Emil Neufeldt, Chapter 1

In the summer of 1945, in a small town called Neuland, Germany, and elderly 71-year-old man stared helplessly at what had been his home. A couple months earlier, in March, he had left it in a hurry after hearing reports that the Soviet Red Army was soon to invade.

He quickly packed for practicality all of his clothing and whatever food he could gather, while his younger wife greedily grabbed her jewelry. He shoved it all into his Mercedes which he hadn’t been able to drive for years, since 1940. But he’d been saving up his gasoline rations and would use what little amount he had to get south to Czechoslovakia, and hopefully safety.

Now, months later, the elderly man and his middle-aged wife staggered back home. His Mercedes had been confiscated by a fleeing German officer, but still the older man had hope, because he had a large house, with extensive gardens and orchards and chickens—plenty of food to feed his daughters, their husbands, and his grandchildren once they could come back again . . .

Except he didn’t find his home.

He found instead a crater left by a bomb, surrounded by piles of rubble. The crater was filled with water, and floating on the water was his granddaughter’s mattress. Lying on it was a German soldier, dead.

The elderly man stared, realizing that his plans for reuniting his family, currently fleeing west in various directions ahead of the Red Army, were not going to happen. There was no home for them to come home to.

He gazed helplessly at his complete ruin, but not hopelessly.

His looked wearily at the details of the rubble around him, hoping for something salvageable in the remnants of a once-grand house that held hundreds of books and a two-story high music room and beds to spare for visiting grandchildren.

In the rubble he noticed bricks, still intact, and he knew what he had to do.

While his wife stared in despair, then in confusion, Emil Neufeldt stooped and picked up one brick, then another. He carefully brushed them off and stacked them neatly in a pile to the side of the rubble. Then another, and another.

He had to rebuild for his family. There were no other options.

This is the story of Emil August Neufeldt, and of his granddaughter, Yvonne Neufeldt. (Written by his great-granddaughter, Trish Strebel Mercer.)

Emil’s early years

An article written just four short years later in 1949 about Emil Neufeldt, age 75, would have made him rather uncomfortable. The writer, Paul Thomas, a colleague in Neisse who admired him greatly, got a few things right about Emil: he was a very successful engineer for the sugar industry and in charge of the construction of the machinery at Weigelwerk AG, a factory which distributed his machines to more than 50 sugar plants throughout the region. He frequently traveled throughout Germany and Poland to oversee installation of that machinery and, in the words of Herr Thomas, was “honored highly by friend and foe alike.” At his funeral “a large crowd of mourners laid him to rest at the Neulander Cemetery.” (Neisser Heimatblatt, No. 112, “Industry in Neisse: in Memorial of Engineer Emil Neufeldt”).

However, Herr Thomas got a few details wrong. The facts of Emil’s life were actually more interesting than Herr Thomas or anyone else really new.

And also more tragic.

Herr Thomas was correct that Emil was born in Stronau, Kreis Bromberg, on Nov. 27, 1873. At the time it was part of Prussia but now it’s Bydgoszcz, Poland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kreis_Bromberg.

To say where Bromberg “is” is a rather complicated thing, so to clarify where Emil was “from” takes some explanation. For Americans, the idea that your town many have a different name, language, and even be a different country several times during your life may seem quite strange, but it was reality for Emil. No city in Eastern Germany/Western Poland is easily defined as to where it is because of shifting empires and suddenly new countries.

Bromberg or Bydgoszcz?

To simplify, here’s where Bromberg “was” since the late 18^th century:

• In 1772 Bromberg was part of the Kingdom of Prussia (Prussia was its own German-speaking empire for two hundred years, starting in 1701 and ending after WWI in 1918).
  So it was Bromberg, Prussia.
• But starting in 1803, Napoleon was trying to create his own empire, and he took over Bromberg in 1807, thanks to the Treaty of Tilsit.
  So then it was Bromberg, Napoleonic Poland.
• But just eight years later, Napoleon was defeated and Europe redrew the boundary lines again. Because of the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Bromberg was once again part of Prussia: Bromberg, Prussia.
• In 1848 Bromberg—still part of Prussia—was assigned to be part of the province of Posen.
• Then in 1871 the German Empire was created, unifying the Kingdom of Prussia with 26 other states to create one country. Emil was born in a country that was only two years older than he was, which means his four older siblings who, while born in the same city as he was, were actually born in a different country.
  Bromberg, Prussia was now Bromberg, Germany
• In 1918, after WWI, part of Posen began to revolt. In this area were many Poles, and they didn’t appreciate German rule. Battles erupted throughout Posen, but Bromberg never fell. However, the Treaty of Versailles signed in the summer 1919 to punish Germany for its contributions to WWI gave Bromberg, which was filled with mostly Germans, to Poland. By winter of 1920, Poland had full control of Bromberg. Between that summer and winter, most of the Germans left for “safer” areas. By January 1920, Bromberg was Polish.
  Bromberg was now Bydgoszcz, Poland.
• This new rule lasted only until 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland and retook and renamed Polish cities.
  Bydgoszcz was again Bromberg, Germany.
• Six years later, in 1945, the Soviet Red Army invaded, the land became Poland again.
  Bromberg, German, was now, and still is in 2021, Bydgoszcz, Poland. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kreis_Bromberg.)

In the span of Emil’s life, Bromberg was part of four countries and had six name changes. Depending upon how one refers to the city, you can guess to some of the history they were living at the time.

When Emil was born in Bromberg, Germany, just two years after the Germany Empire was established, the entire region was well-populated with over 700,000 residents (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromberg_(region)) fairly evenly split between German and Polish descent. Emil grew up bilingual in both German and Polish, which wasn’t as common as one might think, despite the fact that both languages were common in the area.

There remained some occasional animosity between the Germans and the Poles who shared the same land but believed it should belong to their country, and that the “others” living there should leave. However, most people had no problem with the “others.” In fact, Emil’s father was German and his mother was Polish, so there was clearly some crossover and happy marriages between the two nationalities.

Bromberg in an 1890s postcard

Bromberg in an 1890s postcard

Emil’s family

Emil’s father was a forest ranger, and his parents’ greatest hope for him was to also become a forest ranger, or even a farmer, as had been the family tradition. Emil had four older siblings—three brothers and a sister who were 13, 11, 10, and 6 years older than he was. Their occupations are unknown, but it’s possible that they were involved in the family farm or took after their father roaming the forests.

In Bromberg at Emil’s time, there was a society to improve the gardens and town squares. From 1832-1898, the Society for the Beautification of the City of Bromberg and its Environs was active in making gardens and planting trees (https://visitbydgoszcz.pl/en/explore/visitor-itineraries/2907-green.)

But Emil, the youngest son, was interested in something else entirely, and it greatly alarmed his parents. Emil wanted to go into manufacturing and engineering.

Nowadays, in the 2020s, engineering is a great occupation, but not so in the 1890s. Emil’s father, Ludwikg Neufeldt (very German) and his mother Auguste Idzigowska (very Polish) were worried for their youngest child. In the 19^th century, manufacturing meant working in factories which were notoriously unsafe, dirty, and noisy. But this was the middle of the Industrial Age, and increasingly it seemed that factory life was the only way to make a living. Such a completely opposite line of work from farming and forestry.

But despite his parents’ pressure to stay out of the factories, Emil just didn’t feel the forests or farms in his blood. He didn’t jump directly into working at a factory, though. During the 1890s he was, at one point, in the army, as the only photo of him in his youth shows. There wasn’t any war at the time, but all young men were expected to provide two years’ of military service for their country.

Emil in the 1890s

Emil and Mariana

Sometime after this military service he married the love of his life, Marianna Gordon, in 1896. He was 23 years old, and their wedding day, Feb. 1, was also her 24^th birthday. She had been born in the area, in Trischin, Posen, when it was part of Prussia.

Mariana was the second oldest of six children, and her parents were Martin Gordon and Marianna Murawka. Her father was a “cottager,” according to their marriage certificate, which likely meant he owned a small piece of property and farmed it. So if Emil didn’t become a farmer, he at least married a woman who had been raised on a farm.

Because of Mariana’s father’s non-Polish-sounding name—Martin Gordon—he may have been of French or British descent. But her mother was solidly Polish.

Mariana was raised speaking Polish first, German second, so she and her new husband were conversant in both languages. Mariana always had a slightly Polish accent to her German.

Emil and Marianna married in Wtleno, now in Poland, which was just a few miles north of Bromberg, and began their family soon after. They happily settled in Bromberg which, in the late 1890s, was still part of the German Empire.

Marriage certificate of Emil and Mariana, in possession of Barbara Goff.

In January of 1898, less than two years after their wedding, their first son was born: Paul Hilarius.

A year and a half later their first daughter arrived, in August of 1899: Helene, who they called Lene (or Lena). Shortly after his second child was born, Emil’s career began to shift.

Emil’s career

In 1900, when Emil was 26, there are records of him working in a factory, just as his parents had feared he would. He was employed in the sugar industry, as the articles written near the end of his life proudly stated.

At the time, sugar beet production was a major agricultural industry in Germany and Poland, and there were dozens of factories in the region squeezing the sucrose out of the beets to dry out and sell as sugar throughout Europe. Imported sugar cane from Hawaii was expensive, so it was a great boon that sugar beets thrived in Prussia/Germany.

“[T]he Prussian chemist Andreas Sigismund Marggraf [in 1747] succeeded in proving that the sugar in sugar cane also occurs in beet[s] – and with this, a fascinating success story began.” (https://www.suedzucker.de/en/company/history/history-of-sugar).

The trick was to get that sucrose in the most efficient way.

Enter Emil. What he was doing between completing high school at age 18 to age 26 is unknown aside from his military service and marriage, but the writers of the articles assumed that he had graduated from college and began his long and illustrious career in the sugar industry right after that.

By the end of his life, Emil was known and heralded in several countries as a great inventor and engineer, and over several decades he created and patented many inventions which improved the sugar industry (Thomas). One patent was even recorded in America from when Emil was living in Bromberg.

Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office, Volume 244

https://books.google.com/books?id=IwVLAQAAMAAJ&pg=PR33&lpg=PR33&dq=Emil+August+Neufeldt+Maschinenbau+Anstalt&source=bl&ots=uMEy43Z11x&sig=ACfU3U1rKAQjHksR8aTUjHnsbHsVA4Z2nw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwim8b-Gm_DwAhXWGFkFHTfoAaMQ6AEwEnoECAgQAw#v=onepage&q=Emil%20August%20Neufeldt%20Maschinenbau%20Anstalt&f=false

However, there’s a problem with this glowing report of Emil’s rise in the sugar factory: he never attended college. That the articles written later in his life proclaimed that he was a college graduate was a source of silent embarrassment for him, but he never said anything about those mistakes.

His parents hadn’t wanted him to attend college. Perhaps they couldn’t afford it, or maybe they thought they could pressure him to follow the forest-farming advocations they wanted for him. But for whatever reason, he was simply working in a sugar factor and then became one of its greatest innovators.

So how did he become a great inventor and engineer?

Natural talent.

In 1900, according to one article, he was installing a newly delivered piece of machinery, a schnitzelpresse (it pressed sugar beets, not schnitzel), in a sugar factory in Niezychowo, now in Poland. But the machinery didn’t work. Engineers tinkered with it, tried it again and again, and still it failed to perform as it should (Neisser Zeitung).

Emil, the installer, was watching and analyzing their lack of progress. Then, when they couldn’t figure out what more to do, he made some recommendations. And with those modifications, the schnitzelpresse finally worked. That’s what started his career as an engineer and designer in the sugar industry (Neisser Zeitung).

Soon he was hired on as a schnitzelpresse engineer and was hugely successful, with only his on-the-job training to guide him. Clearly he had a gift and knew he wasn’t destined for the forests or farms.

His first patent for machinery came about a dozen years later, in 1912, and he kept inventing and earning patents and revolutionizing the sugar industry in Germany and Poland until he was 67 years old, in 1941. Even then, he didn’t stop working for the industry.

And all without a college education. He was a completely self-made man, keenly observant and a natural trouble-shooter. What he lacked in education he more than made up for in resourcefulness and sheer hard work. During his career of over 40 years, he was sent to 54 sugar factories in the region to install his inventions, see what could be improved, then design yet something else to increase the efficiency of the sugar industry.

Emil and Mariana’s family

But back to his growing family. In December of 1902, his second daughter arrived, Hedwig Klara, who they called Hedel.

Another two years after that, Paul finally got a little brother—Roman—who died when he was only a toddler, in 1906.

Another son also followed, but died either at or shortly after birth, and was never named.

In light of the tragic loss of two of their three sons, Emil and Marianna were grateful for the three of their five children who did survive, and lavished love and attention on them. They raised their family in Bromberg, Emil beginning his career as an engineer when he was a father of two young children.

Paul Hilarius Neufeldt

The oldest, their son Paul, was a talented and mischievous boy. He had a great propensity for getting dirty, to the point that when the young family took their Sunday strolls, they learned to set little Paul by the front door in his underwear and dress him only at the very last minute before leaving the house. Even then, he still found ways to get completely filthy which, because Marianna believed in keeping a clean house, was a frustration for her. As he grew older, he continued to not care too much about the state of his bedroom, or his school books, or any of his possessions. Messes were everywhere around Paul.

However, he was a gifted musician, and learned to play the violin well enough to perform solos in their local cathedrals. He was also skilled in math and science. He was bright, very sensitive, and well-liked, with friends everywhere he went. Emil and Marianna had great hopes for their son.

The Great War

Then came World War I, where Paul served for a time in Russia. While he came home safely, the fallout from that war was going to affect the Neufeldts for many years to come.

The First World War was also ironically known at the time as “the war to end all wars” and “The Great War” because it was pretty big and all encompassing, until an even larger war seemingly dwarfed it in importance. Still, up to a staggering 20 million soldiers were killed during those four years of war, and another 21 million more were wounded (https://online.norwich.edu/academic-programs/resources/six-causes-of-world-war-i).

To put it simplistically, the war was officially started when a 19-year-old shot the next-in-line of another country. The action was just an excuse for many of Europe’s countries to finally fight it out. They had been in competition with each other for some time, trying to outdo each other with armies, armaments, and established colonies, all in pursuit of showing which country was supreme in the region. In other words, they were group of schoolboys who had been talking trash for quite a while and were circling each other in the playground, waiting for someone to throw the first punch and finally get it all going.

Which empire was going to be THE empire? There were several by 1914.

“No, We’re the best country!”

Germany, for example, had become the German Empire in 1871 by unifying its 27 smaller kingdoms. But it wasn’t the only country trying to expand.

During that time England was growing its British Empire all over the world, and France had been toying with increasing its empire as well since Napoleon had started them on that track. Britain and France were snatching up and ruling territories in Africa and Asia, and new empires like Germany wanted in on the game as well, taking lands in Africa for themselves. These vast regions had great wealth the European countries wanted to exploit, and as expected, the native countries and the invading imperialists often didn’t get along.

There were always tensions, especially if Germany was trying to grab land that France was after in a remote part of Africa. Bigger was better, and many countries were out to prove they were better (https://online.norwich.edu/academic-programs/resources/six-causes-of-world-war-i; https://www.thoughtco.com/causes-that-led-to-world-war-i-105515).

They were also arming themselves in the years leading up to 1914, trying to show who was the strongest boy on the playground. Great Britain and Germany were out to prove who had the biggest warships and the largest navy, while Russia was trying to outdo Germany’s size of army, and succeeding (https://www.thoughtco.com/causes-that-led-to-world-war-i-105515). This drive for militarism focused European countries on not just showing off their manpower and weaponry, but gave them hope to show its effectiveness as well.

Protect the “little brothers”

Since many countries were expanding their territories and forces, smaller countries realized it would be a good idea to pair up with the stronger countries, in case any fighting broke out. Alliances were created to try to keep balance of powers in Europe and ensure the “little brothers” were protected. It also meant that if someone attacked one country, they attacked the entire alliance. By 1914 there were several countries looking out for each other. Allied were:

• Russia and Serbia
• Germany and Austria-Hungary
• France and Russia
• Britain and France and Belgium
• Japan and Britain (https://www.thoughtco.com/causes-that-led-to-world-war-i-105515)

It’s easy to see how an attack on one country, say Britain, would draw in several other countries to fight you in Britain’s behalf. Suddenly you’re facing also France, Belgium, and Japan.

The empire we remember only because of WWI

The Austro-Hungarian Empire allied with Germany in 1879 and 1882 because they were worried about Russia trying to expand into the Balkan region, and they were also concerned about the French growing too powerful in Europe. Later Italy joined them—what then became known as the Triple Alliance—because they also didn’t like how France was trying to gain more influence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria-Hungary). In the middle of Europe, these allied countries hoped to keep the countries on either side from expanding.

 With countries gaining power and territory, there also arose a strong sense of nationalism in Europe—pride in one’s own country, and resentment toward other groups living in your country. This was often the case in Germany, and in places like Bromberg where the Neufeldts lived. Such regions weren’t just German, they were also populated with Poles who resented that a few decades before the place was theirs. Borders were frequently redrawn in Europe, with people discovering that the growing empire of one country now meant they were no longer their nation but subsumed into someone else’s.

Where’s Bosnia?

That’s what happened with the Austrian-Hungarian empire, also trying to establish itself during these years. Starting in 1867, about fifty years earlier, the countries of Austria and Hungary combined to rule together. It was a large area geographically, second only to Russia, and larger than the German empire, although Germany had more citizens. About 20 years later, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire took over Bosnia and Herzegovina, which the Bosnians did not appreciate at all. All throughout Europe were little pockets of angry citizens frustrated that their nation wasn’t a nation at all (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria-Hungary; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Serbia).

 And Serbia?

Another nationality not happy with the Austrian-Hungarian empire were the Serbians. They had become their own kingdom in 1878, recognized as such by other countries, and soon after found themselves in a war with Bulgaria in 1885 and lost the territory they were hoping to win in that war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Serbia). At the time, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire had come to defend Serbia against Bulgaria, and Bulgaria quickly retreated, leaving their border lines exactly as they had been before the war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Serbia).

Serbia continued fighting to increase their kingdom and their influence over the next few decades, but the Austrian-Hungarian Empire was holding part of their lands. A radical group of Serbian officers wanted to unite all Slavs, just as Italy had recently united all Italians into one country. This revolutionary group, calling themselves Black Hand, formed in 1901. By 1914 they had committed a few assassinations and were organized enough with hundreds of members hoping to unify all Serb-inhabited lands, including those held by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. One of the leaders of Black Hand was upset that Archduke Ferdinand, who was expected to be the next ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was trying to pacify Serbians about their condition. Black Hand didn’t want their fellow Serbs pacified, but radicalized. They wanted revolution, not peace. So they plotted to have assassins waiting for the Archduke’s next visit to Sarajevo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hand_(Serbia)).

A convenient excuse for a war

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his Sophie drove through the city in an open car, and the citizens lined the road to watch the grand parade which had very little security.

One assassin hiding in the crowd threw a small bomb which bounced off the convertible roof and exploded against another car with minor damage. Three more assassins in place further down the road tried to take the Archduke out, but another man couldn’t get his small bomb out of concealment in time, police were too close to another assassin, and yet another chickened out and ran off. Only by sheer coincidence because the driver took a wrong turn, the Archduke’s car pulled up right next to the last assassin, Gavrilo Princip, who immediately drew his gun and shot both the Archduke and his wife, who died a few hours later from their injuries ( https://www.thoughtco.com/assassination-of-archduke-franz-ferdinand-p2-1222038).

This event—the tensions between Serbia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire—was considered the catalyst for The Great War.

But interestingly, not immediately.

The assassination no one really cared about, except . . .

In fact, no one really cared too much that the Archduke was dead. In Vienna, Austria, the newspapers didn’t even immediately report it, because their Archduke had been a bit of a problem for the government, and they were quietly relieved he was gone. His uncle and cousin were to have been the next in line, but had died, leaving Franz Ferdinand next to take over the empire.

But no one liked him. He had married “beneath” him and the children he and his wife Sophie had were barred by the empire from becoming the next emperors of Austria-Hungary. With Franz Ferdinand out of the way, the leadership of Austria-Hungary could become something else. The only one sort of upset by the assassination was Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, who had been trying to gain Franz Ferdinand as an ally. The assassination itself wasn’t a world-changing event. It was hardly even noted (https://www.thoughtco.com/assassination-of-archduke-franz-ferdinand-p2-1222038).

Except that it was incredibly convenient, and an assassination should never not be exploited.

This was the perfect excuse for Austria-Hungary to invade Serbia, since they’d been wanting the land the Serbs held. And because everyone in Europe was allied with everyone else, and had armies and navies and munitions and national pride just waiting for that first punch to be thrown, a European-wide war, which spread later to America and Asia, was the perfect stage for every country to show what it was made of, and ultimately decide who was the greatest power (https://www.thoughtco.com/assassination-of-archduke-franz-ferdinand-p2-1222038).

First Austria-Hungary waited to make sure Germany would support them, because Austria-Hungary didn’t feel ready for an all-out war on their own (https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/outbreak-of-world-war-i).

A month after the assassination—and with Kaiser Wilhelm’s “blank check” support—Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Then Austria-Hungary braced for what they knew would come next: Russia. It took only a week for Russia, then France, Belgium, and Great Britain to declare war against Austria, Hungary, and Germany (https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/world-war-i-history).

The Great War was finally on.

In many ways it was a messy, useless war. By the end of the four years, and tens of millions of deaths, the Austro-Hungarian empire was dissolved by its enemies. Soldiers engaged in years’ long battles in deep trenches dug all over France and Belgium, fighting for one piece of land with guns, grenades, and poisonous gas, only to gain a few hundred yards to the next trench (https://www.history.com/news/life-in-the-trenches-of-world-war-i). That was on the Western Front.

Paul the Lieutenant

The Eastern Front was different, and that’s where Paul Neufeldt found himself as a teenager. As with many young men, Paul was sent to war and served as a young lieutenant (likely a 2^nd Lieutenant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Army_(German_Empire)#Warrant_Officers_and_Officer_Cadets). He would have been 16-20 years old during those years of the war, so he probably served toward the end of the war. Since he was a young officer, probably taken from the university he was attending, he likely served around 1917 when he was 19. He was on the Eastern Front in Russia for a time as a cavalry officer, until Russia left the war in 1917.

It may sound unusual to us in the 21^st century, but making a 19-year-old college student a lieutenant in the army was rather commonplace.

He may very well have been part of these troops who, as if fighting an ancient war, rode horses and carry lances, but because of modern warfare also wore gas masks, as if in a modern steampunk story.

(Photos downloaded from https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/german-cavalry-lances-1918/)

While Germany’s cavalry started off small—only one division at the beginning of the war against Russia’s 37 divisions, the cavalry quickly grew to hold back the Russians (https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2020/07/05/wwi-german-cavalry-on-the-eastern-front/). Paul was likely fighting for Germany when the calvary was larger.

At the beginning of The Great War, Russia had 140,000 cavalry troops on the Eastern Front, but many were converted to infantry troops later in the war (https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/cavalry).

The same thing happened with the German cavalry. While they quickly built up to 11 divisions, as the war continued, the amount of available horses declined because war takes its toll on animals, and because of the fighting, farmers weren’t able to breed and raise more horses. Many of the cavalry groups had, out of necessity, become foot soldiers.

By the end of World War I, there were only three cavalry divisions left on the Eastern Front, one which may have been Paul’s. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_cavalry_in_World_War_I).

Gas warfare

The reason for the gas masks is because WWI was the first time gas was created and used as a part of warfare.

Starting in 1915, the German army created chlorine gas which, launched into the trenches, settled down and suffocated the allied soldiers. France and Britain quickly started making their own poisonous gasses, and when the Americans joined the war in 1917 they, too, began making chemical weapons. Mustard gas was the worst and most common, created first by the Germans in 1917 to blister eyes, skin, and lungs, and killed thousands of soldiers (https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/germans-introduce-poison-gas).  

But almost as quickly as these gases were created, so were highly effective gas masks. If a soldier got his mask on in time, the gas passed by him with no danger (https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/germans-introduce-poison-gas).

Horses, however, didn’t have too many masks, so wherever gas was used, horses—if present—often didn’t make it. In fact, eight million horses, donkeys, mules, and dogs died in WWI (https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/chemical-warfare-hell-even-horses-needed-gas-masks-during-world-war-i-50232).

Eventually some gas masks were created and used for the pack animals and even pigeons who carried messages, as much as possible (https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/chemical-warfare-hell-even-horses-needed-gas-masks-during-world-war-i-50232).

Little wonder that the cavalry began to diminish and soldiers had to continue on by foot.

End of war for Paul

When Paul returned from the Eastern Front, probably in 1917 at age 19, his feet and legs were in a very bad condition. Emil had to help him pull off his boots, which he had worn for at least several days, if not longer, to reveal that his feet and legs were severely infected and covered with bites, likely from lice.

Many men on the Eastern Front suffered from typhus carried by lice (https://microbiologysociety.org/publication/past-issues/world-war-i/article/typhus-in-world-war-i.html). Lice, typhus, and all kinds of maladies were among soldiers in WWI. They endured horrendous living conditions with no ability to clean up or change clothes for up to months at a time.

Few men returned home without some kind of infection or infestation. Paul was relatively fortunate he wasn’t worse off when he finally returned home, although he was quite miserable until he eventually healed.

The Great War ended in November of 1918, with Germany losing and the Austro-Hungarian empire collapsing. Life slowly started to get back to normal, but serious problems were in line for Germany, who received the blame for the war even though Austria-Hungary started it. But since the empire was gone, the next country to blame was Germany.

In the schoolyard fight that was World War I, the first to throw the punches, Serbia and Austria-Hungary, had been knocked out and dragged away. The last instigator standing was Germany, and the rest of Europe wasn’t about to let it sulk away without one last major hit.

Paul’s education

Until those punishments came for Germany, Paul was fortunate to be able to continue with his college education after the war, something Emil wished he could have done as a young man.

Because of the pressure Emil’s parents had put on him to be a forester, he was sure to never put any kind of pressure upon his own children as to what they should do with their lives. What they wanted to become, they could become.

Even so, Paul followed in his father’s footsteps to continue studying engineering in college, eventually going to graduate school in Mittelwalde/Saxony to complete a higher degree in mechanical engineering.

Leaving Bromberg

The Neufeldts loved Bromberg, but in 1919, after WWI, the situation changed. The Treaty of Versailles was intended to punish Germany for its involvement in the war, and one of the many provisions was that areas of Germany be handed over to Poland. This was the fate of Bromberg, along with many other cities. There had always been tensions between the Germans and the Poles, and The Great War exacerbated all of that.

It seemed that all of Europe was out to punish Germany for its participation, and the Poles living in that area of Germany saw their opportunity.

Near the end of December 1918, there was an uprising of Poles against the Germans in the province of Posen, where Bromberg was. But while the Poles took over some areas, Bromberg remained under German control.

Less than two months later, on Feb. 16, 1919, fighting ended because of an armistice between the two nationalities. Germany was ordered to give over Bromberg to Poland as part of the Treaty of Versailles, even though Bromberg was mostly populated by Germans. This was decreed on June 28, and just five months later, by November 25, 1919, plans were made to move all Germans out of Bromberg into evacuation facilities, which would certainly not be 5-star hotels.

By January 10 of that winter in 1920, all state buildings were cleared out of Germans and handed over to Poland. They had less than a month to complete all handover of lands and buildings. On Jan. 19, Bromberg was then officially Bydgoszcz, Poland. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kreis_Bromberg)

As soon as the Treaty of Versailles was signed, Emil and Mariana knew they needed to leave. Even though Mariana was Polish, her husband and children were German, based on their primary language of choice. Conflict was coming, and they knew they should leave Bromberg for somewhere more German.

They left in 1919 ahead of the handover to Poland. One of the articles written about Emil put it this way:

“Because of the deep feeling he had for Germany, he left Bromberg in 1919 [just before the official transition occurred] when it became Polish, and he joined the Weigelwerk in Neisse, Germany” (Thomas).

Again, the author didn’t get it quite right. For Emil’s part, there was no great love for Germany (the author of the article was solidly German and devoted to the Fatherland), just concern about his family’s safety.

A newspaper article written in 1943 did, however get the right spin:

“In 1919 Mr. Neufeldt was forced to leave Bromberg” (Neisse Zeitung).

Fortunately Emil had somewhere to take his family. A lot of Germans didn’t. The Neufeldts headed 250 miles south into Germany. Emil and Mariana dearly loved Bromberg and were disappointed to leave it. They headed to Neisse simply because the factory there—the Weigelwerk AG—gave Emil a great job offer he couldn’t refuse.

Bromberg to Nysa, driving distance in 2021

Seeing the political situations changing because of World War I, Emil also realized the move was the best thing for his children who were becoming young adults. In 1919, Paul was 21, Lene was 19, and Hedel was 17, and soon they would be looking for spouses. It’d be safer for them to find German spouses, rather than Polish.

Still, Emil’s heart remained in Bromberg/ Bydgoszcz, and he took his family to visit as often as possible. As a traveling engineer, he stopped there whenever he was in the area, later sending postcards home during his travels.

Germany’s punishment

The Treaty of Versailles brought all kinds of changes to Germany, intending to punish the country for its participation in The Great War. The treaty claimed that Germany started the war (since Serbia and Austria-Hungary were no longer players) and demanded enormous amounts of money to pay off the damage to the rest of Europe because of it (https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/treaty-of-versailles-1).

The punishment was staggering:

• surrender 10% of its territories and all overseas lands;
• Germany’s army and navy severely reduced;
• accept full responsibility for the start of the war (since there was no Austro-Hungarian empire to blame); and,
• pay for it all, to the modern equivalency of $33 billion.

No one really expected Germany could pay that, and that was part of the punishment—to keep Germany in poverty and powerless (https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/treaty-of-versailles-1).

In these conditions, Emil and Mariana were beginning in a new home, in Neisse Germany. If this was a good move for the family would be up for debate.

Chapter 2, Emil and Yvonne

House on Marienstrasse, Neisse

In these difficult, humiliating circumstances, Germans tried to start their lives again. The Neufeldts were fortunate to purchase a building in Neisse, their new home, on Marienstrasse #4, now Mariacka Street. They bought the building from the Rudolf family, who had two sons slightly older than the Neufeldts’ daughters.

Photo of house the Neisse house on Marienstrasse looked around 1921/22, shortly after the Neufeldts purchased it. (Photo provided by a public librarian, Barbara Tkaczuk, in Nysa, Poland, who happens to currently live in the building next door, 2021.)

Nysa Poland, 2021, with red flag marking the location of the Marienstrasse house.

Niesse house, Marienstrasse, wider view, 2021 Google Maps

As were many of the buildings in the city (in 2019 the population was round 44,000; it was around 35,000 in the 1930s), the Neufeldts’ new home was a multi-story structure. The ground floor was a grocery store, then the upper three floors were partitioned off into large apartments. Emil and Marianna took over the entire second floor, combining two apartments into one. Their second story apartment was a spacious, comfortable place.

Mariacka Street in October 2021, after a recent remodel. Photo taken by Nysa librarian Barbara Tkaczuk, who, amazingly, lives next door. I wrote her asking about the address of Emil and Mariana’s house, and she immediately took pictures because it’s her neighborhood. Note that the arched bridge between the two buildings is the same as in the 1922 photo. Many areas were damaged during the war and rebuilt, but the building on the left—the Neufeldts—was mostly intact after WWII.

Below are additional streets scenes of Nysa in 2021, taken by librarian Barbara Tkuczuk. These are the streets the Neufeldts walked in the 1920s-1940s, views all around their building.

Neisse was a definitely ascetically-pleasing city for the Neufeldts to move to, called the “Silesian Rome” because of its many baroque-style churches and Renaissance buildings. The city was old, founded in the 900s and may have been settled much earlier, since evidence of a Roman settlement was discovered along the river. The city was listed and illustrated in Hartmann Schedl’s 1493 “World Chronicles” as an important Polish city, Nissa.

Although much of it was damaged during WWII, by the 2020s it has been wholly restored.

Screenshot from Youtube: NYSA – dziedzictwo Śląskiego Rzymu, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFKugK38gcs

Screenshot from Youtube: NYSA – dziedzictwo Śląskiego Rzymu, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFKugK38gcs

How Neisse looked before WWII. (Who knows–there may be a Neufeldt in this photo.) Screenshot from Youtube: NYSA – dziedzictwo Śląskiego Rzymu, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFKugK38gcs

How Nysa looks today. Screenshots taken from Youtube video. Screenshot from Youtube: NYSA – dziedzictwo Śląskiego Rzymu, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFKugK38gcs

The Neufeldts settled in the very heart of this city, convenient to shopping and schools. Combining the two apartments above the grocery store in their building gave the Neufeldts two front entrances across from each other inside, and a back door at the kitchen for deliveries (such as from the grocery store, butcher, etc.). They had three bedrooms, one for Emil and Mariana, one for Lene and Hedel to share, and one for Paul. There was also a gute stube, or sitting room, which was well-furnished.

The walls were faced with walnut, and in the middle of the room was an oval table, surrounded by comfortable upholstered chairs and a couch. One corner was designated for smoking (Emil enjoyed his pipe) with a small table topped with black marble and a few chairs for those who wished to rest while smoking. The room also had a large bookshelf, enclosed with a glass door.

A separate large living room also served as a dining room. The walls in that room were faced in cherrywood, and on one side was a dining table with chairs. By the window was a couch to offer views down to the street below, and a cozy reading corner in the room was furnished with another couch. Lastly, there was another small table and chairs set near the ceramic oven for cold evenings.

All of the rooms were heated with ceramic ovens in those days (and even still now in many European areas), except for the pantry, hallways, and bathroom. While we don’t know exactly what their ovens looked like, there was a wide-range of ovens for rooms, from basic to luxurious. As a major feature of the room, many Europeans wanted theirs to look like a work of art or a statement piece in the room. Some examples can be seen here, and are still used in many modern homes: https://www.rvharvey.com/kachelofen.htm

In Neisse, Emil soon earned a reputation not only as a talented inventor and engineer, but also as a handy man to have around. Everyone in their neighborhood knew if something wasn’t working right, they could call upon Herr Neufeldt and he’d come around and fix it up, for free. He also frequently helped the local Catholic nuns in maintaining their buildings, and became good friends with the Mother Superior, who frequently visited the Neufeldt home in hopes of convincing Emil to become Catholic. But Emil was Protestant, and not really practicing that religion, either. He wasn’t interested in Catholicism or any -ism.

Neisse, around 1920s-30s. The metalwork is a centuries-old cover to protect the town’s Beautiful Well from poisoning.

