[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.]
A few days after the bombings, in the middle of the night, I was awakened by a quiet knock on the door and the sound of a man’s voice. I quickly got up, both to check on who could be coming so late at night and to be near my mother.
[…]
I stood behind my mother expecting a neighbor with news. Had the enemy troops arrived?
No, but a young S.S. soldier stood back from the door in the dark and asked my mother if she had any civilian men’s clothing. He wanted to shed his uniform and get away. Mutti [German: Mom] hushed me back to bed and gave the man a pair of my father’s tweed knickers, a shirt, and a jacket. There were more knocks that night and the next, and more jackets and pants disappeared. I heard the transactions with increasing resentment over my mother’s largesse with my dead father’s clothes. I wondered if she knew that even now helping soldiers desert was treason.
Source:
Hunt, Irmgard A. “War Comes to Berchtesgaden.” On Hitler’s Mountain: Overcoming the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2005. 199-200. Print.
Further Reading:
Mothers are compassionate, those men are some other woman's son.