Hilda Krause was born when the Kaiser was still on the throne, six months before the end of World War One. She was the eldest of four children and was born in West Prussia, a region that doesn’t exist anymore. Prussia only really lives on in the minds of historians (think Frederick the Great, Bismarck, Kant) – but it was a country which had as distinct a culture and identity as strong as Bavaria or Wales.
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| 1927 Family Picture: Omi centre left |
Her tiny home village, Kulingen, is now in Eastern Poland. It’s an area of rolling countryside, rich farmland, “dark woods and crystal lakes”. The villages are neat and tidy: the red brick towns are 15km apart, planned in the Middle Ages so that no farmer had further than 7.5km to travel to take their goods to market. The summers were hot: in winter the snow piled up below the windows a metre deep. According to Omi they could drink from any stream as children.
On 20 January 1920, in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles, Kulingen and most of West Prussia became part of Poland – the famous “Polish Corridor”. Some areas were given plebiscites on their future: this part of West Prussia was not. It simply passed over by stroke of a pen. Around two million West Prussians were given the choice of becoming Poles, or leaving their homes for Germany. My family stayed on their farm. Omi, born German, accordingly became Polish overnight, and attended Polish school. She and her younger siblings were all fluent in both languages as a result. The Poles were however Catholic; they were Lutheran – and culturally they remained strongly German. Her siblings were as follows: Ella 1920, Frieda 1922, Heinrich 1925.
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| Omi's Mother with her cow, Dola |
She did not want to be on a farm but was particularly proud of the fact that she had a special recipe for feeding her pigs. They were so good they were sold in London in the 1930s as bacon. For years she referred proudly to her “Bakkon Schweine” (as she pronounced it). They had no electricity at all in the village (it came in 1946 after they had left) so they used petroleum lamps - and they pumped all their water from a well in the farmyard.
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| Frieda with Tyras |
There’s little question the family saw Hitler and the Nazis as liberators. They proudly hoisted a flagpole with swastika on 2 September. On 3 September the famous British ultimatum expired and World War Two broke out. Within months the 10% Jewish population of Löbau, the nearest town had been rounded up by the Germans and moved away. It is certain few survived the murderous Nazi regime.
Omi’s Polish neighbours had to step off the street when they saw Germans coming, leave a shop when one entered, allow Germans to the front of queues to buy things. West Prussia was integrated back into the Reich, and the family became German citizens again. The Germans were the "Master Race" and in areas of mixed population like this, this was most keenly felt. Many Polish farming neighbours in the area were forcibly resettled and their homes were given to Bessarabian Ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) under an agreement between Stalin and Hitler. The Soviet Union and Germany were of course still not at war at this point.
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| Omi with her Mother on the Farm |
The War passed relatively peacefully in West Prussia (at least for the Germans). It was far from the fighting, and later the Allied bombing of German cities in the West. Our family were farmers and therefore had plenty to eat. In the summer of 1940 Omi met a Reichsbahn Inspector from nearby Frödenau, Kurt, my grandfather. They met one day when she was picking cherries on the farm. He shouted something to her and Omi's first words to him were "You shouldn't talk to women you don't know across the garden fence like that."
Kurt and Hilda quickly fell in love and their engagement was short. Omi's mother said to her on her wedding day (28 November 1940) “Well you’ve got what you always wanted, you’re not going to be a farmer’s wife.” Omi even got a job for a short time teaching Polish children German and they moved to a little house a short walk away from the family farm house.
My mother, Christel Hilda, was born in 1941. On her birth certificate her original maiden name is struck through. The family had later applied to change their name to a more German sounding version. This was granted on my mother's first birthday. Omi thought the “ski” at the end made them sound Polish and did not want this.