Inflation and depression in Germany

At the time the Neufeldts moved the Neisse, Germany was beginning to suffer because of the impossible reparations the country was expected to repay. The country made its first huge payment, then had nothing left. By 1922 Germany was effectively bankrupt, but France thought it was withholding payments just to be difficult. So France and Belgium sent in troops to occupy key factories, coal mines, railroads, and steel mills to further cripple Germany’s already weak economy. The German government recommended that the workers in those industries taken over by the French and Belgians just stop working—demonstrate through passive resistance.

No more goods were coming out of those areas, but the workers were still being paid by the Germans. How? Simple: the government just printed more money and handed that out (https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z9y64j6/revision/5).

But this strategy created a disaster. All of these workers now were flush with cash, but had nothing to purchase. Any goods that were available were in high demand, and people offered more and more dollars (or actually, deutschmarks) to claim those goods. This was the beginning of hyperinflation, and everyone including the Neufeldts felt it (https://mashable.com/feature/german-hyperinflation).

Germany employed 130 printing presses just to keep up with the amount of bills they were producing, and the value of those bills decreased daily.

In 1922 one US dollar was equal to 2,000 marks.

Then it was equal to 20,000, and then a staggering one million marks.

Prices changed daily for common objects, to the point of absurdity. In restaurants, waiters would stand on tables to announce the new, higher prices of meals every half hour. When workers went to collect their pay, they brought long wheelbarrows and suitcases to hold all of the worthless cash they were given. Children played no longer with blocks but with bills, cutting them into paper dolls or turning them into kites or stacking bundles of them like blocks. Women even used the banknotes as fire starters, because the money was cheaper to burn than buying kindling and wood. Even the price of bread was astronomical. In January of 1923 a loaf cost 250 marks. By November it was 200 trillion marks. The bank of Germany was issuing 50 million mark notes just to try to keep up (https://mashable.com/feature/german-hyperinflation).

Emil and Marianna, living in the middle of this mess, recognized that while the rest of Germany was suffering after WWI, they were still doing alright. No matter the country’s situation, people still wanted sugar, even at higher and higher prices. The Neufeldts always had enough food and money, and made it a point to be as quietly generous with their money and goods as much as possible. Taking care of their neighbors and the needy was a priority for them.

Romance in Neisse

Even though Emil preferred Bromberg, Neisse was proving to be a good location for their family, because this is where Emil and Marianna’s daughters finished their education and found their husbands during the turbulent years of the early 1920s. While their oldest son Paul was attending college, his two younger sisters fell in love with the two Rudolf brothers, the sons of the people who previously owned their apartment building.

Helene, called Lene, the older sister, married first shortly after her 22^nd birthday. On August 9, 1921, Alfons Rudolf, age 23, became her husband. He was a quiet, serious, and a bit of an introverted young man, but was very kind man and good to his wife. Alfons began his career as a mechanic and, following in the pattern of his father-in-law, eventually became the technical director of a sugar factory in Munsterberg, Germany (now Ziębice, Poland), about 18 miles away and still within easy visiting distance of the Neufeldts.

Top of the page on the left column is Alfons’s name. This is an address/phone book for Munsterberg in 1939.

The same year Lene was preparing to marry Alfons, Hedel encountered his younger brother, Karl, at a Mardi Gras party in 1921. Hedel was 19 and Karl, age 22, asked her to dance. He learned that she was going later to a more formal ball with her parents, so Karl made sure he was in attendance as well so he could introduce himself to Emil and Mariana. He then boldly asked to take Hedel to the theater, and they agreed, but only if Hedel’s big brother Paul accompanied them as chaperone.

Since this was 1921, and inflation was beginning to take off, many people struggled to just find enough food to eat. Karl, needing some help, soon became a houseguest at the Neufeldts’ home—his old house. He wasn’t alone in staying there. Emil and Mariana took in many friends during that time, including Karl and his older brother Alfons, just before his marriage to Lene. Since the Neufeldts had the financial means to obtain food, they made sure they took care of as many people as they could.

Karl was a salesman for Bergmann, a department store, and while Hedel didn’t see him very often, except for occasional luncheon dates, she was falling in love with him. But Emil didn’t approve of him. He noticed how Karl took after his uncle, a Dr. Tannert. While he was a good doctor with a great practice in Neisse, he blew all his money on riotous living. While Karl wasn’t “riotous” like his uncle, he also wasn’t very good at saving his money. He had just enough to no longer need to stay at the Neufeldts. As soon as he moved out, Emil forbade Karl from ever returning to see Hedel.

Hedel was heartbroken, but not ready to give up on Karl. He was pleasant, fun-loving, outgoing and kind. She asked her mother Mariana if she could still see Karl, perhaps when she went hiking with her Catholic youth group in the Silesian mountains, such as at Glatzer Bergland?

Apparently Mariana said yes, because Karl and Hedel were engaged the next year in 1922, but couldn’t afford to marry for another two years.

This delay was quite common at the time, because of the rampant inflation. No one was quite sure what the future held. Plans were made, but put on hold until Germany could settle down again. Germany’s inflation began to stabilize by late 1923 when the government scrapped the old currency and tried a new one, careful not to overprint worthless money (https://mashable.com/feature/german-hyperinflation).

Finally on August 18, 1924 Hedel and Karl could afford to be married, and moved to Breslau, living at Breslau 9 Hedwig Strasse 52, where Karl became a manager of a silk and fabric store. Karl and Hedel loved animals and bought a yearly pass to visit the zoo, then started to have a zoo of their own at their own home.

The main reason Karl wanted a zoo pass was because of a single monkey. When he was 12 years old, his brother-in-law, Paul Gronde, married to Klara, his older sister, visited Cameroon in Africa. It was then a German colony in 1911 (back when Germany was in a race with England and France to acquire African lands). Paul Gronde brought home with him a live monkey and gave it to Karl. Why someone would think a 12-year-old was ready for a live monkey in Germany wasn’t discussed in Hedel’s life story which she wrote, but Karl now owned a monkey, the only one in Neisse.

Karl loved this animal, taking it on excursions to the remains of the wall fortress which circled Neisse. And everywhere that Karl went, he had a following of people. No one had seen someone with a pet monkey before!

But after a few years, the novelty of the monkey began to wear off. Such a wild animal struggled to adjust to the orderly, civilized lifestyle Germans expected. It became a nuisance and caused problems, but Karl still loved it. His family came up with a solution: they donated the monkey to the Breslau Zoo, where Karl could visit it and the monkey could live a lifestyle of a monkey, rather than a German.

Some years later, after the monkey died, it was stuffed and presented to the Steyler Missionary Brothers Monastery for their display of exotic animals and butterfly collection. Karl visited the monastery, even in his later years, taking his children there on the pretext of giving them a good education about animals. But in reality he just wanted to see his African friend, and while his children browsed the exhibit, he would silently and even forlornly stand in front of the stuffed monkey, reminiscing.

Karl and Hedel eventually created their own menagerie of pets, at one point with over 30 birds in cages in their living room, once they moved to Cosel (now Koźle, Poland), about 45 miles away from Neisse. There they owned a successful clothing and fabric store.

Emil and Mariana, with both of daughters in happy marriages, and adding grandchildren, were very pleased.

Now, if only their oldest son could be happy in marriage as well.

Paul and Charlotte

Paul was the last to marry, on August 9, 1926, almost two years after his youngest sister. He was 28, and his wife was Charlotte Weisser, was just a couple weeks shy of her 22^nd birthday.

Marriage Certificate of Paul and Charlotte; original in possession of Barbara Goff

Marriage certificate signatures of Paul and Charlotte. Note that Paul’s name is first, then Charlotte’s, followed by Karl Rudolf as a witness, and Charlotte’s brother Werner Weisser.

Charlotte was the daughter of a head waiter, Albert Weisser. Her birth certificate states that her father was Catholic, but her mother, Ida Strauss, was Lutheran. Nothing more in known about her parents or how long they lived, but they were at Neisse Ring #15 when Charlotte was born in 1904.

Paul and Charlotte’s marriage was unfortunately not happy, and very little has been said of it, except for a few facts. For example, on February 20, 1927, Paul and Charlotte became parents to a full-term daughter, six months after their wedding.

It was suggested by some that Charlotte, who was interested in wealth and status (her father being a waiter wouldn’t have had much financially), “trapped” Paul and forced the marriage so she could be part of the now-well-off Neufeldt family. Conditions in Germany were still financially difficult in 1926 and marrying into money would guarantee Charlotte her survival.

She seemed to care very little for her newborn daughter, Yvonne Ida Mariana, and even hired another couple, the Koehlers, to take care of her baby so she didn’t have to. Some may think this depiction sounds unfairly self-serving and even heartless, seeing as how she was only 22 and some years younger than the promising engineer. She couldn’t have been very experienced in motherhood and maybe just didn’t understand what was expected of her. But the harsh depiction feels a little more credible when it’s understood what happened a year later.

Paul, finishing a graduate degree in Mittelsalde/Saxony, was frequently gone that first year of his marriage and his daughter’s life. The distance of over 370 km/230 miles meant he couldn’t return home often. In January of 1928, he became very ill at school. A doctor examined him and recommended that he return to Neisse immediately.

His roommates helped him to the train station, and because the train was packed, he had to stand on the open platform for the long ride home. Of course, trying to stand in the windy outside in the dead of winter for hours on end only exacerbated his condition.

When he arrived in Neisse, he had a high fever to accompany his flu, and headed to his home to rest in the care of his wife and baby daughter. However, when he got home, he surprised his wife in what has only been described as a “very compromising position.” Charlotte wasn’t expecting him to suddenly return from the university, and it’s assumed that Paul had caught his wife with another man.

Distraught and possibly delusional because of his fever and his sheer exhaustion, Paul immediately went out, bought a revolver, and shot himself on January 7, 1928, six days before his 30^th birthday.

His daughter Yvonne was not yet a year old and would never have any memories of him except what she heard from his parents, Emil and Marianna.

The loss of Paul

That was a shocking and very dark time for the Neufeldts. Emil and Marianna had now lost their last son, their pride and joy. The entire Neufeldt family was grief-stricken.

To make matters worse, no church would allow Paul to be buried in their grounds, because he was a “murderer.” Eventually one of the churches relented to allow him a Christian burial, but only because he had been an officer during The Great War. They could make a special allowance for his past military service.

Heartbroken and devastated, Emil couldn’t bring himself to attend his only son’s funeral, because he feared seeing Paul’s wife Charlotte there. He couldn’t imagine facing her, the cause of his son’s death. Charlotte seemed to show no remorse for Paul’s passing, and still didn’t care about her baby girl who was now fatherless.

Emil and Marianna and their family were never quite the same after Paul’s suicide. It tainted every wonderful memory and filled them constantly with thoughts of “What might have been.” What if he hadn’t been ill and feverish? What pushed him to such a rash decision? Was he even in his right mind that night? Did he even know what he was doing? No one could know, nor did the answers matter.

Paul Neufeldt, promising engineer, only and oldest son, was dead.

However, there was part of him that remained: Paul’s daughter, Yvonne.

Yvonne, about 1 year old.

Yvonne Ida Mariana Neufeldt

This was the daughter her mother Charlotte wanted nothing to do with, especially after her husband’s sudden death.

Emil and Marianna, however, were more than willing to take in Yvonne and raise their granddaughter. But Charlotte wasn’t going to let that happen easily. No details are known, but there was a legal battle over Yvonne for four long years. During that time, she lived with Friedrich and Frieda Koehler, who were childless themselves but had been caring for Yvonne as an infant when her mother would not. They loved Yvonne immensely and did what they could to help the Neufeldts have time with their granddaughter and finally gain legal custody of her.

Eventually the adoption was approved for Emil and Marianna to have Yvonne, primarily because Charlotte was expecting another baby with a man to whom she was not married. Some speculated that Charlotte kept the legal process going on as long as possible in order to get money from the Neufeldts, but it soon became clear to everyone in Neisse what kind of a young woman she really was and the kind of life she was intent on living.

She had a baby boy in May of 1931 who she named Horst, when Yvonne was four years old and the legal issues about custody were still unresolved. Charlotte, who happened to like and appreciate boy babies, happily kept her new son but never married his father. Her seemingly reckless and immoral behavior made the decision for the courts: Yvonne was awarded to the Neufeldts, with full custody.

Charlotte’s life after Yvonne

While Yvonne later believed that Charlotte left soon after for another town, records indicated that she stayed right there in Neisse. Her first son was born when Charlotte lived at Kochstrasse #2, in Neisse. But there’s no record that she ever interacted with or asked anything about her daughter. Charlotte might as well have been a thousand miles away, except that she wasn’t, remaining in their town where Emil and Mariana would occasionally have the misfortune to run into her. But Charlotte didn’t seem to care, and was happy to have a son.

When Horst was just 17 months old, Charlotte gave birth again to another boy who she named Werner, by yet presumably another man whom she also didn’t marry. She was in a new apartment then, on Grabenstrasse #5. Again, she willingly kept her son.

Three years later in 1935 she had her fourth child, by still another man, but this time it was a little girl named Eva Marie. Charlotte was again living at Kochstrasse #2, where she had been with her first son. Charlotte hadn’t seemed to change her mind about female babies, and about a year after her second daughter’s birth, she gave Eva Marie away to the local baker and his wife, Richard and Marie Elsner, who formally adopted her and changed her last name to theirs. Charlotte cared only for sons, and had no qualms in giving away her daughters.

In a way, that was probably for the best for Yvonne (and her half-sister Eva Marie Elsner who grew up in a bakery), because life with Charlotte Weisser would have likely been unstable and difficult. Charlotte remarried in 1936, a few months after giving away her youngest daughter. Her second husband Gerhard Schneider was six years younger than Charlotte and owned a restaurant in Neisse. His residence was listed as Gierdorf Main Street #96. Charlotte was 32 and her new husband 26. For whatever reason, Gerhard adopted her two boys, giving them his last name of Schneider in November of 1936. According to one rumor, Gerhard may have been a Nazi in 1936, but there’s nothing to substantiate that.

Nothing more is known about Charlotte, her life, or even when she died. Nor is anything known about her children. Yvonne never knew anything else about her mother who readily gave her away as if she were an unwanted kitten, and who never bothered to inquire about her oldest daughter, even though she remained in Neisse for at least the first nine years of Yvonne’s life.

Emil and Marianna desperately wanted their Yvonne. Even though they were 59 and 60 years old in 1933 when the adoption was finally formalized, they were thrilled to have their now-five-year-old granddaughter—the last remembrance of their son Paul—living with them safely in Neisse. Some of their immense heartache was dulled by a vibrant little girl who need their love and attention, and she got everything the Neufeldts could give.  

Charlotte and Gerhard

Nothing more is known about Yvonne’s mother Charlotte Weisser Neufeldt Schneider. No photos, no records of death, no information about her three other children.

There is, however, a death certificate for her second husband, Gerhard Schneider. Apparently he was working as a private guard shortly after the Second World War ended in June of 1945. He would have been 35 years old, and had been married to Charlotte for nine years. The “Germany, Deaths of German Citizens Abroad, Registers from Berlin Standesamt 1, 1939-1955” records him as dying on June 23, 1945, in Vienne, France.

There’s no explanation of why he was in France—an unusual place for a German right at the end of the war. France wasn’t too kind to or happy about Germans. Most Germans tried to get out of France as quickly as possible after May 1945. There’s also no indication if he died while doing his duty as a private guard, whatever that entailed (might he have been guarding a ranking German?).

Nor is there evidence about where his wife Charlotte was or his two adopted sons. The death certificate says only that the Register office was able to track down that he was indeed married to Charlotte Weisser, and nothing more as to whether she was still alive or not. If she were still alive and married to him, she would have been 41 years old and widowed for a second time. Not an easy situation to be at the end of WWII when you’re a German with two teenage sons, had they all survived.

Such a lack of information was not so unusual considering what was to happen during the World War II years in Europe. Among the catastrophic death toll was also the destruction of many churches, cathedrals, and town centers where documents—and often the only copies of those records—were stored. Either bombed or burned or stolen, millions of records are missing. For example, the documentation of when and where Paul served during WWI was known to be destroyed with thousands of other pages during WWII. Graveyards were destroyed, desecrated, or bombed. And worse, millions of people died without anyone to record what happened to them.

Someday in the future something may surface about Charlotte, or maybe even a descendant will come forward with the rest of her story (she seems to have had a third son, perhaps with Gerhard, who, in 2022 was an elderly man in Germany, but he’s not responding to requests from Barb Goff to learn more about him). Maybe descendants can reveal that Charlotte eventually came to regret giving up her daughters, that she wondered what happened to them, hoped for their safety, and yearned for their forgiveness. Maybe she came to grieve over the loss of her first husband, Paul, and her actions that precipitated it. Perhaps she felt regret for her early life—nothing is known about her childhood or teen years. It could be that the young woman whom the Neufeldt family came to resent so deeply for causing so much pain turned things around as she matured and aged.

Or perhaps she was lost just a few short years after her second marriage in WWII, meeting the same tragic end as millions of others.

1932 and changes in Germany

But in 1932, when Yvonne was awarded to her grandparents, no one suspected anything of their future. In fact, Germany was at the start of a long-awaited resurgence. After suffering for a decade, it was ready for something better.

The crash and Great Depression in America in 1929 wasn’t isolated only to America—it affected economies worldwide. And because of this great economic crash, many new younger leaders arose in various places promising voters to reform and fix their countries. In Germany, one charismatic, dogmatic, insistent promiser of a new prosperity was Adolf Hitler.

By 1932, when Yvonne was awarded to her grandparents, Hitler had risen through the ranks of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. With promises to the poor in the lower classes and those without jobs, he believed that “Germany would awaken from its sufferings to reassert its natural greatness.” By end of January 1933, Hindenburg awarded Hitler the position of chancellor over Germany (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Adolf-Hitler/Rise-to-power).

Unemployment in Germany at the time was over six million people (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/hitler-comes-to-power), and the country was desperate for someone—anyone—to make things different for them. Hitler promised prosperity which Germany hadn’t seen since the end of The Great War and the impossible Treaty of Versailles, which he was now ignoring.

The Neufeldts, however, were still generally comfortable in their circumstances. Despite all of the hardships, the sugar industry had continued, and Emil still needed to visit 50+ sugar factories to inspect and install new machinery which he invented. And now, he had a granddaughter to take around with him.

Yvonne’s new life

Emil and Marianna wanted to make Yvonne’s life as fulfilling as possible, which meant also introducing her to the finer things. Marianna loved the opera, especially the Breslau Opera (now Wroclaw, Poland), and she was a frequent patron. Once, before Yvonne had come to live with them, Emil and Marianna had driven the two hours to Breslau to attend the opera. As Marianna was about to make her grand exit from the car at the entrance of the opera house, she suddenly realized her dress was on inside out.

She panicked for only a moment, quickly getting back into the car and telling Emil to drive around the block one more time. Although the traffic was heavy with those arriving at the opera house, Marianna found a way to remove her dress, turn it right-side out, and redress herself in the front seat of the car before they reached the grand entrance again. She left the car calm, cool, and serene: the very picture of sophistication, in a right-side out dress.

Emil’s Mercedes

A few words about Emil’s car are needed here. He was a lover of the Mercedes Benz, and while we’re not sure of the model, we do know that he favored dark blue vehicles, and the interior of at least one of his cars had a small crystal vase on the passenger side, large enough to hold 2-3 rosebuds. He purchased new models through the 1930s and 40s. During WWII he was one of the few German civilians authorized to purchase a Mercedes, probably because of his past loyalty to the brand. His vehicles were likely the 170 V, and may have looked like this:

The Mercedes website claims that over 91,000 170V were built up to November 1942, the largest amount of pre-war cars built anywhere (https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/classic/history/mercedes-benz-170-v-the-best-seller/).

This was likely the car that Marianne so deftly changed her clothing in, and when Yvonne was five years old, the kind of car she rode in for her first opera with her grandparents.

Yvonne’s first opera

Yvonne had no memories from her time before she was five, only from the time she was with her grandparents the Neufeldts. In fact, one of her earliest, most vivid memories had to do with her grandmother’s beloved operas.

At Christmastime in Germany there were two productions you could always count on: the Nutcracker ballet and the “Hansel and Gretel” opera, by Engelbert Humperdinck. The opera is geared toward children and runs about 1 hour and 45 minutes. This was likely one of the first grand outings Emil and Marianna took their granddaughter to. Marianna dressed up little Yvonne in a brand-new party dress, and together they entered the opera house. Yvonne enjoyed the performance quite well—the music, the acting, the scenery—and Marianna was probably feeling confident that her granddaughter was going to be an opera aficionado as she was.

Yvonne very well might have been, until the performance was about 2/3 completed, and it was time for Hansel and Gretel’s feasting on the cottage to be disrupted by the witch whose house was being eaten. Maybe if the witch had sauntered in calmly to catch Hansel and Gretel, there wouldn’t have been a problem. But that’s not how witches behave.

No, this witch, dressed in black and with a pointed hat, rushed aggressively on to the stage with her broom, and shrieked.

It was too much operatic drama for Yvonne. Terrified, Yvonne screamed back, but so loud that even the orchestra was startled and stopped playing. Then she did the only reasonable thing a 5-year-old could do: she dove under her chair to hide. The theater security guards helped extract the screaming Yvonne from under the seat, then escorted Marianna and Yvonne from the theater. Even though the performance wasn’t yet over, Yvonne was ready to leave immediately, and the rest of the theater was ready to see them go as well.

Outside, Marianna realized that the chairs must have been recently oiled to keep them from squeaking as people sat down on them, and now that oil was all over Yvonne’s new dress. With the dress ruined and her granddaughter traumatized, Marianna decided it would be many more years before she tried taking her to the opera again. (Indeed, Yvonne didn’t attend the opera again until she was 14 years old and watched a performance of “La Boheme.” She never screamed nor hid under a seat.)

Yvonne and Breslau

While visits to the opera were now put on hold, Yvonne still traveled frequently with the Neufeldts to Breslau, where they went once a month or so for Emil to conduct business and for Marianna to conduct shopping. It was a two-hour drive which Emil always tried to make go by faster by pushing his Mercedes to its top speeds. He believed the Autobahn, which was newly developed during the 1930s, was created solely for him and his Mercedes.

It was good thing he never let Marianna drive, because while she was a woman of fashion, grace, and class, she had no sense of direction. On one of these early trips with their granddaughter, Yvonne remembered walking aimlessly through Breslau with Marianna who was notorious for getting confused wherever she went. This meant that when she was supposed to meet Emil somewhere after his work was completed and her shopping was done, she often wasn’t there but was heading in a wrong direction.

Once they were so confused that it was growing dark by the time Emil finally found them. He’d been driving around several blocks for quite some time. Because it was growing late, and the roads in 1932 weren’t yet lit, and car headlamps weren’t the brightest, the Neufeldts elected to stay overnight and go home in the morning. The closest hotel happened to be The Savoy, one of the premier hotels in the world.

Without any luggage or change of clothes, they checked into The Savoy, much to little Yvonne’s delight. Happy about staying overnight, she promptly climbed on to one of the beds and jumped up and down. Perhaps the Savoy wasn’t as fancy as one might think, because the little girl broke the bed, much to the chagrin of her grandparents and the hotel management.

Emil and Marianna weren’t alone in helping to care for 5-year-old Yvonne. Their daughters Lene and Hedel immediately stepped up, inviting Yvonne along on vacations and visiting Neisse so that she could play with her cousins.

Yvonne’s cousins

By 1932, Lene and Alfons, the sugar engineer who lived in Munsterberg, had a 10-year-old son named Romuald, an 8-year-old name Alfons Junior, a son Norbert who was 3, and a daughter named Christa, who was born two years later when Yvonne was 7.

In the same year, Hedel and Karl, the store owner who lived in Cosel, also had a growing family with cousins for Yvonne to act as pseudo-siblings. Heinz-Dieter was 7-years-old, Olaf was the same age as Yvonne at 5, Peter was 2, and a year later Susie was born, followed by Ingrid in five years later in 1937.

With nine cousins, Yvonne often felt she was growing up in a large family during the 1930s rather than as a lonely child with her grandparents. Vacations and family get-togethers were frequent, and while Yvonne may have lost one mother, she gained three more in the form of her grandmother and two aunts who loved her as they had loved her father.

In many ways Yvonne had an idyllic childhood. She and her cousins entertained themselves with games, with hikes in the nearby fields and in mountains during vacation, and with riding bikes and playing sports in the summer. In the winter they skated, went sledding, and cross-country skiing. Her aunts and uncles taught her and their children all about nature, to peer under rocks and see who was living there, then carefully replace the rocks so as to not disturb the creatures. They helped her develop a love of wild places and animals, and every household had pets. The Rudolfs who lived in Cosel, for example, not only had 30 birds in their living room (and when the exotic blue/black and orange Schamadrossel—a kind of thrush—from Hawaii sang, everyone was immediately sushed to listen to it https://www.zoobasel.ch/en/tiere/tierlexikon/tierbeschreibung/332/schamadrossel/), they also had dogs, fish, and even pet squirrels.

The Rudolfs in Munsterberg also had a menagerie: besides birds and fish, they also possessed a large tortoise. In their backyard was a large fountain set into the ground, and in the autumn Lene and Alfons shut off the water and allowed the basin to fill with leaves. That’s where their tortoise would hibernate for the winter. Everyone watched eagerly for it (they never were sure of its gender) to see when it emerged in spring, because then they knew winter was definitely over.

Because of all the birds the families owned, no one ever had a cat as a pet.

Yvonne’s childhood was as idyllic as her grandparents and aunts could make it. Their homes were always neat and clean and inviting, with Mariana insisting on a beautiful, well-set table with tablecloths and good china, even if it were for just her husband and granddaughter. Well-cooked meals were plentiful, and good manners were always expected. While the Neufeldts and Rudolfs had money, they didn’t throw it around. They believed in purchasing good-quality items, then saving their surplus for rainy days. Money matters were discussed privately, and help was always given to family, friends, and neighbors, as generously as they could afford to be. Emil and Mariana taught Yvonne to never let the receivers of their generosity know if the giving of help required a sacrifice, and often the Neufeldts helped others anonymously.

Yvonne and Mariana

Life at home with her grandparents was peaceful and happy. Mariana loved to do needlework every evening, and often played pinochle with Emil as she did so. But the same distractedness that caused Mariana to frequently get lost in Breslau while shopping with her granddaughter showed up on those evenings. Mariana would try to play cards at the same time she did her needlework, which meant she’d end up losing because she lost track of what was happening during their pinochle game. Upset at losing yet again, she’d loudly accuse Emil of cheating and declared she would never play pinochle with him again! Then, a few minutes later, she’d deal the cards once more stating that she’d try again, but only of Emil didn’t cheat this round, which he calmly stated he never did. Yvonne would just smile at her grandfather, both of them knowing Mariana was a little too frazzled to do both things at once.

Mariana created many beautiful things through her embroidery, knitting, and crocheting. All of the curtains in their home were handmade by her in filet, a type of crocheting, and she also made beautiful sweaters for Yvonne.

However, Yvonne couldn’t stand the woolen stockings Mariana knitted for her entire family to keep them warm in the winter months. They were too itchy for Yvonne, who devised a strategy to keep her grandmother happy, as well as give her own legs relief.

Before putting on the stockings, Yvonne would slip on knee-length socks, then the stockings over them. Out of the house she’d walk, Mariana seeing that Yvonne was wearing the stockings which would keep her legs warm under the uniform skirt which she wore to school. But as soon as she could after leaving the house, Yvonne would duck out of sight, take off the hated, itchy stockings, and shove them in her backpack. For the rest of the day her legs were slightly colder but much more comfortable. Before she got home again, she’d slip the stockings back on to maintain appearances that she had worn them all day long. Mariana never caught on, or if she did, she never said anything to Yvonne.

Yvonne loved her grandmother, who spoke German with a slight Polish accent which Yvonne occasionally teased her about. Emil also knew Polish, so when they had something to say not intended for Yvonne to understand, her grandparents shifted into Polish to discuss. Around Christmas and her birthday in February, Polish was spoken much more in their house to keep Yvonne from knowing what gifts or surprises she might be getting.

Christmas

Christmas was pure enchantment at the Neufeldts’ house in the 1930s. The daughters Hedel and Lene would come with their husbands and children, and everyone packed into the house for the holidays. In Germany, Christmas Eve is the big holiday, and it began with a traditional fish dinner followed by the singing of Christmas carols together. Then the children opened their gifts on Christmas Eve, not Christmas morning. Then, exhausted, everyone went to bed, the grandsons on the floor of the sitting room, while the aunts and uncles and granddaughters had the surplus beds in the house.

When the grandchildren were a little older, they were allowed to go to Midnight Mass at Christmas. Fifteen minutes before the services the church bells would begin and continue until the services began. The Neisse Cathedral (now St. Jacob and Agnes Church) would be illuminated with candles throughout, creating a warm glow which, to Yvonne, was romantic and even a little bit mysterious. Most intriguing to her was the story that at midnight on Christmas Eve, all of the animals could suddenly speak like humans. She rather regretted that she was in the church for mass at that precise time, instead of at home or at a barn so she could verify the story. She had a lot of questions about God and such mysteries, but the Neufeldts, while active church goers, weren’t deeply steeped in the gospel, so such questions remained brewing in Yvonne’s mind, waiting for answers. She was pretty sure, however, that the animals weren’t talking, much to her disappointment.

Christmas Day was a continuation of the celebrations, usually beginning with attending church again, and having fun and food with close family members in the area. The day after Christmas was reserved for neighbors and friends to visit, usually beginning at 11 am and ending around 4-5 pm. Emil and Mariana sent their grandchildren to the matinee movies on both Christmas Day and the day after, while relatives and friends visited, because while their house in Neisse was large, it wasn’t quite large enough for 10 excited, rambunctious grandchildren. The parents and grandparents needed a break. Yvonne and her cousins didn’t mind attending the movies at all. They loved the 3-4 night sleepover they had every Christmas, and remembered every moment as absolutely wonderful.

How German children spent their days

Winter vacations were filled with sledding on little hills in the park and cross-country skiing. Sometimes Yvonne and her cousins went to the mountains for downhill skiing, but in the 1930s there weren’t a lot of ski lifts yet. Yvonne developed a love of cross-country skiing, because it was so convenient. After she got home from school, she would frequently put on her skis and go to the nearby park and ski to her heart’s content, with no restrictions and no expense.

Yvonne could also go to Gondola Lake for ice skating. The fees were nominal and there was a little warming cabin on the shores where people could warm up.

In the summer, Yvonne frequently went on vacations with her cousins. One favorite spot was Wildgrund in the Sudeten Mountains. The Cosel Rudolfs rented a farmhouse, and while Karl usually had to stay home to work in Cosel at their store, Hedel supervised her children, along with Yvonne and sometimes Lene’s children as well.

Wildgrund—which has “wild” in its name—was a free, somewhat unrestricted area, meaning that Yvonne and her female cousins could wear shorts all week long, except for Sundays. Shorts weren’t really acceptable in society in the 1930s, but on vacation those rules were relaxed. The children could also run around barefoot—another great treat—but again, not on Sundays. Even on vacation, they went to church on Sundays, then they would all spend the afternoons hiking the mountains over to the Bohemian side of the Czech Republic.

It was also somewhat a vacation for Hedel, even though she had her five children plus Yvonne, and sometimes her sister’s four children to supervise, because Hedel would also bring along her maid who would do the necessary work in the morning, then have the rest of the day off until late afternoon when she made them all dinner. (How much of a vacation this was for the maid is up for debate, since the Rudolfs also employed a cook, but she stayed behind in Cosel during these vacations.)

Those days were filled with hiking, biking, swimming, games, movies, and creative adventures. The children would seek approval for their ideas from one of the aunts, but it was usually Hedel who would exclaim, “No! You’re all crazy!” and the cousins would have to come up with something else to do instead.

A few plans, however, worked out. One summer, when Yvonne’s cousin Dieter was 14 or 15, he was exploring the mountain stream behind the farmhouse they were renting and discovered a large trout. With only his hands he caught it as it hid behind a rock in the river. Pleased with the catch, Dieter mailed the fish to is father, Karl, in Cosel. (While details are missing, we can assume it was packed in ice of some sort, or preserved in some way.) Karl repaid their gift with another one: he promptly shipped them a crate which mysteriously hummed. When they opened it up, they found 100 alive crabs and had a feast. (Presumably cooked up by Hedel’s maid-now-also-cook for the vacation.)

Another summer, when Yvonne was around 10, she grew weary of her male cousins teasing her. They were never thrilled with being “forced” to play with their female cousin. When they resorted to calling her a sissy, she decided to show them up.

At Wildgrund there was a swimming hole with various heights of diving boards. The highest was 10 meters (about 32 feet). Angry and defiant about their teasing, Yvonne one day decided to show just how brave she was, and she climbed up that enormously high diving board.

At the top, she panicked, terrified at the height. But she couldn’t even consider climbing back down. So she stayed up there, trying to convince herself to jump, for probably a small eternity, while her cousins stood below, waiting to see what she would do. Finally Yvonne realized that if she didn’t decide something she’d likely be there all night, so out of pure desperation, she jumped. Her cousins were astonished that she did it, as was Yvonne. But when she swam out of the pool, her cousins regarded her with awe, and all teasing stopped. She rode the crest of that fame for the rest of the summer, but never again climbed that highest diving board. Neither did any of her cousins.

Yvonne’s adventures weren’t confined to just vacations. She had plenty of escapades with her cousins at home. When she was six, she and her cousins decided they didn’t like their vegetables, but of course their grandmother reminded them that there were Chinese on the other side of the world starving who would love those vegetables. Yvonne and her cousins decided one day to find out if that was true. They went into Emil’s shed, retrieved his shovels, left the family garden, walked down the hill to the town’s mote about five minutes’ walk away from the house in Neisse, and decided that was a good place to begin digging. (Maybe because the mote was a little lower than the roadway?)

For some reason they decided to begin digging next to the Beton bridge where spectators gathered to watch. Cars, trucks, and horse-drawn wagons went across that bridge, and interest took shape as to what this group of small children with shovels were endeavoring to do. Eventually a police officer came by and asked them what their experiment was all about. They explained, and the police officer pointed out that China was very far away, their shovels were too small, and if they continued, they’d likely be late for dinner. Well, being late for dinner wasn’t something Mariana tolerated, so the cousins and Yvonne decided to stop, head home, and patiently endure stories about the poor Chinese.

Neisse—a place for adventure

Neisse was an old city with all kinds of adventurous places to explore. The city was set on a river called Glatzer Neisse (Nysa Klodzka), which was tributary of the Oder River (and all of the rivers in the area had “Neisse” as part of the name, such as the Neisse-Oder River, etc.). Through Neisse also flowed a narrow river called the Biele, and Neisse was properly forested with elms, chestnuts, lindens, and oaks.

