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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Morwenna Nadar of CSV/´óÏó´«Ã½ LONDON on behalf of Mrs. Susan Wilders and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I lived in a small town in Poland and I remember that when I was in primary school, there was one particular teacher who always insisted on saying ‘Heil Hitler’. I never told him that my father was not a member of the political party as somehow I knew that it could be dangerous to tell this teacher something like that. I also never said anything about listening to the British Broadcasting as we all knew this was a very dangerous thing to do and we would be in serious trouble if the Germans found out.. In January 1945, when I was just 16, I was sent away to the West on the last train with a school friend and her mother. My parents stayed behind because my father was in the Home Guard and refused to leave what he felt was his duty to his country. As the American troops came nearer, my friend’s mother thought it would be better for me to be back with members of my own family (I don’t know why) so I set off for Berlin where my maternal uncle lived. Soon after I left, there were tremendous bombing attacks on Berlin and on the surrounding areas. We all had to leave the train when the bombs were falling and then get on again to continue the journey when it was safe, so it took quite a long time.

As soon as I got to my uncle’s house, he said I had to leave because the bombing had made staying in Berlin too dangerous. He said I should go to my aunt who had a farm near Strasburguckermark so after only a few hours with my uncle, I started off again. When I arrived at the place, I then had a five mile walk to my aunt’s farm as my uncle had not been able to contact her, so nobody knew I was coming. The farm was on the main road and when I got there I found that the German military, who were fleeing from the Russians, had commandeered all the rooms. We civilians also fled as the Russians were known to be very near, and we piled into covered farm trucks. We made for the woods where we all hid. The Russians arrived that night and I don’t know what happened to the German soldiers but we were found. The Russians took all the men but that time did not do anything to the women and girls. We were sent to another farm which was not on the main road, and we worked in the fields and the kitchen. I remember the Russian soldiers use to say, ‘ Woman come peel potatoes.’ At that time, the Russians had respect for doctors and chemists, so eventually I was sent to stay with one of them as my aunt felt I would be safe from assault there.

My parents left our home town, which had suffered badly, and went to Berlin to stay with my father’s sister. I joined them there and life was very hard for the ordinary people. Food was very scarce and it was very difficult to find enough to eat. We were blockaded in as the Russians were encircling Berlin, but my mother and other women would try and get past them to reach the fields and woods where they searched for anything that could be eaten. It was a very dangerous thing to do and they often suffered unspeakable atrocities at the hands of the Russian soldiers, but they felt they had no choice as otherwise they and their families would starve. My mother never allowed me to go with her. As well as searching for food, the women had to do hard physical work. Because the men were all either in the forces or prisoners, Berlin was a town of mainly women and children. This meant that the women, helped by the children and teenagers, had to clear all the debris left by the bombing, and this was done mainly by hand as there were no mechanical devices available.

Looking back, the kind of food we ate during that time seems horrible but at the time, we were only too thankful to have it.
Soup made of water and the hard, black rye bread, with perhaps a grain or two of sugar.
Grain scrounged and ground in a coffee-grinder.
Beechnuts which were very oily when peeled.
Apples and cherries from the farm fields, if we were lucky.
Wild strawberries and other berries from the woods, depending on the season.
Potatoes and sugar-beet from the farms, again if we were lucky.
I don’t know how anybody had the strength to keep going, let alone do the debris clearing.

At Easter 1946 I started my Froebel teacher training. It was not at all easy to get around in Berlin as there was hardly any transport running, but in spite of all the deprivations, people of my age managed to have some good times. After the war ended, Berlin was divided into four, with the British, the Americans, the French and the Russians each in control of one sector. To go into the Russian zone, you had to buy a pass and pay with West marks as East marks were of less value, but the other three zones had free entry. None of wanted to go into the Russian zone unless we absolutely had to, but we regularly went dancing in the other ones. We could not return to our own town because it had been used as a place to keep the Polish prisoners; there had been more of these than there were of actual inhabitants. When the Russian government forced the Black Sea Russians, or Ukrainians, to move into the area, they had no interest in re-building the town as they did not intend to stay permanently. There is now a very good and interesting museum there, which tells all about the suffering and the heroism of the Poles during the war.

In 1948 Britain was advertising for au pairs and I decided to apply. Much to my delight, I was accepted, and, although my parents were sad that I would be leaving, they were pleased for me because they felt I would have a much better life at that time in Britain. The Marshall Plan was in operation by then and the bombers that brought the food in, were taking people out so I left in one of them. I became an au pair to the secretary to the British Labour Minister, and I was very lucky as they were lovely and very kind people.
Even with rationing, Britain in 1948 was so much better than Germany, and I remember sending little bars of chocolate to my parents as they could get nothing like that. I missed my family but I used to regularly meet other Polish girls who had come over and we all felt we had made a good move. Later, I married here so Britain became my home.

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