Growing up German: Impacts from World War Ii

By Hartmut Wegner

Author Hartmut Wegner was born in 1933 near Berlin, Germany, the same year Adolf Hitler took control and built the country into a strong economic and military stronghold. In Growing Up German, Wegner shares his story from the viewpoint of a young boy growing up under the Nazi regime.

This memoir follows the boy from the beginning of World War II in 1939, when the Nazis and Adolf Hitler started their march to conquer the world; through to the wars end in 1945 and the recovery afterward; to the development in his teens in Berlin; and then to his immigration with his family to United States in 1954 at age twenty. He narrates the numerous shocking experiences that had an emotional impact on his young life. In addition to sharing his recollections, Wegner offers his opinions on World War II from his perspective later in life.

Offering a straightforward firsthand account of the events in Germany during World War II, Growing Up German gives keen insight into what life was like for one boy and his family during a tumultuous and tragic time in world history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532049088

Hartmut Wegner

Hartmut Wegner was born in Woltersdorf near Berlin, Germany, and grew up under the Nazi regime. He immigrated to the United States in 1954. He got an education, raised a family, and traveled the world.

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Copyright © 2018 Hartmut Wegner.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-4909-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-4908-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018905239

iUniverse rev. date: 06/28/2018

Contents

Preface

Prologue  Russia Invades Berlin, April 1945

Chapter 1 The Beginning of My Life

Chapter 2 Early Events in My Life

Chapter 3 War Begins

Chapter 4 The Wegner Family’s Reaction to the War

Chapter 5 High School in Poland

Chapter 6 Woltersdorf—November 1943 to April 1944

Chapter 7 Sudetenland—April to Summer 1944

Chapter 8 Woltersdorf—Summer 1944 to Early 1945

Chapter 9 Panicked Flight

Chapter 10 Passage to Poland and Back

Chapter 11 A New Beginning

Chapter 12 My Schooling in Berlin

Chapter 13 The Soviet Blockade of West Berlin

Chapter 14 Rebuilding of Berlin

Chapter 15 A New Life for Me—Bicycle Riding

Chapter 16 School Matters

Chapter 17 Immigration to the United States

Chapter 18 Our Move to America

Chapter 19 Major Activities of the Next Three Years

Chapter 20 Seeing Sylvia in Canada

Chapter 21 New Job with Pako Corporation

Chapter 22 New Life as an American Citizen

Conclusion

Epilogue

Preface

W orld War I and World War II, the two most major events of the twentieth century, had horrendous effects. The destruction in most countries and cultures in the world was huge. Many people were killed, and many millions were displaced.

Hundreds, maybe thousands, of books have been written about World War II, but few explore the experience and daily happenings of a young child living through the events. I am writing this story now as a German American who experienced World War II as a young boy growing up in Berlin, Germany, under the Nazi regime. I describe these experiences in as much detail as my memory allows, recalling specifics of my life and detailing the memories of this boy and his many feelings during this time. I cover the years after my birth to the end of the war and then document the next nine years in which I grew up as a teenager during the early recovery of Germany. Finally, I recount my immigration to the United States in 1954 as a young man of twenty and describe my early life in America.

So many times, in my life here in America, I had opportunities to discuss with my children bits and pieces of my youth during World War II. At one point one of my daughters even interviewed me some on tape. But nothing more serious developed from this action. Then, after returning from a vacation to Germany with her husband, my daughter told me that a young woman she’d traveled with on her way back from Germany wanted to write a book about World War II history. The thought of interviewing me had occurred to them, and my daughter approached me with the idea. I thought about it but realized such an interview could not cover all the events and developments that had occurred. Many things were buried in my mind, and a taped interview could not possibly tell my life’s story.

Once I came to this realization, I sat down to write my own story. And the words flowed. I am not a writer, but I communicate in business a lot with letters and emails. This background is accordingly reflected in my writing style, which is also strongly influenced by my German American background and education. My family wanted me to seek the help of a ghostwriter to have this work corrected to better English. But I disagreed, as my actual writing will show the way I am and act and my personality as an ongoing and changing German American, more and more involved in American culture in business, politics, and daily life. My story is a straightforward report and not a modified novel with other descriptive words. This style may be interesting to some people but not to others. That is okay. I want my memoirs to be as truthful and descriptive as possible.

