A Dangerous Game: Growing Up East of the Oder Under the Nazis and Soviets

By Luise Urban

Luise Urban was born in 1933 into a world about to be turned upside down. Her family lived east of the river Oder. Fatefully, her family were not Nazi Party members and suffered as a result. As the Third Reich crumbled and the Red Army advanced, she was one of 15 million Germans trapped in a war zone during the terrible winter of 1945. Weakened by starvation and forced to flee their home, it was only the bravery of Luise’s mother that saved the family from total destruction.

The Oder–Neisse line (Oder-Neiße-Grenze) is the German–Polish border drawn in the aftermath of the war. The line primarily follows the Oder and Neisse rivers to the Baltic Sea west of the city of Stettin. All pre-war German territory east of the line and within the 1937 German boundaries was discussed at the Potsdam Conference in 1945. Germany was to lose 25 per cent of her territory under the agreement. Crucially, Stalin, Churchill and Truman also agreed to the expulsion of the German population beyond the new eastern borders. This meant that almost all of the native German population was killed, fled or was driven out by force.

In A Dangerous Game, Luise relives that harrowing time, written in memory of her mother, to whom she owes her life. It is the story of a child, but it is not a story for children.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: May 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9780752494234

Luise Urban

LUISE URBAN was born in Germany in October 1933, her harrowing childhood forming the subject of this book. She moved to England in 1956 and became a state-registered nurse, and she took an Open University degree in Physics and Astronomy. She lives in Gwynedd, Wales.

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The author and publishers would like to thank Clare Agnew for all her help in the creation of this book.

Meiner gütigen Mutter mit den klugen Augen.

To my loving mother with eyes full of wisdom.

CONTENTS

Praise

Title

Dedication

Introduction

Foreword

The Wrong Side of a River

School

Things Go Wrong

Food, Always Food

Bidding Farewell to Grandfather

Mother Courage

Raus! Uhodi!

Home

Burying the Dead

The Scent of Lilac

The Order to Go West

West of the Oder

Our New Socialist Friends

To the Border

Climbing out of a Dark Hole

To England

Plates

About the Author

Copyright

INTRODUCTION

It is not necessary to understand the military and political background to this story. As Luise Urban says herself, she has not delved into the historical record or attempted to verify facts. She has simply set down her own childhood memories of a horribly cruel period in history. Her experience, the sufferings of her own family and the torment of all those civilians (not to exclude the soldiers and POWs) east of the Oder are described with a terrible clarity. Some readers, however, may find these brief notes of use. Why, for example, is the Oder the defining border of misery? Why did the Russians treat Polish POWs and refugees with such appalling brutality?

Before the Second World War, Germany’s eastern border with Poland had been fixed at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Certain adjustments were made to the line to allow for the ethnic composition of small areas beyond the traditional provincial borders. Inevitably, some people were left, or felt they had been left, on ‘the wrong side of the line’. Upper Silesia and Pomeralia (eastern Pomerania) were divided, leaving areas populated by Poles as well as other Slavic minorities on the German side and Germans on the Polish side. A further complication was that the border cut Germany in two: the so-called Polish Corridor and the ‘Free City’ of Danzig, established to provide Poland with access to the Baltic Sea, were populated predominantly by Germans. History shows that when lines are drawn on a map and nations or countries are not ‘naturally’ defined over time by geographical features such as mountain ranges or rivers, tension or disaster often follows, from the Balkans to the Indian subcontinent, from Iraq to several modern African states such as Nigeria, where ethnic enmities led to the tragedy of the short-lived state of Biafra.

