[The following is taken from a memoir of Irmgard A. Hunt, who grew up in the mountains under Hitler’s Eagles Nest during the Second World War.]
Mutti [German: Mom] was exhausted, but work distracted her and probably prevented a deeper depression, although the following week several letters came that worsened her mood. One brought the news from Ossi’s parents that he was missing in action.
[…]
The worst news was that my eighteen-year-old cousin, Horst Bieser from Wiesbaden, had been killed – I don’t know where. It was simply incomprehensible that this handsome, black-haired young man on whom I had a crush and who so admired our mountains was dead too. I felt listless one moment and ready to explode in fury another. Was he not my Aunt and Uncle Bieser’s favorite son? Was he not too young to die? This was only the beginning of a string of messages like that one.
Vati’s [German: Dad’s] former colleague, the handsome, tall painter Walter Höfig, whose daughters were our friends, was missing in the east; Helmut Puff, the only son of Herr Puff, had last been seen seriously wounded and left to be captured by the Russians, a fate considered worse than death.
I wondered how much longer we could bear to go on collecting the dead in our lives.
Source:
Hunt, Irmgard A. “Hardship and Disintegration.” On Hitler’s Mountain: Overcoming the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2005. 177. Print.
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