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MY NAME IS LISA (LIESEL WEBB)

My name is Lisa. I was born a long time ago and a long distance away. It was a time when the whole of Europe was at war. In Spain there was fighting between General Franco and the Communists. In Germany there was a man called Hitler, who marched into other peoples’ countries, wanting to rule them. Ordinary people were caught up in the turmoil.

The place where I was born was called KRONSFELD in the UKRAINE. In the Ukraine there was a large German colony at that time. (All the German names have now been changed). My mother was a doctor who looked after sick children (A Paediatrician) She was German, as was my father. They had met at the University of CHARKOV, where my mother studied medicine and my father languages.
My father was not there when I was born on the 3rd. Of November 1937,he had been arrested during one night in August 1937,because he was a foreigner. My mother was not taken away because Doctors were needed.

My mother was told to work in a place called PETROWSK, in the hospital, which looked after a large rural area. We lived in a wooden house with a wooden porch. In winter it was very cold and lots of snow fell. The summers were very hot. People used to travel by horse and sleigh to get to the hospital. All the time my mother, being the only German person there was worried about being arrested, (taken by the KGB, the Secret Police), because of her nationality, Most of all the foreign people had been arrested by that time. My mother started to speak only in the Russian language to me, so that I would not be identified as German.

In June 1941, the war between Russia and Germany broke out.

In October 1941 the fighting between the two armies came to the area where we lived, DONEZ Region. The battles came closer and closer and my mother received orders from the Secret Police (K.G.B) to leave her post at the hospital and make her way well into Russian territory.Two horses were hitched to a wagon (A wagon like the settlers of North America used) and we were told to leave, leaving everthing behind. On the journey East I became quite ill with a high fever. All the lodgings were filled with people fleeing the fighting. We had to sleep in the wagon,the weather turned and it began to snow. My mother decided to return to PETROWSK with me, against the orders of the Secret Police. We travelled through the back roads and woods and after six sdays returned back to our wooden house.Straightaway someone reported our return and my mother was ordered to leave again or be arrested. You could here the roar of the cannon fire (artillery) and bomb explosions in the distance
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We left again pretending to travel East, but instead we went West towards the fighting. Two horses and a trap were used this time as transport. Twenty kilometers away was a safe house. A nurse, who had worked with my mother at the hospital, had asked her parents to hide us. It was a very dangerous thing for Russians to hide foreigners. When we arrived at this lonely Russian farm house,the horses were untied and chased into the Steppes to fend for themselves, my mother knew they would be found, but hopefully a long distance away. The cart was taken apart and burried, other parts were hidden. Fourteen days we stayed with these people, not daring to leave the house, and in a room we shared with three bee hives, there was no escape either. The Steppes were all around us and the battle was raging, the thunder of cannons could be heard every day,and we sat waiting and hoping that the German army would overrun the farmhouse before the Russians could find us.

On the 14th day a company of six to eight horsemen arrived,we were very afraid. They did not look like the Red Army(Russians), neither did they look like German soldiers. They were demanding food, speaking in broken Russian, and my mother went out and asked if there was a German speaker amongst them. Luckily one of the riders was able to speak German. My mother explained to him that there was very little food left, which the Russian couple had shared with us, and if they took the rest we would all die of hunger. She also said that she was a German. After some discussions the riders left without taking any food or belongings of the farmer, my mother told us that the riders were from a Hungarian unit who fought on the side of the German army.

Some Hours later some German S.S. officers arrived to question my mother, to see if she was a spy. These men took us a few miles to their Headquarters. Here my mother worked as a translator for the Russian prisoners,and later in the Field Hospital. We travelled with this army division East again, and came to all the places where we had lived, and the place where I was born. In the German village of Kronsfeld there was no one left. All the German people had been taken away on cattle trains, and we now know that they were taken to a place which lies behind the URAL mountains in KAZAKHSTAN, where the children and grand children still live. Many people died on that long journey,from disease and hunger. In November 1941 my mother received permission for both of us to enter Germany , and to travel to my fathers parents in NEUMUNSTER (Schleswig Holstein). My mother was the only woman and I the only child (4 and a half years old)) to travel by Army train. On this long train jouney we were the only civilians, the train carried soldiers to the front, and back on leave. We started the journey at a place called MELITOPOL in the Ukraine and our first stop was WARSAW (the capital city of Poland). From Warsaw the train took us to BERLIN. The journey lasted seven days and nights. During these days I became very ill with a high fever, I must have reminded the soldiers of their own children at home, because, they would climb out of the carriage windows,clamber along the sides of the moving train to the canteen wagon, collect cold water to keep me cool. Later when I felt better they would share their chocolate with me.

On arrival in BERLIN we had to report to the German Authorities who supplied us with documents and travel passes. My mother was told that my father was also in Germany. After his arrest he had been kept in a prison camp in Russia, and tortured, for one year, and then was sent back to Germany, whereupon he was arrested again, this time by the German Authority, and sent to work building the Autobahns, because he had chosen to study in Russia rather than Germany, no consideration was given to the fact that Germany had no grant system for students at that time, whereas in Russia there was, however meagre, and that he had left Germany before the outbreak of war.

My father lived in KIEL (Schleswig Holstein) after being released from forced labour.
On the journey went from BERLIN to HAMBURG. There we had to change trains again and arrived in NEUMUNSTER late at night. We were met by a nurse and a policeman who took us to my Grandfathers house. The following day, a Sunday, we continued to Kiel to meet my flather. I had never met him. It was the 2nd August 1942.

Now I was in Germany, a Russian speaking girl,where it was dangerous to be foreign.

Liesel Webb (Nee Lembke)

March 1999

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