What was it like growing up in Germany during WWII: The children didn't know any different. Growing up, young boys knew they would become soldiers and might have to go to war at one point in their life. They had to be careful whom they confided in because the underlying motto was always: Achtung, Feind hoert mit (Warning: Enemy is listening). But actually, my father (Reinhold) said it was a great time growing up during the war in a village, because it was a constant adventure. He and his gang snuck up on the soldiers' camps and stole everything they could find, even their toilet paper out of the 'bathroom tent.' They often found guns and ammunition. What an adventure for young boys! The parents had no idea of course. The boys knew it was dangerous, and oftentimes someone got injured or killed.
Scariest moments during the war: My father and his friends befriended a ten or twelve-year-old boy named Rolf Kletschen (use names, makes the story more personal!) from up North, the Rhein River area, from the city of Duesseldorf, who was sent to his aunts', the Graeser sisters, house in Kirchberg to be safe from the bombings in cities. Rolf and his aunts frequently went to the woods to gather twigs for their home fires. When the war was just over and the German troops fled from the US and Sowjet occupiers, they left a lot of their belongings behind in the woods, including guns, ammunition and grenades.
One day, as Rolf and his aunts were gathering wood, he found something on the ground, not knowing what it was. He showed it to his aunts. They said, "What are you carrying around? Throw it away, it's dangerous." He threw it.
Unfortunately, it hit a tree, exploded, and killed one aunt instantly. Rolf lay on the ground, badly injured. The other aunt ran into the village, screaming and crying. A man named Bergschneider hitched a horse to his wagon and the two drove back to the woods, to pick up the bodies. Rolf was brought to the nurses' station next to the church, where my father and his friends saw him lying on a makeshift gurney, bleeding from a gaping wound below his neck. They tried talking to their friend, but he barely responded. Somebody brought an old car and took him to the hospital in Memmingen, where he later died. Rolf's mother arrived by train a few days later to pick him up, not knowing that her son was killed by a grenade.
Another time, my father and his friends, who were always out and about, first of all because there was no TV yet, only radio, and school sometimes was cancelled for months, because the teachers were drafted as soldiers to fight in the war, so the kids roamed the village and surrounding woods from morning to night fall, found a Panzerfaust, which is a bazooka (that long gun you see in Saving Private Ryan, belief it or not!) in a potato field. They played around with it. One hoisted it on his shoulder and pulled the trigger. Luckily, he held it backwards and the shell went out back, otherwise he would have killed his friends instantly. But the firestream that came out the other end hit a boy who was wearing short Lederhosen and burned his thighs. His legs were covered with tiny blood specks and the boy was screaming in agony.
My dad remembers looking out the kitchen window one night across the street to his neighbor Buechele's house. Both their sons, Martin and Eugen, and the father had been drafted into the war. He could see through the curtain that the mother just received the message that Martin had fallen in the war and saw the mother's reaction. She screamed and cried, then collapsed. He said it was horrible to witness.
Anything positive happen to u during the war (befriending and helping soldiers, etc): the young lads soon found out that the American soldiers were much nicer than the French or Russian ones. The US GIs gave them cigarettes and chocolates, whereas the French, when they were done smoking a cigarette, begrudged the boys even the butts and ground them into the dirt with the heels of their boots. This just to show you the difference. To this day, my dad hates the French because they were so mean. The French of course hated the Germans because they invaded and occupied France during the war and plundered, stealing everything. But when the US soldiers occupied the village, it was actually fun.
