1945 recollection.
E. Blaschke (eblaschke@sprint.ca)
Mon, 9 Nov 1998 23:06:04 -0500
Inspired by Walter's excellent and in-depth articles on the Hitler Youth, I
wrote down just one of the recollections I have of a time in the spring of
1945:
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Some mosquitoes buzzing near my ear woke me in the small room in the
farmhouse which had been my home away from home for the past year. I started
to collect my thoughts and reflect upon my situation.
It was early in 1945. "The war" was going to be over soon, we all knew that.
The Russian troops were getting closer and would soon conquer the eastern
area of Austria then called "Ostmark", where I was. My parents and their
housekeeper were in Vienna, a city some 80 km east of where I stayed. A year
earlier, we had decided that for a boy of 13 as I was, a stay in the country
would be preferable to escape the bombing raids in the city. My parents
housekeeper had some distant relatives who had a farm with a few pigs,
chickens, and who raised some crops. They would willingly take in a boarder.
For me it meant more food, less danger from air-raids and a pleasant life on
the farm. My parents in Vienna lived near the centre of town. My father was
a physician with a busy practice. My mother, a former nurse, tried to help
out, but was not allowed to do much since she was Jewish. At one time my
mother was shunned by many people who knew that she was Jewish, but as of
late the very people who very carefully had avoided to be seen with her,
sought out her company, since it was common knowledge in Austria that the
war was about to be lost, and that knowing a Jewish person might suddenly be
an advantage rather than a threat to life and career.
The question I now pondered was this: Should I stay here in the country and
wait for the Russian troops, or should I travel back to Vienna to be with my
parents during the fighting? Where was I likely to be safer? Would the
soldiers be more ruthless in the countryside or the city? Vienna, being
further east, would be 'liberated' by the Russians sooner than the part of
the country where I was.
As it turned out the events of the next few hours would make my decision for
me:
I got up, got dressed and went into the kitchen of the farmhouse for my
breakfast. The farmers wife, a very well fed, buxom lady, was standing near
the stove, making breakfast, while her husband, a small spindly figure of a
man was unobtrusively sitting in the corner. He was the typical "henpecked"
husband, his wife ran the place. The third person in the household was Anna,
a "foreign worker" from the Ukraine, a woman in her twenties, who was
forcibly sent from her homeland by the occupying German troops to serve
somewhere in the "German Reich" to aid the war effort. She had been assigned
to the farm where she received room and board in return for a roughly 10
hour work-day on the farm. Luckily the farmer's wife was basically a
friendly person, and on the whole had treated Anna better than many of the
foreign workers were accustomed to. She also was not at all taken in by the
Nazi propaganda, and the very fact that she dared to take me in as a
boarder, who in the official classification of the time, was a "Mischling
ersten Grades" (half-Jew), was proof enough of her anti-Nazi stance.
As I entered the breakfast room I noticed a hangnail on my finger. I looked
for my small manicure set, but could not find it. Innocently I asked the
farmers wife if she had seen it. "Are you sure it's not in your room?", she
enquired. I went back there to look, but it wasn't there either. She flew
into a rage and said to Anna: "I knew you were stealing stuff around here,
I'll fix you". And with these words she left the room. Five minutes later
she returned with the villages uniformed "gendarme", or police-officer. He
yelled at Anna: "Take me to your room. We are going to search it for this
boy's manicure set. And God help you if we find it!" He dragged her to her
room, told us all to accompany him, threw Anna onto her bed, and started
beating her, yelling: "Where did you hide it?". The poor girl cried and
sobbed and swore that she never took anything. When she wet the bed out of
fear, he finally let go of her and with some cursing retreated. While that
was the end of the affair, I now knew that I had to leave this place before
the Russians arrived here and the before the Ukrainian girl could tell them
she was beaten because she was suspected to have stolen something from me. I
might have been shot on the spot.
So this helped me to make up my mind to soon leave for Vienna.
A few days later I packed my few belongings into a suitcase and boarded a
local train to the nearest larger city, from where I intended to make a
connection to Vienna. As it turned out, there were only few of the scheduled
trains still running. While I was waiting for a train heading east to Vienna
and towards the Russians, a westbound one arrived in the station. It looked
like what one would expect to see on trains in India: People filling every
available space, hanging on to the doors in a determined effort to make
their way westward, away from the Russians and into a part of the country
that was likely to be occupied by the Americans.
Eventually an empty train arrived heading east. I took a seat in a
compartment which I had all to myself and expected to be in Vienna in about
half an hour's time. As it turned out we saw a lone Russian plane
approaching the train and starting to shoot at it. Luckily the train was
just close to the entrance of a tunnel, so it slowed down and then stopped
in the tunnel to make sure the Russian plane would have left when the train
reemerged. With a slight delay we finally arrived in Vienna and I rejoined
my parents who were glad to see me back.
Ernest in Toronto.