In the 1930s the population was about 35,000, and a few factories and businesses kept Neisse successful. Along with the Weigelwerk where Emil had his inventions made, there was a curtain and doily factory. Neisse also used to be a garrison, and a large mote still surrounded the city (where Yvonne and her cousins tried to dig to China).

As mentioned earlier, Neisse was a beautiful city, with so many medieval style churches that it was nicknamed the Silesian Rome. The Gothic Jakobuskirche (St. Jacob and Agnes Church) held tall stained-glass windows.

The church itself was damaged in 1935 when a dam 10 km northwest of Neisse broke on the Ottmachau reservoir (now Otmuchów Lake—there are a series of four reservoirs now, with the Nyskie reservoir now on the western edge of Nysa before the Otmuchów Lake). The resultant flood rushed through Neisse causing extensive damage and cracked one of the Jakobuskirche’s supporting pillars. It took two years to restore.

The flood didn’t damage the Neufeldts’ house, but they had a front step view of the devastation. Yvonne, who was about 8, watched with her grandparents, her cousin Alfons, and the maid as household goods and even a dead pig from a village upstream floated by their house. Yvonne didn’t understand the destruction she was witnessing. All she knew was that she couldn’t go to school because of the flood, and because of that she was quite happy.

During the reconstruction of St. Jakobus/Jacob and Agnes Church, another church of Romanesque architecture was discovered underneath. Workers also discovered old graves as they dug for reconstruction. Each week Yvonne would check on the progress of the reconstruction, since she and a few girls went to Catholic class there once a week. (Yvonne had been baptized Luthern as a baby, because Charlotte had been Lutheran, but the family wasn’t picky as to which church they attended.) Once, when Yvonne and her friends were approaching the reconstruction site, a work picked up a skull he had unearthed and illuminated it with a flashlight to spook the girls. It worked. They ran away, screaming.

When the church was finally restored, it was more beautiful than ever because the unattractive dark frescoes had been removed. All the walls and columns were painted in pure white, enhancing the beauty of the stained-glass windows. The church also has an Italian bell tower, or campanile, and a beautiful organ. (Later, at some point the columns must have been stripped of the white paint to reveal the brick construction, as it appears now.)

Because Neisse was the hometown of brothers Karl and Alfons Rudolf, they knew all of the secrets of the city, especially the old fortress wall, or Festungwalle. The military still had a presence there in the 1930s, and the cavalry regularly delivered loads of manure to residents for their gardens. Old fortress walls remained, up to 12 feet high and very thick, and throughout those walls were extensive labyrinths. Soldiers apparently used those walls and labyrinths to hide and even escape during wars and battles.

Built in the 18^th century, not only did Prussian soldiers hide and escape in them, so did Yvonne and her cousins, especially when their fathers and uncles were chasing them through the labyrinths to scare them (https://www.gwo24.pl/nysa-fort-prusy/)

Once when Yvonne was 8 or 9 years old, she and Olaf ventured to the walls on a Saturday afternoon before the Easter services. They were bored and looking for adventure.

Not having any flashlights with them to explore the labyrinths, they took candles instead, but they didn’t get too far, because the drafts in the labyrinths quickly extinguished their candles.

But they were already far enough in that everything around them was pitch black.

Terrified, they turned around and were fortunately able to make their way out again.

Shaken, they made their way back to the Basilica of Jacob and Agnes in time for the resurrection service. They had been missing for half an hour, but the gathered family assumed they’d make it in time, which they did. The family was already seated inside, at their pew which they rented yearly, when Yvonne and Olaf slipped inside and sat down, relieved.

But then the adults glanced at Olaf and Yvonne, and began to whisper, and for the first time Yvonne and Olaf glanced at each other. In their frantic attempt to get out of the old labyrinths, they had become very dirty. Instead of looking presentable and polished in their Easter best, they looked more like haggard street urchins, filthy and disheveled. They remember the teasing of their cousins, but don’t remember if they were punished by the adults. After all, it had been Karl and Alfons who had introduced the children to the labyrinths under the fortress walls, so really the blame could have been placed on them.

Cousins and Indians and Indians

For 10-year-old Yvonne, being able to keep up with her male cousins was very important. Impressing the boys was her goal in every outing with them, such as braving the Prusy Fort labyrinths or jumping off the high dive in Wildgrund. When Yvonne was 10, aunt Lene and uncle Alfon’s children were Romuald (14), Alfons (13), and Norbert (7). Hedel and Karl’s sons were Dieter (12), Olaf (10—same as Yvonne), and Peter (8). These boys were her playmates, and she wanted to be boyish as well, in order to earn the right to play with them. Her cousins told her they were “ordered” by their parents to play with her, so she tried to lessen their reluctance by keeping up.

Granted, Yvonne did have younger girl cousins, but they were too little to be interesting to a 10-year-old. Lene’s daughter Christa was born in 1934 so she was seven years younger than Yvonne and just a preschooler, and Hedel had two daughters, Susie, who was born in 1933 so she would have been four years old when Yvonne was 10, and Ingrid who was just a baby in 1937. While Yvonne appreciated the sweet little girls, her focus was on making an impression upon the boys, and she felt she kept up with them quite well. If ever she was afraid, she’d do her best to fake confidence instead.

During that decade in Germany, a popular activity was to play Indians and Indians, not Cowboys and Indians. Germany had a love affair with the wild west of America, thanks to a prolific author named Karl May who, while never having visited America himself, wrote many books about Native Americans, cowboys, and the West. As a result, nearly all German children played Indians, dressed up as Indians, and dreamed of the wild west of America. (Interestingly, Yvonne would later move to, visit, and live for over 50 years in those “wild states”.)

When the cousins played, Yvonne was usually relegated to being squaw to the chief, since she was the only girl, and the chief was either Romuald or Dieter. Early on in their play, Yvonne was usually captured, probably to get her out of the way. One time the boys tied her to a tree, using her long braids to secure her. She was terrified at the time, but tried to be the brave squaw.

When it was time to go home, the boys couldn’t get the knot in her hair undone, so they did the only wild west thing they knew: they cut her hair with a pocketknife. Now, it would have been smart to merely cut the knot itself, leaving the braids intact, but that didn’t occur to the boys. Instead, they cut off one entire braid next to Yvonne’s head, and they went home, with the dangling part still tied to her other braid.

When they reached Emil and Mariana’s home, Lene quickly saw the problem and rushed Yvonne to the hairdresser’s for a decent haircut before Mariana could see what had happened to her dear granddaughter’s long hair. When Lene and Yvonne returned back to the Neufeldts after her new haircut, Mariana was upset that the long hair was gone. But Yvonne was thrilled. She’d hated the pigtails and loved her new short bob hairdo.

Sometimes Yvonne’s childhood adventures took her to her aunts’ homes. Lene and Alfons lived in Munsterberg, where Alfons worked as an engineer in the sugar factory. The plant had a swimming pool where Yvonne and her cousins Romuald, Alfons Jr., and Norbert built a raft. Once when Yvonne was around 12, she got stuck under the raft and couldn’t get out from under it. Her cousins rushed to her rescue, with Alfons (probably around 15 years old) finally pulling a panicked Yvonne out.

But the greatest fun was Emil’s backyard in Neisse. They had a swing, a teeter-totter, monkey bars, and a small swimming pool which they made out of a compost basin. The cousins would clean and disinfect it each season before filling it up with water, and no one ever got sick from swimming in it.

Emil also garaged his car in that yard in a corrugated steel garage. Behind the garage was a sandbox, and the cousins loved to climb on top of the garage and jump into the sandbox, but only when Mariana wasn’t around to tell them not to, and only before the sun had heated up the roof making it too hot to stand on. Later, before moving from that house to Neuland, Emil replaced the garage with a larger, sturdier, and taller garage, much to the chagrin of his grandchildren.

As Yvonne’s cousins got older, they embarked on greater adventures. One summer when Dieter was 16 and Olaf was 14, they were hired on as deck hands of a coal ship on the Baltic Sea. They began in the Port of Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland), which was the largest port on the Baltic Sea, about 290 miles northwest of Neisse. They traveled on the coal ship along the rivers and waterways down to Berlin, as well as other great cities, then back to Neisse and Cosel (Kozle), loving every minute of it.

Sometimes Yvonne’s cousins had adventures all by themselves, which they often didn’t reveal until many years later. For example, one morning in 1942 Emil discovered that his beloved Mercedes was missing. He called the police who immediately went on the search for it. They discovered it later that day stuck in a ditch, a bit dented, and abandoned. It took some time to get to the bottom of it, but it turned out that Alfons Jr. who was then 18, decided he’d tried driving his grandfather’s car by himself. He was successful for just a few miles. Dieter later told Yvonne that the damage to the car was nothing compared to the punishment Alfons received. Alfons was a bit of a rebellious spirit, always at war with the family, especially with Emil. He just had that kind of personality. (However, about 50 years later, Alfons wrote to Yvonne about how proud he was of his only son, a man as bright and resourceful as their grandfather Emil.)

Emil also loved to travel, although Mariana didn’t always want to go with him. His daughter Hedel, however, would travel with him.

School

All of this play and vacationing didn’t mean that Yvonne didn’t go to school. On the contrary. Emil and Mariana felt that academics was as important for girls as it was for boys, and they encouraged her to get as much education as she could, which Yvonne tried to do.

But when she first began school, she had a difficult time with reading. The letters didn’t make sense, the words didn’t come together. Today, she may have been diagnosed with a learning disability. (She believed that since she was forced to be right-handed by the school, when she was naturally left-handed, helped “mix up” her brain.) Back in the 1930s, there were no resources for children with learning disabilities. In fact, such a term didn’t even exist. Kids who struggled were seen as lazy or even stupid, and sometime written off entirely as hopeless to teach.

But no one was going to give up on Yvonne so quickly. Emil’s older sister, Otillie Wilhemine Neufeldt Sabott, frequently visited her brother and was Yvonne’s favorite relative when she was little. Otillie was married to Franz Sabott, who had died before Yvonne was born, and she had a son Edmund who was married to Margarete Frohlich. Edmund and Margarete (Grete) lived in Berlin. Otillie didn’t have anyone close except for her youngest brother and his family.

Great Aunt Otillie was kind and loving, and cheerfully sat down with Yvonne to help her learn her letters and words. Throughout first grade, Otillie came by to help her brother’s granddaughter figure out the shapes of words and how letters came together, and by second grade, Yvonne was finally reading on grade level.

Sadly, about a year later when Yvonne was around 8 years old, she woke up from a terrifying dream. She had seen her beloved Tante Ottilie laying down as if she were dead. In the morning she told Emil and Mariana about her bad dream, but they dismissed it. Later that day, Emil got a telegram about his sister. She had, indeed, passed away. She had cut herself with a thumbtack earlier but it didn’t seem significant. That night she went to a film premier, then came home and apparently died of blood poisoning.  

Math woes

Yvonne was a good student, except in one way: math, particularly algebra. She couldn’t wrap her head around it. When she was 12 she decided that maybe she didn’t need any additional schooling, especially algebra. Her aunts commiserated with her. They, too, struggled to understand math, and Yvonne decided that there was a muted algebra gene that she shared with her aunts which left them incapable of ever knowing the unknowns in an equation.

Yvonne’s math teachers weren’t impressed with her, either, but gave her passing grades only because they knew she never cheated. Only someone that truly hopeless with math could ever get the scores she earned. Not that Yvonne had never considered cheating, but what she lacked in math skills she made up for in logic. She knew she would get caught if she tried to cheat and would look idiotic if she did. Cheating was even more complicated than math, and she wasn’t going to bother with it.

If she could just quit school, not go on to the Lyceum (high school) she’d have more time to play, she reasoned as a 12-year-old. But Emil had different ideas. There was still a lot more to learn not dealing with math.

So Emil made a deal with Yvonne. Knowing how much she wanted a new bike, he promised to buy her one if she passed the entrance exam to go to the Lyceum. That was too tempting an offer for Yvonne to turn down. When she was little she’d had a tricycle, then got a scooter, then a treadle scooter, but she didn’t yet have a bike of her own. There was no choice. She had knuckle down and study. So she did, and she passed the entrance exam with flying colors, definitely high enough to earn herself a bike.

The day she got her gleaming, fast brand-new bike, Emil was in the hospital having knee surgery. The excitement of her new vehicle was too much for Yvonne to wait to share, so she rode it down to the hospital, walked it in to the service elevator (after a little maneuvering to get it in), then took it up to Emil’s floor. Proudly she marched in to his hospital room where Emil, still sedated for pain from his surgery, just stared at her in complete bewilderment. He likely thought he was having some kind of hallucination to see his granddaughter and her bike in his hospital room. Soon a nurse came in, glared at Yvonne, and “invited” her to leave, and take her bike with her.

Yvonne not only loved her new bike but also loved the Lyceum as well. When World War II started, Yvonne’s school was moved to the Jesuit Church, also known as the Carolinum, where the boys attended the humanistic high school, called the Gymnasium, where they learned Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. (The school is still used as a high school to this day.) Yvonne’s school needed to share their space because the German troops took over the Lyceum as a barracks. But Yvonne didn’t mind going to the Carolinum for school, because it was a stately and beautiful baroque building built in the 1650s. (https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolinum_(Nysa)

The auditorium, or Aula, had white marble walls and benches, with light-colored stained-glass windows which miraculous remained intact during the war.  Yvonne discovered that she actually learned better there because the building seemed to demand a level of style and culture from those who attended, and the students behaved better in such an elegant structure.

The only other place Yvonne loved more was the library. Always a bookworm—once she mastered reading at the side of her great Aunt Otillie—Yvonne loved to collect books and visit bookstores and libraries.

At the high school, it also helped Yvonne that even though the boys and girls were kept separate, as was the practice in education then (it’s not now at the Carolinum), the girls still got some good views of the boys on the other side of the building.

Yvonne was a creative, mischievous girl, always on the lookout for an adventure or entertainment. Often, she made her own. At her school was a teacher who was very large and had a protruding behind. While walking behind this teacher one day, and following her on the stairs, Yvonne had an idea. She noticed that the teacher’s pronounced rear end acted as a sort of shelf of sorts. One day she brought to school a tiny toy chick, and as the teacher begin to climb the stairs in front of Yvonne, she gently placed the tiny chick on the teacher’s shelf-behind, and there it remained all the way up the stairs, with Yvonne and her friends trying hard to control their sniggering as they followed.

Difficult times

However, Yvonne’s childhood wasn’t all perfect. All of Neisse, it seemed, knew of the tragedy of her parents. Although there were 35,000 residents, stories went around. Yvonne’s mother had remarried a man who owned a restaurant in Neisse, and it was known that she had two more sons, and another daughter who she had given away. If Yvonne had ever run into her mother, or her two half-brothers or half-sister, is unknown. She may not have known who they were even if she had. Her grandparents and aunts and uncles tried to shield her from gossip, but sometimes people would point at her and say, “That’s the little Neufeldt girl.” Even as a small child, Yvonne knew what they were talking about: the fact that her father had killed himself upon finding his wife in a bad situation.

The tragedy of losing her father, and the abandonment of her mother, weren’t to be the only struggles young Yvonne would have to endure. Her beloved grandmother, Mariana, was frequently ill. She suffered from an enlarged heart, and often her ankles swelled so much she could no longer walk. She was brought to the hospital in 1937, but they couldn’t do anything more for her, so they sent her home.

Emil, who had done free maintenance work for the Catholic nuns, hired some of their nurses to come care for his wife. Called the Gray Sisters, these nuns were also registered nurses, and lovingly cared for Mariana as well as Yvonne, helping her with her homework when she came back from school each day.

Yvonne was worried. Mariana was the best person in her life, willingly taking her in when her son died, and giving up her life of ease to take on a lively, inquisitive, mischievous little girl. Mariana adored her granddaughter, but never could get over the loss of her last living son. Those who were close to her said her heart was failing because it was broken when Paul committed suicide.

Despite everyone’s efforts, Mariana passed away from heart failure on Dec. 28, 1937, at the age of 65.

Yvonne was just 10 years old and now had lost her grandmother. 

Emil was heartbroken to lose his wife of 41 years, and he worried about how to raise his granddaughter without her. He traveled quite often for his work, leaving for days and even weeks at a time. It’s not that Mariana had ever been left wholly alone with Yvonne, because there was always a maid and a cook, and part-time gardeners to help. Plus his daughters Hedel and Lene frequently pitched in to be surrogate mothers.

But now, when he’d leave for a trip to install his machinery in some distant town, Yvonne wouldn’t have a grandmother to watch over and love her.

In a postcard he sent to her dated January 18, 1938, less than a month since Mariana passed, he wrote,

“Dear one, today after dinner I think of you. My child, how are you, I hope you are well. I think of you every time whenever I have time. Be very good, my dear child. Your dear grandma is no longer there. Greetings to Martha and the Koehler family [presumably her former foster parents, the Koehlers, were taking care of her again]. Be good so that I can enjoy you.”

The address also isn’t their house in Neisse, but is listed as Neustradterstrasse No. 18. Maybe this is where the Koehlers lived.

Clearly he had little time to mourn his wife or care for his granddaughter.

His traveling was constant, and it seems he was even out while Mariana was doing poorly. A postcard sent to Yvonne on Dec. 9, 1937, less than three weeks before she passed away, reads:

“My dear child, today on Thursday it snows all the time. My train to Hannover is more than an hour later. Roads are no longer passable. Will have to cancel my trip tomorrow. Might be home on Saturday afternoon. Greetings to Grandma and Romuald [presumably he was staying at the house]. Will arrive soon on Saturday. Greetings to all friends.”

(Again the address is to Neustadterstrasse No. 18—maybe the Koehlers? Perhaps Yvonne was staying with them while Mariana was ill.)

Emil sent another postcard to Yvonne, dated Jan. 15, 1938, from Berlin. It’s not as heavy as the one he sent a few days later, reminding both of them unnecessarily that they no longer had Mariana, but still this has a sense of not knowing quite what to do for his granddaughter, and signals Emil’s sadness:

“My dear, I send you the warmest greetings of a guy from Berlin. I hope everyone of you is fine. Tonight I drove all night long. Now I’m heading to Magdeburg. Miss Matka also greets you [unknown who this is—maybe a maid or an acquaintance].  Your grandpa. Be my good child. Obey well. Make me happy when I come home next week.”

He needed a new wife and grandmother for his granddaughter, and that happened rather quicker than anyone might have expected. His goal wasn’t to find a companion so much as it was to find a someone for Yvonne.

Marta Lowack

Just a couple of months after Mariana died, a bank president who lived nearby introduced Emil to Marta Lowack. At age 51, she was beautiful, stylish, a great dresser, and worked at a shop. She soon charmed Emil and seemed to him a convenient and timely solution to a difficult problem.

However, his family members decided soon that she had merely grown tired of working and realized that life with Emil Neufeldt, who was 14 years older but very well off, would be a step in the right financial direction.

On July 14, of 1938, just seven months after Mariana died, Marta Lowack married Emil. Soon it became apparent that she wasn’t with him to become a new grandmother for Yvonne, but because his money would make the rest of her life quite comfortable.  

It certainly couldn’t have been easy for Ms. Lowack to suddenly step in as step-grandmother to an 11-year-old girl and her cousins, and become step-mother to Lene and Hedel. Marta had been a single woman all her life, so becoming a wife after so many years, as well as step-mother and step-grandmother, must have been an immense and difficult task all at once.

And Yvonne and the rest of the Neufeldt family didn’t feel she was up to that task. The entire dynamics of the family shifted for the worse after Marta joined the family.

Where Mariana had been warm, inviting, and friendly, Marta was cold and standoffish. Christmases at the Neufeldts ended, because Marta didn’t enjoy her new husband’s grandchildren and didn’t know how to make his daughters and their families feel welcome. Whereas the family used to communicate frequently, nearly all communication stopped with the arrival of Marta. Perhaps Emil’s daughters resented their mother’s replacement arriving so quickly, or Marta really didn’t have a knack for dealing with people.

Whereas Mariana had been prudent with their finances and didn’t believe in showing off, Marta was eager to demonstrate what she now possessed. While Mariana was satisfied with just one fur coat and a cape, Marta decided she needed two more in addition to what she already owned. And of course she needed the jewelry to go with every new outfit.

Where Mariana had been generous with her money and possessions with those around her, Marta was stingy (which was demonstrated acutely later during WWII). Marta was generous with herself and no one else, pointing out how much everything cost and how grateful anyone should be to get anything. Once, when Lene and Alfons were visiting, Marta asked Alfons if he wanted another cup of coffee, but he had learned already that anything given was done so with a nasty little glare. So he said instead, “No thank you. I don’t want to make my new mother-in-law poor.” That became an often-used expression. “I don’t want to make you poor.”

Where Mariana had stayed home to take care of Yvonne when Emil traveled, Marta, who always wanted to see the world, insisted on going with Emil on many of his trips. One postcard from Harzburg dated May 17, 1939, from Marta reads:

“My dear Yvonne! We won’t be home until Saturday because Grandpa still has to work on Friday. Many greetings to Miss Marta [likely the Rudolfs’ maid], Alfons, Romuald, Ursula, and everyone at the Schmidts. We look forward to be back home again. So see you on Saturday. Grandma and Grandpa.”

Actually, Yvonne was fine with her step-grandmother leaving. She wasn’t a great fan of her either. The more Marta was gone, the more at ease Yvonne could be.

However, even that didn’t work out so well. Her grandmother Mariana had been kind and generous with their maids and cooks, and the hired help remained at the house until they married and left for their own homes. Mariana frequently gifted them with linens and other household goods so their new homes would be well supplied.

But Marta was demanding and rude, and maids came and went so frequently because of her that Yvonne couldn’t keep track of them. When Emil left for another trip, Yvonne wasn’t always sure who would be in the house with her.

Yvonne wasn’t pleased with her new Step-Oma, and years later, when she watched Disney movies and saw the wicked step-mothers in the cartoons, she’d nod and comment that the characters were depicted exactly right.

Yvonne soon realized that her life now would be one of loneliness. Even when her grandfather was home, it was difficult to feel the same sense of love and acceptance as had been there when Mariana was still alive. But it was worse when Marta stayed home when Emil left because of her coldness toward his grandchildren. As often as possible, Yvonne spent time with her aunts and their families in Cosel and Munsterberg. They tried to fill in the gaps and provide the love she desperately needed, but they couldn’t be there all the time for her, nor could she move in with any of them. That would have crushed Emil even more, to lose his granddaughter after losing his wife.

The Schmidt family

One good thing that came with Marta Lowack was her sister’s family, the Schmidts. As cold and unfriendly as Marta was, her sister Hedel Schmidt was the opposite. In fact, Hedel Schmidt mothered Yvonne as often as she could, and Yvonne loved her for that. In her eyes, Hedel Schmidt could do no wrong, and Yvonne went out of her way once to gush to her new step-grandmother what a wonderful cook her sister Hedel was, implying clearly that Marta was lacking.

Hedel also had a daughter name Ursula, around the same age as Yvonne, who became a welcomed friend. Hedel and her husband Paul also had two older sons, Heinz and Walter, and a younger son named Hubert. (This is the family mentioned in the May 1939 postcard sent to Yvonne.) Yvonne and Emil loved the Schmidt family visits because they brought warmth and friendship and love with them. If they had to put up with Marta, at least they got the Schmidts as a consolation prize.

Hedel Schmidt’s husband, Paul, quickly became one of Emil’s best friends. He was as nice as his wife and was an excellent musician. And best of all, he didn’t care for Marta Lowack, his wife’s sister, either. He always called her “Frau Neufeldt” instead of her first name when he couldn’t avoid having to talk to her.

Saving Yvonne’s soul

But Marta had plans for Yvonne, even if she didn’t particularly enjoy her step-granddaughter either. She was going to save the girl’s soul by turning her into a good Catholic. The next year in 1939, she began in earnest.

Marta was a faithful and sincere Catholic, and was bothered that the Neufeldts weren’t too deeply steeped in religion. Emil was vaguely Lutheran but not practicing, which had given the Catholic nuns who he did work for, and who had tended to Mariana in her last weeks, hope that they might convert him. While they attended the Jacob and Agnes Basilica, not even all of the family was really Catholic. Emil he wasn’t interested in religion, although he believed in God.

Marta was also having no luck with converting him officially, so she turned her attentions to making Yvonne a proper Catholic, especially after she realized that Yvonne had been baptized as a baby in the Lutheran church since her mother Charlotte had been Lutheran.

Yvonne was not happy whatsoever with the idea of becoming Catholic. Marta tried again and again to teach Yvonne to pray the rosary before going to bed, but 12-year-old Yvonne would pretend to be sleepy so Marta would leave her bedroom. Then Yvonne would pull out her flashlight and read books under the covers for an hour or so. Yvonne concluded she would have made a terrible nun, having never once completed the rosary.

It seems Emil stayed out of this whole becoming Catholic situation. Maybe he was travelling a lot, maybe he didn’t want to upset anyone, or maybe he thought this conversion process might bring Marta and Yvonne closer. It didn’t.

Marta arranged for Yvonne to receive private Catechism lessons ahead of her conversion to Catholicism. Everything was fine with the lessons until the priest explained to Yvonne the concept of the Godhead. Even though Yvonne was just 12 years old, the explanation made no sense to her, and Yvonne—ever logical and ever headstrong—told the priest she just couldn’t comprehend that God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit were all one and the same. It made no sense to her.

The priest didn’t care for her taking back—Yvonne was never one for holding back her opinion on anything—and told her she just had to accept it. There were millions of well-educated people who accepted this explanation of the Godhead, he pointed out, and she was just a little girl, so who was she to question it? She needed to humble herself and stop asking so many questions but just take his word for it.

Sensing inevitable defeat, Yvonne quit challenging him and was soon baptized by sprinkling, then the next day reluctantly took her first communion.

In the photos taken of 12-year-old Yvonne that day, you can clearly see her lack of enthusiasm.

Marta had gone all out, inviting friends and family over for a grand celebration afterward. She felt she had done God’s work in “saving” the little Neufeldt girl, and for a while Yvonne tried to be an active Catholic. But the question of the Godhead plagued her, never quite making sense.

The approach of WWII

The years 1938-39 was eventful not only because of Marta’s invasion and Yvonne’s forced Catholicism, but because Hitler and his Nazis were gaining power in Germany. And the local Nazi party decided that their newest recruit should be Emil Neufeldt, because the influence he had in the sugar industry which the Nazis would need to keep going to keep Germany progressing.

But mostly, the Nazis just wanted Emil’s money.

Emil hated the Nazi party, and the rest of his family feared it, just as most of Germans did.

When it first arose, the Nazi Party—while never very popular—had been cautiously welcomed as a way to make Germany strong again. Germany had been suffering since 1919 from crippling inflation, unemployment, and poverty because of the judgements from the Treaty of Versailles. But very quickly after Nazism’s rise, by the early 1930s, many Germans were already seeing this small but very noisy party for what it was, and they didn’t want anything more to do with it.

Nazi party members were considered, at least by Emil and his associates, as failed and unsuccessful men who relied on the Nazi party to make these “nobodies” into “somebodies.” Desperate for attention and affirmation, these narcissistic men joined the party that promised them prosperity. Most Germans deemed the Nazis to be undereducated (which was a gross sin in Germany), crude, and coarse (again, a great sin in a country that embraced refinement). The intelligentsia who had embraced Hitler early on abandoned him by the end of the 1930s, realizing he was taking the country in the wrong directions.

By 1938, sensing that the country wasn’t entirely behind them, the Nazi party was looking for respectable, well-established members of each community to bolster their ranks and lend them credibility. They made lists of who in each city would give their party the footholds they needed. Emil Neufeldt made the list, but he wasn’t about to join.

Nazi Recruiter

One evening at 8pm a Nazi recruiter showed up at the house, and Emil was ready for him. He put on the charm and treated the Nazi to the usual fare of schnaps and beer. The recruiter drank, and drank, and drank, trying to keep up with Emil. What he didn’t know was that Emil had grown up in West Prussia where the cold winds blew in from the Russian Steppe. In the 1800s the belief was that drinking alcohol would keep you warm, so even as a young man, Emil had been taught how to drink a lot of alcohol without getting drunk. He knew when to quit, but the Nazi didn’t.

By 10 pm the recruiter was passed out on the carpet, in a very undignified manner. While drinking was acceptable in German society, becoming drunk was definitely not. It demonstrated a lack of discipline and self-control, and passing out drunk was especially shameful, especially at someone else’s house.

The reaction to this extreme social faux pas was exactly what Emil was counting on. He called up the leader of the Nazi recruiter, told him very politely that the poor fellow had a problem, and would they come pick him up? Of course, Emil assured the Nazi leader, their family would keep this embarrassing incident a secret only if no further attempts to recruit Emil into the Nazi party ever happened again.

Chagrined by the boorish behavior of their recruiter, the Nazi leaders quickly rushed over to Emil’s house, retrieved their fallen man, and told Emil that if he made a donation to a charity which provided vacations to underprivileged children, they would remove him from the list. Emil agreed, made the donation to a charity he wholeheartedly endorsed, and never sent a pfennig to the Nazis.

Kristallnacht

But that wasn’t the end of the Nazis in Neisse, nor were they humiliated into silence for very long. Later in 1938, on the night of November 9-10, was Kristallnacht: the night Nazis made a great show of how they felt about the Jews. In all of Neisse there were only about 220 Jews, about 0.6% of the population (https://sztetl.org.pl/en/towns/n/65-nysa/99-history/137768-history-of-community). Still, that was enough to protest against.

Kristallnacht means “night of broken glass.” What brought it on was a “fortunate” circumstance for the Nazis, blowing out of proportion the frustration of a teenager.

In 1938 Jews were being forcibly moved out of German towns. One 17-year-old Polish boy, Herschel Grynszpan, learned that his parents had been forced from Hanover, which had been their home for many years, to a dismal camp in Poland. Herschel was living in France (illegally) at the time with his uncle and was furious about a postcard he received from his parents who feared the end was coming for them and that they didn’t have any money.

Herschel reacted rashly. He went out, bought a revolver and ammunition, and headed for the German embassy in Paris. There he was led to the office of a German diplomat, Ernst Vom Rath, who was anti-Nazi himself and sympathetic to the Jews’ plight. But Herschel wasn’t interested in talking, and likely didn’t know the German diplomat was on his side. The distraught teenager fired five shots at Vom Rath, on Nov. 7, 1938, and two days later Vom Rath died from his wounds. Hershel allowed himself to be captured by the French police right after the shooting. A postcard in his pocket asked his parents to forgive him, but he needed the world to know what was happening to the Jews (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kristallnacht; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht#Expulsion_of_Polish_Jews_in_Germany; https://www.history.com/topics/holocaust/kristallnacht)

Hitler himself attended Vom Rath’s funeral and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels immediately grabbed hold of this assassination and made it into a rallying cry against all Jews. (https://www.history.com/topics/holocaust/kristallnacht). He created the rumor that the murder wasn’t just a teenage boy acting out in fear for his parents, but was a planned assassination set up by a secret group of Jews, and that action needed to be taken against them. He then declared that, “the Führer has decided that … demonstrations should not be prepared or organized by the Party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered” (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kristallnacht).

These “spontaneous” demonstrations occurred during the night of Nov. 9-10 in thousands of towns and cities throughout Germany, including Neisse. The Nazis’ head of the Secret Police sent out telegrams throughout Germany that the Hitler Youth groups be mobilized, but wearing civilian clothing so it looked like regular German citizens were involved. Then these groups of men and teenage boys (neither Yvonne nor any of her cousins participated) went out in hundreds of cities, town, and villages burning synagogues, knocking over Jewish headstones in cemeteries, smashing windows and looting thousands of stores. In many areas the streets were covered in glass—hence the name Night of Broken Glass (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kristallnacht).

There was nothing “spontaneous” about this demonstration, and it was designed to show Jews just what Germans thought of them. But in reality it was purely intimidation and bullying by the Nazis and their followers. The local police and fire departments did nothing to help the Jews—by command of the Nazis—and responded to fires only if they threatened to spread from a burning synagogue to someone else’s house or business owned by a non-Jew.

Neisse’s Jews

In Neisse, the few hundred Jews who lived there were also targeted. Their synagogue was vandalized, but fortunately not set on fire as many others were. Destroyed in Neisse was the Jewish community buildings, a pharmacy, workshops, a dentist’s office, almost a dozen shops, and over 30 Jewish households. The Jews knew exactly how the Nazis felt, and many quickly left the town. Only 93 Jews stayed behind (https://sztetl.org.pl/en/towns/n/65-nysa/99-history/137768-history-of-community).

Yvonne witnessed one of these senseless acts of violence. Not all of them happened during the night, but some on subsequent days. Yvonne, who was 11 at the time and not yet at the high school, was at the playground of her elementary when suddenly several cars pulled up. Across the street from the school was a clothing shop, perhaps one of the shops mentioned in the article above. Men poured out of the cars and started throwing bricks and rocks through the windows of the Jewish store. Then they ran back to their cars like cowards and drove off.

Yvonne was deeply shaken by the event, and all of the children were sent home from school to keep them safe since it wasn’t clear how much more violence would occur. There was glass all over the streets that she and the other children had to gingerly walk around. More than just glass was shattered. So was their security.

Eventually Neisse was nearly “Judenrein,” or Free from Jews. As the authors of a history about Nysa explain, before the war began, Jews had their rights limited, more and more, starting in November 1938 and into 1939. First they weren’t allowed into theaters and cinemas, then public swimming pools and community parks. Signs for “Germans Only” were common where Jews lived. If Jews rode on trains for a long distance, they weren’t allowed to use the sleeping compartments. Apparently the idea was that Jews were “unclean” and you didn’t even want to accidentally brush up against any of them. In the town of Neisse, the Jews were employed only in “dirty work” such as street cleaning, and since most of them lost their shops and livelihood after Kristallnacht, they didn’t have any other choices for employment. Jews weren’t allowed to own businesses anymore (https://sztetl.org.pl/en/towns/n/65-nysa/99-history/137768-history-of-community).

After three years of this demeaning and humiliating treatment, Jews from Neisse were taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, about 175 km/109 miles east of Neisse. Most Jews taken there were exterminated, if not sent to other camps for forced labor. Few survived. The Gestapo closed down the Jewish cemetery in Neisse in June of 1943, and the local synagogue was pulled down and destroyed in 1945 before the war ended (https://sztetl.org.pl/en/towns/n/65-nysa/99-history/137768-history-of-community). Only a few Jews remained in the city.