One afternoon, when they were about 12, Reinhold and his buddies snuck up on the US soldiers' camp in the middle of the village. The soldiers had confiscated the pre-war model cars of the towns' people and parked them alongside a street. Gas was rationed and at that time, there was no gas in any of the cars. But the boys waited until the soldiers left the camp and "borrowed' the car that was parked in front. One sat behind the wheel, the others pushed. This way, they 'drove' through the whole town, having a blast. Nobody stopped them. Downhill was easy. They went to the only place that would have gas, but they were still out, so they had to push the car back up the hill). They wanted to bring the car back so they wouldn't be yelled at. On the way up the hill, an American Jeep full of US soldiers passed them. Reinhold and his friends ran away to hide and left the car in the middle of the road. The US soldiers stopped and got out. When they saw the young boys hiding in the bushes nearby, they called them out. The soldiers thought it was funny that these little German boys thought now they had a car to play with. They hitched the car on their Jeep and pulled it up the hill for them. Everybody was laughing, that's how nice the American soldiers were. To them it was just kids having fun.
The villagers stuck together. When the French occupied the village, they demanded a large part of their livestock to be brought to their camps so they would have fresh meat. They also demanded flour and other foods. You were in big trouble if you didn't declare everything you had to their commander. But the farmers were sly and stuck together. They hid cows and pigs and other food, and once a week, in the middle of the night, the butcher in town would slaughter a pig or cow and parcel the meat out to the families. It was all done in secret and with codes. The country folks had it a little easier during the war than city people like my mother (Omi) because the country had fields and livestock. People grew their own food. The city people were on rations and had to go begging at surrounding farms for an egg or a slice of bread.
Once Reinhold started middle school, he had to take the train to Memmingen, a small city about 20 miles away, where the school was. Sometimes, when the students got there, the building had been taken over by soldiers and turned into a hospital. If they were lucky, there was a note tacked to the front door to let them know where the teachers would be holding school that day. If not, they had to wait around until night to catch the train back home.
The city of Ulm, about 25 miles away where Omi and Albert Einstein are from, was almost completely destroyed during the war, except for the cathedral, which is famous for having the world's tallest church tower. The American soldiers flew over the cathedral and 'bombed' it with flour sacks, just to show the Germans that they could have destroyed it. But out of respect to God, they left it intact and only dropped flour on it to show they hit it.
As boys they often found guns and bags left behind by soldiers. That was always an adventure. Their parents never knew where they were, what they found, and what they were up to, because they always hit the guns and ammunition before they went home.
My young nephew, Moritz and his friends, then 8 years old, found mason jars buried in the woods a couple years ago, more than 70 years after WWII. In the jars were real hand guns. They looked a bit rusty, but also appeared to be in good working condition. They ran to Jochen, Moritz's father, to show him what they found. Jochen called Felix's dad, Thomas, a policeman, and told him about the guns the boys found buried in the woods. Thomas said he would be up there shortly, as soon as he finished his dinner…Turns out they were hand guns that the villagers hid whenever soldiers came into town and went through their homes, stealing everything they could.
Reinhold's father, my grandfather Alois, was drafted around 1942 or 43. He was sent to Balingen, a town in Germany near Stuttgart, where he first worked as a security guard for foreign prisoners-of-war who had to go out during the day and help out on farms, of which sons and fathers were in the war, then report back at night. Then he was sent to Krakow, Poland from where he sent them a letter. He also met one of his friends from Kirchberg there. Then he was moved to Russia to fight on the front. One night, he lay in a trench when an enemy soldier attacked him. They fist fought for a long time, trying to kill one another. At the end, Alois bit off the other guy's finger, and passed out. When he awoke with a head injury, he had no idea where to go, so he just started low-crawling away. He had no idea where to go or what to do, it was dark. He kept crawling, and arrived at the German soldiers' camp! They took care of him as much as they could, then he was sent back to Germany, to the university hospital in Tuebingen, because of his brain injury. Meantime, his commander had sent a letter of recommendation for his heroism and the Iron Cross for war injuries to his family in Kirchberg, but admitted he didn't know where Alois was. Weeks later they received a letter from him from Tuebingen. He was released from the Wehrmacht because of his injuries six months before the war ended. Ever since then, he prayed the whole rosary every day until he died in 1984.
When the US and Soviet occupiers arrived in the village after the war, Alois and other villagers destroyed their medals and the letters because if it would have been found in their homes, they would probably have been hanged for participating in the war. That's why no records and medals exist from that time in our family.
