmler" school, there came a time when all boys above age 16
were drafted but allowed to choose which miltary branch they wanted to be
drafted into.  Age 14 and up they had to go to the Westwall, the
fortification designed to stop the Allied troops.  This left the place
quite empty and the teachers were getting more nervous and aggressive
all the time.  Discipline was enforced by 14 year olds who thought
they were men.  But that is another story.

Every now and then we heard that one of the boys I knew was killed
in combat.  My room elder had decided to join the Navy as a one-man
torpedo.  Not a suicidal torpedo but some sort of dual cylinder
design with the diver in the top and the torpedo below.  This boy
approached his target and released the torpedo but it pulled him
right into the target and blew him up.  At least that was the story.

We had a memorial in the auditorium and some military people were
there, but I don't recall any heroic speeches.  But somewhere along
the line, school or hitleryouth, we all became quite fanatic and
"heroic", discussing strategies on how we would fight if given a
chance.  So somebody must have worked on our minds, but I think it
was the "himmler" school.

Just a few weeks before I left the final time for vacation, with
no inkling that I would not be back, we had some training on
basic weapons.  the K98 infantry rifle, the panzerfaust (german
equivalent to a bazooka) and the wood-handled handgrenades.
This would make me livid if my child were asked to train on
these things, but my parents had no way of knowing, and very little
to say about it had they known.

I really don't recall nor believe that soldiers or other "officials"
went to school unless they came from that school and just visited.
I don't recall any propaganda speeches to the school.  Nor do I
believe that would have been necessary.  The entire society was in
one way or another exposed to all sorts of propaganda with no
chance to discuss any of that with their children, at least not
in any contesting way, for their lives were at peril had they done
so.  There are stories about that too, school related.
In the absence of anyone who would or could tell you different,
and at that age, what you learned was taken as factual, as the truth,
as the way things were.  And to whip up sentiments against the
enemy was easy.  The bombers saw to that, and we had geopolitical
perspective then.

Hope this helps.
BTW.  In connection with a book I am writing on an unrelated
subject, I placed a prolog on a server which reflects the impact
a war has and the invalidation of what has just been learned.
If you like, just send a message to: glosys@netcom.com
and in the body, not the subject line, write: send prolog

best regards

eberhard weber