The Neufeldts knew of one family of Jews by the last name of Wrinkel. The wife of the family worked in a store that Yvonne frequently visited, and when she greeted the woman as she always did, Frau Wrinkel merely looked at her but didn’t say anything. Perplexed, Yvonne looked to the shop owner for an explanation. The Wrinkels were Jews, Yvonne was told. They weren’t allowed to speak to anyone, nor was anyone allowed to speak to them.

Yvonne couldn’t accept that. Anything illogical to her needed to be tested and examined. On another day when she saw the Wrinkels’ daughter playing outside, she called over to her friend, but was immediately shushed by the adult who was with her. Yvonne wasn’t allowed to speak to the Jews.

While Yvonne was upset by this seemingly random and unnecessary limitation, not speaking to them was also, in a twisted way, a kindness. If the Jews were seen interacting with the Germans, the Jews would have been punished. (Not the Germans, unless the interaction was particularly grievous and the German seemed to be sympathetic to the Jews’ plight.) To help save the Wrinkels from deportation to Auschwitz, the Neufeldts and everyone else had to ignore them. As it turned out, the Wrinkels were one of the few families never rounded up and taking to a concentration camp. Perhaps because the Jewish population was so small in Neisse, the Wrinkels were likely forgotten about by the Nazis who focused their cruelty on cities with larger Jewish populations. The Wrinkels survived the war and remained in Neisse.

But the rest of the Jews in Neisse, and indeed everywhere else in Germany and Poland, were vanishing. There was nothing anyone could do about it, either. When the police can’t even come to your aid, and the Nazis have full control of media, communication, transportation, and also have the ability to shoot you without reason and without consequences, you quickly realize your only option is to try to stay low and quiet, and survive until somehow the nightmare of the Nazis comes to an end.

When 1939 came, and with it came Germany’s invasion of Poland in September, the minority of Germans who supported Hitler were thrilled about the invasion and the further promise of greater prosperity for Germany. But regular Germans, who were in the majority like the Neufeldts and Rudolfs and Schmidts, felt only trouble coming. Very few Germans thought the war was just or necessary, even though every radio report and newsreel taught the Germans about the “invincible” German army and its many victories. They knew they were being fed propaganda, but they didn’t know how much. It was rare and difficult to get any news from the BBC or any other countries. All they knew was what Germany proclaimed, and it made the majority of Germans very uncomfortable. They didn’t want another war, they saw no reason to take over Austria and then march into Poland. They suspected Hitler wouldn’t be quickly appeased and would want more and more territory, which Germany wouldn’t be able to hold on to, because the world wouldn’t tolerate it. And they were right.

But in 1939, there was nothing the average Germans could do about their arrogant, boorish leader and the many “nobodies” who followed him. All they could do was brace for whatever impacts were coming.

Hitler Youth

A note about the Hitler Youth, which all school-age children, starting from age 10 (and as young as 6), needed to register for. By 1936 it was a requirement for both boys and girls who were “pure,” meaning “not Jewish,” to be part of the organization (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hitler-Youth). Yvonne and her cousins were part of Hitler Youth, not because they wanted to be but because they were forced to be.

The purpose of Hitler Youth was simple: indoctrinate Germany’s teenagers in Hitler’s ideology, then send them off to war ready to defend all that Hitler believed (https://www.history.com/news/how-the-hitler-youth-turned-a-generation-of-kids-into-nazis). This has always been the strategy of dictators—gain hold of the rising generation and they’ll follow you the rest of their lives. Hitler and the Nazis knew that many parents opposed their regime, so in order to lessen the influence over the children in Germany, Hitler Youth tried to step in and teach the children properly what they should know. Children were even encouraged to denounce their parents who weren’t toeing the Nazi line (https://www.history.com/news/how-the-hitler-youth-turned-a-generation-of-kids-into-nazis; https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/hitler-youth-2).

Hitler Youth was patterned after the Boy Scouts, which had been popular in Germany before Hitler banned it and shifted all Boy Scouts into Hitler Youth (https://www.history.com/news/how-the-hitler-youth-turned-a-generation-of-kids-into-nazis). A section for girls was also created, because Hitler would need loyal mothers to raise the next generation which he believed would keep his Third Reich going for another 1,000 years (he grossly overestimated the length of his reign by about 9,988 years). Any children refusing to join were alienated and punished by the schools and society, so that by 1939 over 90% of German children were officially registered (https://www.history.com/news/how-the-hitler-youth-turned-a-generation-of-kids-into-nazis). Schools were sent notices as to who wasn’t enrolled yet in Hitler Youth, and those students were shamed into writing essays titled, “Why I am not in Hitler Youth.” Some schools wouldn’t issue diplomas to students who hadn’t joined, and some universities denied enrollment to those who hadn’t been in Hitler Youth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Youth). Pressure to be a member was immense.

In many ways, Hitler Youth was fun. They met weekly after school, held overnight camps, did singing, crafts, and hiking, wore smart uniforms, and told stories around campfires. The boys were also trained in weapons use, the girls were taught how to work together to become good mothers and wives, and all children received a healthy dose—or rather, a potentially lethal dose—of Nazi propaganda filling the youth with visions of how great Germany would be (https://www.history.com/news/how-the-hitler-youth-turned-a-generation-of-kids-into-nazis; https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/hitler-youth-2).

However, like many other parents and youth not thrilled about the uniforms, the weekly meetings, and especially the indoctrination in Nazi principles, Yvonne’s grandparents and her aunts and uncles found ways for their children to avoid it altogether. While there were pockets of rebellious groups actively campaigning against Hitler Youth (see the movie “Swing Kids” for a depiction of rebels in Hamburg), those groups were generally crushed by the Nazis (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/hitler-youth-2).

It was just safer to skirt the issue of attendance entirely and hope the leaders forget your children even existed. Illness was a convenient way to do this.

Yvonne came down with scarlet fever when she was around 11 or 12, a common malady at the time which could cause temporary heart murmurs. While generally a worrisome illness, the disease was welcomed in that the diagnosis from a doctor also came with a warning: until this child’s heart fully recovers, they shouldn’t exert themselves in any unnecessary ways, which included participation in the marching and training of Hitler Youth. Some doctors readily wrote out excuse notes (if the children suffered from heart murmurs or not, and even if the children were never ill to begin with), and parents not thrilled with Hitler Youth handed those notes over to the local Hitler Youth leaders.

Yvonne attended Hitler Youth only a handful of times before she became sick, and after she recovered, her grandparents simply never sent her back to the weekly meetings. Same with her cousins of age. This was also how Yvonne’s cousins avoided having to show up for Kristallnacht activities, which none of them believed was right anyway. (As an adult, Yvonne hated anything to do with Boy Scouts in America, because it reminded her too much of Hitler Youth.)

With WWII starting, the Nazis had enough to worry about without tracking down their missing Hitler Youth members, of which there were quite a few. Unfortunately there were plenty of other youth happily lining up to throw rocks into windows and learn how to goosestep. Throughout Germany the Nazi party appealed to natural bullies, those children and adults who were desperate to be seen as authorities and who had no sense of mercy or kindness. Whereas people like the Neufeldts and Rudolfs quietly walked away from all associations of Hitler and Nazism, insecure and failed “toughs” rushed up to be part of the growing movement of anger and superiority. Because they felt no strength in themselves, they had to align with any power that would let them pretend they were something important, even if the Nazis were just simply using them.

Hitler Youth activities began to wind down when the war started cranking up. While many areas kept the activities going strong to keep the rising generation of fighters ready, the war soon took over the importance of the meetings. Starting in 1943, boys aged 17 were being pulled into war, first from Hitler Youth, then from the general population. And by 1945, the desperate Nazis, running out of men and seeing the end was near, were taking inexperienced boys of any age for what were essentially suicide missions (https://www.history.com/news/how-the-hitler-youth-turned-a-generation-of-kids-into-nazis).

What Hitler was trying to accomplish

When Hitler came on to the scene in the early 1930s, when Germany was still struggling to get out of the financial depression caused by the Treaty of Versailles, he wasn’t just trying to improve Germany’s situation. He was out to create another Roman Empire, or rather, outdo it. Hitler also realized that the Roman empire became great because it wasn’t afraid to also be cruel, and that the ends justify the means (https://lithub.com/how-great-an-influence-did-roman-society-have-on-nazi-ideology/). If you end up with what you wanted, then how you got it was irrelevant.

Hitler, with unlimited ambition, wanted to create a “Third Reich” which would look like this on the map:

Obviously a few countries stood in Hitler’s way, but by “resurrecting” the ruthless methods of the Romans, he could accomplish this new empire. He so admired Roman ways that he adopted the eagle as his symbol and created buildings in Germany that mimicked Roman architecture. The Holy Roman Empire was the First Reich, then the second was the short-lived German empire from 1871 to 1918 when WWI dismantled it (https://www.britannica.com/story/why-was-nazi-germany-called-the-third-reich).

The Third Reich, then, would be Hitler’s creation of a great German state, and ironically (and thankfully) while it was so violent, it was also the shortest lived at only 12 years. But those were an immense 12 years with staggering production of armaments, projects, and cruelty.

Hitler came to power in 1933 primarily because his predecessors couldn’t solve the depression in Germany. President Hindenburg and his chancellors made no progress in helping Germany recover, so reluctantly, worriedly, they placed in a popular man in as chancellor, assuming that he, too, would fail to help Germany recover. And when he failed, Hindenburg and his men would regain the popularity which they had been losing. But that popular politician they instated, Adolf Hitler, was about to surprise them all (https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-4/hitler-power).

There were a number of issues which Hindenburg agreed with Hitler about, such as the need to oppose communism, as well as democracy, and a desire for Lebensraum, which means “living space.” Germany needed more land for their people, and while Hindenburg really didn’t think Hitler had the wherewithal to accomplish that, he did like the Hitler agreed that Germany needed to be a bit bigger (https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-4/hitler-power).

Hitler was supposed to work with the other political parties of the day in 1933 to create a coalition government. But quickly he put his own Nazi party in power, which was considerably smaller than the other parties. Hitler acted more like an emperor than a chancellor and declared he would make Germany great once more, by eradicating communism and wiping out who really was undermining Germany and its recovery: the Jews (https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-4/hitler-power).

Hitler and the Jews

Now the great irony is that Hitler was likely one-quarter Jewish himself, his maternal grandfather likely being Jewish. Even more, recent genetic tests done on surviving Hitler relations suggest that he may have also had African ancestry, another group whom he despised and believed should be eradicated (https://www.history.com/news/study-suggests-adolf-hitler-had-jewish-and-african-ancestors).

Hitler wanted a strong, beautiful Germany, modeled after the Romans, Athenians, and Spartans. He believed those groups were all ancestors to the Nordic tribes, and that all of their achievements were also the achievements of his own race, the Aryan people (https://lithub.com/how-great-an-influence-did-roman-society-have-on-nazi-ideology/). However he didn’t come close to resembling the blond hair, blue-eyed ideal he wanted for Germany and maybe wasn’t even as Aryan as he hoped he was.

And neither were the Jews, he was certain. Precisely why he so hated Jews has never been quite discovered, although antisemitism has been around for thousands of years and likely in his early years Hitler became drawn into this irrational hatred of Jews (https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/why-did-hitler-hate-jews/).

Perhaps part of his anger was related to the loss of World War I, where he served as a soldier. For many Germans, the fact that they lost the first world war was unfathomable. How could the great German empire fall?! It was illogical. Unless Germany had been dealt with traitorously. Soon rumors abounded, which were never founded but certainly fueled a great deal of fire, that Germany had been infiltrated and betrayed by communists, social democrats, and Jews. Those evil groups were why the war was lost, and that’s why decades later those people had to be destroyed (https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/why-did-hitler-hate-jews/).

Early on Hitler believed that Jews were akin to germs, and even said so in 1920. And if they are like germs, they must be eliminated in order to preserve the rest of the country. Thinking this way for so many years made his decisions in 1940 to “exterminate” the Jews a natural conclusion. They were after world dominance, after all (ironically, Hitler attributed to the Jews everything he actually was) (https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/why-did-hitler-hate-jews/).

To be fair, Hitler found that many others were also “inferior” like the unworthy Jews who also needed to be removed from pure German life. Anyone who was mentally or physically handicapped, along with alcoholics and even perpetual criminals would have no place in the new Third Reich he was planning (https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/why-did-hitler-hate-jews/). Hitler had a lot of hate to generously throw around.

“The Final Solution to the Jewish Question”

Hitler found many among the Nazis who went along with his ideas, and lent their own as well. Eventually the collective of Nazis and Hitler came up with “The Final Solution to the Jewish Question” which sounds euphemistically like a game show, but was actually a way to get rid of the influence of the Jews: simply kill them all (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/final-solution-overview). The fact that the Nazis employed such a vague phrase to hide what they were doing suggests that on some deeper level even they knew that to try to wipe out an entire population was appalling and evil, and needed to be hidden some way, even from themselves.

It’s not clear when exactly this “solution” appeared or who created it—maybe it was a committee solution—but the process was to first force all Jews out of their homes and into ghettos where they could be controlled, then begin killing them. Hitler gave that task to his SS chief Heinrich Himmler, and to Nazi leader Hermann Goering, in 1941 (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/final-solution-overview).

Rather shockingly fast, concentration camps sprang up all over Germany and Poland and surrounding areas, some established as hard labor camps where Jews were imprisoned and forced to work in factories to support the very German war machine that was trying to destroy them. Eventually there were 2,000 camps of various sizes. The idea was to extract as much free labor from the Jews as possible before they died or were killed. Remarkably, many Jews survived up to four years of hard labor camps, demonstrating that the human desire to survive can withstand horrific treatment. Some reports suggest that the Nazis were frankly surprised that many Jews held on so long. To read some accounts of the survivors, and in what deplorable conditions they were discovered in, and recovered from, is astonishing (Gerda Weissman Klein in All But My Life, for example).

Other camps were solely designed to simply kill the Jews brought there. In all, over six million Jews were killed by Hitler and the Nazis, which represented 2/3 of all Jews living in Europe (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/final-solution-overview).

The most deadly camp was the Auschwitz complex where approximately one million people died (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/documenting-numbers-of-victims-of-the-holocaust-and-nazi-persecution).

It’s common knowledge that 12 million people died in the camps, so if Jews made up 6 million, who made up the other half? Also interred and forced to labor, or outright killed, were those deemed unfit to be Germans in the future. These included those Hitler hated, such as the mentally and physically handicapped people, homosexuals, communists and Soviets, Romani (formerly known as gypsies), perpetual criminals, Jehovah Witnesses (who refused to take up arms), and various other who simply spoke out against Hitler (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/documenting-numbers-of-victims-of-the-holocaust-and-nazi-persecution), such as the Catholic priests from Neisse who went missing, and even a teenager from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (formerly called Mormons) who was tried and executed for speaking out against the Nazis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmuth_H%C3%BCbener).

“Living Space”

Another goal of Hitler’s, after eliminating the traitorous Jews whose successful lives clearly meant they were bringing down Germany, was to expand Germany itself. He, along with Hindenburg and other leaders, had desired “Lebensraum,” or “living space,” an idea made popular in the early 1900s by a geographer and author. Just over the border in Poland was excellent farming land which could help strengthen Germany, and poor Russia was suffering from being run by Jews, after all, and needed liberating, or so Hitler believed (https://www.thoughtco.com/lebensraum-eastern-expansion-4081248).

The problem, Hitler arrogantly asserted, was that such beautiful lands with such vast resources in the east, such as Poland and the Soviet Union, were wasted “lower” people like Jews and Slavs. Their “lesser” minds couldn’t fully appreciate what they had, Hitler reasoned, so those lands deserved to be German. In fact, or so went the convenient belief, anciently those lands had been German, and needed to be restored to their proper country (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/lebensraum).

Clearing out the land of the 30 million people who currently lived there, though, was a small price to pay for restoring it rightfully to Germany, and if a war was needed to do so, so be it. The policy created by the Nazis before “the invasion of the Soviet Union stated unequivocally that ‘many tens of millions of people in this territory will become superfluous and will have to die or migrate to Siberia… With regard to this, absolute clarity must reign.’” But since these were “inferior” people, their deaths or banishment to Siberia really wouldn’t be a loss to humanity (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/lebensraum).

With an obsessive drive to restore Germany to greatness, and a decades-old hate of Jews who he was convinced were bringing it down, and a realization that a Third Reich taking over eastern lands would make an empire that could rival Rome and last 1,000 years, Hitler set to work.

World War II was ready to begin.

Bromberg Bloody Sunday, 1939

In 1939, Emil, seeing how Germany was changing and heading into war, was probably very grateful that he had moved his family from their beloved Bromberg/Bydgoszcz, because of what happened in their hometown. The “Bloody Sunday” in Bromberg was one of the first great pushes of propaganda by the Nazis after Kristallnacht, and for decades no one was entirely sure just what had happened. How much was truth and how much was exaggeration by the Nazis to justify invading Poland?

The report that the Neufeldts and everyone else in Germany received about Bromberg/Bydgoszcz was this: By Sept. 3-4, 1939, Germans in the city were in the minority, only about 10,000 were left, according to some estimates. (https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1939)).

Many Germans had left 20 years earlier, when the Neufeldts did, once Bromberg was given back to Poland because of the Treaty of Versailles. Poles were in the majority in the city.

Then the German Army, the Wehrmacht, invaded Poland in early September. Fighting was fast and fierce, but very quickly the Polish army knew they had no chance against Hitler and his forces. In Bydgoszcz, the Polish army was retreating, but the German army kept firing on them as they ran away. According to the stories, some German nationals—not part of the army but citizens still living in Bydgoszcz—took advantage of the situation and their anger for the past 20 years, and fired upon Poles from houses and even from the Jesuit Church. Some of those armed German civilians were captured by the Polish army and executed or lynched on the spot. (https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1939)). The city became a battle zone.

The Nazis reported the battle, which they dubbed “Bloody Sunday” or “September murders” as far worse than it actually was. The incident occurred in September, but in November, the Nazis claimed that more than 5,400 Germans had died. Investigations years later, however, suggest at most only about 300 Germans died, and about 40-50 Poles. Then, in early 1940, yet another report stated the number of German killed in Bromberg was suddenly 58,000 because the horrid Polish army soldiers were murdering innocent German civilians (https://1september39.com/39e/articles/2332,The-Myth-of-quotThe-Bloody-Sunday-of-Bydgoszcz-Dispelled.html). If the city had less than 10,000 Germans living in it, there’s some strange math going on.

But that was the nature of the propaganda being fed to the Germans. They suspected the news they were receiving wasn’t entirely accurate, but they had no way of knowing the truth. (The “Bloody Sunday” event, for example, is still being studied six decades later, with researchers trying to find the entire truth [https://1september39.com/39e/articles/2332,The-Myth-of-quotThe-Bloody-Sunday-of-Bydgoszcz-Dispelled.html]).

Radios and reports and what you hear

To make sure no Germans heard anything else besides what the Nazis proclaimed, such as their reports of what happened in Bromberg, in September 1939, the Nazis declared it illegal to listen to foreign radio broadcasts (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-propaganda-and-censorship). The Neufeldts and Rudolf families had radios which they guarded carefully.

Radios were a relatively new invention, having been in people’s homes only since the early 1920s. By January 1933, when Hitler was first elected chancellor, his head of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, quickly realized that what the government broadcast to the country could help the Nazis control what people thought. While the bureaucrat in charge of radio broadcasting early on wanted only education and entertainment to be broadcast—he worried how people might react to politics and news updates—the Nazis wanted exactly that: control over the politics and news to control the public’s reactions. They took control over all broadcasting in Germany in the 1930s (https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/05/germany-war-radio-social-media/590149/).

People still tried to tune in the BBC in London which gave an accounting of their perspective of the war, but radios and stations weren’t as powerful as they are now. And if a German was caught listening to the wrong news, punishments were immediate and severe. Confiscation of radios, just to make sure no one was hearing the “wrong” thing, was very common. Near the end of the war, the penalty for listening to the wrong stations could include being sent to a concentration camp or even death (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksempf%C3%A4nger).

Be careful not only with what you hear but with what you say and write

The news reaching the Neufeldts in 1939 that Bydgoszcz, Poland, was once again Bromberg, Germany, was not encouraging for the Neufeldts, nor for anyone in Germany. They dreaded the war and knew it wouldn’t end well. The Neufeldts, Rudolfs, and Schmidts worried what war would mean to them personally with so many sons and grandsons. It seemed inevitable that if the war continued, their grandsons, and maybe even the fathers Karl and Alfons Rudolf, and Paul Schmidt, might be dragged into it. And as soldiers, they would have no choice to but to obey their government and leadership, which was now all Nazi-driven.

Very quickly Germans learned to be careful about what they said, because anyone could prove to be an informative pair of ears for the Nazis and would report them. Germans knew about concentration camps that were springing up all over Germany and surrounding areas, but were never told how many there were, what exactly they were for, nor who was being sent to them. They only knew that if someone said the wrong thing, they’d be sent to a camp and not return. In the area of Neisse there was a sub-camp of the Gross-Rosen Concentration Camp System (https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/gross-rosen-concentration-camp), but no one in Neisse knew who was there, or why, or what they were doing. And if they did know, they wouldn’t confess it, or they might be the next ones interred there.

News and communications were carefully controlled, and became even tighter after Poland was invaded in September of 1939. The only news anyone received came directly through Hitler’s lines and Goebbels’s Nazi propaganda leaders, so naturally it was all glowing about the good Germany was accomplishing, and what horrible things were happening in Czechoslovakia that they were putting down, and how invading Poland was keeping the Soviet army and Communism at bay.

No thoughtful Germans believed all of that, though. Cynical and skeptical, they nevertheless had no other means of really knowing what was going on. Letters that the soldiers sent home, beginning with the start of the war, went first to the censors. The Nazis employed people to open every letter in the post, read it for incriminating or information the Nazis deemed “dangerous” in any way, then blacken it out with ink or paint before remailing it to its intended recipient.

Especially revealing or dangerous letters never made it to their destinations, but the SS—the Nazis’ secret police—often would make a personal visit instead to those who wrote or read what they shouldn’t. Information was very closely controlled, and everyone was looking for someone not behaving “correctly.” Anything derogatory about Hitler, the Nazis, the war effort, or any information about troop movements, shortages, or any kind of “trouble” was painted over (https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibition/about-philately-covers-and-letters-in-times-of-trouble-conflict-mail/world-war-ii-1941).

Emil sent a few postcards to Yvonne during the war which don’t seem to be censored in anyway, but they also weren’t very exciting nor filled with “dangerous” information beyond, “We’re sending you a package, so be good.”

One postcard from March 1941 is probably as “dangerous” as Emil dared to get:

“Sweet child of Mine, I send you a greeting card from Posen from my trip to the castle. I have to take preference with waiting for three hours here. Grandma [Marta] sends you a package, so you don’t have to starve to death [the “dangerous line” suggesting people were starving, but anyone reading it would likely sense the sarcasm]. Grandma stayed in Heidelberg. I’ll pick her up from there later. So my child be very good, obey well. I wish you the warmest greetings from me and your dear grandma [Yvonne likely sensed further, if unintentional, sarcasm in that “dear grandma” line]. Greetings to the Schmidt family, Miss Kilm and Miss Maria [likely maids].”

In this environment of the late 1930s and early 1940s of not knowing who around you might be waiting for an opportunity to turn you in, the Neufeldts tried to continue on with their lives, but the reality of war was all around them. No one felt safe to say anything they really felt, especially after they saw early on in the war what could happen. The Neufeldts were aware of a few Catholic priests who spoke out against Hitler, and questioned what was happening to the vanishing Jews in their area, and then the next day the priests were suddenly gone. Some were sent to the Russian front to fight for the Hitler they had just denounced, while others were sent to concentration camps and never heard from again. These brave Catholic leaders spoke out for the human rights of the Jews, then lost their own.

The Neufeldts, along with the rest of Germany, hated the sight of the Nazi uniforms, but were extremely careful not say so out loud. Theirs had become a totalitarian regime very quickly, and the wrong word could mean the end of everyone.

Neufeldts move to Neuland

In 1941, when Yvonne was 14, Emil, Marta, and Yvonne moved to the suburb Neuland, just a couple of miles outside of Neisse. While Emil moved to be closer to his factory, there may have been other reasons for the move: to get out the city which may be targeted sometime during the war, and to have property where they could grow their own food, should shortages which were already rumored about become a reality. Their new address was Schneiderstrasse 34, Neuland (now Krawiecka 34).

The large duplex they purchased had the advantage of being just a 15-minute walk away from the Weigelwerk which built all of Emil’s inventions and machinery, which were then installed in 54 sugar factories around Silesia and beyond. (On the map above, the Weigelwerk may have been the factory-like area east of the house. In 2021 it’s a paper factory.)

While relatively close to the factory, the location of the house was in a residential area with a large garden so it felt much further away from the industrial area. It was a dream house, right down to the white picket fence running along the perimeter of the large gardens.

The entry of the house was a glass-enclosed sun porch to protect family and visitors from the elements. The front door was heavy oak, leading into the main hallway of the house, with a nearby half bathroom for convenience. Also in the front hall was a large wardrobe to store coats and boots, and a large mirror for checking one’s appearance before leaving the house.

Immediately to the right of the entrance was the “music” room, with the “ “ intentional, because while the Neufeldts enjoyed music, the room didn’t have that much musically-focused to warrant an entire room. It did contain a piano, a music stand, a shelf which held sheet music, and Yvonne’s wooden recorder and, the most important musical item: a record player. It also held the radio, a necessary and protected device. For listening pleasure, the room was also furnished with a large couch, two easy chairs, a dining table for impromptu meals or snacks, and a large glass cabinet which held china and other knick-knacks. The music room also was equipped with an alcove and a ceiling that stretched two stories high for enhanced acoustics.

Next to this room was the sitting room, furnished with what it had when the Neufeldts lived in Neisse, with an additional large desk and something unusual for houses in 1940: a telephone. Because most of their neighbors couldn’t afford one, Emil allowed them to use their phone to make calls when needed.

Next to the sitting room was a casual dining room for everyday meals, which also doubled as a sewing room, with a table that looked like a small desk and chair, but opened up to reveal a sewing machine.

A small door in the casual dining room led to the kitchen and pantry. In fact, each room had two doors—one that connected to the main hallway, and another which connected it to the room next to it. One could move from room to room in the house without ever entering the hallway. The kitchen didn’t have a refrigerator, which would have been a rare possession in 1940. If something really needed refrigeration, one brought the food to the town’s butcher and stored it in his refrigerator for a small fee.

A grand, curved staircase led to the three enormous bedrooms upstairs. The largest of these rooms was for Emil and Marta. Their room had two beds (pushed next to each other), two nightstands, two wardrobe closets, a larger mirror, a couch by the windows to gaze over their property, and a second couch at the end of the beds. 

Next was the guest room, which had a balcony that looked over into the “Music” room above the alcove. Guests were furnished with a bed, chest of drawers, a wardrobe, an easy chair, a small desk, and a mirror.

Last was Yvonne’s bedroom, yet another large room that had a closet where suitcases were stored, a bed, her own couch, a nightstand, two wardrobes for clothing, a chest of drawers with a mirror perched on top of it, a large table and chairs where she could do her homework, and bookshelves with over 200 books, all belonging to Yvonne, the bookworm. She was given her choice of bedrooms, and she chose that one because it looked north toward Neisse, and she loved seeing the city’s skyline.

On that same floor was the bathroom, with a bath tub in a separate room next door. That bath tub room also had a second door which led up to the attic and storage space above. This attic was where Emil hung his homegrown tobacco to cure, and where, in the winter, the family hung their laundry to dry, although it could take 4-6 days for clothing to “dry” in sub-freezing temperatures.

The garden was also just as grand and impressive as the house. With over an acre of land, the Neufeldts grew plenty of fruits and vegetables, but with a little help. Emil hired some neighbors to maintain the garden since he traveled so much for work.

It was at this home in Neuland that the Neufeldts acquired dwarf chickens, a dog (still no cat), and rabbits.

The Neufeldts also employed maids, both in Neisse and Neuland, and often they were from France. But in Neuland they hired another neighbor, Frau Hundeck, as their cook, who was originally from Switzerland. She supported a windowed mother and appreciated the work and pay.

Someone once commented that the cook should have been French, not the maids, but Frau Hundeck had a way with pastry that no French chef could have surpassed.

(Many years later, when a middle-aged Yvonne moved into a new town in America, and a neighbor heard her accent, she said, “Oh, you sound German. My last maid was a German, you know. If you’re interested—” and she raised her eyebrows as if to suggest Yvonne could be her next maid. This puzzled Yvonne because they lived only three houses down and clearly could afford the home in Bountiful, Utah, which they had purchased. Yvonne took this as a slight, and, with her quick tongue and refusal to ever back down, shut down the insulting neighbor with a smile and this retort: “A German maid? When I was growing up, we always insisted on French maids. Too bad you couldn’t find one. Our cook was Swiss, though. Is yours?” The new neighbor, who obviously didn’t have a cook, didn’t speak to Yvonne again for many months afterward.)

The argument with Rotraut

Yvonne, now 13, was really struggling. Being 13 is hard enough, but piled on top of that was not only immense worry about war all around her, but the losses she had endured. Not only had her beloved grandmother died, and was replaced by an opportunistic, selfish woman, the loss of her parents still stung. Usually could shake off the stares and whispers of people in Neisse who still occasionally pointed at the “poor little Neufeldt girl,” but one time, shortly after she began attending high school, it all became too much.

Yvonne got into an argument with a girl named Rotraut (a not particularly feminine or lovely name). What precipitated the argument was long forgotten, but it escalated to the point that Rotraut announced angrily that Yvonne’s father Paul was a murderer since he had committed suicide. That ended the argument, because Yvonne was never one for holding back or stepping away from a fight.  Shocked and enraged, Yvonne promptly punched Rotraut in the nose. So solid was the hit that she broke the girl’s nose and it bled profusely. Naturally the girl went running and yelling about what had happened to her, and Yvonne was struck with fear. Fighting was grounds for expulsion from the school she had worked so hard to earn a bike to get into.

Reluctantly, but knowing there was no other option, she trudged to the office to learn her fate. She’d never been sent to the school director’s office before, and she was sick with worry about what would happen.

In the outer room, Rotraut’s father was already there. He taught at the elementary school across the street, and immediately began to yell at Yvonne for breaking his dear daughter’s nose. Rotraut was his only child, and he was sure of her superiority to all other children. Yvonne opened her mouth to try to explain what had provoked her punch, but Rotraut’s father didn’t want to hear any of it.

But Frau Silbernagel, the school’s director, did want to hear Yvonne’s side of the story. She led Yvonne into her office, away from the yelling father, and away from Yvonne’s friends who had followed her to lend support and back up her side of the story, leaving them in the hall.

After Yvonne calmed down a little, she told Frau Silbernagel what Rotraut had said about her father. Speaking to the director wasn’t too terrifying, because she knew the woman well. Frau Silbernagel, whose name in English means “Silvernail” (and the students nicknamed her Blechzwecke, or thumbtack behind her back) lived across the street from the Neufeldts in Neisse. In fact, Emil frequently gave her a ride to Bromberg (Bidgodz) whenever he went, because Frau Silbernagel had been born in raised in the same area as Mariana. Emil’s daughters Lene and Hedel had even finished their schooling at the same high school as Yvonne. Because Frau Silbernagel had been friends with the Neufeldts for many years, she knew all too well what had happened with Paul and his wife Charlotte, and how hard Emil and Mariana had fought to gain custody of Yvonne. Still, she was a tough director and disciplinarian, and listened carefully and without feeling as Yvonne told her what had happened.

After explaining the incident, Yvonne braced for the inevitable—expulsion. Frau Silbernagel came from around her large and imposing desk to stand in front of cowering Yvonne, then did something completely uncharacteristic for her position as director: she drew Yvonne into her arms and hugged her. Both of them wept silently, holding each other. Eventually Frau Silbernagel stepped back and assured Yvonne that there would be no punishment, but that she would have to tell her grandfather what had happened. Yvonne understood, and in light of the director’s response, she wasn’t too worried about what might happen at home. Yvonne’s friends didn’t even need to tell their version of the story about Rotraut, which they regretted not being able to do. None of the girls like the arrogant Rotraut, and afterward, their mutual dislike of Rotraut further strengthened their friendship.

When Yvonne got home from school that day and confessed to her grandfather about what had happened, she again wasn’t punished but received a lot of love and understanding from her family.

However, a plan of action was needed. The director had warned Emil that Rotraut’s father might consider suing him for damages over Yvonne’s punch. Frau Silbernagel and Emil advised Yvonne to avoid Rotraut at all costs, and at all times. Should the girl say anything more to Yvonne, she should run straight for the office or a teacher and let them know. Yvonne also had to promise to never defend her family’s honor through fighting again, which she agreed to.

And then that was that.

No one ever spoke of the incident again, no more problems ever arose, and Yvonne had the distinction of being the only girl in the school to get into a fight and get away with it. Her cousins couldn’t believe her good luck.

Germany invades Russia

But overall, there wasn’t a whole lot of luck in Germany. In 1941, when Hitler broke his treaty with the Soviet Union and marched his troops into Russia, most Germans believed Germany could now never win the war. It was a Sunday morning in June when that news came over the radio, that the “glorious German army” had invaded Russia. Emil was just about to cut off the top of his boiled egg and hesitated, listening to the awful news. Finally he said, “At least that should bring America in the war and finish off Hitler sooner.” A few more times that year, Emil would surprise Yvonne by suddenly declaring there would be a prayer before they ate. Not a very religious person, Emil’s prayers were always the same: “God, bless the Americans to come into this stupid war and end it. Amen.” He felt the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that December five months later was God finally answering his prayer, because it pulled the Americans in and did change the tide of the war in Germany.

Also at the breakfast table that morning in June, when the Germans invaded Russia, was Walter Schmidt, Hedel and Paul Schmidt’s middle son, and Marta’s nephew. Walter was in his early twenties. The news hit him particular hard because he had just been drafted into the army. The idea that maybe he’d be sent to Russia filled him with dread, and he murmured, “That idiot. More death.”

Walter did eventually find himself on the Russian front fighting for Hitler, but he did so reluctantly. He took along with him his beloved Leica camera and each time they moved onward, he grabbed his camera first and his gun last.

A few times he was able to return home to visit his mother Hedel Schmidt, and he insisted that she bring him civilian clothes at the train station when she met him. She’d pass the clothes up to him still on the train, he’d changed, then leave the train as a civilian instead of a soldier. That’s how much he hated the uniform and the war he was forced into. His father, too, was also conscripted to fight for Hitler. Below is Walter and Paul in their uniforms in winter, probably in 1942.

