A small Hamburg building-material business, whose owner was a blond Ayran, employed in his business some very unusual people. There was the former Social Democratic Party - member of the "Reichstag" (parliament in the Republic of Weimar)who visited old and won new customers.

His son, who had come from the youth organization of the party, was a book-keeper. The young employee in the office didn't have a political past yet, but some of the workers and storemen werde former members of the KPD (Communist Party of Germany), though only small fry. And then there was Hans! Hans was the so-called "young man", the errand boy, the assistant book-keeper and so on. Hans was a "half-Jew", his mother was a Jewess, his father was an "Aryan" and fought as a soldier in the Great War. His younger sister worked as an employee. Hans, born in 1922 was naturally not worthy of defending the Fatherland with a weapon in his hand, for according to the opinion in those days he didn't really have a Fatherland.

Hans had a cheerful disposition. He hoped very much that nothing would happen to his father. Certainly he loved his father, but the main reason for his worry was, that with the report of his death the family would immediately be arrested and put in a concentration camp." I don't fear for myself", he once said, "But my mother and my sister would be lost". Hans was also clever and without great fuss took care that mother and sister did not get only only the meagre rations for jews.

The years passed. Hamburg was bombed; Stalingrad symbolized the turning point of the war.The "Heldenklau"(Naziparty members recruited men who origially were able to fight) went round and one day Hans received a uniform and a gun. Instead of the "defence-worthy" Aryans, he was now allowed to guard concentration camp prisoners. And that is the way it worked: one day in the winter of 1943/44 Hans got the order to clear the lane,to pull down wobbly remnants of houses and to recover corpses if necessary in Billstraße Rothenburgsort with 30 prisoners and three "Kapos". This Kapos were real criminals who were acting as a sort of senior soldier of the barrack rooms in the camp.

After he had over the surprise and astonishment Hans started to get things organized. First of all, two metal garbage bins were picked up from the city refuse collection department and placed near the entrance gate. In the lower third the men knocked some holes. The bins were filled with paper, then small and big pieces of wood like pieces of timber and so on. Some prisoners and a Kapo were sent into the ruins to get coal and coke out of the most open cellars. Then the paper was lit and after a short time these provisional oven gave a pleasant warmth. Fifteen men were allowed to warm themselves at a time while the remainder had to work. After an hour the shift was always changed.

These poor starving people also should have something to eat. This was also no difficulty, well not for Hans anyway. Each morning some small horse carts with cabbage came through Billstraße coming from the Vierlande. On the cart seat there sat mostly a sleepy Russian and the skinny little horse also had no hurry. Now it was the Kapos turn to let fall down some of the cabbages from the cart. It was smart of Hans to send the Kapos, for if an inspector had caught a prisoner at this activity he would have been immediately shot or hanged. Scarcely anything happened to the Kapos. Some pots of a suitable size were quickly got hold of. The ruins lay full of house and kitchen equipment. There was also water. The cabbages were cut up into small pieces. Some salt, a handful of potatoes, some slices of bread were a treat of the workers, a piece of ham and a small sausage were contibuted by one of them who got a food parcel from his girl friend in Pomerania... After lunch time and having enough to eat a little bit of work was done in the ruins.

Thus, or similar, it lasted about three weeks. Then Hans moved on with his bunch further to another place of action, where thanks to Hans they hopefully will have been treated just as well.

All's well that ends well: Hans, his mother and sister survived in Hamburg and his father also came back from the war unscathed.

Translated from the German by John Milloy, Can. (nimso@aol.com)

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© 2002 Charlotte Brozzo