Experimental Blog # 205

Quotations from and comments on "East of the Oder - A German Childhood under the Nazis and Soviets" by Luise Urban

From the publisher's introduction: "Stalin, Churchill, and Truman - also agreed to the expulsion of the German population beyond the new eastern borders. This meant that almost all of the native German population was killed, fled or was driven out."

"This is the story of my childhood. Sadly, it is not suitable to be read by children."
The author's amazing memory begins with pleasant descriptions from as early as 16 and 18 months of age! Luise Urban was born in October of 1933.

The title to chapter 7 is "Raus! Uhodi! , which probably means "Get out now! in Russian.
"One night a soldier shot another young mother < > She had a little boy. The next morning < > I saw the little boy crawl out of the front door < > At that moment I < > decided that I would take that soldier's life, he was too much of a danger to all of us. < > I recognized the soldier who had shot the toddler's mother, he was actually called Ivan. He was known to all of us as a brutal bully and greatly feared. I got Bubi{another little boy} to somehow get Ivan into the barn that day < > There I was waiting, hidden by bales of straw. There was no shortage of weapons of all kinds. < > When Ivan entered I shot him."!!

"I was in a group of people that were sprayed with bullets, as was routine in those days, < > But I got away. < > I turned round and saw a soldier coming towards me. < > Perhaps no more than four steps away. I had a weapon in my hands. < > I pulled the trigger. The bullet went through the figure's right hand. < > The figure stopped moving. < > I allowed the face to come as close to me as was safe. < > I pulled the trigger for a second time."!!

So Luise Urban describes how she shot and killed 2 Soviet soldiers when she was only eleven years old!!

"Someone had to bury the mountains of dead. Their bodies had been lying along the roads < > and as days and weeks went by, more and more were added. < > And that is how I ended up on a lorry together with lots of other children - most even younger than me .."
"Dealing with rotten bodies is not an easy matter. < > You dig a hole or a depression in the ground close to the body and then, using your spade, you fearfully scrape or lever it into the hollow you have made, then hastily cover it and move on to the next."
"I was not surprised when I met up again with the 400 or so German POWs I had seen marching towards Soldin not so long ago. They had all been shot before they had reached Soldin. Mere children themselves. It was a long job, my group worked for two days in that area. The 400 were not the only ones that needed burying."

"The indiscriminate bombing of the civilian population was official British war policy as formulated and carried out by Winston Churchill. < > To make this policy acceptable to the British public it was sometimes rephrased as 'de-housing the German population'. A neutral observer might describe it as 'the burning alive of tens of thousands of children'."
"It took Hitler several years to murder 6 million innocent Jews and only a few Nazis were hanged for this crime. No one was punished for the crime that was planned and carried out in the East of Germany and Poland. It took the victorious leaders a mere five months between January and May 1945 to murder millions of equally innocent Germans and Poles"

This is only a small sample of the horrifying experiences that this amazing 11 year old girl went through in 1945 and after.