Rationing and tobacco

The war brought many changes to daily life, some faster than others. When the war officially began in 1939, there was very little food rationing in Germany. Hitler suspected that severe rationing during the previous Great War had led to discouragement and a drop in morale among the Germans, and he wanted to avoid that this time around. He had taken over France in 1940 and promptly had goods and artwork confiscated and sent to Germany (which meant rationing in France suddenly increased because of stolen goods). Countries that the Nazis took over suffered immensely, and Jews were severely limited in what they were allowed to own.

When Germany initially invaded Poland in 1939, all Jews were to turn over to the Nazis their gold (so they couldn’t purchase anything), bicycles and cars (to hamper their ability to travel), their pens (so they couldn’t write letters and communicate about their situation, although they usually held back a few), and their radios (so they couldn’t get any news). Phones and electricity were also cut off, and the ability for Jews to get food was severely restricted (Klein, All But My Life).

The Neufeldts in Germany, along with everyone else, didn’t face any of that initially. While Hitler did set out some rationing guides, none of them needed to be implemented . . . yet. He did set forth an aggressive anti-smoking campaign in Germany from 1939-1941, believing that smoking reduced one’s fertility and caused lung cancer. Hitler wanted families to grow larger in Germany and spread all over Europe and Russia. It was a couple’s duty to have as many children as possible (although Hitler himself never had any). So he set out to ban smoking in hopes of increasing fertility (https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tobacco_movement_in_Nazi_Germany).

This was a problem for Emil, who loved his cigars and wasn’t about to give them up. Nor was he of any age to keep procreating, so what was the point? Business was conducted over cigars, and to be without them, even during wartime, was unacceptable.

On a trip to Posen in March 1940, he discovered that Marta, who had traveled with him and went on to Bodgaj for a visit, hadn’t packed him any cigars. He sent a postcard back to Yvonne lamenting this fact. He directed Yvonne to ask the maid Miss Martha to send him not only 50 cigars but also a pack of cigarettes, which she’d need to buy but he’d reimburse her later, and send them to Heidelberg, where he was probably traveling to next.

Interestingly, he wrote instructions for the maid to send the package of smokes to Mr. Paul Neufeldt, the name of his deceased son. Presumably this was a ploy to avoid any trouble. Maybe it wasn’t legal to mail cigars and cigarettes during Hitler’s campaign against smoking (and no one censored the postcard), or maybe anyone found with such a large supply would be punished for possession. Whatever the case, the casualness of the directions in the postcard suggest that this wasn’t the first time something was mailed somewhere under a false name, and that Emil wasn’t about to give up smoking for anything, especially for Hitler.

Later in the war, however, it became very difficult to purchase cigars or cigarettes. The British navy blockaded Germany from receiving shipments of goods from other countries, resulting in many shortages, including tobacco. This is probably why Emil grew his own tobacco and dried it in his attic in the house in Neuland.

Country life=food during war time

German citizens tried to prepare as best they could for the war, and for Yvonne and her family, that meant increasing their ability to provide food for themselves. Those who lived in cities struggled much more than those who lived in the country, like the Neufeldts. It’s not clear if Emil moved his family to the country for the land and gardening, or if suddenly having that land was a blessed coincidence. Emil’s acre-large garden of vegetables, fruits, and berries helped provide for not only their family but also the neighbors who he hired to help take care of it.

Chickens

The Neufeldts chickens acquired in 1940 also provided needed eggs and occasionally meat, both of which were very difficult to come by in later years of the war, especially in the cities. (For example, by the end of the war in Berlin, food shortages were so extreme that a fresh egg sold on the black market cost four cigarettes, which were about 50 cents each. One egg=$2. So valuable was a whole carton of eggs that the payment for such was a piano [https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=159844].)

 Germans were limited, however, to how many chickens they were allowed to own. Any extra chickens and eggs were to be donated to “the war effort.” Some economic genius decided that each person in Germany needed one and a half chickens for survival, which could make the math confusing. When the Neufeldts had a maid living with them, that meant they could have six chickens. But early on, the maid was deemed “not part of the war effort” and Marta had to give her up. The maid, along with many other German citizens, was forced to work in a factory to help the war effort.  Unmarried women under 25 were required to work, and by 1943 all women ages 17-45 had to register for work, although only 1/3 of the 3 million women eligible to do so did (https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zp47pbk/revision/4).  In this case of the Neufeldts, the maid was sent to manufacture munitions.

The Germans were paid for their jobs, but no one was getting rich from their hard labor. And even then, it was more profitable to use the forced labor of Jews and others interred in camps.  Of the one million German women who registered to work, only about 400,000 were actually employed. Factory owners and Nazis preferred to use prisoners (https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zp47pbk/revision/4). Prisoners didn’t need to be paid or fed decently.

Losing the maid meant that the Neufeldts were down to four and a half chickens (don’t ask about that “half” because no one knew what to do with it). The count applied only to laying hens; people could have as many roosters as they wanted. In the Neufeldts’ henhouse there were two roosters. One of them, a big white rooster, didn’t amount to much in the henhouse. He was bullied about by an aggressive dwarf rooster who threw his lightweight around and intimidated the heavyweight. Yvonne wondered if she contributed to the large rooster’s poor self-image by imitating his crowing to his face, shaming him into bashfulness. But since Yvonne didn’t like the chickens very much, she felt no remorse for that.

She was, however, in charge of feeding and gathering the eggs of the chickens, and they had many more than 4.5 birds. Everyone around them did, too. Most people had eight to twelve leghorns, which wasn’t a problem until the “Chicken Inspector” came around. He was much more merely a “counter” rather than an “inspector,” and his task was to confiscate any extra birds.

The neighborhood in Neuland had a way around this, though. Someone knew of his schedule and would pass it on to everyone in the area. Then everyone would go about hiding their extraneous birds until he had come through with his count.

This was Yvonne’s task in their home, and the young teenager had a routine. She hypnotized the birds by putting each one gently down and tipping their beaks to the ground. Holding them gently but firmly in the upper are slightly above their wings, Yvonne would then slowly and calmly draw a line in the dirt with a stick in front of the chicken, beginning at its beak. She’d draw that line five to ten times until the chicken began to relax and fall asleep, watching the stick move away from it. She’d carry the sleeping, silent chickens up to the bedroom on the second floor of the house until the chicken counter was gone. Sometimes she slid them into an empty chest of drawers and closed them up inside, in case they woke up prematurely. As long as everything was quiet, the birds remained hypnotized. The Neufeldts’ extra birds were never confiscated.

One day, Yvonne decided to use her chicken hypnotizing skill for a little entertainment. She put five sleeping chickens neatly in a row on the window sill of the open kitchen window. Then she asked her step-grandmother to come into the kitchen. When Marta saw the birds unexpectedly sitting there, she screamed and clapped her hands in alarm. That immediately woke up the chickens which squawked and screeched and ran noisily around the yard. Marta was not pleased at all, but Yvonne certainly was as she rounded up the chickens and put them away. The rest of her family also thought the situation was quite entertaining.

Rabbits

Because meat was becoming harder to find, around 1941-2 the Neufeldts acquired two rabbits, and Emil told Yvonne she was in charge of taking care of them. She happily did so, and they rapidly multiplied to 48. Delighted with her success, Yvonne named them and loved them as she cleaned out their pens. But then one day she realized that there were fewer rabbits than there had been before. Maybe some had escaped or been lost, she concluded.

One evening soon after she discovered, much to her surprise, there was liverwurst sausage for dinner! They hadn’t seen sausage for many months, so this was quite a treat. She happily ate it, noticing that it tasted just a little different than the regular beef liverwurst they used to get. That’s when Emil told her the difficult truth: the rabbits weren’t just to be her pets. They were to be food. Her missing rabbits were part of that sausage.

Yvonne was devastated. The next day they had roast rabbit, and because Yvonne was fairly certain she knew the name of that animal, she refused to eat it. However, with meat becoming scarcer, she did relent to eat the sausage, which had been mixed with bits of beef, because she was never sure exactly which rabbits she was eating. She was young and hungry, and realized some allowances needed to be made.

She also stopped naming the rabbits after that.

(It could have been worse: toward the end of the war, starving Germans took to keeping Daschschwein, or “roof pigs” for home-grown meat. Except what was grown in cages on some people’s roofs weren’t pigs but were cats. [https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2018/12/20/wwii-german-rations-feeding-troops-of-third-reich/])

Rationing books

Rationing in Germany didn’t become difficult until about 1941, after Germany invaded Russia. While some rationing had been put in place by August of 1939, with people limited to what they were allowed to buy such as some foods, leather, clothing, and soap, it wasn’t a hardship yet. Just an inconvenience. But some products vanished quite quickly, such as whipped cream. No one saw that again for nearly a decade, until 1948, and chocolate also was gone, as were cakes with rich frostings (https://haydncorper.com/index.php/germany-at-war/everyday-life-in-germany-during-the-war/).

For anyone to purchase anything, especially from 1941 onward, they needed to have a ration stamp, and each person was issued a card with the items listed that they were allowed to purchase. That didn’t necessarily mean those items were in stock, but that if you happened to find them, you were eligible to purchase them. Nothing was handed out for free. And quite often people had ration stamps go unused because certain foods just weren’t available, at any price. (The Black Market, however, was going strong, so the very wealthy could almost always find something they wanted, at exorbitant prices.)

Among the items rationed were:

• sugar (and this is why it was so helpful Emil worked for the sugar industry)
• meat (why the Neufeldts needed the rabbits and chickens)
• fruit and nuts, eggs (again, chickens provided what they couldn’t find to buy)
• all dairy products such as milk and cheeses (the Neufeldts had no cow so they were constrained by what they could find)
• margarine (because butter was very difficult to get, margarine was invented during WWII as a butter replacement until it, too, became scarce)
• cooking oil (margarine is made from cooking oil, so when that began to dwindle, so did the margarine)
• grains
• bread (you could make your own bread, but only if you found flour which was also rationed), and,
• jams and fruit jellies (if you could grow your own fruits and berries make your own jams, you could keep whatever you produced) (https://haydncorper.com/index.php/germany-at-war/everyday-life-in-germany-during-the-war/).  

“Fake” or Ersatz foods

Also rationed and very difficult to find was coffee. Because it was imported from South America, and the British navy had set up a blockade not allowing any supply ships to reach Germany, people had to create fake coffee which wasn’t coffee at all, primarily because it had no caffeine. In desperation to have that sense of normal cup of coffee in the morning, people ground up roasted barley, acorns, and chicory and steeped them in hot water for some kind of flavor. Sometimes a little bit of dirt was stirred into the pretend coffee to darken it (https://haydncorper.com/index.php/germany-at-war/everyday-life-in-germany-during-the-war/). The flavor, as one might imagine, was quite terrible, and with no cream or very little sugar to dress it up.

Coffee wasn’t the only pretend food to be created. Some desperate creativity back then reflects what vegetarians and vegans now do willingly. To make fake meat, Germans took cooked rice, mashed it into patties, and fried it in mutton fat (arguably, vegetarians wouldn’t go that far) to infuse some meat flavor into the rice. They made ersatz fish in a similar manner: Germans mixed cooked rice with onions and the oil reserved from tinned fish, then fried that up as “fish patties” (https://haydncorper.com/index.php/germany-at-war/everyday-life-in-germany-during-the-war/).

Restaurants, gardens, and meat

If you had the rare luxury of going to a restaurant, you needed to bring your ration card as well. After you placed your order, waiters would remove the stamps from your ration card for the ingredients required to make your meal. And while it may seem tempting to forge ration cards or steal them, the penalty for being caught was harsh enough to keep people from trying. If you were caught, you were sent to a forced labor camp. As food shortages became worse, people caught stealing or forging were simply killed. At least that would save them the bother of needing food  (https://haydncorper.com/index.php/germany-at-war/everyday-life-in-germany-during-the-war/).

As the war continued, the amounts of rations allotted grew smaller, and fewer items were available. In April of 1942, meat, bread, and fat rations were all reduced. The reasons given by the government to the citizens were that there were fewer people to harvest the crops which hadn’t done well that year, there were fewer farmers available to work the lands, and millions of Jews, dissidents, and others were interred in labor camps and needed to be fed (although they were never given what could have been considered a decent meal). There just wasn’t enough to go around (https://haydncorper.com/index.php/germany-at-war/everyday-life-in-germany-during-the-war/).

As mentioned earlier, bread was rationed and often not available in bakeries. While you could make your own, you couldn’t find more than a couple cups of flour a week, if that. So again Germans had to get creative. They tried grinding up horse-chestnuts, pea meal, barley, and potato meal to add to the wheat flour (https://haydncorper.com/index.php/germany-at-war/everyday-life-in-germany-during-the-war/). And, in cities where resources were even more limited, such as Munich, children were sent to the sawmills to gather sawdust to supplement the flour. Bread might be up to half sawdust, half flour—or whatever could pass for flour. It wasn’t appetizing, but since it took much longer for the gut to digest sawdust and chestnuts, it did leave people feeling full longer, even if there was very little nutrition being taken in and people developed digestion problems because of it.

Realizing there was no food coming from the stores or the government, people quickly resorted to digging up lawns and parks to plant gardens, not only in Germany but throughout Europe, in England, and in America. Nearly every home that had a little plot of land turned it to growing food. These spaces were often labeled “Victory Gardens.” People willingly destroyed their useless lawn to ensure victory for their nation and food for themselves. Growing your own food was vital when farms lay unattended or became battle zones. No one could rely on any infrastructure to bring them supplies. Every last effort was going to supporting the troops. Citizens were on their own, and most citizens of the fighting countries became overnight gardeners (https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zp47pbk/revision/2).

There were great advantages for those living outside of the cities to grow their own food. One in particular was simply variety. People who were stuck in cities or had no other resources soon found that the only foods they had access to was bread, potatoes, and preserves. Such a diet became depressingly monotonous (https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zp47pbk/revision/2). Those who could grow their own food had some variety which helped to strengthen their weakening morale.

If you couldn’t grow your own meat, however, you were pretty much out of luck. Meat rations were reduced in Germany dramatically, not only because the majority of what was left was intended for the soldiers fighting, but for another reason: a great deal of beef and pork had been imported from America, and since America was now Germany’s enemy, they weren’t about to send any. Not that the British blockade would have let through any supply ships anyway. In 1939 German meat rations were at 750 grams per week, which was about 1.5 pounds total of beef, pork, chicken per person. That’s not very much. But by 1945 it dropped even more, to just 250 grams, or about half a pound of meat a week per person, if you could find it. That’s equivalent to two typical hamburgers for the entire week (https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zp47pbk/revision/2).

Another source shows the amounts people were allowed to purchase this way:

BEFORE May of 1942: MONTHLY civilian rations in Germany were:

• 10,600 grams of bread 

–Per day: 353.33 grams or 12.5 oz [the size of a small loaf of bread]

• 2000 grams of general food stuffs

–Per day: 66.7 grams per day or 2.3 oz. [this would include rice, potatoes, noodles, etc.; about 1/3 cup, uncooked, per person]

• 900 grams of sugar 

–Per day: 1.06 oz. or about 2 rounded tablespoons

AFTER May, 1942: rations in Germany were dropped to:

• bread–about a half loaf of bread per day

• meat–less than a 10th of lb. of meat per day—about the size of a thin slice of sandwich meat

• general foods, meaning rice, noodles, potatoes—just a few tablespoons per day

• sugar—the size of a packet for tea or a cup of coffee (https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=159844)

Incidentally, any Jews still not in camps in 1942, such as the Wrinkels in Neisse, had rations of only half this amount. Even at the beginning in 1939, Jews received only half of what Germans were allowed to purchase (Klein, All But My Life). Hitler’s plan, the vaguely and euphemistically named “Final Solution to the Jewish Problem” was to starve them as quickly as possible.

Shopping for rations

Getting access to these rations wasn’t easy, either. Sometimes getting food for evening supper was a task that took most of the day. There were no large grocery stores, but several smaller stores, and each one had to verify and take the ration cards. For example, at the local grocery store which sold grains, canned goods, cheese, etc., the products were stored on shelves behind a counter. This helped to reduce theft and keep order in the store. Customers waited at the counter, told the clerks what they wanted, then the clerks retrieved them. (There was no wandering up and down aisles looking for bargains or new products, which didn’t exist, and no impulse shopping, either.) Most products weren’t already wrapped in convenient sizes; they needed to be weighed out. Sugar, rice, potatoes—none were in pre-packaged bags but needed to be measured based on what someone was entitled to buy. Most stores had only a couple of clerks working, to help keep prices low. (https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=159844).

After the grocery store you’d next go to the bakery for breads and rolls (it was very rare to find cake or any kinds of pastries during the war), and then the butcher, who would very carefully cut you whatever sliver of meat you were allotted that week. Since few Germans had refrigeration, people went to the butchers and other shops daily for their food (https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=159844). And if a product was out one day, you may go back day after day hoping to find it in stock again.

Several foods disappeared altogether. It was impossible for years to find oranges, bananas, and, most tragically, chocolate. Many children in Germany didn’t have a taste of chocolate for nearly a decade, until the Candy Bomber as part of the Berlin airlift in 1948 started dropping Hershey bars on kids outside of Berlin (https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2020/10/13/hal-halversen-100-candy-bomber/).

To be clear, most of these rationing efforts and lack of foods not only affected Germany but Europe as a whole, and even in Britain they were creating imitation meat and suffering without bananas (https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/banana-substitute). In America, while SPAM was created before the war as an alternative for meat after the Great Depression, it really took off during the war as cheap protein (https://www.hormelfoods.com/newsroom/in-the-news/what-is-spam-anyway/). No country touched by WWII had enough of anything to eat, burn, or wear.

The Neufeldts were extremely fortunate to not only have produce from their gardens and meat from the chickens and rabbits which they shared with their family and neighbors, but also to have access to one of the greatest luxuries during wartime: sugar. Because of Emil’s connections, and because Alfons was also an engineer at a sugar plant, they always had sugar which they could exchange for anything else they needed.

And even though clothing became difficult to acquire, the Neufeldts still had what the basic necessities because Hedel and Karl owned a clothing and fabric store, and employed almost a dozen people. From November 1939 onwards, even clothing was rationed because it was in short supply. Shoes, especially, became hard to find for many years, and if Nazi officials thought anyone had a surplus, they’d raid those houses (https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zp47pbk/revision/2). The Neufeldts and Rudolfs luckily didn’t experience any of that because they weren’t hoarding anything. Just to keep in stock was difficult, because it was hard to get new fabric and clothing. Anything that was being produced first went to the war effort (soldiers needed uniforms, socks, underwear before regular people), and if there was anything left, then those supplies and fabrics trickled down to the citizens. During those war years, there was no such thing as shopping for fun. There was no browsing in stores for the latest fashions. “Thrift” was the operative word. You made do with the clothing you had, and when it wore out, you hoped you could find a replacement pair of pants or a blouse, but often you couldn’t. Some people resorted to unraveling knitted sweaters and using that yarn to knit something “new.”

If a child outgrew clothing, hems and seams were let out hoping to get another year’s wear out of them. Otherwise, they’d be handed down to someone else who needed the clothes, and you hoped someone you knew had something to hand down to your children. Otherwise, you had only a few changes of clothes, and that was all you could hope for.

Coal and heating

Because Emil also worked with the mining companies (presumably as a consulting engineer), he received shipments of coal for heating and cooking as payment, coal which many people did not have access to. Early on in the war, starting in the winter from 1939-1940, there was a coal shortage. Men were required to mine and transport the coal, but those same men were being used for the war effort, and because of the huge rise in construction efforts by Hitler to create new weapons and machinery, coal was needed to keep those factories running. That meant that the citizens would suffer. The first winter of the war was very cold, and to ration coal, people were allowed warm water for baths only twice a week. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zp47pbk/revision/2). Otherwise baths were cold, and all clothes and dish washing was done with cold water as well.

The lack of coal meant it was also difficult to find fuel for heating houses and even for cooking. Most houses and apartments used steam radiators for heat, which were powered by coal burning the hot water heaters. Coal would be delivered to houses and dumped into chutes which would deliver the coal into cellars where furnaces were kept. Residents then fed that coal into the furnaces which heated their homes. But coal was in short supply, so many apartments and homes didn’t get nearly enough to heat with (https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=159844). Houses were heated just enough to take the chill out of a room, but never to being “warm.” Often people shut up part of their home and lived in only a couple of rooms to conserve heat.

Cooking was a problem since the stoves in many kitchens were cast iron and fueled with coal, or if that couldn’t be found, wood. And eventually wood ran out as well. Those who lived in the country, again like the Neufeldts, often had a few more resources such as trees on their property or nearby forests that could be poached for timber. But in the cities, people had little to no resources aside of what was delivered to them, and those deliveries were fewer and fewer as the war dragged on.

The need for fuel became so great in Berlin, for example, that the huge 630-acre Tiergarten Park on the western side of the city stopped being a park. It was fully forested, until Berliners chopped down all of the trees for heating and cooking. Creativity was also used to find ways to replace coal. A plant in Weimar found a way to turn potato stalks into fuel pellets, so Hitler Youth were tasked to gather all the potato stalks they could find to ship there (https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=159844).

Cars, trains, and butter

Even though the Neufeldts were better off than most Germans, the rationing began to tighten around them as well. Emil couldn’t drive his Mercedes for work anymore because he was entitled to only 20 liters (a little over 5 gallons) of gasoline a month which would get him pretty much nowhere. He had to take the train to various destinations to install his inventions in the 50+ sugar factories around Germany that were still trying to produce. Train travel put an end to much of Marta’s traveling days as well, and she was more frequently left at home with Yvonne. Those were the days and weeks Yvonne felt the most alone, with her grandfather gone and her step-mother in charge.

By February of 1942, it seems the Marta was staying home from Emil’s trips. A postcard dated Feb. 11, 1942, from Bromberg, Germany, reads:

“My dear Yvonne, I want to send you some greetings from my old homeland. Hope you behave properly for your dear grandma during my travel. [Apparently Emil was aware there was a little tension at home between the “dear” grandma and his “dear” granddaughter.] You know how everything is beautiful when one has fulfilled one’s duties. [Yvonne confessed later to not exactly obeying her step-grandmother faithfully.] Now your grandpa greets you warmly. Greetings to grandma and the Schmidt family [at least Yvonne had Ursula and Hedel Schmidt nearby]. I want to be home on Saturday. Happy reunion.”

Butter battle

Marta wasn’t exactly loving or self-sacrificing, or maybe even deserving of the term “dear,” at least in Yvonne’s books. Marta subtly made sure that she, herself, had enough food during the rationings, and that Yvonne didn’t take more than she should of anything, particularly the butter or margarine. In the mornings, when Yvonne came downstairs for breakfast and took her toast, Marta would, without a word, remove the butter or margarine from the table and hide it elsewhere in the kitchen. Yvonne was not to have any. That was the case with a few food items. Marta would have something, then remove it before Yvonne could take any. Neither of them ever said a word about it, which only meant that tension in the house grew.

One morning the same situation played out again, with Yvonne coming to the table for breakfast, and Marta deliberately removing the butter from her reach. Except this wasn’t a typical morning with Emil gone on a work trip. He was there, and Marta had been so used to removing foods from Yvonne that she forgot she never did that in front of her husband.

Emil was furious. He yelled—one of the few times Yvonne ever heard him yell—at his wife about her stinginess and that he should never withhold anything from his granddaughter again, especially when he was away.

Shaken, Marta returned the butter to the table, and never again removed it when Yvonne sat down to eat. They never did run out of the rationed butter/margarine, although Yvonne was gradually losing weight as all children and adults were. The amount of food Germans had available to eat fell by 25% by 1941 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zp47pbk/revision/2) and decreased even further by 1945.

Called up to fight

While their work circumstances and access to sugar and gardens helped the Neufeldts, there was one resource they had which the Nazis wanted: the males.

Emil held extended family councils before and during the war, and the topic of conversation was usually about how best to manage their families’ resources to keep everyone supplied in consideration of a new shortage or a decrease in rations. Also they somberly discussed what they would do should the time come for their sons to be drafted. What branch of the service offered the best options for a good outcome? The best possibility seemed to be the tank corps, because the boys could be safe in the tanks, or maybe the infantry, since not every group saw fighting. No one was keen about the air force or Luftwaffe, and the navy was absolutely out. The rate of U-boats sinking or going missing was well known, and the navy seemed the surest way to not come back home.

Romuald

Soon enough, the grandsons of Emil began to be called up to service. The cousins weren’t all drafted at the same time. Lene and Alfons’s oldest son, Romuald, was taken up first. A kind and peace-loving son, he didn’t want to go, but went into the infantry in 1942. He was 20 years old. He went directly to the Russian Front, the site of the most brutal fighting.

One day news came about him, and it wasn’t good. Emil was returning home from another business trip by train. Yvonne was sent to meet him at the train station, her heart heavy with what she already knew. However, Lene had told Yvonne not to let him know until he reached home. Apparently Emil recognized the evasive nature of his 16-year-old granddaughter and said, “Just tell me!” He already had a suspicion, and Yvonne confirmed it: Romuald was killed in action May 10, 1943. The Neufeldts oldest, gentlest grandson was already gone.

There’s some conflicting information about the date he died, however. Below is the translation of his “Killed in action” statement.

Name:                         Romuald-Emil Rudolf [Eduard Rudolf]

Rank:                           Gefr. (Corporal)

Birth Date:                 5. Okt 1922 (5 Oct 1922)

Birth Place:                Heidersdorf Reichenbach/Eul.

Military Unit:             8. Komp. Feld-Ausb. Batl. 162

Death Date:                10. Mai 1943 (10 May 1943)

Death Place:              Priwolnoje (Privolnoye Russia)

Identification Number:           G-A 522/0170

Yvonne remembers their family getting the news in 1942, when Germany occupied the Privolnoye area in Russia, where Romuald died. However, by May of 1943—when he is listed as having died—

Germany had already pulled out because the Soviet army was taking over. Perhaps Romuald had been left behind with other German soldiers in May. Maybe he died earlier, but record-keeping during wartime is difficult and inconsistent, and he was recorded as having died later than he was, with a random date assigned. Also confusing is the fact that this was a “training” squad—at least, that’s what the military unit designation suggests. If they still were a training squad, or were attached to another group with a different name, is unknown.

But what was clear was that the first fatality of the war had hit the Neufeldt family, and it wouldn’t be the last.

Alfons Junior

It was in 1942 that the family had another council because drafts were now inevitable. Yvonne was riveted as the adults tried yet again to dispassionately discuss which branch of the armed forces the grandsons should join. Only Alfons Jr., the rebellious son who knocked heads with Emil and even once stole his Mercedes for a very short joy ride, was willing to join; the others waited until they were drafted. In the end, several of them were forced into the war.

Alfons Jr., younger brother of Romuald, joined the navy—which everyone in his family warned him against—and was assigned to a minesweeper. There’s no information about what ship he was on or when he served, but there were a total of 127 ships were built between 1941 and 1944, and of those, 63 M1940 class ships were sunk during the war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-class_minesweeper_(Germany))

Alfons was aboard one of the 63 ships torpedoed and sunk. However, he survived. He spent a very long 12 hours in the cold Atlantic Ocean before he was rescued by other Germans. He sustained a leg injury from the incident which bothered him for a long time afterward.

In 1942, Germany and Hitler’s Third Reich had reached its apex, having taken over most of Europe and beginning to look like the Holy Roman Empire Hitler so wanted. But this didn’t mean other countries were about to give up; instead, they set about to take Germany down.

And because the rest of the world was willing to fight back against Germany, they needed even more soldiers to keep the dream of the Third Reich intact.

Dieter and the Americans

Dieter, age 19, was next drafted into the tank corps.

Dieter didn’t serve in the tank corps for long, because according to one story (for which there is no evidence but it’s a great story), Emil had told his grandsons that if ever they had the option of surrendering to the Americans, they should take it. America would treat them well and humanely. The same could not be said of the Soviets.

Apparently Dieter remembered that advice, and not long after being pressed into the tank corps service, found himself in near proximity to the Americans. Not caring for the war at all, Dieter ran for it, straight to the Americans, and surrendered. Emil’s advice was correct: the American soldiers took great care of him. They immediately fed him as a reward for desertion and was sent to a prisoner of war camp. (In the 1980s, when Dieter visited his cousin Yvonne in Utah, he drove Yvonne’s daughter’s old, green station wagon. She had been calling it a tank and asked Dieter for his opinion. He took the large ’69 Chevy Kingswood station wagon around the block and declared that it was, indeed, a tank.)

American camps were nothing like German camps. Dieter was shipped off to America where POW camps were set up in every state of the union. More than 400,000 soldiers from the Axis powers were sent to the US from 1942-1945. Most of the camps they were detained in were in rural areas across America (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/german-pows-on-the-american-homefront-141009996/).

The US had a serious labor shortage during the war, since so many men were fighting in Europe and Asia. It seemed logical to make these 400,000 prisoners earn their keep. Dieter found himself in Kentucky and Tennessee and New Jersey, living and working on horse farms, and being fed far better than he had been since the war began. He gained weight, improved his English, and fell in love with America. Being taken prisoner was the best thing that could have happened to him.

Many German soldiers who were sent to POW camps in America didn’t want to return to Germany after the war. They felt immense peace in America, were humbled by the kindness Americans showed them, and realized that it really was a land of opportunity. Several German soldiers tried to run away when the war was over and it was time to send them back to Germany. They knew the good life when they experienced it. It’s not clear when Dieter returned, but the majority of German prisoners stayed working in the US until 1946. The priority was to use the US’s limited navy to return American men home after the way, then send back the prisoners of war to their home countries. In France and the United Kingdom, some prisoners were held for up to three years after the war for the same reasons. Although it was against the Geneva Convention to not return the men “rapidly,” German soldiers like Dieter didn’t mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_prisoners_of_war_in_the_United_States

Life in the American prisoner of war camps was far better than life was in Germany as a whole. Soldiers received letters from home and knew that their country was in tatters, food was in short supply, and the situation was grim. Still in America, the POWs could still eat, work, and even earn some money. When many finally went home, they did so with several hundred dollars and a good knowledge of English. That knowledge and money from America went a long way in helping Germany recover. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_prisoners_of_war_in_the_United_States#:~:text=Despite%20the%20delay%20in%20repatriation,and%20often%20with%20several%20hundred)

A few Germans did more than just not want to go home—they even tried to avoid it all costs. More than 2,200 German POWs escaped from their camps to keep from returning to Germany, but most were recaptured quickly. In the end, only seven prisoners were not found and returned. The longest a soldier remained undiscovered was forty years. The soldier was from Silesia, where region the Neufeldts lived, and escaped from a camp in New Mexico in Sept. 1945. He remained undiscovered until he 1985, and the then-elderly man was pardoned by the US and allowed to stay. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_prisoners_of_war_in_the_United_States#:~:text=Despite%20the%20delay%20in%20repatriation,and%20often%20with%20several%20hundred).

Olaf and his father Karl

Dieter’s younger brother, Olaf, who was Yvonne’s age, however, wasn’t lucky enough to be captured by Americans but by the Soviets. In 1944, shortly after the family portrait was taken, he was just 17 years old when he was forced into the army. As mentioned earlier, the Nazis, starting in 1943, were pulling 17-year-olds into the war (https://www.history.com/news/how-the-hitler-youth-turned-a-generation-of-kids-into-nazis). At this time it wasn’t uncommon for students to be sitting in school, trying to do their studies which was frequently interrupted by air raids or school closures because of shortages, when suddenly the door would open and there would stand soldiers. Yvonne once stated, and it’s unclear if this happened to Olaf or not, that the soldiers would announce that all boys, either close to or already 17, that they were now members of the “glorious German army” and had two hours to go home, pack, and report for training. There was no getting out of it, unless you wanted to be shot on site. Germany was desperate for fighters, and the age of conscription became both younger and older. Karl, Olaf and Dieter’s father, had already been drafted into the army at age of 43. That’s likely why he wasn’t in this photo:

At only 17, Olaf was sent to Russia, captured by the Soviets (it’s unsure where or when) and taken as a prisoner of war. But that didn’t mean happy days working on a horse farm with three solid meals a day and a paycheck, as it was for his older brother Dieter. Olaf was instead sent to Siberia, where the cruelest and coldest labor camps were established intended to work soldiers to death. The Russian army had no concern for the Germans; they felt betrayed by Hitler for invading Russia back in 1941, and took revenge on every German they could find.

Olaf, along with many other soldiers, as well as anyone who had spoken out against the Russian regime, was fed a starvation diet and forced to work long, torturous hours. Olaf’s memories are vague as to exactly what happened one day, but he had been digging in a frozen ditch, exhausted and starved, when he collapsed. As he lay in the frozen muck, a Russian soldier came by to punish him, and either using the butt of his rifle or the heel of his boot, he hit Olaf in the forehead hard enough to fracture his skull and split open his forehead.

The blow should have killed him, considering how severe and graphic his injury was, but also imprisoned in that labor camp was someone, or a few people, with medical knowledge. What followed was an understandable blur in Olaf’s memory. For the next several weeks or even months, the prisoners who had brought him back to their barracks took turns holding Olaf’s head together, allowing his skull to heal and the flesh knit back together. Miraculously he survived the ordeal.

Hans Heinrich Schmidt

The Schmidt family, Marta’s sister and her family, weren’t so lucky. Hedel and Paul Schmidt and their five children were like many German families: sons forced into the war. Their oldest son Hans Heinrich was first drafted, then Walter (the camera-lover), and then even their father Paul was called up. Hedel was left alone with her two younger children, fretting for her family.

Until one day, probably in 1944, the doorbell rang. Whenever someone came to the door, it was a frightening thing to answer it. One was never sure who was on the other side, what they would be demanding, or what they might accuse you of. Worried and anxious, with her younger children remaining back, Hedel timidly opened the door.

There stood a Nazi—the Schmidts and Neufeldts had taken to calling them “gold pheasants” because of their hideous dress uniforms. He clicked his heels and puffed up his chest to show off all of his medals, which the family called tinsel. He saluted Hedel with a loud, “Heil Hitler,” which she didn’t return, then announced, “You will be pleased to hear that your son Hans Heinrich has given his life for the Third Reich!”

Hedel, who was a peaceful, gracious, and loving lady was not at that moment. At the arrogant Nazi who just told her that her oldest son was dead, she screamed, “Get out of here before I kick you!”

