大象传媒

This story was submitted by Garry Lloyd, a CSV volunteer, on behalf of Elke Nauke, who has given her permission for her story to be added to the website and understands the terms and conditions of the site.

As the war was coming to an end, in the Spring of l945 at the age of six, I was collecting firewood with my grandmother on the forested outskirts of Geesthacht, our home near Hamburg. Beside the river Elbe on light sandy slopes we were clearly visible, at the edge of a wood, when we heard an aircraft engine.

Looking up we saw a British fighter plane diving towards us. I could see the RAF roundels, and the helmet of the pilot, before it opened up with its cannon. My grandmother grabbed me, started running and pulled me into the bushes as cannon-fire ripped up the ground. We escaped unhurt, but my grandmother was terribly frightened. The fighter climbed away. It was all over in seconds, too swift for me to react. He must have seen we were just a woman and child.

It wasn鈥檛 mentioned in the family, and I blanked it out for years, thinking it was a unique incident. But a German friend recently told me the same thing happened to her. War brings out the worst, and the best, in people whichever side they are on.

In spite of rationing and food shortages we had a largely peaceful life. Geesthacht was a small industrial town. At Kr眉mmel, on the east side, was an explosives factory, founded by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite who gave his name to the Peace Prize. My father was chief electrician there. Preparing for war Hitler converted it to manufacturing munitions, later attracting occasional, but unsuccessful, bombing by the British. Its original construction was semi-submerged for safety reasons.

From our home we could see the sky lit up by raids on Hamburg, and answering German phosphorus bombs which we called Christmas trees. We had a goat, for milk and cheese, chickens, grew vegetables, and sacrificed our lawn to sugar beet to make black syrup. Thus we were able to feed refugees fleeing the Russian advance from the East. Russians were universally feared, especially by the women, with their reputation for mass rape.

My aunt fled from Mecklenburg, with her two children, to live with us. Her son, aged about 14, managed to protect his mother from the Russians but was beaten up for his trouble. In Geesthacht everyone prayed that the British would reach us before the Russians. They did, and from the other side of the river Elbe, spent a week shelling us into submission. About l7 people were killed. We took cover in an air raid shelter in our garden. The blast from one explosion lifted the roof on our house. It crashed back down dislodging rows of tiles. I still have a souvenir piece of shrapnel.

There was resistance. The Nazis ordered it and 鈥渄efeatists鈥� were summarily executed. Across Germany they hanged people they accused of failing to fight. But the outcome in Geesthacht was inevitable, and we surrendered. My father, who had spent the war in a reserved occupation as factory electrician, was nonetheless conscripted during its final months. In Alsace he deserted, managing to cross the Rhine as guide to an officer, simply because he had a torch. Afterwards he jettisoned his uniform for civilian clothes from a friendly farmer.

The conquering Britons established a functional local government in Geesthacht, instituting the English educational system from which I benefited. A young officer was billeted at our house with his Polish batman. They were popular, giving us chocolate and white bread, which we had never seen. Such were the food shortages my father cycled all the way to Hamburg 鈥� over a dozen miles 鈥� just to get a loaf.

We children were turned out of our beds to make room for refugees, and never got them back. Instead we bedded down in a living room. Our house was substantial and my father reconstructed it into three small flats, even utilizing the garage, to accommodate refugees. The British ordered him to dismantle all electrical components of the Kr眉mmel factory. Machinery was shipped to Australia, and copper wire to England. For a brief period Geesthacht became lawless. Freed prisoners-of-war, mostly Russians and Poles who had been used as forced labour at the factory, plundered the town and we children were not allowed out. The British blew the factory up. Now the site is a nuclear power station.

With our chickens, geese, goat, two sheep for their wool, the woods from which to gather berries, leaves and mushrooms my father was able to trade on a thriving black market. People tried to steal our chickens, and my grandmother caught a German policeman filling his helmet with cherries from our orchard.

My father-in-law, a German officer, was captured during the war and interned in Northumbria. He lived better than we did, even sending his family occasional food parcels from his camp. In l977 I came to live in England and became a teacher in Surrey, where I have made my home.

When I was invited to tell this story, initially I was reluctant, feeling I was from a defeated nation and should not denote behaviour, like the shelling from the fighter plane, as dishonourable for Britain which has made me welcome. Also I concluded it was in the past. But that is what we should learn from, in the hope that history will not repeat itself.

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