The Oder–Neisse line (Oder-Neiße-Grenze) is the German-Polish border drawn in the aftermath of the Second World War. The line primarily follows the Oder and Neisse rivers to the Baltic Sea west of the city of Stettin. Hence Winston Churchill’s memorable and prophetic judgement of 5 May 1946: ‘From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.’ All pre-war German territory east of the line and within the 1937 German boundaries was discussed at the Potsdam Conference (July–August 1945). Germany was to lose 25% of her territory under the agreement. Crucially, some might say (including most certainly Luise Urban) callously, the ‘Big Three’– Stalin, Churchill and Truman – also agreed to the expulsion of the German population beyond the new eastern borders. This meant that almost all of the native German population was killed, fled or was driven out. The Oder–Neisse line would divide the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and Poland from 1950 to 1990. East Germany confirmed the border with Poland in 1950. West Germany only officially accepted it in 1970. In 1990 the reunified Germany signed a treaty with Poland recognising it as their border.

The Third Reich’s last battle is usually identified as that for Berlin, a doomed last effort with the Führer directing it from his bunker. It can be argued, however, that the last concerted battle was actually directed by Generaloberst Gotthard Heinrici. He took command of Army Group Vistula (Heeresgruppe Weichsel) on 20 March 1945, before the enormous Soviet thrust towards Berlin was launched in April. Heinrici, not Hitler, decided that there was only one strategic course left for Germany: to hold the Soviets back along the Oder Front long enough for the western Allies to cross the Elbe River. The war was lost and Heinrici accepted it. All that was left was to bring the western Allies as far as possible east to save as many as possible of the German population from the fearsome revenge that would overtake them at the hands of the Soviets. Defending the Oder Front might force General Eisenhower to order his armies into the planned postwar Soviet Zone of Occupation, as outlined in the top secret western Allies’ plan, Eclipse, which was designed to prevent the Soviets from ‘overstepping the mark’ westward – into Denmark specifically – and gaining the access to the Atlantic she offered. Berlin, Heinrici ordered, would not be defended. OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, Supreme Command of the Armed Forces) decided on 23 April to defend the capital. This left Heinrici at odds with OKW over operations along the Oder Front. His defence against the Soviets was undermined. On 28 April, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel discovered troops under Heinrici’s command marching away from Berlin against the Führer’s orders. A furious Keitel tracked down Heinrici and accused him of treason and cowardice. Heinrici was relieved of his command the next day, as an endless procession of wounded and disarmed soldiers and refugees streamed past, fleeing from the Soviets.

This summary of events in 1945 east of the Oder tends to construct an inadequate or misleading ‘net’ of cause and effect to throw over the chaos that led to the deaths of millions of innocent people, including most members of Luise Urban’s family.

FOREWORD

I am living far away from the place of my birth and home to me is now a place where I have been asked constantly: ‘What are you doing here? Where do you come from?’ So, I will tell my story. Not because I think I am a gifted writer and the world should know about it. No, but because it is only reasonable to explain to my children where I come from and why I am here.

This is the story of my childhood. Sadly, it is not suitable to be read by children.

I am German, but have written this in English. To recall the past in German is far too painful and I could not, remotely, tolerate it. In addition, my extensive knowledge of German vocabulary and therefore better choice of words would make it impossible for me to pass on accurately the trauma I suffered as a child. To relive past events in English is the distancing mechanism I need to recount my early life. Writing in English means I can safely sit in a glasshouse and look out, or rather back, as what I am about to relate cannot hurt me any more. There is a barrier between me and the world I am describing. That world is crystal clear and I can give an almost detached account of it. It is with great sorrow that I must insist I am writing about events that truly took place.

You may throw as many stones as you like at my glasshouse. It will not break. I am indestructible.

THE WRONG SIDE OF A RIVER

I was born on the wrong side of a river at the wrong time in history. The times I am writing about are the Hitler years and the immediate post-war years. It was a tragic time for the world and I had the misfortune of being born on the eastern side of that big river, the Oder.

My family was well-to-do with a sizeable property and a large house, which could not only accommodate four generations of one family but also one of my uncles with his family and a separate flat for a very kind, very old lady who had helped to bring up my father. When he got married she wished to live in his house so that she could be with her little Johnny.