Germany begins losing the war

Yvonne, while not conscripted to fight, was also a teenager facing a harrowing situation. By 1944 it was clear to most Germans that they were losing the war, that it was only a matter of time before they were overrun. The Soviet army was closing in on the east, coming ever nearer to the Neufeldts and Rudolfs in Silesia. A well-planned assassination attempt on Hitler’s life in July of 1944 failed. To many Germans, including the Neufeldts, the officers, generals, and the mayor Leipzig who had planned it were heroes for trying to stop Hitler and end the war. (A good movie about the subject is “Valkyrie” made in 2008.) Many in Germany—including several of those in command of the military—knew Hitler had be stopped, that the war was unjust, and that the situation was only going to get worse. But the planners were hanged by the Gestapo for their “highly treasonous” plot. It seemed no one could stop Hitler.

Germans hoped that brutal winter of 1944-45 might, however. The severe cold spread even to Neisse, and Yvonne’s eyebrows froze a few times as she walked to school and back. The children who had musical instruments were told not to bring them to school because they would crack in the severe cold.

Last Neufeldt Family council

In late 1944 Emil held one more family council—it was to be the last, but no one knew that at the time—about what to do when Germany finally fell. It was important to get the women and girls out of eastern Germany before the Russian army arrived. The Soviet’s Red Army was never compassionate to its enemies, nor did it discern between combatants or soldiers, and noncombatants or the innocent civilians who simply got in the way. The Russians wanted revenge for everything that happened, and taking it out on women and girls was their preferred strategy. The Soviet soldiers gang-raped girls and women in every town and village they conquered, and while they weren’t yet in Germany, the stories were running ahead of them. Getting Yvonne, age 17, and her aunts and cousins out was imperative.

Emil, however, decided to remain in Neisse. He was fluent in Polish, which would come in handy since it seemed their area of Germany would once again become part of Poland, and he also knew enough Russian to be conversant. He could negotiate with the Soviets, he reasoned. Besides, he was needed.

The Poles knew it was important to keep the sugar industry going, and the Braunschweig Machine Factory offered Emil a house and a good position as being in charge of engineering, even though he was already 71 years old.

Emil didn’t take that offer, though. Not that he wanted to retire, because that thought never crossed his mind. He didn’t take the offer because he had a plan: if he stayed in Neisse, worked well and negotiated with both the Poles and the Soviets who would like take over the city and area, then they would see his value, especially to the sugar industry, and would put him to work. Then all of his family could eventually return to Neisse. They could rebuild, together. The grandsons would come back from the war, his daughters and granddaughters would return from the west once the east was safe and calm again, and the Neufeldt-Rudolf families would once again be together.

Yvonne didn’t want to go west without him. After losing her grandmother, then her cousin Romuald and Marta’s nephew Hans Heinrich Schmidt, and knowing that her cousins Dieter and Olaf were in prisoner of war camps, and that Alfons was somewhere in the ocean on a sub, and even her Uncle Karl Rudolf was called up to fight . . . it was becoming too much. She couldn’t bear to think of losing anyone else.

By 1944-45, Germany had been dealing with war, with its insecurities and constant stress, for five to six years. The constant anxiety Germans experienced was replicated throughout Europe wherever the war occurred. Each morning you’d wake and cautiously turned on the news (if you had a functioning radio that hadn’t been confiscated by the Nazis) to find out what village, or city, or country had fallen overnight, or which area where your friends or family lived had been bombed, or invaded. Or maybe you learned that a favorite vacation area, or place of happy memories, was now bombed and burning or overrun. The news changed every day, for weeks, months, and years.

The people became numb. They could no longer discuss the war and what it did to their lives. It did no good to weep and mourn and plead for help because your husband is missing, your son is dead, your grandparents haven’t been heard from since their village changed hands once again. It did no good because everyone else around you was in the same situation, feeling the same deep-seated anxiety, and exhausted from the same sense of not knowing how much longer, and who else would die. Maybe your children would be next, maybe you. While everyone dreamed about the war’s end, they also knew the next nightmare would come: how to rebuild and start life again when so many of your family and friends were gone, resources were strained, and there wasn’t even enough food for tomorrow.

There was anger, there was fear, there was exhaustion, and there was numbness.

And then there’d be the cleanup.

For many Europeans and Germans, talking about the war just didn’t happen. What good would it do? Could it reverse anything? No. You would just shrug and say, “The war,” in response to any inquiry about a missing relative or friend. Interestingly, while there are many memoirs and accounts of what happened during WWII, written from various viewpoints of Jews and Europeans, the number of published accounts is relatively few. Considering that millions went through the horrors in varying degrees, only a few hundred were willing to relive those details enough to write them down. Most everyone else just wanted to forget and try to move on. If they didn’t move, they’d die.

By 1944-45 there was a heavy, depressing resignation over everyone, knowing that the Soviet army was pressing in from the east, the Allied armies of the British, Americans, and French moving in from the west, and that somewhere, sometime it would all end in the middle, but not easily, and not cleanly. There was more suffering to come.

During that last family council, Lene and Alfons had only their daughter Christa left, who was 11 years old in 1944, and their son Norbert, 16, who was fortunately just barely too young to be drafted into the war, although the Nazis were loosening their standards as to who was “ready” to fight. Alfons was somewhere in a sub and Romuald was buried in Russia.

Hedel wasn’t in any better condition than her sister. Her husband, Karl, just one year younger than his brother Alfons, had been conscripted in the army, and she didn’t know where he was. Her oldest son Dieter was fortunately a prisoner of war in America, but Olaf was in Siberia. She still had her son Peter, age 14, and daughters Susie, age 11, and Ingrid, just 8 years old.

It was decided they should go in different directions, since it wasn’t clear where the safest point of escape would be. Everyone would go west, obviously. No one wanted to be captured by the Soviets.

Traveling west wasn’t going to be an easy thing, either. It wasn’t a matter of packing your bags and getting into a car, because no one had cars and fuel, and you didn’t have much to pack anymore, either.

Germany was in chaos by the beginning of 1945 when the Soviets first entered Poland and discovered the first of many concentration camps. Even the hardened Russian army was staggered by the conditions they discovered at Auschwitz: thousands of starving Jews, nearly dead on their feet, and evidence that thousands more had been recently exterminated. Nazis had left the facility in a panic, trying to destroy evidence as they went, and soon a morbid race of sorts was on. The Soviets immediately notified the Allied troops about what they found at Auschwitz as they moved from east to west, so that British, American, Canadian, and French soldiers could help liberate the camps they encountered as they closed in from the west. But the SS and the Nazis were trying to destroy all evidence of the camps (at one point there were over 2,000 labor/concentration camps), and save their own hides as well ahead of the Allied armies.

The push was on by the Allied forces to squeeze Germany like a tourniquet, and in the middle of it were millions of refugees trying to get out of the way.

Allied bombs destroyed railways and roads throughout Germany. There was no infrastructure, no one repairing bridges, no one offering rides, and no supplies moving anywhere, just countless Germans rushing west.

Hedel, Ursula, and Hubert Schmidt and Dresden

The Schmidts, Marta’s sister Hedel and what was left of her family, also chose to go west. Not only did Hedel Schmidt have only her daughter Ursula who was Yvonne’s friend, and son Hubert left, she had already lost her oldest son who was fighting for the “glorious German army,” and her second son Walter and her husband Paul were both fighting for a cause they didn’t believe in. And she had no idea where they were.

Hedel chose to leave to the west with her two youngest children, hoping her husband and son would survive and find them later. Where the Schmidts lived during most of the war is unknown (presumable near Neuland or Neisse, since they visited the Neufeldts frequently), but when Hedel Schmidt left her with son and daughter, they went at the wrong time and to the wrong place. They headed to Dresden, a city of 600,000 people, as thousands of other refugees did, reaching there around the middle of February.

And they were there when the city was destroyed by thousands of firebombs.

The Allies had been closing in on Germany, and even though the country was on the verge of surrendering, the Americans and British made a decision that’s been controversial ever since. Believing that Nazis and their families were hiding in Dresden, and that the city was a crucial center for the German war machine with manufacturing, the Allied air forces decided to bomb it. And not just bomb it—obliterate it. More than 800 British and American planes dropped 3,400 tons of explosives on the city overnight. The intensity of the bombing and the incendiary devices they used created a nightmarish firestorm throughout the city. Eight square miles were devastated, killing over 25,000 people (https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/firebombing-of-dresden).

The cities of Colone, Berlin, and Hamburg were also firebombed extensively with huge losses of life.

And Hedel, Ursula, and Hubert were in Dresden.

The real tragedy was that Dresden was not a manufacturing city, but was instead one of the most beautiful medieval cities in Europe. It was called “Florence of the Elbe,” and “The Jewel Box” because of its fantastic architecture, now destroyed. Few Nazis were there, having taken their families out before the bombing. Who was there, however, were thousands of refugees like the Schmidts, trying to find a safe place to be.

Some suggest that the actual numbers of dead will never be known, because no one knew how many refugees had flooded into the city looking for help. The Nazis claimed 200,000 were killed, but that number is dubious, possibly fueled by the propagandists still trying to get Germans to fight against the Allies (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51448486).

But others speculate that up to 300,000 refugees from Silesia had poured into Dresden, all at the wrong time, and many of them were killed (https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/apocalypse-dresden-february-1945).

The firebombing had horrific effects. The first wave of planes took out all of the electricity. During the war when people heard the planes coming and the air raid sirens go off, they would run down into bomb shelters under buildings and remain there, up to many hours or even all night. After the power was gone in Dresden, some people came out of hiding, thinking the bombing was over (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51448486).

But then the second wave arrived. The fire bombs didn’t merely explode, but sucked the air directly from people’s lungs, and they fell where they stood (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51448486).

One witness put it like this: “There was an indescribable roar in the air—the fire. The thundering fire reminded me of the biblical catastrophes that I had heard about in my education in the humanities. I was aghast. I can’t describe seeing this city burn in any other way. The color had changed as well. It was no longer pinkish-red. The fire had become a furious white and yellow, and the sky was just one massive mountain of cloud” (https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/apocalypse-dresden-february-1945).

Historian Donald Miller describes the effects of the incendiary bombs: “’People’s shoes melted into the hot asphalt of the streets, and the fire moved so swiftly that many were reduced to atoms before they had time to remove their shoes. The fire melted iron and steel, turned stone into powder, and caused trees to explode from the heat of their own resin. People running from the fire could feel its heat through their backs, burning their lungs.’ Miller also points out a forgotten fact, that 70 percent of the victims actually suffocated from carbon monoxide discharged by combustion” (https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/apocalypse-dresden-february-1945).

For weeks Dresden burned, overwhelming the firefighters who soon gave up. Those thousands who died were tossed into piles on top of iron grates, soaked with benzene, and cremated. There were no other options than these makeshift funeral pyres, and why a final death count is impossible and the seemingly-inflated numbers of hundreds of thousands dead might actually be accurate. There are far too many people unaccounted for, lost during WWII. The stench of burning bodies was everywhere. A few Allied prisoners of war had been held in Dresden, and they were used to help extract corpses from the rubble (https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/apocalypse-dresden-february-1945). The author Kurt Vonnegut was one of those POWs and later wrote his novel Slaughterhouse Five after his experiences in Dresden.  

Into this apocalypse, as many referred to it, came Hedel, Ursula, and Hubert, and miraculously they came out of it again, but deeply traumatized. Somehow they made it to Nordlingen/Schhwaben, about another 400 km/250 miles southwest, and were able to wait there until Paul and Walter were released from the war and eventually were reunited with them, several months later.

Yvonne heading west

Back in Neisse, though, Yvonne didn’t want to leave Emil, nor was he eager to let her go. They told each other again and again that their separation would be only for a few months until the Nazis were defeated, the fighting was over, and the rebuilding would begin. Yvonne would be back soon, maybe even by summer of 1945. Yvonne was to turn 18 in February. Emil was 71.

Finally, with her backpack stuffed with clothes and some food—she could take only what she could carry—Yvonne said goodbye to her grandfather. Her good-bye was extremely painful for both them, with a great deal of tears shed and hugs given. It’s unsure when exactly Yvonne and the rest of her family evacuated, but it was likely early 1945, maybe before March. By January, the Red Army of the Soviets had entered Poland, and by March they were approaching Neisse.

Leaving was further complicated by the Nazis who made everything difficult for their fellow Germans. They didn’t want their people in danger evacuating because it would make their soldiers “feel badly and ruin morale”. But morale had been gone for quite a while already, and reluctantly the Nazis let Germans head west only once they were sure of inevitable defeat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_evacuation_from_Central_and_Eastern_Europe).

By February of 1945, that defeat seemed to be the case. An incredible amount of people—10-12 million—were trying to leave the eastern territories (prewar Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia) for somewhere safer. By March and April, millions of refugees were on the move, unsure of exactly where they were going but hoping for some sort of peace. The cities which received them were in shambles themselves, bombed out and devastated, with no room to hold fleeing elderly, women, and children. Western Germany was soon being overrun by homeless refugees who had no money, no food, and little clothing, and the west had nothing to offer them, either (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_evacuation_from_Central_and_Eastern_Europe).

What was happening in Germany and surrounding areas was a vast evacuation unlike anything that ever occurred before or since. Never had millions of people tried to move without organization, without support, without resources.

Each person had to figure it out for themselves and simply hope for the best.

The Soviet Invasion

When Yvonne finally left, she was told by her grandfather that she was just a day or two ahead of the Red Army—the invading Russians and Soviets. How true that was is unclear. Maybe Emil told her they were close in order to get her moving. Maybe they really were that close. Because we don’t have a date of her departure, we’re unsure. But no matter what, the Red Army was making quick time through Poland and Germany, and no one was sure which direction their several fronts might take. It was inevitable that they would take over everything in the east in just a matter of days or weeks. Troop movements listed in “U.S. Army in WWII, Special Studies, Chronology 1941-1945” lays out the approach of the Soviets (https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-SS-Chronology/USA-SS-Chronology-5.html).

On Thursday, Jan. 18, 1945, the Soviet armies in Poland were rapidly approaching German Silesia, the region where the Neufeldts lived. The local residents would have known about this. The Nazi government was sending out propaganda about the coming Soviets for several weeks, but did a poor job of it. Their goal was to strengthen the civilians, make them want to fight against the encroaching Red Army. The strategy? Show just how brutal and horrible the Red Army was by detailing in gore and even some embellishment the atrocities they committed as they invaded (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes#Murders_of_civilians).

For example, in Nemmersdorf, in East Prussia, Germany, just a couple of months before on October 21, 1944, the Soviet army invaded and found an improvised bunker where 14 civilians were hiding. The Soviet officer ordered them out, then shot and killed the Germans. The story of what happened there grew, similarly as it had when the Nazis invaded Bromberg six years earlier. The Nazi propaganda claimed that not just 14 people but that dozens of civilians had been killed, along with 50 non-combatant prisoners of war. Not only that, the Nazis insisted, the Red Army had been gruesome: many women had been raped and even nailed to barn doors crucifixion style, and other citizens and even babies were tortured. Later investigations suggested that there wasn’t much evidence beyond the initial 14 people being killed, that photos from the “massacre” came from other towns and villages instead, and the crucifix barn doors were never discovered in Nemmersdorf (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemmersdorf_massacre).

But this was the graphic horror story the Nazis broadcast about the Red Army, meant to steel the nerves of the Germans and inspire them to fight against the Soviets.

However, the opposite reaction occurred instead. People panicked. Weary of six long years of war, and now knowing that their greatest enemy was angry and looking for revenge, citizens took off for the west as soon as the local soldiers retreated (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labor_of_Germans_in_the_Soviet_Union). Why stick around?

By Friday, Jan. 19, the Soviet launched a new offensive against East Prussia and were rapidly moving across Poland toward Silesia. On Saturday, Jan. 20 the First Ukrainian Front was heading west through Poland, straight for Germany, in particular Silesia.

Then on Sunday, Jan. 21, the First Ukrainian Front crossed into Silesia and took several Silesian towns. The Red Army continued, and on the next day, Jan. 22, the First Ukrainian Front seized the towns of Konstadt (now Wołczyn, Poland), about 95 km/60 miles to the northeast of Neisse.

The next day, Tuesday, Jan. 23, they came even closer, striking cities important to the Neufeldts. Bromberg (now Bydgoszcz, Poland) where Emil, Mariana, and their three children were born and raised, fell to the First White Russian Front. This was very worrying, because one of the Rudolf families—Lene and Alfons—now lived in Kulmsee (now Chełmża), only 45 km/28 miles to the east. They still needed to get out, but it was getting harder to do so. The Red Army traveled so quickly through the country that maybe Rudolfs’ plans to leave had to be pushed back.

By Wednesday, Jan. 24 the First Ukrainian Front overran the industrial center of Gleiwitz (now Gliwice, Poland) 120 km/75 miles east of Neisse. The next day, the Russians started crossing the Oder River between Gleiwitz and Brieg (now Brzeg), just north of Neisse about 52 km/32 miles.

By Friday, Jan. 26, the Soviet forces were encircling Thorn (Toruń) and Posen (Poznan), where Emil had frequently traveled to sugar factories. By Sunday, Jan. 28, the First Ukrainian Front captured of major industrial cities along border of Upper Silesia and Poland, taking Beuthen (now Bytom) in Silesia and Katowice. Katowice to the southeast was about 154 km from Neisse. The Red Army was making rapid progress through Poland and Germany, meeting very little resistance, except in Posen which fought for a few days more before being defeated a few weeks later on Feb. 23.

The city of Breslau, however, tried to hold out, not by choice but by force. Although the citizens wanted to leave, the Wehrmacht didn’t. By Feb. 16 the city was surrounded by the Red Army, and a siege lasted there for many weeks until May 4 when Breslau finally gave up. This was the city where Mariana loved to attend the opera and take her granddaughter shopping, even if they frequently got lost. (If Mariana were still living, should would have been relieved to hear her beloved opera house wasn’t damaged and that performances began there again in September. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wroc%C5%82aw_Opera).

Breslau’s defiance cost it a great deal of life, though, and while it was the Russians that inflicted the pain, at its root was the pride of the Nazis which wouldn’t let the people of Breslau escape when they had the chance. Der Spiegel puts it this way: “How much suffering could have been avoided if the cynical Nazi leaders hadn’t delayed the evacuation of Germans time and again? Any attempts to flee were punished. . . This policy led to a human tragedy in Breslau, known today as Wroclaw, where 700,000 inhabitants, refugees and injured people had held out until the Russians were almost at the gates to the city. Almost 90,000 people perished in the ensuing panicked evacuation of the city and the subsequent siege” (https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-time-of-retribution-paying-with-life-and-limb-for-the-crimes-of-nazi-germany-a-759737.html).

The archdiocese of Breslau described the suffering in the city as the Red Army kept them surrounded: “There, where the number of Germans who had remained behind was about 300,000, it has been determined officially that more than ninety percent of the babies, a very large percentage of infants, many young mothers and old persons died of starvation. . . Dysentery broke out and claimed many victims, all the more so as the medical supplies which had not been confiscated or stolen were soon exhausted . . . Germans were obliged to sell the few possessions they had . . . to the Poles in order to obtain . . . a little food. From May 8 onwards the Germans had been obliged to get along without receiving any Polish money (in the form of wage or salary) and without any official allocations of food rations. The misery and distress of the population in the towns was indescribable” (Rummel).

Aside from these few holdouts such as in Breslau, there was nothing to keep the Red Army from advancing, and encouraging millions of German citizens to run to the west ahead of them. No one was listening to the Nazis’ orders to stay and fight. The Germans had been done with the Nazis for a long time now, and it was time to save themselves.

Yvonne and her relatives were among them. Fortunately Yvonne wasn’t traveling west alone. The Koehlers, who had taken care of her as an infant when her mother wasn’t interested in her, and who were her foster parents during the four years while her grandparents tried to get custody of her, were taking Yvonne with them to the west. They were lucky enough to be on one of the last refugee trains that wasn’t shot at by the Allied planes. It’s not that the Allies purposely targeted civilian refugee trains, but that they simply didn’t know what their targets were far below them on the ground. Communication was only through radio, updates about troop movements came hours after the fact, and whatever on the ground that happened to move, the order was to destroy it. American and British pilots would see movement below and had to make assumptions as to why a train or convey was moving, and what it might be carrying. If it were troops, it was vital to stop the German war machine as soon as possible.

As mentioned earlier, by Jan. 27, the Soviets had come across and liberated Auschwitz, where 7,000 dying Jews and prisoners were discovered in deplorable conditions. The rest of the inmates—about 56,000–had been started on a Death March to get them into the interior of Germany, hide the evidence of what the Nazis were doing in the concentration camps, and use whomever survived as forced labor. So shocked by the conditions that they discovered in Auschwitz, the Red Army stopped to help as much as they could, and notified the rest of the Allies what they discovered (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_of_Auschwitz_concentration_camp; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_marches_during_the_Holocaust).

After that, the American, British, and French forces were alert to discover more camps and more Death Marches, so they took precautions as to what they bombed and attacked. Any movement on the ground might not mean troops escaping from the Allies, but could be concentration camp victims or innocent civilians trying to get out of the way of the war.

Still, it was remarkable that the train Yvonne and Koehlers took wasn’t targeted, and that they found undamaged track to travel on. They traveled through, and saw first-hand, the destruction in Prague, Vienna, Munich, Karlsruhe, and finally Ettlingen, only a few miles from the French border, where the Kohlers’ had some family who could rent them a couple of rooms. The train was packed with refugees, standing room only, for five long days. It was a distance of about 1,200 kilometers, or 750 miles. (Normally, the route can be driven in about 14 hours, and a direct drive from Nysa, Poland to Ettlingen can take about 9 hours.)

Theirs was one of many refugee trains. Yvonne never said how extreme the conditions were on their train but many accounts describe a horrific situation on others. Der Spiegel magazine published an article about the little-known horrors German refugees endured, and gave this example:

“A woman from Heiligenbeil (today’s Mamonovo) remembers freight trains packed with refugees from Masuria in what is now northeastern Poland, all of whom had had to stand for days on end. ‘Pregnant women who had given birth had frozen to the floor. The dead were thrown out of the windows.’ There were equally horrific scenes out on the streets: Families with horse-drawn carts, handcarts or just their suitcases in their hands dragged themselves through blowing snow and icy winds, far too weak to move out of the way if a Russian T-34 tank rolled into their convoy, as they sometimes did” (https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-time-of-retribution-paying-with-life-and-limb-for-the-crimes-of-nazi-germany-a-759737.html).

People weren’t deterrents to tanks, and the Russians proved that repeatedly.

All of Europe which had been touched by the war was in chaos. Wrote one man in his diary,

 “columns of ‘refugees marked by unimaginable suffering’ began moving westward from January 1945 onward, past destroyed towns, war rubble and piles of dead bodies. Later on these treks became interwoven with others heading in the opposite direction; hundreds of thousands of people who had been overtaken by the Red Army and were now trying to get back to their home towns” (https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-time-of-retribution-paying-with-life-and-limb-for-the-crimes-of-nazi-germany-a-759737.html).

Der Spiegel describes the situation like this:

“At the end of World War II, an unprecedented shifting of populations took place in eastern parts of central Europe, as Germans became pawns shuttled to and fro at the whims of the victors and their deal-making. But the people fleeing the Red Army were unaware that the Allies had already agreed with the Polish government-in-exile to hand over large parts of eastern Germany to Poland and resettle the Germans who were living there.” (https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-time-of-retribution-paying-with-life-and-limb-for-the-crimes-of-nazi-germany-a-759737.html).

The Neufeldts and Rudolfs didn’t realize that their hometowns were now in the wrong side of the war. They just knew they had to leave for safety and hope to return some weeks or months later. While at the beginning people were fleeing from the Red Army, many tried to stay as Emil was. However, that wasn’t going to be allowed, but in January no one knew that yet. “All those who didn’t manage to escape in time fell victim to the frenzied expulsions that were carried out until July 1945.” (https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-time-of-retribution-paying-with-life-and-limb-for-the-crimes-of-nazi-germany-a-759737.html).

The Soviets and Poles began to physically force people out, dragging Germans from their homes and shoving them on trains for the west.

The Red Army in Neisse

This wasn’t happening in Neisse just yet. And almost immediately after letting Yvonne go to the west, Emil regretted it. He told his friend Paul Schmidt that it was the biggest mistake he’d ever made. Paul had been released from the war, returned to Neisse hoping to find his wife Hedel and his children Ursula and Hubert, but they had already gone west, first to Dresden, then to Nordlingen. But by the time Paul Schmidt got to Neisse and Neuland, the Poles were no longer letting people out of the city, and he had to stay there for a time.

He later told Yvonne about her grandfather’s regret in letting her go, especially when he heard about the bombing throughout Germany and the collapse of the country. Emil was sure he could have negotiated her safety with the incoming Russians, and could have kept her by his side where he could make sure she was safe. Sending her out so many miles away into a war-torn country, unsure if she’d reach anywhere livable, was irresponsible and dangerous. He fretted immensely about it.

Until a few short days later after she left. Emil then realized that his plans to stay in Neisse may have been just optimistic fantasies. The Red Army didn’t come in triumphantly and peacefully; they came in to Neisse as they did with every town and city they conquered: with great vengeance. Neisse wasn’t spared, either. Emil heard the stories and even saw what happened. Filled with celebratory vodka, the Red Army rounded up the girls and young women and raped them. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Germany).

This was a pattern that continued all the way up to their conquering of Berlin on April 15, 1945. By some estimates, up to 2 million German girls and women may have been raped by the Red Army as they march through. Most women didn’t want to talk about it, and there was no therapy at the time to help them. There are records from Berlin, however, that verify at least 100,000 were raped by the Russians, and 90% of them contracted venereal diseases because of it. Even more tragic, many of these women became pregnant from the abuse, and abortions rose drastically the spring of 1945. The Soviet army spent three days of riotous looting, raping, and killing in Berlin, and at the end of it, scores of women committed suicide, unable to live with the reality of what happened to them by gangs of Russians who often held their husbands and fathers back at gunpoint. Women jumped off of balconies and Nazis even killed their own families to keep them from falling to the Soviets. Some Berliners wrote that on the fourth day after the Soviet army arrived in Berlin, the city fell eerily quiet (www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2002-09-24-0209240344-story.html).

Just as quickly as Emil had regretted sending away Yvonne, he was grateful that he had. She was spared the atrocities of the Red Army which he was powerless to protect her from.

But his son-in-law and grandson weren’t spared.

Alfons and Norbert

On Jan. 23-26 the First White Russian Front had engaged fighting in Breslau, then encircled Thorn, near Kulmlsee where Alfons, Lene, and their two younger children Norbert, 16, and Christa 11, were still living.

 What happened next has been referred to by the family only as “the tragedy.” In a newspaper article about Emil, the incident was briefly mentioned: “His son-in-law was a native of Neisse, the foreman Alfons Rudolf who worked in the sugar factory in Poland in Kulmsee near Thorn. The Russians kidnapped him with his 16-year-old son [Norbert] along with many others and no one came back.”

There’s no date of when this happened, nor information yet available (files are still being digitized) about where Alfons and Norbert and the others were taken. No one in the family spoke much of it. Then again, they spoke very little about anything that happened during those months and years. The best guess is that Alfons and Norbert were taken by the Russians as forced laborers, along “with many others” and they never “came back.”

We can only speculate what happened with Alfons and Norbert, and information is still slow (as of 2021) to be acknowledged during Russia’s time in Poland and Germany after WWII.

Until 1991, information about the forced labor of Germans was suppressed by the Russian government. In 1945, taking Germans back to labor camps was considered by the Soviets as mere war reparations. Germany hurt Russia, and now Germans had to pay for that. The Russians were just getting the laborers they were entitled to (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labor_of_Germans_in_the_Soviet_Union).

On many occasions as the Red Army marched through Poland and Germany from January through May of 1945, they rounded up potentially able-bodied German nationals and placed them in camps, then deported them to Russia. Initially the belief was that the Soviets were taking only suspected Nazi party members, but soon they decided anyone would do: leaders of businesses, the more financially well-off, anyone who seemed able-bodied. The Soviet Union took other government officials in areas east of the Oder-Neisse line, established to divide new Poland from Germany. The prisoners were held in camps for a short time until sent into Russia itself to work (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labor_of_Germans_in_the_Soviet_Union).

While there’s no clear evidence where Alfons and Norbert ended up, we do know what fate awaited the majority of those who were kidnapped. About three-fourths of the laborers were sent to help rebuild heavy industry and mines in the Donets Basin, and about 11% were sent to the Ural Mountains to work in those heavy industries. Workers were housed in concentration camps and watched over by armed guards. Concentration camps didn’t end with the Germans; they simply continued elsewhere. Living and working conditions were harsh, and about 25% of those imprisoned died (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labor_of_Germans_in_the_Soviet_Union). It’s recorded that Alfons and Norbert died in 1945, but where or why is unknown.

Soon the Soviets realized this kidnapping-for-workers wasn’t working out as they had hoped, because the kidnapped Germans were often older men or women unable to perform the heavy labor they required. And those Germans who were male and healthy (such as Alfons and Norbert) were soon literally worked to death. By the end of 1945, the Soviets were sending back some of the kidnapped Germans, and all were sent home by 1950. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labor_of_Germans_in_the_Soviet_Union).  

Alfons and Norbert weren’t among those who were released later in 1945, nor among the rest of the survivors who lasted up to another five years.

Der Spiegel cites stories of some who survived:

“Eva-Maria S. was just 16 when she was abducted by the Russians . . . She recounted her deportation to Siberia in a series of eyewitness accounts that former East German human rights activist Freya Klier put together in the book Verschleppt bis ans Ende der Welt (Dragged Off to the End of the Earth). She recalled, ‘There were about 90 of us in one freight train wagon when we set off. Our journey took us through Poland, where stones often smashed against the sides of the wagons. I can’t remember all the details of the journey any more, only that several people died in our wagon. So I immediately volunteered to help get rid of the bodies. These were passed out by other girls, and thrown on top of the coal in the coal-storage car. When the prisoners pulled coal out of the bottom for their little stove, the frozen bodies slid out too. Somewhere along the way, we once pulled about 30 corpses out of that coal car.

“‘As the train trundled through the ruins left over from Nazi Germany’s war effort, many of the prisoners realized why the victors were so hungry for revenge.

“Eva-Maria S. reported, ‘I think Belorussia was the worst. Looking through barbed wire on the windows, all we could see was scorched earth, destroyed villages and blown-up factories’” (https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-time-of-retribution-paying-with-life-and-limb-for-the-crimes-of-nazi-germany-a-759737.html).

The numbers of how many were ultimate deported and died vary depending upon which government is reporting them. The Soviet archives state that “reparation deportees,”—a neutral euphemism for those they kidnapped to pay for the crimes of Germany invading Russia—were about 375,000 people; 230,000 of those were from Germany and Poland, which would have been Alfons and Norbert. Of that 375,000, 45% died, or about 169,000 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labor_of_Germans_in_the_Soviet_Union).

Historian Grossbard describes a situation which may may have happened to Norbert: “Twelve to thirteen hundred children in Polish Lower Silesia were found to have been forced to work on building projects in the area and another thousand boys were reported to the Soviet Union, presumably to work in labor camps.”

Yvonne would later refer to what happened to Alfons and Norbert only as “the family tragedy, one of many,” and never went into details. Probably because details were never to be had. This was a horror that replayed itself in too many areas all over Europe, beginning in 1939 when Polish Jews were first taken to concentration camps with no details left for others to know about their fates, except for perhaps a list sent to a post office, then that horror spread as the Nazis took millions of more Jews, and then the Nazis’ enemies retaliated by taking Germans away.

The only notes about the deaths of Alfons, age 46, and Norbert, age 16, are “Died in Russia, April 1945.”

Lene and Christa

No Germans, or Poles, or really anyone in Europe escaped the war without some kind of trauma and loss. Lene Rudolf, was now all alone with Christa. Her husband Alfons and son Norbert were taken, and Romuald had already died, and Alfons Junior was somewhere in the Atlantic. Lene and Christa found themselves unable to escape because of the surrounding Soviet army. They were terrified, with dwindling supplies at home and no way to communicate with Emil, who feared the worst for them.

That’s when the Poles came for them.

Russia had made a secret pact the summer before in 1944 with the Polish National Liberation Committee. Together they decided that when the war was over, there would be a new eastern border of Poland, the Oder-Neisse Line, or the Oder-Neisse Rivers. It wouldn’t matter what the western Allies would later agree to once the war was over and country lines redrawn, the Oder-Neisse line was staying (https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-time-of-retribution-paying-with-life-and-limb-for-the-crimes-of-nazi-germany-a-759737.html).

This meant that 7.5 million Germans who lived in the Silesian part of Germany were going to be in the wrong country. When the war was over, cities like Neisse, Bromberg, Breslau, Cosel, Munsterberg, and Kulmsee would be Poland, would have their names changed, and would have all of their German citizens forced out.

Lene, who was 45, and 11-year-old Christa, were in the middle of all of this, with no one to help them.

Poland wanted all Germans out of their territory, and it was going to happen as “quickly” and “ruthlessly” as possible. In March of 1945 detailed plans had already been drawn up by the Russians and the Poles, and immediately they began to implement the deportations. The survivors, however, remember it as a “wild expulsion” (https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-time-of-retribution-paying-with-life-and-limb-for-the-crimes-of-nazi-germany-a-759737.html).

Several modern writers/historians have expressed that what happened in 1945 was nothing less than ethnic cleansing. The Poles wanted their land “cleansed” of Germans by any means possible (Rummel; Grossband; Habble). As Habble explains, “The Nazis’ crimes had been far worse, but the suffering of the ethnic Germans was immense.” One estimate is that over 14 million Germans were forced from their homes, and at least 473,000 died as they escaped or were expelled (Habble).

Germans were given no warning that they had to leave their homes that winter in 1945. Sometimes the Poles and Red Army gave entire German neighborhoods just an hour, or half an hour, or just minutes to pack a bag to leave. Then the Poles collected them, took them to train stations, pushed them onto cars or cattle cars, and send them to an occupation zone somewhere in Germany, never to let them return again. The Poles took over their properties that were left behind (Rummel).

The Poles often joined the Red Army in abusing the Germans, beating, raping, and robbing the them of whatever possessions they carried, and if anyone fought back, they were killed. Many people were interred in concentration camps, newly abandoned by Jews, and the interred Germans were left to slowly starve to death. That was the fate of 8,064 Germans in Camp Lamsdorf in Upper Silesia, including 628 children (Rummel). What happened in other similar Polish camps wasn’t always recorded or remembered, but was likely the same.