Omi is on the left of the picture of my mother's christening. Over the next few weeks troops began amassing in West Prussia. Something major was clearly afoot. On 22 June 1941, exactly three weeks after my Mother's christening, Germany attacked the Soviet Union. Operation Barbarossa had begun. The family genuinely greeted the news with some amount of consternation. Many people felt Hitler had this time bitten off more than he could chew. All hell was about to break out on the Eastern Front and it would ultimately mean the end of the life that our family knew.
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| Omi's Wedding 1940 |
Kurt and Hilda quickly fell in love and their engagement was short. Omi's mother said to her on her wedding day (28 November 1940) “Well you’ve got what you always wanted, you’re not going to be a farmer’s wife.” Omi even got a job for a short time teaching Polish children German and they moved to a little house a short walk away from the family farm house.
My mother, Christel Hilda, was born in 1941. On her birth certificate her original maiden name is struck through. The family had later applied to change their name to a more German sounding version. This was granted on my mother's first birthday. Omi thought the “ski” at the end made them sound Polish and did not want this.
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| Mother's Christening 1 June 1941 |
The photographs from this time are fascinating. To the right we see Omi dressed in a striped fur coat
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| Snow Ball Fight |
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| Max, one of the Trakehners |
There were six cows and three horses on the farm. The horses were called Max, Lisa and Prinz. They were Trakehners, a fine, handsome breed of East Prussian horses that has been immortalised in England through the Lloyds Bank "Black Horse". Omi's sister Ella took care of the horses.
In total 10,000 registered Trakehner stallions and 18,000 breeding mares were reduced to just 700 survivors after 1945. Max and Lisa almost certainly saved the family's life in during the flight that came in 1945. This beautiful breed of horse is being bred again in Germany, but far from its ancient home in the East.
This picture shows the farmyard with the well, which is covered up so that it could be accessed even when there was snow. There are steps across the muddy farmyard. Omi's brother, Heinrich, playing on the cart, has had his armband scratched out on the photo by someone, presumably after the War.
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| The Farmyard |
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| Inside the Farmhouse 1943 |
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| Frieda, Youngest Sister |
In late 1944 the Soviets first breached the borders of the Reich in East Prussia at Nemmersdorf. They raped and killed the inhabitants of the village, apparently crucifying women to barn doors. Dr Goebbels visited and the Nazi press made much of the event – historians argue about how much was genuine and how much was staged. In any case, the aim was to galvanise German resolve to win the war. The effect was blind panic when the Soviets again broke through the lines on 12 January 1945.
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| The Flight: Unimaginable Horror |
On 18 January 1945 Omi’s village received the “Evacuation Order”. They had literally 24 hours to leave their homes with what they could carry. The men were allowed to help slaughter animals and prepare their families for evacuation. They then had to rejoin the army to fight. My grandfather, who had been invalided from the Front, was allowed to accompany his family as far as Preußisch Stargard (100km away), when he had to report to the military and return to fight the Soviets. Rape and death would have been a virtual certainty if my family had remained at home.
Early in the morning on 19 January 1945 Omi, 26 years old, set off with her mother Elisabeth (56), her sisters Ella and Frieda (24 and 22), my mother Christel (aged 3), my aunt Gitti (1) and her niece Karin (6 weeks old). The Polish farmhand, Josef (19) also accompanied them for 8 weeks of the flight. He was terrified of the Red Army too, regarded his employers as his family, and had no close relatives of his own.
It was -25 Celsius and there was thick snow. Refugees were not generally allowed on the roads – these were reserved for the Wehrmacht. Instead they had to use field tracks. They had hung carpets from the wagon to keep out the wind. The babies were wrapped in linen baskets. Thick feather beds kept them as warm as possible particularly at night. Apart from what they could fit on their cart, they literally left everything they had behind them. Max and Lisa, the horses pulled the wagon. Prinz (the other horse), their cows, the hens, Tyras their dog - their entire existence was left behind. Omi, who lived to experience 2011, never saw her home again.
