Summer in Parchim 1945
By Heiner Fosseck
I had my 5th birthday in June 1945. My mother managed to get five small candles and I was allowed to blow them out. All schools and kindergartens were closed this summer. The teachers were dead, arrested, or had fled from the Red Army. The kindergarten attendants were no longer there. Small and bigger children were left to themselves. What could we do?Once a vast number of papers and documents lay in the yard of the office of the region's administrator. The new head of the region, appointed by the Russians, had thrown these "fascist" records out of the window. We children played with enthusiasm for a week on this soft mountain of paper. Many records also ended up in the outhouse at home. A month later though, the Dept. of Works and the authorities were wringing their hands in frustration looking for land-registry documents and other papers. But again, the new district head had already disappeared.

There was neither electricity nor gas in Parchim that summer. There was a curfew during evenings and nights. In the old dragoon barracks there were mountains of scrap. The smallest among us were sent into the barracks, now occupied by the Russians, in order to "organize" useable scrap metal or copper...that's what we called the acquisition of equipment deemed to have been abandoned. " The Russians like children, they won't do anything to you Heiner", so the adults thought. I ran off, "organized", but on the way back the Russians ran after me. I escaped only because I could force myself through the surrounding railings. At home I got completely chewed out by my horrified grandmother and then sent straight to bed. She had been told everything about my "heroic deed" straightaway.

On the parade ground the Russians practiced cycling on bicycles they had confiscated. They fell down again and again. We children howled. The Russians had pulled up the legs of their uniform pants. Strangely enough, they wore ladies' stockings with seams on underneath their pants. One of them had five wristwatches on his arm. Youths, 17 year olds and older, were locked up together with adults in a villa by the river Elde. The house was bursting at the seams with people. Whenever someone was missing at roll call the guards grabbed anyone who happened by chance to be going past on the street. Then their number count was correct. Everybody made a long detour around the villa. Even we children had the strongest orders to stay away from this place. It was exactly the same near the GPU- cellar around theWockersee. One heard screaming there day and night.

My mother made application after application for to move to Hamburg. There was no possibility. Hamburg had closed off the influx of people. It was not until another year that we were able to cover the 150 km to Hamburg.

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

SeniorenNet Hamburg e.V.
print
top