It’s not as if the Germans could request assistance from the police for what was happening to them, because the police were among those helping with the forced deportations. Along with militia men and army units, the police would circle the German citizens in their town and villages then forced out whoever remained, forcibly taking citizens and either shoving them on packed freight trains headed to the west, or interring them in concentration camps (https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-time-of-retribution-paying-with-life-and-limb-for-the-crimes-of-nazi-germany-a-759737.html)

Lene and Christa were among the thousands of Germans on the wrong side of the Neisse-Oder river. They were taken by the Poles and shoved into a former concentration camp. To humiliate them, their heads were shaved, and then they were put to work. They had lost everything—their husband/father, brothers/sons, their cousins, their grandparents, their home, their belongings—everything.

They weren’t alone. In 1974 the German government published a study estimating how many Germans were victims of crimes after the war between 1945 and 1948. The number they calculated was “over 600,000, with about 400,000 deaths in the areas east of Oder and Neisse” which would have been the area Lene and Christa were in, the part of Germany which was now suddenly Poland (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes#Murders_of_civilians).

About 120,000 were victims of acts of direct violence, “mostly by Soviet troops but also by the Poles.” There were also about 60,000 people taken to Polish concentration camps where they were forced to work and suffered “from hunger and disease” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes#Murders_of_civilians).

This is ethnic cleansing and forcing out of Germans is one of the great atrocities of WWII that very few now remember and rarely mention. Lene and Christa were imprisoned for six months for the crime of just living in the wrong area.

Why was this happening? A term described as “collective guilt” or “war guilt” described in the Potsdam Agreement’s second article, signed a few months after the fact in August of 1945. It states that “The German people . . .  have suffered a total military defeat and they cannot escape the responsibility for what they have brought on themselves” (Grossbard). Essentially this meant that “all Germans had an obligation to accept responsibility for the wrongs that their government committed on a personal level” (Grossbard). Again, it’s reminiscent of the ending of World War I—the real instigators were gone, so someone had to be blamed. This time around, Hitler and the Nazis were or would be dead soon or run off to South America, and someone had to pay for everyone’s anger against Germany. That meant even the elderly, children, and babies were not to be spared. Because of collective guilt, all Germans deserved to be punished, and ethnic cleansing was the means to do.

Grossbard describes that throughout the deportation process of cleansing new Poland of Germans, not even children were spared, were denied milk allowances, separated from their parents and families, and children as young as eight years old were forced into performing heavy labor. In one camp of fifty babies, only two remained alive after several months of slowly starving. No clothing was given to children in the camps, and if they came in wearing something nice, it was immediately stolen. Other children were made to plow fields and work in mines, labor that would be difficult for healthy adult males, and suggests that such inhumane treatment suggests a desire for vindication. Remarkably, “the abuse of children was widely understood as acceptable in post-war Europe” (Grossbard).

Grossbard explains this unbelievable attitude this way:

“Slavic people needed an outlet for the frustration and desire for retribution they had not been able to express during their Nazi occupation. This resulted in something of suspension of moral obligations towards ethnic German children . . . It would be naïve to think that Polonization [removing other nationalities from Poland] is the exception to the rule and that other processes of ethno-nationalism have been kinder to younger generations. It’s more likely that the process of Polonization has served as a model for other acts of ethnic cleansing inside and outside twentieth century Europe” (Grossbard).

In other words, what Poland did to Germans has inspired other ethnic cleansings in other countries, and essentially paved the way for it to happen again.

It’s crucial to note, however, that not all Poles behaved horrifically to the Germans nor agreed with what was going on. Because many Poles had suffered themselves during the war, they sympathized with the fleeing Germans and tried to help. A newly appointed chief in Lower Silesia even threatened to punish “the use of indiscriminate or excessive cruelty” but this declaration had little impact, and the Germans continued to be treated brutally (Habble).

The loss of so many Germans to the Soviets, the rapes, and the forced expulsion, were such overwhelming, painful events that no one could bring themselves to discuss them. Der Spiegel recognizes this as a nationwide problem in Germany: “In the 1950s, a team of historians commissioned by the West German government to investigate the events surrounding the flight and expulsion of Germans after World War II amassed more than 40,000 such eyewitness accounts and stories.”

Not just a handful or a few hundred, but tens of thousands of miserable, horrific accounts.

“Their findings were apparently so shocking that the government decided not to publish them for many years. Historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler believes Bonn had reason to fear that the ‘countless credible reports of tanks simply plowing through lines of refugees, of people forced to drink out of latrine barrels until they perished’ would prompt the people to weigh the crimes of the Nazis against the suffering of the expellees” (https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-time-of-retribution-paying-with-life-and-limb-for-the-crimes-of-nazi-germany-a-759737.html).

In other words, many Europeans and Jews had been treated horrifically by the Nazis. But now the victims of Hitler were becoming the perpetrators, and acting as cruelly as the Nazis had, and Germans had suffered as immensely as the Jews. It was too much to digest and deal with, especially in the 1950s when the war was still so fresh and countries and their citizens were still trying to rebuild.

“Certain topics, particularly the mass rapes, were too sensitive for the nascent West Germany to consider. Even the women themselves mostly kept silent about their ordeals, out of embarrassment and a fear of being stigmatized. They therefore simply repressed the memory of their trauma. Psychological counseling wasn’t available” (https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-time-of-retribution-paying-with-life-and-limb-for-the-crimes-of-nazi-germany-a-759737.html).

In the end, it’s estimated that a total of 7.5 million Germans were evacuated, migrated, or expelled from Poland alone between 1944 and 1950 (Kamusella). There were additional German refugees from other countries, possibly doubling that amount, although accurate numbers will likely never be known.

A last note about Charlotte, Yvonne’s mother: it’s now clearer to see how easy it was to “lose” someone during the war, to have no idea where they ended up, or even if they survived. Depending on the city where she lived, or where she might have escaped to with her children while her second husband found himself in France in 1945 and died there in June, Charlotte may have passed away sometime during the war, or been displaced and forced out of Neisse or another city, or taken to Russia, or died in bombings . . . there are tragically too many options to know, and still no evidence as to what happened to her.

The amount of total dead in the European theater of war—civilians and soldiers—is roughly estimated at around 40 million people, including 20 million in Russia alone, 7 million in Germany, and 6 million in Poland (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#Human_losses_by_country). Those are conservative guesses; the actual amounts are likely higher, but accurate numbers will never be known.

Yvonne in Ettlingen

As for Yvonne, she was relatively safe and secure in Ettlingen. Now 18, she was living in the rented rooms of the Koehlers’ relatives.  A school was even started again for teenagers, because in Germany few things were more important than an education. That sense of normalcy, of going to school, was hugely welcomed to Yvonne. Never mind that the classes were held in a building other than a school house, and that she didn’t know anyone, and that most of the students were also refugees. Every student and teacher was relieved to have a sense of regular life, no matter how long or short-lived it might be. For a couple of months, life could continue again.

Then another miracle happened: the Allies invaded, and through luck of the draw, who came into Ettlingen were the Americans. That was the best possible scenario, because the Americans were fair, careful, and kind to the regular German citizens. When the Americans came, you also knew that peace and even food was sure to follow.

According to the troop movement timeline (https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-SS-Chronology/USA-SS-Chronology-5.html), it was around April 9^th that the French First Army area and the American Second Army Corps gained ground in the Black Mountains southeast of Ettlingen. South of the city, the French Valluy Groupement (also known as the French 9th Colonial Infantry Division), reinforced by the American 1^st Armored Division, was pushing in as well.  About a week before, the French combined forces with the Second Moroccan Infantry Division of 2d Corps. Ettlingen was the first German city on the French border, so it’s not unexpected that French would be those who got there first with the Americans.

Unfortunately, the Americans didn’t stay, but continued to push further into Germany, and left Ettlingen and the surround area under French rule instead.

Whereas the Americans were compassionate to civilians, the French soldiers were not. While they weren’t as vengeful and bitter as the Soviets and the Poles in the east, they were certainly not going to treat their enemies who invaded their country with any sense of dignity. The French’s animosity is understandable, considering Hitler and his armies had occupied France and treated them horribly for many years. But the way the French treated the innocent refugees was inexcusable. As if life as a refugee—with very little clothing or food, no home, and few if any family around—wasn’t difficult enough, the French made it worse.

For Yvonne, the next few months were the most difficult of her life. Immediately food was curtailed. Each German was allowed one loaf of bread a week, nothing else. While food shortages abounded, there were local people who raised their own gardens and livestock, but the Germans weren’t allowed to purchase anything, even if they could find it, which they usually couldn’t. Any fruit, vegetable, or livestock discovered to the German town was immediately confiscated by the French. They either used that food for themselves or sent it back over to France, which was also suffering from the effects of the war.

As is often the case in war, illnesses spread rapidly in Ettlingen. Yvonne, along with many others, became ill with hepatitis and other abdominal problems because of lack of food. But there were no doctors, no medicine, no help coming to help them during the late spring and early summer. Germany was being defeated and cities were falling left and right, but there was no food to ship anywhere, nor were the railroads intact or the roads undamaged. At this time in April and May, the Allies were also discovering more and more concentration camps and people forced into Death Marches, where every day Jews dropped dead from months of walking and starvation. Any food resources that could be secured went to the survivors of these atrocities, although for many Jews it was too late to help them.

Death Marches

The numbers of Jews forced to walk was staggering. While the camps killed an approximate 6 million Jews during WWII (and another 6 million were also killed by the Nazis including the mentally handicapped, gays, communists, people who spoke out against Hitler and his regime, Romani, and anyone else who happened to get in the way), that wasn’t the end of the Nazis brutality. As mentioned before, when the camps were discovered by the Allies, they realized that the Nazis were trying to get the surviving Jews out and to central areas in Germany, either to continue using them for labor or to kill them and hide the evidence of what they had been doing. Yad Vashem compiled a list of just how many Jews were forced on these “Death Marches” to get them to their next locations, where fortunately some Allied forces encountered them. Still, tens of thousands died before they could be rescued.

A few marches to move dissidents began before the war ended, starting with Nazis marching hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers in 1941 through Belorussia and Ukraine to transfer them to another camp (https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206260.pdf). This demonstrated to the Nazis that, even though a few thousand died, it was a feasible, if not horrific, way of moving large groups of people. Walk them until they die (or were executed at prearranged locations) or they make it to the next destination.

The Nazis tried this again in 1941, moving masses of Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina to Transnistria. Then in 1944, when the Allied forces showed their strength, the Nazis began “liquidating” camps in earnest, meaning either killed the Jews and/or moving the more healthy ones to new sites (https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206260.pdf).

The first major march was from Budapest, Hungary, where 76,000 Jewish men, women, and children were forced to walk to the Austrian border, a distance of a few hundred miles that took a month to walk. Thousands died of disease, starvation, and cold since it was from November to December. While a few hundred were rescued, thousands more weren’t, and ended up in camps such as Dachau and Mauthausen (https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206260.pdf).

By January the Nazis knew they were losing and had to move the Jews. The first major march, as mentioned earlier, began from Auschwitz in Poland just before the Russians arrived on January 18. About 60,000 Jews were marched out of there, 15,000 dying along the way (https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206260.pdf).

Three days later, 4,000 Jewish men were sent off from the Hblechhammer camp, and the Stutthof camp complex of about 47,000 prisoners was also emptied. Of that 47,000, 35,000 were Jews and most of the female. A total of 7,000 Jews—1,000 men and 6,000 women—were force walked for 10 days, with 700 murdered along the way. When they reached the Baltic Sea, the Nazi soldiers pushed the survivors into the water and shot them. Only 13 survived (https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206260.pdf).

In February, the main camp of Gross-Rosen and its sub-camps started evacuating. Over 40,000 prisoners were sent out, thousands murdered by the Nazis and guards along the way (https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206260.pdf).

Another 20,000 Jews who worked in labor camps at Eulengebirge were killed either before they evacuated or during their death march away. Throughout March and April, Nazis cleared out camp after camp, sending at least a quarter of a million Jews—250,000 people—out on death marches. At the time they held a total of 700,000 prisoners in the 2,000 concentration camps. Some marches lasted for weeks, with people dying daily. Often prisoners were forced onto trains and denied food and water (https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206260.pdf).

But the death marches continued, and on April 6 the clearing out of the main Buchenwald camp began, with 3,100 Jews marched off, 1,400 killed along the way. For the next four days, another 40,000 prisoners were sent off, 13,500 of them dying. Over 20,000 prisoners remained in camp, most of them not Jews (https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206260.pdf).

A week later, a sub-camp called Rehmsdorf was evacuated with over 4,000 prisoners leaving but less than 500 surviving. Then Dora-Mittlebau camp was evacuated, marching prisoners for two weeks towards Bergen-Belsen. There, one group of prisoners were forced into a barn that was then set on fire. Tragically, the Americans arrived just the next day to find all of the Jews dead. By the end of the month, the Nazis had started death marches from Flossenburg, Neungamme, Sachsenhause, Magdeburg, Ravensbrueck, Mathausen, and others. Some marches lasted until the very day the Nazis surrendered, but still tens of thousands of Jews died or were killed (https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206260.pdf).

In all an estimated 200,000-250,000 concentration camp victims were murdered or died during the death marches (https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206260.pdf).

(For an excellent and inspiring memoir on the camps and the death marches, read All But My Life by Gerda Weissman Klein.)

It’s easy to see why when suffering Jews were discovered, either in camps or on marches, that all efforts were made by the Allied forces to assist them. That also meant that regular citizens who were also in need, yet not quite as needy, were often passed over, such as the refugees.

Surrender and shortages and leaving Neisse

In every city and area in Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Russia—in fact, all of Europe—there were severe shortages of food, medicine, and help, even well after Germany finally surrendered on May 7, 1945. While that surrender was a huge relief to Germans and the rest of the world, it didn’t change much for most people’s situation. The countries were in ruins, farms and crops hadn’t been planted, infrastructure had been bombed and would take the next 10 years or more to repair, and people continued to suffer.

Yvonne was losing weight (and years later, when she saw her teenage daughter’s figure, she sighed and said, “Ah, I remember being that skinny! Of course, I was starving at the time, but at least I looked good.”). The French also halted school, because they had a different plan for the Germans.

Back in Neisse, Emil realized that his plan to stay in the town and negotiate with the Russians wasn’t going to work, and that he and Marta needed to leave. Near the end of the war, probably in March when fighting was fiercest in Neisse, Emil packed his clothes into his beloved Mercedes which he hadn’t driven for a while, but had kept stocked with the gasoline rations he was allowed, while Marta packed in all the jewelry she had. They drove to Czechoslovakia (the border was less than 20 miles away) hoping to find safety. It’s unclear how far they got, but somewhere in the Czech Republic a German officer saw Emil in his Mercedes and confiscated it “for the war effort.” He never saw his car again.

There’s a postcard he sent to Yvonne from the Sudetenland—Czechoslovakia. However, there’s no date on the postcard, nor any address, and the writing is a little more cramped than Emil’s earlier postcards. He sends his regards to the Assa family, which likely could have been who Yvonne had been staying with, the relatives of the Koehlers.

While it’s tempting to suggest he wrote this during his short time in the Czech Republic, it could have been even a couple of years later, considering his reference to “4 years behind the iron curtain.” Winston Churchill first coined the term “Iron Curtain” to describe life in the eastern bloc countries, in March of 1946, so maybe this postcard was written much later, and Emil had returned to Czechoslovakia. Maybe he uses the term “refugee camp” loosely, ironically, to refer to his present living conditions. Discovering just when he wrote and sent this is difficult, but the words he writes are a little distressing, reflecting his worry and concern after the war:

Dear Yvonne!

I also want to send you a sign of life from our refugee camp Goldenstein vom Sudetenland [Could this have been Branna Czech Republic, about 55 km/35 miles south of Neisse?]. Now it is abroad. Thank you for your efforts. I am still requested by Brannsū Maschinenbau Anstalt because of my patents. How this matter will turn out I don’t know!? Hopefully everything will change for the better. There is a lot of talk about reunions at home. It is possible that there will be a reunion here, but wait and see. It would be good to be true. It would be a great pleasure for me to celebrate a reunion. May God reign over it. There were always God’s miracles when the hope was true. My 4 years behind the iron curtain have not passed without a trace. Had another nervous breakdown followed by fear of death. But my mind is still active.

Many greetings from your grandpa

Warmest regards to the Assa family

His fear of death, his nervous breakdowns, are understandable for a man in his 70s who had lost all of his family and didn’t know where they were or if he’d ever see them again. Nor did he even have a home of his own anymore.

Emil’s return to Neuland

Realizing that Czechoslovakia wasn’t faring much better than Neisse, and not having much left (Marta still had her jewelry, but food was much more valuable), Emil and Marta somehow made it back to Neisse/Neuland. How long it took or what manner they traveled since the car was gone is unknown. But eventually they made it back to Neisse and Neuland, hoping to find some resources at their home. At least they still had the gardens and fruit trees and would be able to still eat—

Except that’s not what they found.

Instead of their home, they found a crater.

Apparently after the Neufeldts fled from the house, German soldiers moved into it. There must have been a skirmish of some sorts, resulting in the house being bombed completely. All that was left of their beautiful home, with the two-story high “music” room and Yvonne’s 200 books and the attic where they dried their laundry and Emil’s tobacco, and the large sitting room and kitchen and dining room . . . all that was left was a large crater in the ground.

And that crater had filled with water.

And on that water floated Yvonne’s bed.

And on that bed was a dead German soldier.

Emil was crushed. Granted, had they stayed they likely would have had trouble with the German soldiers who wanted to take over the house, and they might have even perished once the area had been bombed. By leaving, Emil and Marta had escaped all of that. What the soldiers did to their house while they had it disturbed all of the family, and maybe it was a good thing that it was destroyed after being defiled. In fact, all of Neisse—now Nysa, Poland—had been devastated. About 80% of the city and surroundings were destroyed, and what was left, the Red Army burned. There was practically nothing left of Nysa.

For Emil, nearly 72, it was all just too much. His dreams of bringing everyone home again to his house were destroyed. His hopes of quick reunions were put on hold, indefinitely. So many of his family were now gone, and so too was their home and garden and all that he possessed.

Across the road lived Emil’s friends, and when they saw him in front of his destroyed home, they took him and let him and Marta live there. Theirs was one of the few residences still intact. Many of their German neighbors had left for the west as so many others had.

The next day, Emil walked across the road to the debris of what had been his house, and started gathering whatever intact bricks he could retrieve. Carefully he cleaned each one, stacked them in neat rows, and dreamed of rebuilding. Every day he went out to gather and clean bricks, not able to give up on the hope of reunions, remembering the words written to his granddaughter, “It would be a great pleasure for me to celebrate a reunion. May God reign over it. There were always God’s miracles when the hope was true.”

Ettlingen summer of 1945

In the meantime, in Ettlingen in the summer of 1945, the situation was growing more difficult for Yvonne, even though the war was now over. Across the street from where the Koehlers and Yvonne lived was an elderly German couple by the last name of Grat. Because the husband spoke French fluently, the French soldiers who were in charge of Ettlingen made Herr Grat the Commissioner of Labor for the city, and gave him a list of tasks to perform to start cleaning up. Grat, who was as nasty-tempered as any Nazi (and some suspected he had been one, but he wasn’t about to confess that to anyone after the war), needed to find laborers, and he found them at the school which the French were shutting down.

Apparently Herr Grat hated teenagers, along with anyone who was well-educated, so the school was the perfect pool for forced labor. Grat took them from the school and tasked them to work. The German students and teachers were to paid nothing for their labor and still received only that one loaf of bread per week. All of the teenagers and teachers soon grew weak with hunger, but the task they were given by Herr Grat killed any appetite they had left. They were ordered to the nearby military base where the French-Moroccan troops had stayed when they invaded Ettlingen in April. To show their hatred of the Germany army, the French-Moroccan army ransacked the buildings, took all of the documents, threw them all over the rooms (it was knee-deep in most areas) then proceeded to use all the papers in every room as a bathroom. After sitting for several weeks, the stench and decay was overwhelming. Yvonne and her schoolmates and teachers, forced to clean this mess up, were no longer hungry but instead overcome by nausea.

Fortunately in October, the Americans returned to Ettlingen and the region, and the French went back over the Rhine river. Now the Americans were the occupation army and that was a huge relief for Yvonne and everyone else. Everything changed. When the French were in charge, the Germans always had to step off the sidewalk and into the gutters when a French officer approached. Not so with the Americans. School was also allowed to start up again, and food rations also went up significantly. All of the high school students and teachers were given a hot meal at the school each day. For many of them, including Yvonne, it was the only food they received, and it was more than just a few slices of bread that the French allotted them.  (Later in 1948, The Marshall Plan codified ways that America could help Europe recover through delivered food.)

Herr Grat wasn’t pleased with this change in command, because the Americans weren’t pleased with him and his treatment of the people in the city. The high schoolers and teachers weren’t the only ones he conscripted into unpaid labor. The Americans immediately removed him from his position as Commissioner of Labor and took away all other privileges.

Then the truth about Grat came out. There was a reason he was fluent in French: he’d been incarcerated in a French prison for counterfeiting. Suddenly the great Grat was the laughingstock of Etttlingen. If they didn’t hate him before for his cruelty, the Germans hated him even more for lording himself over everyone when he was just a common crook. Humiliated, Grat rarely left his house after that, not daring to show his face in the city again.

Slow-to-no help for the Germans

Just as the American soldiers were realizing how Grat was tormenting his fellow Germans, the suffering that the German citizens were undergoing all over was slowly coming to light to the rest of the world. Word leaked out about the forced deportations in Poland, and the Western Allies were furious. It was when American soldiers in Berlin helped unload refugee trains at the Lehrter Bahnhof train station that the situation became clear. As the American soldiers unloaded people shoved like cattle into freight trains, they also pulled out an average of 10 corpses per car. Germans had been traveling for days with no food or water or bathroom facilities, or even the ability to sit down. When a ship arrived at Westhafen in Berlin carrying 300 half-starved children, it sparked angry protests. The US government, deeply dismayed at the conditions they were finding German refugees, had the State Department write a cable to Poland about what they called “massive misery and poor treatment of weak and helpless people” (https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-time-of-retribution-paying-with-life-and-limb-for-the-crimes-of-nazi-germany-a-759737.html). Still, aid was very slow in coming for German refugees, and wouldn’t arrive for months.

Germans who escaped from these areas called Poland the “land of death.” One man’s report in the fall of 1945, when Lene and Christa were still imprisoned in an old concentration camp, was this: “We literally breathed a sigh of relief as we left the Polish zone and entered the Russian-occupied area. We had finally left behind us the pillaged towns, disease-riddled villages, concentration camps, desolation, untended fields and body-strewn roads along which bandits waited to rob us of our last remaining possessions” (https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-time-of-retribution-paying-with-life-and-limb-for-the-crimes-of-nazi-germany-a-759737.html). This violent exile of German nationals happened also in Czechoslovakia with similar stories of cruelty and devastation. No German national was safe anywhere in those countries.

But getting help to the German refugees was on the bottom of the priority list. Historian Rummel writes that death in Poland and occupied Germany was frequent, discovering bodies lying along the roads was a daily and common occurrence, and seeing mothers holding dead children close to them not unusual. He admits that “France, Great Britain, and the United States were reluctant to divert needed food, clothing, tents, medicine, and other supplies from elsewhere in Europe to those who had been such brutal enemies just a few months previous” (Rummel).

Such poor treatment of the Germans was foreseen by a Polish courier sent to President Roosevelt before the end of the war. Jan Karski told him, “I would be frank with you, Mr. President. Nothing on earth will stop the Poles from taking some kind of revenge on the Germans after the Nazi collapse. There will be some terrorism, probably short-lived, but unavoidable. And I think this will be a sort of encouragement for all Germans in Poland to go west, to Germany proper, where they belong” (Rummel).

 Britain’s Winston Churchill, upon learning about the mass expulsions of Germans—most who were innocent women, children, and elderly—called it a “tragedy on a prodigious scale,” but still little aid was diverted to them. Because of Hitler’s Lebensraum plan to expel 30 million Poles and Slaves from eastern Europe, the Western allies “weren’t particularly interested in protecting” the Germans now from the anger of those who lived in Poland and Russia (Habbe).

But as 1945 wore on, and into 1946, and as the situation in Germany grew worse each month, the Allies finally began to allow private relief agencies to come in and provide food and clothing (Rummel). Welsh minister Dr. Elfan Rees, a relief worker who was the head of the refugee division of the World Council of Churches, went so far as to say in 1949, “More people have been rendered homeless by an Allied peace than by a Nazi war” (furtherglory.wordpress.com/2017/07/02/displaced-person-deps-then-and-now).

For months Yvonne, the Koehlers, Emil and Marta, the Schmidts, Lene and Christa, and Hedel and her children had to get by with any means available to them, which often meant no means at all. They had no homes, no clothing besides what they carried, no reliable food sources, and no pay for work they did. They just had to keep moving forward, hoping for better days.

The Koehlers, seeing how their situation was growing more dire, encouraged Yvonne to find a job and work to help support herself and possibly them. But Yvonne’s heart was in continuing school, and while she was grateful to the Koehlers for all their help, she realized she had different plans than they had. Yvonne made arrangements to stay with other relations of the Koehlers, who charged her low enough rent for the tiny room and small amount of food they could offer. Yvonne had just enough to cover those costs, so she parted ways with the Koehlers, still as friends and with great affection for her former foster parents.

Emil and Lene and Christa

Somehow Emil got word of what had happened to Lene and Christa, and he was devastated by their capture and imprisonment in a former concentration camp. He had to rescue them, but had nothing left in Neisse. What could he bribe the guards with? He had no more wealth nor even sugar, and not even a home of his own anymore.

But there was one thing: he did speak Polish. In a country which was divided by nationalities and languages, a knowledge of Polish suggested he was on their side. Perhaps this was the reason his Polish mother had raised him speaking Polish along with German, and why he continued to practice his Polish with his Polish-German wife Mariana. His fluency had to be for some reason. He had to at least try something to get his daughter and granddaughter back.

Somehow (because he no longer had a car) he made his way up to their camp and spoke to the guards. Whatever he said, in his fluent Polish, it was enough. He was able to persuade the guards to release his daughter and granddaughter. Maybe the thought they had interred Poles instead of Germans and were willing to rectify the error. Not all camp detainees were so fortunate. Many died in the camps before the rest were finally released.

Six months of incarceration had taken its toll on Lene and young Christa. Emil was sickened by their condition when they were brought to him at the gates. They had been wasting away on starvation rations and hard labor. They were weak and still bald, but so grateful to be released to their family.

Emil whisked home Lene and Christa back to Neisse/Neuland, ready to nurse them back to health. They were all he had left for now. Hedel and her remaining children had fled to Bitterfeld, 488 km/303 miles to the west. Yvonne was gone further west than that, and the rest of the family were in the war. But at least Emil got back his oldest daughter and a granddaughter.

Presumably they stayed with the neighbors across the street from the bombed-out shell of the Neufeldts’ old home. Who that family was or what sacrifices they made to house more and more people is unknown. They may very well have been Polish themselves, some of the many Poles who were shocked at the treatment of the Germans and stepped up to provide relief as much as they could. While many Poles and Russians took revenge, many other Poles and Germans took compassion on their neighbors and distant relatives, and opened up whatever they had left to share. Paul Schmidt was also staying with Emil and Marta at the time, and witnessed Lene and Christa’s pitiable condition.

When Marta first saw her step-daughter and step-granddaughter, she wasn’t suddenly overcome with compassion as one might think. She was disgusted and repulsed by their haggard appearance, shaved heads, and ragged clothes—the only possessions they had left. She announced that their filthy appearance didn’t qualify them to sit at the dining room table, but that she would permit them to take their meals in the kitchen, where traditionally servants and lower-class people were relegated to eat. She seemed to think that was a great and generous allowance on her part. After all, they looked like homeless beggars. What more could they expect?

It wasn’t often that Emil lost his temper, but if ever a situation warranted rage, this was it.

Emil exploded in fury at the arrogance of his second wife. In no uncertain terms he laid it out to Marta: either his daughter and granddaughter be treated with love and kindness and respect—which meant eating in the dining room—or she could pack up whatever she had left and leave. Considering all that Emil had gone through to rescue his family, his ultimatum—and the depth of his anger—were not to be taken lightly.

Marta likely never considered such a stipulation, probably thinking she rated much higher on the scale of importance than she did. But Emil had been Lene’s father far longer than he had been Marta’s husband, and even though he knew the severity of the conditions outside of their shared shelter, he had no problem casting her out into the middle of it for the sake of his family.

Marta suddenly understood this, and also realized she had nowhere else to go. Her sister and her remaining family had suffered dearly in the firebombings of Dresden and were currently fleeing for safety themselves, and Marta had no other family or friends. And the family she did currently have, she was insulting at a rate to get her tossed out into the land of “pillaged towns, disease-riddled villages, concentration camps, desolation, untended fields and body-strewn roads.”

Out of options, and probably realizing that life wasn’t going back to her luxurious normal anytime soon, she meekly agreed to help take care of Lene and Christa.

This rescue of Lene of Christa was likely in the autumn of 1945, when movement to the west was becoming more stable and less oppressive now that the Allies were firmly in place. Later, when Lene and Christa were healthy again, they were reunited with Alfons Junior who was back from his stint on a minesweeper in the ocean, and together they traveled to Limburg an der Lahn, Germany, 800 km/500 miles west of Neisse.

There they had one last relative, or sort of. During these difficult times anyone who had any connection to your family was considered a “relative.” Fortunately Lene’s husband Alfons had a compassionate “relation” who was willing to take in whomever could make it to him, and he had some room. Karl and Alfons Rudolfs’ parents had years before acted as foster parents for a young man named Romuald Laqua. After he left the Rudolfs he became a monk, living at a monastery in Limburg an der Lahn, where he rose to the position of abbot (in charge of the monastery). He gladly took in Lene, Alfons Junior, and Christa and helped them resettle in the west after their horrible ordeals. Lene did the best she could to make a new life for her surviving son and daughter.

Paul Schmidt was finally allowed to leave Neisse and be reunited with his wife Hedel and children Ursula, Hubert, and Walter in Nordlingen. They were desperately poor, but immensely grateful to at least be together again.

Yvonne’s aunt Hedel Rudolf also had to head west. She left with only part of her family, since Dieter was a POW in America, Olaf was still in Siberia, and her husband Karl was serving somewhere in the army. Karl had a brother who was a dentist in Bitterfeld. Fortunately his home was still intact, with room to spare. Hedel fled there with Peter, Susie, and Ingrid, and it’s where her husband and two sons eventually returned to as well.

Yvonne tries to go home

In Ettlingen, in the fall of 1945, Yvonne decided she’d had enough. She was weary of refugee life, tired of living with the Koehlers, but most of all, she was terribly homesick and desperately wanted to return to her grandfather. Being 18 and alone was taking its toll on her, and one day she came to a conclusion: if Emil couldn’t leave Neisse, Yvonne would return to him.

It didn’t matter to Yvonne that the country was in shambles, that she had very little food and money, that she was just a teenage girl. She was going home! She knew that her Aunt Hedel was settled with her brother-in-law’s family in Bitterfeld, and that was only 540 km/335 miles away. That would be her first stop. Maybe Hedel had information or ideas for getting Yvonne back into Neisse.

So Yvonne took off, with her trusty backpack again filled, but not with too much because she didn’t have much left. She traveled first to Hof/Franken, about 420 km/260 miles. By car on modern highways, the trip would take about five hours. But in 1945, Yvonne traveled by train on tracks that were mostly destroyed, meaning she had to change trains frequently where gaps in the track meant no further traveling. She walked between sections where tracks were gone, and the five-hour trip ended taking several days to accomplish.

She didn’t take to the roads, either, though. While the war was over, hostilities abounded. The Americans occupied parts of the land, but the Red Army occupied other sections.

Unsure of if an area was friendly or hostile during those shifting times, Yvonne played it safe and hiked for 12 km/7 miles through a forest to avoid both American and Russian troops. She crossed the border to Eastern Germany in the seclusion and safety of the trees. She then made her way to Bitterfeld, in the Eastern Germany part, to find Hedel, Peter, Susie, and Ingrid at the brother-in-law’s house.

Bitterfeld

Yvonne was thrilled to find her aunt and cousins again, and they eagerly invited her to remain with them, which was a bit tempting. Hedel had been like a mother to her, her cousins like siblings. But Yvonne was determined, and she had made it so far on her own that she was filled with confidence and even some callousness. She declared that she was going home, no matter what. Hedel verified that Emil was still alive and in Neuland, but she didn’t know anything else about him or his condition. No mail was allowed out of Poland into Germany. None of them in Bitterfeld knew yet that the Neuland home had been destroyed. Yvonne had no house to return to, no extra clothes, no books, no security. But, ignorant of this, she was undeterred, sure that her grandfather and her home were waiting safely in Neisse.

Hedel was also undeterred—she was NOT going to allow Yvonne to head into hostile territory. All night long Hedel stayed up with Yvonne convincing her of the foolishness of her plan. The Poles were forcing OUT Germans. Why would they let one back in?!

Simple, Yvonne would just sneak in, as she had sneaked across the border through the woods.

But Neisse isn’t surrounded by woods, Hedel reminded her. It was surrounded by rivers, and there were three main bridges people had to take to get into the area. It’s impossible to sneak across bridges, especially when the Poles were actively patrolling the bridges and brutally forcing people away!

Eventually Hedel broke through Yvonne’s stubbornness, convincing her that if she thought life in Ettlingen was difficult, she’d find life in Poland far worse. Reluctantly Yvonne agreed to go no further east. Getting back to her grandfather would have to wait for the world to calm down a little more.

Before she headed back west, Yvonne stayed with Hedel for a while, but not because she was living in any kind of luxury. Hedel needed help, and Yvonne remained to provide labor. The fields and farms around Bitterfeld had been planted that year and harvested, but still there wasn’t enough food for everyone. So Yvonne went with Hedel and her children to glean the wheat fields, looking for dropped grains that they could collect. There was no flour for the refugees to purchase, but they could try to gather grains for themselves.

It was humbling work, reminding Yvonne that there really was no “normal life” to get back to, anywhere. The world was markedly different, and what it would be in their future was unknown. They had been a wealthy family with plenty to have and to share with others. Now they were on their hands and knees for days at a time picking through the dirt and straw for any grains available. Then they took what they had to the flour mill in exchange for flour, and were charged regular price even though they had done the labor themselves. No one was given any kinds of breaks in those days. Everyone was starving, everyone was struggling, and there was no room for mercy anywhere.

After doing what she could for Hedel, she hugged her aunt and her cousins goodbye, and set off again. But she didn’t immediately head west to Ettlingen again, but went north about 155 km/96 miles to Berlin/Falkensee. Although she knew the city had been devastated by the Soviets, and that the Russians still occupied much of it, she wanted to go because there was family there.

