‘Home’ was no less important for the millions of non-Germans who, mostly against their will, found themselves in Germany when the war ended. For many, the homes that they had left no longer existed, their family members and friends no longer were alive. They too had a deep longing for permanence, for a sense of security, often after years of displacement.
One voice may speak for many, as related by Saul Padover when he described arriving in Halle, in central Germany, in April 1945:
When we reached the industrial city of Halle late in the afternoon, we found its undestroyed houses occupied by combat troops. We looked for a place to spend the night, but nothing was available. A Russian girl walked up to me and in mangled German asked where the Kommandantur was. She had just come to the city after escaping from the farm where she was enslaved, and was looking desperately for somebody to help her. She possessed nothing whatever except what she had on her back, and her eyes were wet from weeping. ‘I want to go home’, she sobbed, ‘please help me get home. I am only seventeen’.
Source:
Bessel, Richard. “Societies of the Uprooted.” Germany 1945: From War to Peace. New York, NY, HarperCollins, 2009. 249. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Saul K. Padover, Experiment in Germany. The Story of an American Intelligence Officer (New York, 1946), p. 361.
Further Reading:
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