I know little about the wide-ranging backgrounds of close members of my family, as all records were destroyed during the war. Out of 26 of us who lived in the house, only 9 survived 1945; and then there was no one left to ask. I know that my maternal grandfather was the descendant of an Italian rebel who had to flee Italy after the Garibaldi uprising. He settled somewhere in Slovakia and my grandfather stems from that lineage. He spoke German and Slavonic, which was his first language. He was a very stern, principled man with a keen interest in astronomy and the humanities and he was one of the few people that I know who could recite Goethe’s Faust from beginning to end by heart.

My great-grandfather on my mother’s side was very special too. His rooms were full of books and beautiful china, which he collected. When the day’s work was done, he used to read and read and read. He had a lovable weakness: he adored cooking for me, his eldest great-grandchild. Needless to say, I was happy to hang around in his rooms for the glorious food, with books and newspapers stacked high on the table.

No one taught me to read but with my great-grandfather reading aloud to me at times from newspapers I was able to make sense of the large, printed squiggles. It was hard though, because the print was the highly ornamental old gothic German print. But I cracked it without help. No one in my family took any notice of my ability to read at a very young age; apparently everyone in my immediate family could read long before school age. It was accepted as normal. Breathing, eating, drinking, reading – that’s what children did.

Sometimes my great-grandfather would speak to me in a strange language; it probably sounded like Dutch. He was actually descended from Dutch dam builders whom Frederick the Great had attracted to live and work in Prussia. They were expert dam builders and the Oder needed damming up with extensive earthworks, up to 30m thick in places. They lasted until they were destroyed in 1945. As a result of many years of neglect thereafter there were catastrophic consequences for the area.

I much later discovered that the language in which my great-grandfather spoke to me was not really Dutch but resembled closely the old Gothic, which was classed as a dead language no longer spoken and understood. It had clearly travelled from the south down the Rhine, pockets had survived and then, under Frederick the Great, it had come to the east of the Oder with the dam builders.

I had as a grown-up no difficulties reading the Hildebrand, the Hildebrandslied Saga in Old High German. The language diversity in my family was accentuated by my great-grandfather’s wife, great-grandmama Gauthier. She was from French aristocratic stock. Her family survived Bartholomaeus Night (the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572). During the night of 23/24 August many leaders of the French protestants – Huguenots – were assassinated, apparently on the orders of the Queen Mother, Catherine de’ Medici, and many more Protestants were murdered by the mob. Great-grandmama’s family escaped and fled to Prussia. Their descendants lived under the protection of Frederick the Great. Most of them settled in Berlin, but my great-grandmother followed her husband to a town east of the Oder and as a token of her love for him accepted German nationality to honour him, the first and only one from all her family to do so. Great-grandmama was a most beautiful woman. In their part of the house you would hear French; in my grandparents’ part you would hear Slavonic. But we all spoke German in public. In the 1930s and 1940s it would have been most unwise to utter foreign sounds, which could have fatal consequences.

I know little about my father’s family, except that they had suffered greatly in the First World War. Two brothers had gone down in U-boats and when my father was five years old his father was crushed by a heavy piece of machinery that had slipped off a railway wagon during unloading at Küstrin. His mother, whose father was Polish, was a very imposing figure – very clever, compassionate, with a heart of gold. She was propertied and although she had many proposals of marriage after she was widowed, she could not bring herself to remarry because no one could ever be as good and kind and caring as her beloved Gustav. She had a very hard time bringing up her children after the Great War, but all her children won scholarships for higher education. We saw nothing of her after 1945 as she managed to escape to East Berlin.

Much later, after my father had been released as a POW to the West of Germany, he asked the German Democratic Republic (GDR) authorities for permission to visit her because she had become very ill. Permission was refused. When a telegram arrived to say she had died, he was refused permission to attend her funeral. The reason: there was no point in travelling to Berlin now, as she was dead.

