Decades later an office worker in Hamburg, born in 1950 to a mother who came from Silesia, related the following in a life-history interview:
Yes, my mother – and my grandmother as well – constantly talked about their Heimat [homeland], about the beauty of their Heimat. And they often spoke about the flight [from East Prussia]. They had to leave their house from one day to the next. Then they were in flight. My mother said that they picked up a boy along the way. He had lost his parents. What exactly became of him I do not know any longer. I think they handed him over to the Red Cross. But I don’t know exactly. It may be that I thought of the Red Cross because then constant messages of people searching for the missing came over the radio. They spoke of refugee children who were searching for their parents: name, height, eye colour, etc. That was terrible for us all back then, the idea of searching for parents and siblings. In any case this thing must have preoccupied me a lot, as my best friend and I, we constantly imagined how awful it would be if we ourselves would have had to flee. If we were to flee, in no case must we lose one another and so forth. But if that should happen nonetheless, then we would have to notify the Red Cross without fail, so that we could find one another. Back then I dreamt very often that I had to leave our home, our beautiful home, that I was in flight and had lost my parents.
Source:
Bessel, Richard. “Fleeing for Their Lives.” Germany 1945: From War to Peace. New York, NY, HarperCollins, 2009. 92. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Interview with Katharina Hassel, quoted in Lehmann, Im Fremden ungewollt zuhaus, p. 90.
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