Berlin and the Sabbots

Her favorite aunt—Emil’s sister Ottilie who had helped Yvonne learn to read when she was little, and about whom Yvonne had a dream that she had died after getting blood poisoning—had a son living in Berlin, named Edmund Sabbot. Edmund was a successful writer and screenwriter, and was in a natural position to serve as a communication base for the extended family. He and his wife Grete had stayed in the city when the armies came, realizing that there wasn’t really anywhere for them to go. Since they were the only ones who never moved, everyone sent letters and postcards to the letting them know where they were and asking about news of others. Yvonne decided that since everyone else reported to Edmund and Grete about their whereabouts and status, so could she—personally.

Grete and Edmund were astonished and thrilled to see her, relieved to know she was still alive. They demanded a report on everyone and everything she had seen, and when she told them about gleaning the fields with Hedel and her children, Edmund and Grete immediately set about to send Hedel money. How many in the family they helped financially no one ever knew. But Edmund and Grete gave all they could as often as they could.

Seeing their generosity made Yvonne even more grateful for the gift she was able to bring them. When she had been traveling from Bitterfeld to Falkensee, she overheard that no one in Berlin had seen salt for six months. That struck Yvonne as strange, since there were vast salt mines as Asse II just south about 250 km/155 miles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine). But, as with many industries and mines, the war had stalled work in the mine (and further south, other salt mines were used by Hitler to hide his stolen art treasures—see “Monuments Men” for a good retelling of that time). There was also no way to transport salt, or to transport anything for that matter.

But Yvonne could transport a little for her father’s cousins and Tante Ottilie’s son and daughter-in-law. She bought five pounds of salt as she traveled, as much as she could carry in her backpack, and brought it to Falkensee. When she pulled out her sack of salt for Edmund and Grete, Grete was more thrilled than Yvonne had been when she first received her bike. There’s no substitute for salt, and bland food tastes even blander without it. Edmund and Grete promptly divided up the salt and delivered portions of it to their neighbors who were equally thrilled with finally having salt again.

Yvonne was sobered by the condition of Berlin. While she had heard about its destruction, seeing it made it all real. The city had been bombed 363 times by American, British, and Soviet forces (https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/berlin-end-war-1945/).

Berlin, where Hitler had been headquartered, was wholly devastated, with Russian soldiers on every corner and every street. Her father’s cousins pointed out to her that there was a curfew at dusk for the civilians, not to keep them in order, but to keep them safe from the Red Army. Everyone rushed home before dark and secured their homes as best they could before drunk soldiers came knocking or breaking in.

Yvonne realized just how serious the problems were with the Soviet army, and that in Neisse, where Poles and Russians were in charge, the situation wouldn’t be much better. Edmund and Grete urged Yvonne to head back to the west, to the safety of the American soldiers and opportunities to finish her education. Without schooling, her future prospects were even bleaker. She wasn’t safe among the Russians, but had much better chances among the Americans.

She agreed to head back west, and with love from Edmund and Grete, and with as much money as they could spare her, along with a stick of salami, the only food they could offer her, they sent her out of Berlin back toward the west again.

Returning west

Yvonne boarded a train from Berlin/Spandau to Naumburg, a smaller but beautiful city, traveling for two days a distance that would take less than five hours to normally drive.

Since the train ended there, Yvonne, ever the sight-seer, decided to visit the cathedral to see the famous Utah sculpture created in the 15^th century (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uta_von_Ballenstedt)

But to her disappointment, once she made her way to the cathedral, she discovered the statue was still encased in wood for protection against the bombings. Only later did she realize that sightseeing wasn’t supposed to be the focus of her journey; getting safely back to the west was.

Naumburg train station

Yvonne walked back to the train station only to discover no more trains were leaving that day, and it was growing dark. Russian soldiers patrolled the areas, eyeing everyone who came to the station. For once, Yvonne felt fear, realizing that she was young, alone, in a city where she knew no one, and that several soldiers were watching her closely to see what she’d do next. She had no ideas and no options. Edmund and Grete had advised her to not stay at any hotels, if she could find any standing, because the Russians “made their rounds” at night looking for entertainment. The railroad station was supposed to be safe, but it suddenly didn’t feel that way.  

As darkness began to settle, Yvonne was startled to realize that walking straight for her wasn’t a soldier but a woman, maybe in her early thirties. With her was her young daughter. They strode right up to Yvonne, introduced themselves, then invited her to spend the night with them. Yvonne later learned that this woman came to the station every night looking for girls and women who might be vulnerable and needing shelter during the night, away from the Red Army.

Yvonne immediately and gratefully accepted the offer, and with great relief followed them home. The woman told Yvonne that she had a husband who had been forced into the war, but that since the war had ended a few months ago, she still hadn’t heard anything about him. She wasn’t giving up yet, but was realistic that he wouldn’t be coming home. Perhaps her showing up at the train station each night wasn’t just to rescue needy women but was also hoping to discover her husband had finally made it back to her.

When they reached her humble-but-still intact house, the woman apologized to Yvonne that she had no food to offer, but could give Yvonne a little herbal tea. Yvonne knew what was in her backpack, given to her the day before by Edmund and Grete—the stick of salami. She pulled that out and presented it to the woman and her daughter for their generosity. They were surprised and thrilled. They hadn’t had such substantial food in a very long time. Together they had a decent meal of salami and herbal tea, and Yvonne slept safely.

The woman told Yvonne that local farmers tried to help refugees across the border in various unpopulated areas, and could travel with their wagons and horses and not be bothered by the Russians. Finding those farmers on the other side of the border would be Yvonne’s best bet to getting west.

Crossing the border into the west

The next morning Yvonne went back to the train station and found a train heading west, close to the border again where she had crossed through the forest some weeks before.

Now, traveling east wasn’t so difficult in those days, because no one was stopping anyone foolish enough to try to go east. But heading west, out of Soviet-held lands and into freedom, was very different. It wasn’t merely just driving across the border or taking a stroll along a sidewalk. The Red Army wasn’t about to let anyone to leave the east, but every day thousands of people tried it and many succeeded, but not all. The soldiers couldn’t patrol every inch, and if you timed it right, and left the roads, your chances were better.

People riding the train with Yvonne discussed the problem of getting across the border without the Soviet soldiers stopping them. Yvonne listened to everyone but said nothing. She had heard from others during her travels that going with a large group was a bad idea, because the noise would attract patrolling soldiers. And everyone knew to avoid the roads and go through the dense woods instead.

Yvonne grew worried, wondering if she could take the same route she had before, realizing that dozens, if not hundreds, of people would be trying to do the same thing, and might draw the soldiers near.

A German soldier sat near Yvonne and noticed that she had been silently listening to the conversations. He leaned over and privately asked if she knew how to cross. Noticing her reticence to answer, he assured Yvonne that he had no evil designs for her, he just wanted to get home to his wife and children. When the war ended, there weren’t any organized methods for returning German soldiers. They just left their groups and made their ways home as best as they could. Since this soldier was finally getting home, maybe the husband of the woman the night before in Naumburg might be reunited with her husband soon as well.

Yvonne stared at the soldier, wondering if she should trust him. If he was telling the truth, that he was simply trying to get home safely, he would be a good ally should something go wrong. He was still armed and had some skills he picked up in the war. But if he were just an opportunist, looking to take advantage of a teenager, things could go very wrong and Yvonne would be in trouble and alone.

She decided to risk it and trust him. In whispers, she told him that the best chance was to stay apart from the larger groups and wait in the forest until it was dark and the guards changed commands, usually in the middle of the night. In the morning, farmers would be in key hidden areas ready to transport anyone who made it through the forest. The soldier liked her idea, and together they left the train when it stopped.

It was already dark when they started from Hildburghausen in Thuringia. Yvonne and the soldier found an abandoned school house and rested there a while, until it was sufficiently late, probably for a few hours. What might have Yvonne been thinking during that quiet time, alone with the soldier, both waiting to either get to freedom or possibly get caught. Eventually they snuck out into the dark and walked into the dark forest in the middle of the night.

They reached the border at around 2am, and just in time for the Russian guards to switch. The information about when the change of guard occurred also came from observant farmers who, during those months of Soviet occupation, did a lot more than just farming.

Yvonne and the German soldier crept cautiously through the woods to the border, but there were more Russian soldiers on patrol than they anticipated. They noticed one silhouetted against the sky in a small clearing in the trees, his gun and bayonet pointed to the sky. Immediately the gun was then pointed at Yvonne and the German soldier. They were caught.

Exchanging glances, Yvonne and the soldier knew what they had to do. The Russian didn’t say anything but simply glared at them. It was useless to run, because the Russian soldiers were trigger happy, and they didn’t know well the black forest they’d be running into.

Reluctantly Yvonne took off her backpack and handed it over to the Russian. It was customary to hand over whatever goods you had to the Russians before they took you in. He searched her pack but found no food and very little clothing, and nothing else of real interest.

He was, however, momentarily intrigued by her manicure set. He set down her bag to look at the set more closely, and that’s when Yvonne noticed the German soldier wave subtly for her to run. This was her chance and she needed to take it. She snatched up her backpack and took off running into the dark. Instead of feeling terrified or worried, she was instead filled with a great sense of calm, of safety. She sensed she was being protected by a Higher Being, and so was the German soldier, because he was sprinting right along with her. Within just a few minutes they were across the border and into an area considered no-man’s land.

Relieved and thrilled that the escape had cost her only her manicure set, Yvonne and the German soldier didn’t have a lot of time to rejoice in their freedom, because shots soon rang out. Yvonne and the soldier took cover, but the shooting wasn’t directed at them. They heard a group of people, much larger and making a great deal of noise, also running across the border just a few hundred yards away from them. And judging by the shooting, not all of them were going to be successful making it to no-man’s land.

Yvonne and the soldier walked out of there as quickly as possible to avoid being caught up in the group or being tracked down by the Soviets. For two hours they walked in the dark toward the road where the forest ended and the farms began. They reached it as dawn approached, and just as Yvonne had been told in Naumburg, there was a farmer in a wagon waiting to take them into the village.

Astonished at the man’s kindness, Yvonne and the soldier happily got into the wagon. Once they reached the village they were further surprised to discover that the farmers had prepared breakfast for whomever had made it across the border that night. Apparently they did that every morning—looked for those who had come across, then fed them a simple meal congratulating them on making it to the west. Fed and safe for the time being, Yvonne shook hands with the German soldier who went on his way to find his family while Yvonne focused on trying to get back to Ettlingen.

Yvonne was struck by how many kind, generous, helpful people were scattered around the country, not concerned about themselves and their serious want, but recognizing that there were so many others in even greater need than they were. True, Poles and Russians were trying to destroy the Germans, but other Poles and war-weary Germans were also trying to help the refugees with every last bit they had.

Making her way back to Ettlingen

Yvonne spent the next many days getting back west, noticing that everyone was traveling as she was, going either north, south, or west. No one was ever going east. There was no point in doing so.

Getting back to Ettlingen required a variety of strategies. Sometimes she could take the train, as long as there were tracks. Otherwise she walked. Sometimes she tried hitchhiking, and was careful to accept rides only from Germans, not from soldiers from any occupying armies, although they did offer her rides. When Yvonne did ride in German cars, she wondered where they got the gasoline from. But she never asked, not really wanting to know the answers.

Wurzberg

One day she needed to traverse Wurzberg, which before the war had been a beautiful city. Now, it was a city of death. For two hours she made her way through the area, never once seeing a single house intact. While devastation from bombings were evident in every city she traveled through, no where was it as pronounced as in Wurzberg or Pforzheim. Mountains of rubble lined the streets, with makeshift wooden crosses set on top with the names of loved ones inscribed. That was the only cemetery and burial those residents would have. Even though the last bombings and fighting had been over many months before, in March of 1945 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_W%C3%BCrzburg_in_World_War_II), the city would take years before it recovered. The destruction of the city was even greater than what had happened to Dresden the month earlier.

When Yvonne focused on anything in the piles of crushed concrete and smashed buildings, she recognized body parts slowly decaying, and bones protruding. While the smell of death was mostly gone by late fall/early winter, sometimes pockets of stench hit her. Many times she had to look down to pick her way through streets strewn with debris, and too late she’d realize that she was stepping over a hand, or a foot, or a leg. Sometimes the body part wasn’t attached to the rest of the body either. For two long hours she walked through that city, alone, with rarely any other travelers or residents around, on that cold day.

Sobered and silent, halfway through the city she stopped in disbelief as to what was in front of her: a lovely garden, with flowers and walkways, and a beautiful baroque palais, or French-style official residence. It was the home of the Catholic bishop, and unbelievably it appeared untouched, although the interior had been bombed and burned. It seemed clear that someone had at least been keeping up the grounds, so that in the middle of the death and chaos, a square of beauty and order remained.

Yvonne stared at the palace and gardens for quite some time, feeling the calm of the gardens and paths restore her troubled, saddened soul. Finally feeling she’d taken in enough reminder that the world could still go on again, that order could return, she continued on her way through the dead city, reaching a train station at the end, and catching another train which brought her the rest of the way to Ettlingen, about 190 km/118 miles away.

Life in Ettlingen

Yvonne returned just in time for school to start again that January in 1946, and since she was soon to turn 19, she was happy to get back to a regular routine again. The school which was set up required the students to complete four years of Latin, but Yvonne’s school in Neisse had been a lyceum, not a gymnasium which gave students years of Latin instruction. She and four other girls were at a great disadvantage, needing to make up four years of Latin in just six months so that they could graduate. Yvonne like Latin, but there was really only so much someone could learn!

Fortunately they had a compassionate teacher who understood that all of them were in difficult circumstances. While Yvonne and her friends did their best to learn delineations and conjugations, their teacher gave them all good grades based solely on effort.

Yvonne received another postcard, undated and with no return address, likely sent around this time, based on some clues in the message and concerns about Hedel. It was written by Marta, sounding friendly and helpful, and maybe at this time she was. (The translator had difficulty deciphering all of this, as you can see by the quality of the card and the damage on it):

[Notice written upside down on top right side of postcard:]

I took this card out of an album by Sch.!

Dear Yvonne, your dear letter from December 25th has just arrived here. Thank you very much for that. I’ve been waiting for this message. I am very pleased that the package reached you. As soon as possible, I want to please Mrs. Asser [likely the family Yvonne was renting a room from] with a little something. However I have to think of something. Aunt Hedel and the children also have concerns. And one P.? [unclear] I’m only allowed to take it to the post office, after a while again!! [meaning she paused in her writing, then continued the postcard later]

Dear Yvonne, you don’t need to do anything for us, because here we have everything and we old people don’t need much either, therefore I can dare with the P. [unclear] You made us happy with the little photos, we thank you very much and look forward to the next one!

We thank the Asser family for their kind greetings and wishes for the new year. Grandpa as well as I answer this heartily. First and foremost, we wish you, dear Yvonne, good health, then may God have mercy on the D. [assume German] people so that we can experience peace this year. Well goodbye, stay healthy, with warm regards especially to you,

Your grandma and your grandpa.

Emil in Nysa, Poland

Yvonne graduated from school that summer and stayed in Ettlingen for a while, taking jobs where she could. There was still no hope yet in returning to Neisse—now officially Nysa—and to her grandfather. While the Poles had forced out most Germans beginning in mid-June of 1945, they did allow to remain specific Germans to stay behind (https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Nysa,_Poland).

The Poles had ranked citizens based on their “Germanness.” The rank of “indubitable German” meant these citizens were German through and through, and they and their descendants needed to be ousted as quickly as possible (Kamusella).

However, if someone in that groups was also ranked as a “indispensable Germans” this meant that they had technical skill needed to get Poland on its feet again (Kamusella).Emil was indispensable since he had the knowledge and ability to get the Wiegelwerk up and running again. Getting the sugar industry functioning was crucial for Poland. Emil called back the former employees and began the factory again, not so much because he had any love for Nysa, Poland, or for his work, but because he still clung to the hope that sometime, somehow, his family could return.

However, his health was causing him problems. Since Paul had died 18 years earlier, Emil had developed Type 2 diabetes. The fact that he loved his cigars and good glass of pilsner beer also didn’t help him. His kidneys were beginning to give out, but still he continued working, hoping, and planning for reunions.

Working in Ettlingen

Until Nysa was ready to let her and others return to Poland, Yvonne kept working in Ettlingen. However, jobs were inconsistent and often not long-lasting. As countries tried to put themselves together again, the value of cash was very unstable (and the German mark was worth very little). Employers also found it difficult to pay their employees, and cities had a hard time even keeping basic necessities going. It took up to 10 years for many parts of Germany to become stable again.

Yvonne first worked for a post office at the international switchboard. While she may not have learned Latin very quickly, she did have a good command of French as well as English, learned at her school in Neisse. Her translation talents were a valuable asset as various countries called in, especially in Ettlingen which was near France and had a lot of American soldiers occupying the area.

She then worked as a language liaison between Karlsruhe, which was just a couple of miles away from Ettlingen, translating for foreign callers over the switchboard. At this time, when someone wanted to make a long-distance call—and “long distance” could mean anywhere more than 45 miles away—extra money was paid for these calls. But in Germany, the only way people could pay for calls was with the German mark, which was next to worthless after the war. Yvonne and her coworkers found ways to help people make their calls: they swapped long-distance “time” with France, Switzerland, England, and Belgium.

Yvonne had a teacher in Ettlingen who taught German, French, English, history, and literature. He was taken with Yvonne’s language skills and intelligence, and he offered that Yvonne could live with his wife and him to continue schooling in Karlsruhe. She had done well enough to earn a scholarship, and she had a few other friends and acquaintances in the area wanting her to stay.

The offer was tempting, but Yvonne had been in Ettlingen for a couple of years now, was nearing 20, and felt awkward about accepting the offer to live with the professor and his wife. She felt she was old enough to support herself, and needed to do so. But jobs were hard to find. She was fortunate in that a friend’s father, who was the postmaster, found her a job in Karlsruhe, but frankly Yvonne just didn’t like the town. She felt it was full of bureaucrats and generally boring for a 20-year-old young woman.

She mailed out inquiries about other jobs in other towns, hoping for something more interesting. That was the way to find jobs: paper notices would be posted on public boards for local jobs, or job openings would be listed in newspapers. To apply for a job, one wrote a letter to the company posting the position. Those letters were often more like detailed resumes, since meeting up for an interview was nearly impossible, especially if the job was in another town, and phones weren’t something everyone had access to. Posting for a job and then filling it could take several weeks to a few months, depending upon how the mail traveled, and if you were offered a job in another town, often the first time you saw where you’d work or meet with the employer was on your first day. Yvonne applied to many positions in different areas, and waited to see if anything could come from them.

Struggles in Nysa

Back at her old home of Nysa, things weren’t going so well. The city struggled to rebuild, Emil did all he could to revive the Wiegelwerk, and still he held on to the dream that everyone would come back . . .

Except that his kidneys were failing, and medicine at the time, and especially in Poland, had no way to help him.

On July 21, 1949, at age 75, Emil passed away, never again having seen his daughters who had gone west, nor his granddaughter Yvonne who was now in Karlsruhe, or any of his other grandchildren. His pile of bricks never became a house again, and all he had for companionship at the end was his second wife, Marta.

For whatever reasons—probably financial ones—Marta didn’t immediately notify Emil’s daughters and granddaughter about his passing. In fact, she waited a full two weeks to finally let them know that their father and grandfather was gone. Perhaps she was trying to secure whatever wealth he still had to make sure it wouldn’t leave her when her husband did.

Yvonne, Hedel, and Lene were bitterly hurt that they didn’t know of Emil’s passing for so long, and any affection they may have felt for his second wife vanished. Emil was buried before they could have even tried to go back for his funeral, which they couldn’t have done anyway. The Poles were still against letting anyone back in.

In an article written by a German about Emil—the same author who believed Emil had graduated from college and had a such a deep love for Germany that he moved from Bromberg when the Poles took over—there is mention of his funeral: “Honored highly by friend and foe alike, a large crowd of mourners laid him to rest at the Neulander cemetery, with a wooden cross built by the carpenter shop of the holy Cross monastery.” The cross was likely commissioned by Marta, his Catholic wife, who never got him converted in the 11 years they were married.

Incidentally, the Weigelwerk company was never able to take off like those who remained in Nysa hoped it would. There’s an abbreviated About Us/History about the Weigelwerk factory on this website: https://apparatebaundh.de/demo-inhalte/about-us/history/?lang=en. It began back in 1830 with Ferdinand Weigelwerk creating a mechanical engineering shop. Over a hundred years later, by March 16-17, 1945, likely the same time or very near the time Neisse was being heavily bombed, large parts of the company were put on trains and sent to Nordhausen, Germany, 570 km/355 miles to the west. The company produced not only machinery for sugar production, but also machinery for distilleries, dairies, and steam engines. Of this time, the site plainly states, “With the beginning of the Second World War and the manufacturing bans that were passed with it, the previous business completely succumbed and the bitter end came in Neisse.” Much of the factory was moved in 1945, then by the late 1950s, the rest of the sugar production, steam boilers, and breweries were moved over to Nordhausen. The sugar factory in Nysa, Germany, was no longer there by the end of the 1950s. While Emil tried at the end of the war to get his sugar part of the factory running again in the late 1940s, it’s clear that it was never going to be the success again that it once was, despite his valiant efforts. Many German-owned industries left Poland after the war. The company in 2021 is now called Apparatebau Nordhausen GmbH (https://apparatebaundh.de/demo-inhalte/about-us/history/?lang=en).

Marta leaves Poland

Marta, now alone and decidedly not an “indispensable German” for the Poles, realized she had to leave Nysa for the west, and going to her sister Hedel Schmidt in Nordlingen was her only option. She was lucky in that the Poles allowed her, on account of her husband’s efforts to restart the sugar industry, to take everything she had left with her. Because Emil had initially escaped Neisse with all of his clothing and suits, four years later in 1949 Marta still had those, and took them, along with her jewelry, to Nordlingen. There, in spite of her own difficult circumstances, she remained as stingy as ever. While she was prevailing upon the good will of her sister and her family, who were very poor and struggling even after four years, she refused to share anything she had brought with her from Neisse, including Emil’s suits. She had no use for them, but she certainly wasn’t going to let anyone else have them, either.

Yvonne, now 22, was still working in Karlsruhe and pondering the offer to live with the German professor and attend the technical high school/university. She took a break and went to Nordlingen to visit her step-grandmother who had settled there with the Schmidts. Maybe she was hoping Marta had brought something for Yvonne of her grandfather’s, but more likely she just wanted to see the Schmidts again. Marta was polite to Yvonne because she had a proposition. Yvonne could move to Nordlingen, work full time to support herself and Marta, and Marta would cook for her.

There was not one element of that in proposition that appealed to Yvonne, and surely both of them had to remember Yvonne’s insult when she was 11 and informed Marta that her sister Hedel’s cooking was far better. The offer seemed to Yvonne to be quite lopsided. Marta’s cooking wasn’t worth spending any effort on whatsoever. Essentially Marta wanted someone to take care of her so she didn’t have to.

Yvonne turned her down outright. There was no work in Nordlingen anyway, and no school, which Marta didn’t think important for Yvonne to attend. Marta still pushed for Yvonne to stay and take care of her and Yvonne pushed right back. Then the discussion turned to Emil’s possessions she had brought with her. Hedel and her husband Paul had very little, and clothing was still difficult to obtain, even four years after the war. Yvonne told Marta that holding on to Emil’s suits did nothing for her, and that he would have wanted his good friend Paul to have them. At the time, Paul had next to nothing.

Marta refused and Yvonne fumed.

Later that evening Marta went to the church for confession, and Yvonne thought of all kinds of things she thought her step-grandmother should be confessing about. Yvonne had quit attending the Catholic Church a few years earlier, at age 19, not that she had been too faithful in the religion forced upon her anyway. She had also told Marta during that visit that she no longer considered herself Catholic, so yet another wedge was driven between them. When Marta was safely away at confession, Yvonne went into her things, found Emil’s old suits, and gave them to Paul Schmidt. It didn’t matter that they weren’t going to be the right size, any article of clothing was useful and valuable. Yvonne told Paul this is what her grandfather would have wanted, and since Paul needed them, that was that.

When Marta returned from church, she realized what Yvonne had done, but Yvonne felt no need to repent of anything. She told Marta point blank—actually, she yelled at her step-grandmother—that she had known her grandfather a lot longer than Marta had, that Paul was his best friend, and that this was the right thing to do, to make sure Paul had finally something decent to wear. Needless to say, Marta and Yvonne didn’t part on the best of terms. It was bad enough that Marta had claimed all of Emil’s money and retirement funds, and refused to share any of it with his children or grandchildren. She wasn’t also going to unnecessarily hold on to his clothing as well.

Yvonne returned to Karlsruhe ready to be independent—of her step-grandmother and of anyone else. Of the many inquiries for jobs she sent out, she was thrilled to get an offer from a magazine in Munich, which was 300 km/185 miles southeast of Ettlingen. She loved the idea of Munich—a larger city with much more excitement than dull Karlsruhe. It was time to move on from her refugee status and her limping along without any direction. She felt Munich offered everything she didn’t know she was missing. She said a grateful and heartfelt goodbye to the Koehlers who remained in Ettlingen, and accepted the job to be an all-around office worker at a magazine.

Then Yvonne made the big move, by herself, to Munich.

Yvonne in Munich

Her arrival and new job weren’t quite as triumphant as maybe she hoped, because the magazine, struggling as just about every other business was, went bankrupt shortly after Yvonne arrived. That wasn’t unexpected for businesses trying to establish themselves in a shaky country.

Undeterred, Yvonne next found a job with an American-Jewish agency that helped people immigrate to Israel. Israel was a new country as of 1948, and welcoming Jews back home. She loved that work, helping Jews reclaim some of their lives and start new ones. However that company, too, struggled financially and had to lay off many of its employees, including Yvonne.

Never mind, there was still more work in Munich. Eventually she found another job with a tire company. While she didn’t know much about tires, she did know a lot about English. The company did a lot of work with foreign countries, and hired Yvonne to be their translator. She finally found her footing in Munich and the area was starting to feel like home.

Nothing was left for her in Neisse except the three graves of her father, grandmother, and now grandfather.

Yvonne never returned to Nysa again.

Edmund and Grete in Berlin

Yvonne wasn’t the only one to not see her home again. Edmund and Grete, the cousins of her father and aunts who had been the main communication center for the Neufeldt and Rudolf families, remained in Berlin. They had no children but were happy together. After the war, and probably around the time Yvonne visited them, Edmund started a new job. He had been a screenwriter, but now the New York Herald wanted a “boots on the ground” understanding of what was going on in Berlin, and hired Edmund to write for their German edition of the newspaper. This was the time of the Soviet occupation and of immense poverty in Berlin. Edmund asked the New York Herald to pay him not only in money, but in American cigarettes and coffee, which he knew he could trade for other commodities not readily available in Berlin. Cash was pretty much useless in Berlin for many years.

The situation worked out quite well for them for a few years. Grete and Edmund stored the bartering goods in the basement of their house and used them for shopping.

Until one day, in the early 1950s, when a neighbor happened to see what was stored in their basement. She concluded immediately that the only way a Berliner could have such wealth was if Edmund were a spy. Since they were in the Russian sector, who else would they spying for and about? Obviously to the Americans, about the Russians.

Apparently this neighbor reported them, or confronted them, or something, but Grete and Edmund realized they had to leave, immediately. That night they ran from their home with only what they could carry, along with Edmund’s precious typewriter. They made it safely to the American sector in Spandau.

Yvonne and her family regretted that when the Sabbotts needed their help, none of the family was in position to help them. Grete and Edmund had aided everyone else, giving food, money, and news, yet in their time of need, they had no one who could help them.

Edmund died just a few years later, and Grete continued alone. For a while she cared for an elderly aunt in East Berlin, crossing the borders in the city, until the Soviets put up the Berlin Wall in August of 1961. Now, not only was Grete alone, but so was her ailing aunt. When the aunt died, Grete tried to get permission to arrange a funeral, but the East Germany government refused. She tried to go in to attend whatever burial she would have, and again was denied. It wasn’t as if she was trying to leave East Germany, but get in for the sake of saying goodbye to her last blood relative. But there was no allowing any of that.

Grete continued alone in Berlin until 1991, when she passed away.

The Rudolfs and their futures

Yvonne was fortunate in that she did see her cousins and aunts again. Hedel and Lene did their best to keep their families going. On Oct. 1, 1949, Yvonne traveled back to Bitterfeld for a great event: Dieter, home from America, was marrying his girlfriend.

For a contrast, here are Dieter and Leisl Rudolf on their 50^th wedding anniversary, after renewing their vows:

Dieter and his wife Liesl had a happy wedding in 1949 with as many family as could join them.

Sadly, though, Dieter’s father Karl died the year before, on July 28, 1948. He had returned from the war but had been in ill health since then. He managed to make it to Bitterfeld, to be reunited with his family, and for a couple of years there were all together again. His passing was difficult for the family, because now both Karl and Alfons were gone.

In a two-page life story that Hedel wrote later in her life, about Karl she could say only this: “We then bought a textile store in Cosel (Upper Silesia) which proved to be a great success. We thought we now had enough for old age and for our children. The war and Karl’s death put an end to our dreams.

But life goes on, but not the way it was before.”

Olaf was also back from Siberia and had made it to Bitterfeld. When Yvonne saw her same-age cousin again, the now-healed fracture across his forehead was still quite visible. He married and had four children, but his experiences in Russia caused him ill health and a few mental concerns for the rest of his life.

The rest of the story for Hedel and her children

Because Yvonne lost touch with her family for many years, then connected with them later in life, and didn’t record all of their details, the information we have is spotty (although efforts are being made to track down their descendants).

Dieter Rudolf As mentioned before, Dieter married Leisl (Luise Katharina Pfeifer) in 1949 and were married for over 50 years. Dieter became a police commissioner in the city of Mannheim, and he and Leisl had two daughters, Inge Rudolph, born about 1955 and married to Jens Rudolph, and Jutta Martin, married to Thomas Martin. Inge has two sons (names unknown; teenagers in 1999) and Jutta has two daughters, Andrea and Kirsten (ages unknown, but teenagers in 1999)

In the 1980s, he and Leisl visited Yvonne in Utah, America, the first time Yvonne had seen him since his wedding. They spent a wonderful month together exploring the American west and catching up on their lives. Dieter was an avid biker and hiker, and even into his seventies was going on weeks’ long camping and hiking trips through Europe (his wife elected to stay home from those).

Dieter lived a long and good life, passing away only in 2020 at the age of nearly 95.

Olaf Olaf married Elfried Axton and had four children, only two of the names known: Christine and Hans Joachim. His head injury as a teenager in Siberia caused him problems for the rest of his life, and he was never quite the same as he’d been before. He passed away May 25, 1985.Peter married Christine (Christa) Tamm, and had four children: Klemens, Eva Marie, Michael (born around 1957) and Wolf-Peter. He was a businessman in Kaufbeuren. It’s unknown if he’s still alive or has passed away.

Susi married Wolfgang Krueger and had one son and one daughter. She was a gym teacher and her husband was a math professor. It’s unknown if she’s still alive or has passed away.

Ingrid, the last of the children, has been married twice, first to a man named Siegfried with whom she had one son and a daughter. Her second husband was a physician, and they remained in Bitterfeld where Hedel had taken her family after the war.

Hedel, their mother’s last lines from her personal history which she sent to Yvonne years later said this: “I am satisfied and travel during the summer months to my children and grandchildren. My life has purpose.”

She continued in Bitterfeld, enjoying her grandchildren as they came.

She was happy to be reunited with her sister Lene on a few occasions.

Hedel was stuck in East Germany until 1967, when, because of her age (65) the East German government let her leave and settle in Kaufbeuren, Allgau, with her sister-in-law Klara Gronde. Hedel was thrilled to be out of East Germany, where food and clothing and money were hard to come by, but oppression was plentiful.

She spent her last 15 years in a free West Germany, and passed peacefully away on April 15, 1982, at age 80, having lived a loving life, always putting her family first. Below if a photo of all of her children at her burial. Just three years later Olaf would pass away.

Lene and her family

Alfons, the only son Lene had remaining, married Gisela Jurgens, in Neu Bueddenstedt, Braunschweig, Germany, and had a son name Jorge.  In 1987 he wrote to Yvonne (Dieter had visited the year earlier and sent his cousin Alfons information about Yvonne). Alfons sent Yvonne a few pictures of him in 1987 when he was 62.  He also wrote to Yvonne that he had a son who was as clever and smart as their grandfather Emil.

This was the same grandfather with whom Alfons had butt heads a few times, and even took his Mercedes on a short joy ride. As he aged, he became much warmer toward his grandfather.

And there are some clear similarities between him and Emil.

Alfons passed away in 1992 at the age of 67, five years after he reconnected with Yvonne.

Christa married Gunter Bertram, an accountant, in the 1950s and had a son, Gunter Junior. He married Petra in the 1980s and had a daughter, Robin, born Dec 18, 1989. As Lene grow older, Christa took care of her mother.

The families tried to get together as often as possible.

Lene Rudolf passed away March 14, 1993, at age 94.

Yvonne said of her aunts that they impressed her with their demeanor during such difficult times. They remained refined ladies, loving and caring, always remembering birthdays. Yvonne saved a couple of cards they sent to her in America.

Yvonne felt a sense of belonging, always, in her extended family. There was warmth and compliments, fair play, enormous amounts of laughter, and just the right amount of strictness. She felt valued and cared for by her aunts, uncles, cousins, and her grandparents.

While she had a hard time for some years staying in contact with her family—she moved to America in the 1950s—in the 1980s she reconnected with Dieter and his wife who came to visit, then later went back to Germany in the late 1990s and was able to visit many of her relatives. They began writing letters again and sending photos, many of which aren’t labeled very well. Yvonne received some of these photos when her own health was declining and she was unable to process them well. However, one photo found from Dieter states, “This is Christa. Doesn’t she look just like Tante Lene did?” (Compare to the photos above to see for yourself.)

2007

               Among Yvonne’s boxes was found a collection of photos, taken in 2007, which seems to be a Rudolf family party, with Ingrid and Susi and some of their descendants. Not all names are known, for example, Boris and his wife Silke, Nora—maybe Ingrid’s daughter?—and a possible Carsten-Uwe, and two little girls who are someone’s grand/great-granddaughters. Efforts have been made to find and possibly contact these people, but since 14 years have transpired, no success has occurred—yet.

The rest of Yvonne’s story

When we last left Yvonne’s story, it was 1949 and she had left to work in Munich, feeling that something about her future was there.

It was.

But first, the story of Dorothea Strebel and her son Rudolf. (Yes, there are a lot of Rudolfs in this story. To Yvonne, it seemed to be a sign.)