The same happened to my mother in 1983. Her father, my beloved grandfather, died in the GDR. But we lived in West Germany. Permission to attend his funeral was not granted. He was dead. So, why do you want to come to the GDR? To explain: in the early days of the GDR only visits from parents to children were allowed, or children to parents. The rules were relaxed later on. But the paperwork that went with these visits was formidable; every visitor was treated as a potential spy. You had to present yourself at the police station within one hour of arrival, you had to attend ‘enlightenment classes’, which you did with great enthusiasm – and it was, of course, a great joy for you to bring your relatives as well. Even if you learned nothing, at least the police knew where you were in the evenings. And your relatives better attend these classes as well because if they didn’t, they would disappear after you had travelled home, never to be heard of again.

It was virtually impossible to assist our East German relatives in any way. On one occasion my mother took several pairs of tights with her for her sister-in-law. On her way back to the West she was stopped by the GDR police and questioned about the now missing tights. My mother told them that she had thrown them away as they were laddered. ‘Next time,’ said the friendly policeman, ‘bring them back with you.’ Point taken. The GDR was leading the world – I have forgotten what in – they needed no assistance with anything and certainly no handouts.

So theoretically you could visit your East German relatives, but the East had exclusion zones, up to 15km and even up to 30km east of the river Elbe, which was the border with the West. And with great foresight old people’s homes were opened in those exclusion zones, so that no western spies could infiltrate the minds of the elderly. The regime worked hard to keep them sheltered and safe.

We had been robbed of all our earthly possessions, everything that previous generations had built up was gone. Far worse: most of our much loved immediate family had been cruelly killed in 1945. Now political dogma robbed us of even saying farewell to our remaining nearest and dearest.

I am writing all this from memory. I have not consulted historical records or anything that might help me to reconstruct the events of late 1944 to 1946 and a few years thereafter. I am truthfully recording what I saw and heard and lived through. I saw, obviously, through the eyes of a child and with a child’s mind, but I do have a good memory and my observations are historically correct. This is not fiction. This is the truth unfolding.

Although I was very young, a baby really, some events are crystal clear in my mind.

It must have been autumn judging by the colour of the leaves on the trees. My parents had arranged to meet somewhere in the afternoon and I was taken there in the pram by my mother. It must have been a special occasion for my parents, as they talked about it years later. I was overjoyed when I interrupted them and enthusiastically shouted, ‘Yes, I remember the place!’ and they said, you can’t, you were barely one year old and you were in a pram. And I continued delightedly, yes, and the pram was brown and cream and there was a small open travelling circus in a clearing; I described to them a scantily dressed young acrobat performing as a contortionist, announced and given a running commentary by an older compere dressed formally in a black suit. And lots of people laughed and shouted and clapped their hands. My parents looked at me at first in disbelief, but I was their first-born and naturally the most beautiful and cleverest girl in the world. So, if ‘Prinzeßchen’ said it was like so, then it must have been like so and both parents claimed: ‘She takes after me.’

I remember another occasion when I was given my first pair of ankle-high shoes. Children in those days wore high lace-up boots, which made for very weak ankle joints. No one seemed to have realised this. But I walked very early and so well that I was treated to grown up shoes. I walked into the yard which was very large. I walked into the orchard which was even larger. And as you might expect, my feet got tired from the unusual exercise and I twisted my left ankle. I was hurt, I fell and I could not get up. But I did not cry. So sure and aware was I of the security of my home and the loving care of my parents that I only had to sit there where I was, I would be rescued. And indeed, a little later my father came running towards me with arms outstretched, I was picked up and kissed and made a fuss of, a doctor was called, I was bandaged up and spoiled and given a lot of presents the next day – more plasticine, drawing paper, coloured pencils – there was no end to all the goodies and visitors and uncles and aunts with still more presents. I rather liked being injured, but when that was over I was back to high lace-up boots. That was when I was about 16 months old.