It is amazing how many of my memories have never disappeared. In addition to my personal recollections, in some sections of this book I also share my opinions on World War II issues that I learned about later in my life. Here, I use an approach Herman Wouk used in his two-volume work about his family in World War II, titled The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. In this work he periodically interviewed a German general, and he used a different script to describe these interviews. I do similar, using a different paragraph with a black frame around the white heading on these special issues. These are issues that I studied and learned about later in my education, when I tried to evaluate the many things that had occurred.

Prologue

Russia Invades Berlin, April 1945

I t was April 30, 1945, near the end of World War II. I was a young boy, eleven years old. I’d recently started living with my sixteen-year-old sister, Trautchen; her eighteen-year-old half-Jewish husband, Rudy; and their six-month-old baby, Karin. We lived in hiding in a suburb of the capital of Germany, the once-beautiful city of Berlin.

My mother, Elli Wegner, supported us with food from her location in the northern part of Berlin, where she lived at that time with my oldest sister, Hansi. Before, they’d lived in the more central part of Berlin, but their apartment had been destroyed in a vicious bombing raid, as will be later described. Along with many other German cities, Berlin experienced continuous bombing, at night by the British Lancaster bombers and in the daytime by the US B-17 Flying Fortresses.

My mother was active in the black market, where extra food was available and even ration cards were traded, and this kept us alive. Trautchen, Rudy, and I lived in a small country house in a suburb of Berlin named Schildow. This small country house, actually more a hut, belonged to Rudy’s father, who now had to suffer as a Jew in a Nazi concentration camp.

May 2, 1945, was a nice day in the Schildow area—sunshine with a few clouds and a somewhat warm temperature. It was peaceful.

However, Rudy was uneasy. He had prepared a pole with a white flag attached. Today was possibly the day when our whole society would be turned over. We were actually eagerly awaiting the Russian troops, who we thought were still at the Oder River about one hundred miles to the east of Berlin. We knew the hated Nazi regime would be changing to another system. We had hopes the change would be an improvement and mean freedom, but we did not really know. We were very anxious.

Rudy had predicted earlier the exact day when the Russian soldiers would be coming. On that day, we were outside, behind the hedge of our little house. And then we heard foreign voices. We first thought that these were from some prisoners. Then the hedge opened, revealing long rows of Russian soldiers. Rudy had a rifle in his hand, and so did I. We were approached by what appeared to be an officer and two more soldiers. Rudy showed his white flag and kept saying, Amerikanski. The first thing the soldiers did was take our rifles. They must have realized we were anti-Nazi. Rudy had immediately begun talking with an American type of voice, pretending he was an American. One Russian soldier quickly disarmed our rifles. The baby, Karin, was in the outside bunker and was crying. Rudy convinced the Russian officer that we were friendly. He also had me get the stack of anti-Nazi leaflets, which were hidden in the straw in the shed adjacent to our little house. The Russians looked at these and were more convinced and were even smiling.

These were Russian fighting troops: straightforward and decent. Rudy convinced the Russians that he knew about ammunition in the nearby Nazi factory, and he left with them. Everything happened so fast. All of a sudden Trautchen and I were alone and had to face whatever was ahead of us. It was not good. Things changed terribly.

Our disaster began. After a while, three more Russian soldiers appeared. They immediately ordered Trautchen into the room of our little house. One soldier tore her clothes off. She tried to fight back, but he pointed to his rifle, and she had to stop resisting. First one soldier raped her in front of me. Then the other two followed. Trautchen was more worried about me, her young brother, than about herself. I was totally in panic. I did not even know then how a boy would be with a girl sexually. Here I had to see it. My sister was being hurt, and I did not know what to do. Our dog Hasso, a German shepherd, was barking like crazy on his long chain. He was trying to protect us. The soldiers did not go near him, which probably saved his life, as they likely would have shot him.

These soldiers disappeared, and fortunately no others appeared at that moment. Then we heard from the neighbors. Almost all the women were being raped. Not far away was a