大象传媒

The women became very inventive making new things out of old ones. Clothes were cut up, jumpers unravelled, left over bits of wool or material dug out, spare curtains, sheets, anything was used to make something fresh. At this time we received some parcels from Sweden. My mother had kept loosely in touch by mail with the lady she had been working for before the war. This Swedish family owned a clothes making firm: it must have been for ladies only because I remember that mostly my mother and I benefitted from it. We were sent coats and suits. I had the smartest woollen two-piece at the age of 12! Everything was of superb quality. Schwedenpakete, parcels from Sweden, kept coming over a number of years and were of enormous help.

Many winter afternoons and evenings were spent in the gloom of a candle, when the electricity had been turned off yet again. These were not power failures, but planned cut-offs, because of a general shortage of electricity. They were published in the paper. Daily routines had to be adjusted to make the best use of power when you got it, and even then the voltage was low.

My mother could not help in the practice any longer, partly because it was no longer on the doorstep, but mainly because she spent long hours foraging for essential food stuffs, queueing at one shop for bread, for vegetables at another - or whatever. If you saw a queue you found out what it was for and joined it, it was bound to be for something useful. Meanwhile I waited and waited for her to come home. I used to visualise where she might be and walk with her, in thought, down the mainroad. Now, she should really be home, I would think, but my thoughts were always faster than her feet and shorter than the queues. Eventually she returned with or without the things she had set out to get - or with something quite unexpected. I was always worried when I did not know where she was.

We slowly got used to seeing the Russians in the streets. The common soldiers were always led in columns. We watched them from the balcony. We could hear them from afar, because they were usually singing some sad song. My mother told me that they must be terribly home sick. Sometimes they were carrying sacks on their shoulders, when they were led to the Public Baths for their weekly ablutions. The Officers were allowed to bring their women. You could spot them easily, because they were bigger than the average German woman at that time, well fed, with white lacy crochet headscarfs and big bosoms. They obviously wore an uplifting bra which made their breasts point slightly upwards. Russenbusen, Russian boobs, we called it. In due course babies were born and my father's services were required. Although they sometimes came to fetch him with an escort in full regalia, including rifle, he never had a bad experience.
In fact, they often fed him at their houses (usually confiscated properties). Once I went along. We were given white bread, which I had never seen before, with pork fat. My father asked for some salt. There ensued a friendly discussion (in German) between him and the mother of the sick child, of how much better bread and lard would taste with a little salt, but none was forthcoming, either because she did not have any or because she did not want to get it out.
Once a Russian baby, admitted to the children's hospital died in spite of all efforts. My father told me that he had never seen a mother sob so desperately as this Russian woman.

Our schooling was also affected by the changes. It had been erratic enough during the final war years, but at the collapse of the state, there was no school at all. Classes were large, teachers changed frequently, no wonder I cannot remember a single primary school teacher by name - although I can see one young motherly type in my mind. She had longish wavy hair and was very friendly. I liked her.
After the war almost all the old teachers disappeared. Very young new ones arrived who found it difficult to keep discipline. Overnight Russian was made a compulsary language, but there were no competent teachers; they were still studying the language themselves. Consequently we did not learn very much at all in the beginning. The Russian lessons were a joke to us. Nobody was very keen to learn the language of our occupiers anyway. In all I had eight years of teaching, but only in the last two or three years did I begin to appreciate that learning a foreign language is a wonderful and exhilerating experience, a slow unfolding of a once secret sound and script. Once I left school my little bit of Russian was quickly buried. Recently I have often regretted that I did not keep it up.

A national curriculum was introduced.
Girls' subjects such as cooking and needle work were dropped from the curriculum. I learned these important skills from my mother. Religion was taught no longer.

Back to 1945/46. It was a very difficult time. The men (and some women) drank cheap spirits, such as potato schnaps, to drown their sorrows. Drunken men could be seen staggering in the street. I was afraid of them and have retained to this day a distaste for inebriated men.
Sometimes drunken men from the restaurant/bar, situated at the bottom of the block of flats, got lost after having used the toilets in the basement and came into the staircase, instead of returning to the bar. Once it was a Russian soldier with a rifle who started knocking on one flat door after another. My mother told us to be very quiet, because she was not going to open up. He did go away eventually.

When the first post war election took place in East Germany my mother explained to me that there were two questions on the Polling Paper: Do you want peace? and Do you want war? This is how I understood it. If you voted for peace you elected a whole bunch of already chosen people. Nobody really got to know how many spoiled papers there were or how many voted for war, even though they did not want it, simply out of opposition. I don't know how my parents voted, I suspect they made their voting slip invalid somehow. Later it was like this: although a booth was provided, you were expected not to use it, because why should you hide in order to vote for the "beloved" regime! I believe that not many English people can really understand what it is like to live under occupation or under a totalitarian regime. In a free society in a democratic state it is simply unimaginable! Under oppression men keep quiet and go along with existing conditions if they want to keep their job to feed their families. It takes extraordinary courage and the willingness to sacrifice your freedom and possibly your life to oppose a totalitarian state. (This was true for the NAZI-regime as well as the Communist East Germany.) My father was very lucky as a doctor, because doctors could not possibly be replaced by political functionaries, as it was possible with teachers, the judiciary, government officers etc. Doctors were very busy, because of a man-power shortage and therefore they could more easily excuse themselves from political meetings and keep out of politics as much as possible. My father worked to the point of exhaustion. He counted himself very lucky to have been allowed back home when most of his comrades died at Stalingrad.

One day, unexpectedly, officials came to school to recruit Young Pioneers, for the political youth group. Before you knew it, with sweet talk of becoming an example to the class, a good pupil and the like you had a red scarf around your neck. I thought it was rather nice, I wanted to be good. I came home proudly to show my Rotes Tuch. My parents were none too pleased and not sure how to handle it, but they advised me to keep a low profile. The novelty of the red neck tie soon wore off. I seem to recall that the leaders were not too enthusiastic either, because the whole thing soon fell flat in our school. However, we did have to go around to people's houses to collect "money for peace". Everybody in the class was given a list and an area to go to. People were reluctant not to give anything at all, because they had to sign a sheet. They were worried that they would be reported. Not one of us collectors or the givers actually knew what the money was used for. These house-to-house collections were such a pain and embarrassment, I have never again in my life volunteered to collect money for any cause.

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