Slipping the Noose: Two Escape Stories

By Helmut Lemke and Eva Daniel

The book tells two complimentary stories about events at the end of World War II in Germany.

Eva describes how her large Mennonite family flees from their farm in East Prussia, pursued by the Russian army, to settle in the west of Germany. In interesting detail, she describes the hardships and the kindness they received while trekking for two month in horse-drawn wagons through war-torn Germany, often slipping out of the Russian noose. Occasionally, she recounts memories of her childhood and shares the difficulties of starting new careers.

Helmut, a young soldier, starts on an adventurous, dangerous journey from his military hospital in West Germany. He hitchhikes to his home village in East Prussia in search of his mother. In gripping detail, he describes life-threatening confrontations with Russian soldiers who now occupy his home country. Later he is expelled from his home by Polish militia and escapes from being jailed in a Polish labor camp.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 21, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546237723

Helmut Lemke

Helmut Lemke was born in 1926 in West Prussia, Germany. He attended a boarding school from where he was drafted to fight on the Russian Front in the Second World War. After the war he undertook a dangerous trip into Russian occupied territory to search for his mother. They were expelled from their home and he fled with his mother to West Germany. He studied at the Technical University Braunschweig in Germany and in the USA and graduated with a degree of Diploma Engineer. He immigrated to Canada and worked there as an architect and art instructor. He married Hildegard and they had three children. Both parents were active in youth work and church activities. In his retirement he volunteered as a director for a social housing society. He has written several books.

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© 2018 Helmut Lemke and Eva Daniel. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 04/20/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-3756-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-3772-3 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Preface

Eva's Story: Preparations For The Flight

Departure

The First Russian Noose

The Second Russian Noose

Hillerse

A Daring Journey Home

Leaving Home

About The Authors

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks go to Eva, my cousin and co-author, who told me the story of the flight of her family and followed the progress of the manuscript.

Eva’s brothers Johannes and Erich, added some events which they remembered from their flight.

Krista red the manuscript critically and made some structural adjustments which added to the fluency of the story.

Special thanks go to Tannis, for her helpful advice and for proofreading the stories. Joanna agreed to read the corrected copy once more. Madison allowed us to use her photo of Eva for the front cover.

SLIPPING THE NOOSE

E V A’S S T O R Y

AND A DARING JOURNEY HOME

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Two stories from World War II.

Helmut Lemke and Eva Daniel

PREFACE

Eva’s story begins in Sparau, a remote part of a small village in West Prussia, where Eva grew up.

The time is January 1945, the end of World War II. Russian troops have already invaded Germany. When they approach her home village, the family decides to flee, leaving behind all their belongings. They have heard of the atrocities carried out by Russian soldiers, what they had done to German women and children when they entered German territory. They did not want to suffer the same fate.

For two months a family of eleven trek with three wagons and 12 horses west, in deep winter, always barely escaping the Russian pursuers.

They never know where they will spend the next night, looking for shelter and food, knocking on doors of farms, schools, and army barracks.

Their trek ends when they are registered as refugees in West Germany and assigned to a village near Hannover in Lower Saxony. There they begin a new life. The children finish their education, start new careers and settle in different parts of the country

Eva told this moving story to her cousin, Helmut. He encouraged her to share it with a larger audience and she asked him to write it for her.

The story grew out of Eva’s experiences, her travel diary and memories from her siblings and other resources.

For a better understanding and clarification of the story the author interjected a few historical facts.

The second story, A daring journey complements the first story.

During the war many families were dispersed and family members often did not know about each other’s whereabouts.

Helmut, a young soldier, having been wounded on the Russian front, undertakes a dangerous journey searching for his mother. He hitchhikes from his military hospital in West Germany to his home village in East Prussia, hoping to find his mother there. His home village is now occupied by Soviet troops and under the administration of the new Polish government.

He describes in a gripping way the confrontations and calamitous encounters with Russian soldiers and the Polish militia, his expulsion from his home and flight to West Germany.

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EVA'S STORY

PREPARATIONS FOR THE FLIGHT

Father came rushing into our room and alerted us: Get up quickly we have to leave. The Russians are in the village already.

We were startled and afraid when we heard that. Where are we going?

