大象传媒

This story was submitted by Alison Tebbutt, Derby CSV Action Desk, on behalf of Ingrid Newman. The author has given her permission and fully understand's the site's terms and conditions.

I was born in November 1941, in Germany, and for the first few years of my life, lived in the town of Dessau.

When I was three years old our house was bombed flat, and we had to move to my grandmother鈥檚 house, in the small town of Beelitz, east of Berlin. My mother, who was pregnant, took my older sister, Gitti, and me to 鈥極mi鈥檚鈥� (German for Nan or Grandma).

Almost my earliest memory is a shout, 鈥淭he Russians are coming.鈥� The primeval scent of fear transmitted to a child? I have no idea what I thought a Russian was, but if Omi and Mutti (mother) were that frightened, then a Russian must be the worst kind of bogeyman.

We all ran from the house into the nearby asparagus fields. Acres and acres of asparagus were grown round the town. Each field had a wooden shed at the corner, built to provide shelter for the farm workers to eat their sandwiches. They now provided us with a sheltering place from the Russians.

Feuding neighbours, who had never spoken to each other for years, shared the sheds. I remember being told to 鈥淗ush.鈥� But I don鈥檛 suppose my crying could have been heard because of the noise from the advancing tanks.

Omi didn鈥檛 hide with us. My baby brother Dietrich was crying and she ran from farm to farm, begging for milk. She must have been very brave, but none of the farmers would either give or sell her any milk.

I can鈥檛 remember how long we hid in those sheds, but I do remember returning to Omi鈥檚 house and her being in tears.The Russians had smashed everything! All the furniture, plumbing, and sanitary ware were in pieces. Even the food had been destroyed, not eaten.

Our garden, like every other wartime garden, was used for growing fruit and vegetables. The fruit and vegetables were bottled, or made into jam when there was any sugar. The cellar was lined with rows and rows of the airtight jars. They too had all been smashed, swept from the shelves, onto the paved floor, into a brittle goo of plums, green beans and glass. There was no hope of finding food there to keep us alive.

Though many didn鈥檛, we did manage to survive. I remember my grandma acquiring a cartload of parsnips. We ate parsnips, or parsnip soup, and nothing else, for days. The strained armistice between neighbours must have continued, because I remember the village children being gathered together to share a bed, head to toe, as if there was safety in numbers. I had to sleep next to a boy of my age from another family. Our families weren鈥檛 on speaking terms and so I never said a word to him. I was so brain washed that I blamed him when I caught head lice!

My sister, Gitti, wanted to be a doctor. Once she took me to a main road that lead to Berlin. Wounded soldiers from both armies lay in the roadside ditches, left to die by the advancing army. Gitti and I tried to tend their wounds, or simply comfort them and give them water. She was nine and I was four!

I didn鈥檛 understand the meaning of the word 鈥榬ape鈥� then, but it seemed to be a word as common, and as feared as the word 鈥楻ussian鈥�. Like all of us, I did my best to avoid the Russians. Once, I was out on my own, when I was confronted by a Russian soldier. He took his rifle from his shoulder and rested the butt on the ground. He bent down to my level, stoked my blond hair and gave me a sweet, a kindness that was very much an exception.

When the war ended, my father, who had been in the army, returned to our home in Dessau, to find it flattened. He thought we were all dead, but came to the house in Beelitz and found us. He found us starved of food and cold. Nevertheless, I must have developed a taste for the high life from somewhere, because I asked my mother for some butter. She told me that butter was short, to which I replied, 鈥淚 don鈥檛 mind eating short butter!鈥�

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