Another heartwarming image springs to mind. I remember with great affection sitting on a sand-coloured blanket on the fresh green grass in the garden under a large apple tree covered with pinkish-white blossoms, the sweet scent of them, the buzzing of bumble bees, the jubilant birds, the blue sky, the golden sun, the warm, soft air and the bright yellow dandelions dotted all around me. I see myself laughing and being consciously aware of the joy and beauty of spring; the month must have been May, so I was around 18 months old.

Children were royalty in our household, we were the most important people in the lives of our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, but our upbringing was what one might call old-fashioned. I call it very strict and what we could do or not do was clearly defined. We could do no wrong. Meaning not outright wrong, better phrased as perhaps not quite right, but never wrong. There was plenty of room for talking and explaining.

Once I was frustrated and as I did not quite understand what was required of me I spoke up and said, ‘I cannot help it, I don’t yet have the reasoning of a grown-up.’ This was quite calmly accepted as a perfectly plausible explanation for my behaviour and my status was almost that of another grown-up engaged in a conversation among equals.

Great-grandmama Gauthier was the grande dame in our family. She was an exceedingly beautiful woman. Her whole demeanour commanded respect. She used to sit on a dais by the window from which she could overlook the entire yard and outbuildings arranged in a rectangle, with the house forming one of the sides. From that window she would supervise the comings and goings of everyone, people and animals alike. You could not reach the front door from the street or from the front field without first having to walk through the yard and you could not come from the fields at the back of the house without walking through the orchard and then through the yard. People always greeted her most respectfully and she ever so slightly bowed her head in acknowledgement.

You were not allowed to call her nana or granny or something that familiar. She was addressed very formally as great-grandmama, followed by her maiden surname. When afternoon came I was allowed to visit her accompanied by my mother. Such a visit was a great honour and was quite a performance. I was washed and combed and polished until I shone, best dress was to be worn, always designed and hand sewn by my father’s mother, who was very fashion conscious. We would walk up to her room and knock. We were expected, of course, to be punctual. We were asked in and remained standing at a respectable distance from her dais, my mother within touching distance behind me. Upon a slight push from my mother in my back I would curtsy and wish her ‘Good afternoon, Great-grandmama Gauthier.’ Then she would say, ‘Good afternoon, mein liebes Kind, have you had a good day?’ I would curtsy again and say ‘Yes, thank you Great-grandmama Gauthier.’ Then ‘Mein liebes Kind, what have you learnt today?’ Upon that I got another push in my back from my mother, took another step forward, curtsied again and recited a verse. A four-liner as a rule. Then she thanked me and wished me good night. ‘Schlaf schön und träume süß’ (‘sleep well and sweet dreams’). Another curtsy and a thank-you and with that we were dismissed.

My mother never had to suffer the shame of me forgetting my words. Their delivery was practised again and again. While I had my dinner, my mother would sit opposite me at the table with a book, Verses for Young Children. She would read some out to me and then we would choose one suitable to be recited in the afternoon. How to curtsy and when to curtsy was also well practised before my early afternoon rest. After all, I was under two years old – but nonetheless well trained for an audience with Great-grandmama Gauthier.

Then there came a day when the house fell silent. There was great sorrow, a lot of people dressed in black arrived, uncles, aunties, people I had never seen before, all in black, some crying. They carried huge bouquets and wreaths in green and white, some had small persons with them, small like me and like me dressed all in white. They were called cousins. That was news to me. I had not known that I was a cousin. It was so exciting. I wandered out of the house and there, like an apparition from a fairy tale, a most beautiful carriage drew up in front of the house, its polished black wood and shining glass sparkling in the bright sunlight. It was drawn by four black horses, the finest I had ever seen, decorated like the carriage with silver ornaments and tassels, wearing black and silver crowns on their heads. It was breathtaking. I was overjoyed and started running back to the house to tell my mother about this truly unbelievable, magnificent sight.

But I was held back; some men, including my father, were walking slowly past me carrying on their shoulders a long, black, shiny box decorated with silver