In our imaginations we visualized the Russian soldiers coming with guns and tanks chasing us. Our imaginations were fed by the news we heard on the radio. Mother had prepared us for this possibility already.

We expected that to happen and were in a way set up for it but we did not think it would become reality that suddenly.

We had listened to the news off and on to find out what was going on in the world, fraught with tension.

The Russians had entered East Prussia from the east and south. Stories about atrocities committed by Russian troops as they entered German territory circulated, stories of how they had treated the inhabitants.

We knew the outcome of the war looked pretty hopeless for our country.

In the west, from the other side, American and British troops crossed the Rhine and occupied the Ruhrgebiet, cutting us off from our industrial resource centre and military and food supplies.

This terrible war is now in its 6th year already -

I still remember September 1939 when we heard the first thunder of guns and airplanes flying over our house. German troops had just moved into Poland not far from where we lived. We realized then, this now is the war we had so much hoped and prayed would not happen.

Why did Hitler start a war at this time or why was it necessary at all, we wondered? Most of us thought it could have been avoided.

Hitler claimed he wanted to restore dignity to Germany and the German people after the humiliating and unjust treaty of Versailles after World War One. He wanted to regain back the land, in which German people had lived for centuries and which Germany had to cede to France, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Lithuania and bring back its German population into the German Reich.

A number of people felt that was reasonable.

Hitler had accomplished much of that already through the appeasement attempts of the English Prime Minister Chamberlain and he even had brought his ‘homeland’, Austria, into the German fold in 1938.

Hitler should have been content with that achievement.

He now used the controversy with Poland, incidents where Polish radical activists had murdered several German families, like in the ‘Bromberg-Blood-Sunday’, as a reason to invade Poland, ‘in order to protect the German minority’.

He knew that Poland had an agreement with England and France, that they had pledged to support each other if one of them should be attacked by Germany. So Hitler knew if he started a war with Poland there was a risk that France and Britain would join Poland to fight against Germany and that it could escalate into a European war. Secretly he hoped that Britain would remain neutral.

Poland counted on that agreement, on Britain’s support and help and was quite bold to reject Hitler’s appeasement suggestions, to allow Germany an inspection free corridor to run a rail line and highway through Polish territory, to have a connection between the isolated East Prussia and mainland Germany.

Poland had been awarded a strip of German territory, most of West Prussia, by the treaty of Versailles in 1919. This 100 km wide strip, known as the Polish Corridor, gave Poland free access to the Baltic Sea but it separated East Prussia from mainland Germany.

Hitler also asked if Poland had any objection to the Free State of Danzig with its mainly German population,(now under the administration of the League of Nations,) returning to Germany again.

In the opinion of many Germans the problem with Poland could have been solved by international diplomatic negotiations and not by plunging our countries and the whole continent into war.

The response to the invasion of Poland was the British and French declaration of war on Germany.

Hitler wanted to appease the German people by bragging about his successes. Poland would be occupied and out of the way very shortly. Later when he invaded Russia, he tried to assure us, that at the end of next summer our soldiers will march into Moscow and the war would be over.

Typical propaganda!

Now six years later, our troops are still marching but in the opposite direction, Russian troops have pushed them back and are now entering German territory. They might be in Berlin soon and the war would be over but on their terms. This makes us uneasy and angry and we feel betrayed.

So far in West Prussia we had not experienced much of the effects of the war, the terror, violence and fear, the inconvenience and distress that it brings with it. We had two unexpected heavy bombings of the Marienburg-Königsdorf military airport, about 20 km west of us, where they assembled and tested the famous Focke Wulf FW-190 fighter planes. American and British bomber squadrons destroyed the airport once in 1943 and when it had been rebuilt again in 1944, with half an hour of terror, loss of life and devastation of property on each attack.

Growing up on the farm we always had enough to eat. We grew our own vegetables, fruit, wheat and oats. We had a large orchard and raised our own animals that gave us meat, milk and eggs.

We were ordered to deliver all the surplus of our harvest to the government, but there was enough left for us.

What we could not get on ration cards, which had been issued lately, we could sometimes obtain ‘under the counter’ in exchange for a sausage, a basket of vegetables or a plucked goose. But that might