Early in the morning on 19 January 1945 Omi, 26 years old, set off with her mother Elisabeth (56), her sisters Ella and Frieda (24 and 22), my mother Christel (aged 3), my aunt Gitti (1) and her niece Karin (6 weeks old). The Polish farmhand, Josef (19) also accompanied them for 8 weeks of the flight. He was terrified of the Red Army too, regarded his employers as his family, and had no close relatives of his own.
It was -25 Celsius and there was thick snow. Refugees were not generally allowed on the roads – these were reserved for the Wehrmacht. Instead they had to use field tracks. They had hung carpets from the wagon to keep out the wind. The babies were wrapped in linen baskets. Thick feather beds kept them as warm as possible particularly at night. Apart from what they could fit on their cart, they literally left everything they had behind them. Max and Lisa, the horses pulled the wagon. Prinz (the other horse), their cows, the hens, Tyras their dog - their entire existence was left behind. Omi, who lived to experience 2011, never saw her home again.
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| Panic, Fear and Terror |
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| The Wilhelm Gustloff |
Some made it to Danzig or Gottenhafen where they caught refugee ships to the West. The Soviets torpedoed several of these ships: including the pride of the KDF fleet the Wilhelm Gustloff, in which 9400 perished in the icy Baltic Sea on 30 January 1945. This is the worst maritime disaster in history (1500 died on the Titanic).
In total, an estimated one million Germans died during the flight, pretty much all women, children or the elderly. It has been politically very difficult to drawn attention to this suffering because of the terrible crimes committed by Nazi Germany. Germans were perpetrators, not victims so it goes. As always, history is considerably more nuanced and complicated than that. Suffering is suffering – although I never forget that this was also the time when the few surviving Jews of Europe were being driven on death marches from the camps, also on the path West.
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| Westpreußen (West Prussia) on Right |
The other half had to wait an entire day to cross over. It was sent North and did not make it to safety: Omi's family was among this half. In late March 1945, after over 2 months flight, the Soviets caught up with the family in Pomerania at the village of Althammer. The horses who have saved them were taken away by soldiers: the flight was over. Josef, the Pole, went back to Kulingen. My family all survived, but what happened there at the hands of the Russian soldiers is barely spoken about.
The family stayed on a farm in Pomerania throughout 1946 and helped bring the harvest in. They had very little to eat and the constant fear of Soviet troops to deal with. Omi's second daughter, Gitti (by now 2), almost died from bacillary dysentery. There were no medicines and she had to be treated with plants growing in the woods.
From 1946 onwards all of the Germans still left east of the Oder-Neisse line were systematically expelled westwards by the Soviets. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin had agreed at the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences to wipe Prussia off the map and to “peacefully resettle” the millions of Germans still in the East. Eight centuries of German civilisation and history were eradicated.
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| The Schwarz Farm in Mecklenburg |
Omi and her family now headed together to the Schwarzes, this time in goods carriages on a train. The train stopped and they were systematically robbed by partisans at the Oder-Neisse border. A German pastor in their wagon literally had the shirt off his back taken away when he was stripped to his underpants. The family travelled through Berlin, where in the bombed out main railway station, Omi's youngest sister Frieda was selected from a crowd to do forced labour in Siberia by the Soviets. She was marched through the city with another woman, but they lied and said they had children. The Russians were famously "child friendly" and let them return. Had they checked their ID cards they would have discovered the truth.
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| My Grandfather, Kurt |
Eventually my grandfather, released from a Soviet Prisoner of War camp, rejoined them in Mecklenburg through the help of the Red Cross. In 1947 the family escaped to the West, to the British Zone. My grandfather hid under a pile of logs to avoid detection. After their experiences, they had no desire to be in the Soviet Zone of Occupation, and went to the Dutch border, to a little town called Gronau in Westfalia. They settled here in October 1947.
There were by now around 12 million refugees from the East packed mainly into bombed out Western Germany. The strain on housing, resources, schools, hospitals was immense. The family lived in an attic with several other families for almost a year. Many West Germans called them “Polaks” and mocked their Prussian accents and dialects. These are my Mother's first clear memories.
The combined flight and expulsion of the Eastern Germans remains the biggest movement of human population in the history of the world. The area concerned is around the total size of England: over 1/4 of Germany's territory was removed from the map of Europe. It remains the largest example of ethnic cleansing ever perpetrated, all carried out with the agreement of the Allies to appease the Soviets and to allow them to shift their border westwards. Millions of Poles were also expelled from their homes, and moved to former German cities, to make way for Russians in what had been Poland before 1939.
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| Omi, Widowed with her 3 Daughters |
On 8 June 1951, just as things were starting to look up, my Grandfather was tragically killed in a railway accident. Omi was left alone in post-war West Germany, with a small widow’s pension from Deutsche Bahn. She was 33 and had three daughters aged 10, 7 and 3. Initially she was told she was entitled to a death payment of 1000DM from his trade union; it later transpired that his service was 4 months short and the money was withheld.
Omi did everything she could to help her girls to learn. She saved from her pension to send them to the Realschule (a small fee was payable and the education was better) rather than the free Volksschule. After they had gone to bed she would read their schoolbooks because she had never had a German education and was determined to write proper, correct German, and to learn about German history.
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| "Peterchen" (3) with Omi |
Learning was something Omi taught me. “Peterchen, lernen mußt du!” She told had lost everything to the Russians, but what you had in your head no one could ever take. I became the first child in our family to go to university (though my elder brother also went to Polytechnic) – and the first child from our school to get into Cambridge.
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| Omi in her 70s |
Omi lived for 60 years as a widow. She was utterly devoted to her three girls and then to her grandchildren.
When I came out to my mother, she asked me not to tell Omi, as she would was very Lutheran and would not understand. I respected this, but eventually we decided she would have to know as otherwise she would find out and that would be worse. Her astonishing reaction? “There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s not a choice, it’s genetic. I read about it in a magazine.” She just loved me, her Peterchen (little Peter), and that was the end of it.
Omi was 90 in 2008. As she got older she said she remembered the horror of the flight more and more and sometimes woke with nightmares about it all. We all went across to Germany for her birthday. All 5 women of the 7 who had been on the flight were there, including my mother. Omi was so excited she could not get to sleep until 3am the following day. I last saw her in August 2009. She was going downhill a lot with dementia and barely recognised me. She was however superbly cared for by the German health care system in the most wonderful old people’s home imaginable.
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| Visiting West Prussia 2004 |
In 2004 my mother and I went to former West Prussia (now Poland) and visited the farm where my Mum was born and the village Omi knew as her home– it was a wonderful experience. We went with a group of old West Prussians, many of whom had never been there since 1945. Omi never did go back – she wanted to keep her memories as it all was. We however saw the church she was confirmed in, the old barn still standing at the farm, the railway station where my Grandfather worked, even the little house my mother was born in.
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| Omi aged 88 with Oscar my Collie |
Omi died peacefully in her sleep yesterday, 21 January 2011, a few months short of 93. By historic irony, 21 January 1945 was the day the Soviets entered the village of Kulingen and the “blackest day in its history".
Omi was definitely damaged by her life experiences – the loss of home, the loss of her husband, being on her own – all enormous things to deal with for anyone. She was absolutely certain she would be reunited with her husband in death and I hope she will be. She had a long life. From 90 onwards she was rarely present and often unwell. I’m so pleased she slipped away without pain or suffering.
Despite well over 60 years in the West, Omi's "Heimat" or "Homeland" remained West Prussia until the day she died. I have written this to remember that place, to remember the millions who lost their lives and homes at the end of the War, and in tribute to my Grandmother. An ordinary, but brave and much loved woman, caught up in extraordinary times.
Ruhe in Frieden, liebe Omi
Ruhe in Frieden, liebe Omi
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