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My Life in the Third Reich: Nightmares and Consequences

by Gisela Cooper

178 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #04-0520; ISBN 1-4120-2692-X; US$18.50, C$20.22, EUR15.00, £10.50

Many times I have received letters from customers and friends who read my book, saying everyone in the world should read it.

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about the book      about the author      excerpts      catalogue info

About the Book I started my book with introducing my grandparents and parents, and continued with anecdotes from my childhood. I remember the depression, people were very poor, as no work was available. I saw ex-soldiers, who had lost limbs in the war, begging in the street. Father applied for a new job, he was one of the lucky ones who could earn money to keep us comfortable. We moved to Dueneberg near Hamburg in 1929. I started school that year at the age of six. My brother Dieter was born 1931. Hitler was elected into power in January 1933. Immediate political and economical changes took place At the age of nearly 15, I went to a Home Economic Boarding School in the Harz Mountains until 1938. The following year, summer 1939 we moved to Leipzig. Father had applied for an even better paid job. War started in September 1939. Every young person had to do one year's unpaid service (only pocket money) working for families with children or on farms. No-one could start a job before doing this. I was lucky and had only 6 months left to do after leaving the boarding school, as we had a children's holiday home attached to the school and worked there on occasions. In my book are many anecdotes from before, during and after the war. In 1940 I started work as a telex operator in the Leipzig Telegraph Office and in November 1944 I started to work for Heinkel's Aeroplane's factory, again doing telex work. Mother thought I should better myself with more pay and having my own office. I wished that I had never left the Post Office. It became a nightmare. I met slave workers from Auschwitz, sent letters for them to their home towns. I had been watched by the Gestapo for a while. Everyone was always under suspicion. A letter from the Poles had been found in my valet and it was on 29.January 1945 that I was arrested and was taken by an SS man by train to a Labour Camp. There everyone, 400 girls from all over Europe, were kept, verbically abused, beaten and left to die without any medicines. I survived after being very ill with high fever and was released on 4 April 1945 looking like a skeleton. Father had to fight against the approaching Americans. From 400 men only 4 survived. Germany was divided and we had to live under Russian occupation and were starving. Father was taken by the Russians to the vicinity of Moscow, with others, where they were indoctrinated with Communism. I escaped to West-Germany in summer 1947 and had to go to an assembly camp and worked then for British Service families. Worked as a nanny and loved it. I met a British Service man, Patrick, he came from Bristol. In October 1953 we were married in Hengrove-Bristol.

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About the Author I was born in 1923 in Saarau Silesia. Father worked as a designing engineer in a Chemical Plant until 1929, when he was offered a better paid job in Dueneberg near Hamburg, where I attended school. After Hitler came into power in 1933, all children had to join the Hitler Youth Organisation. In the beginning it was not very strict, but when Dieter, my brother, had to join, he was grilled about his ancestry, and was asked if there were any Jews in his family. His head was measured. (My mother's mother was an Italian Jew. I did not know this until a few years ago. It had been kept a secret from us children, or we might have come to a quick end.) I loved my job as a telex operator in Leipzig and was lucky to have worked as a telex operator for the Bristol-City-Line for a while. Sadly my husband had a fatal motorbike accident when I was expecting our second child. After a few years I married again, but the marriage was not successful. I have one consolation that through this marriage I had two girls.

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Excerpts

Mother was now very glad to have father back home. She would not have to fend for her own living now. Father was at once re-engaged in his former job in Boehlen, which was now under Russian management.

At that time they were rehoused (more about this in the next chapter) and their old lifestyle had returned. Father had to design certain work in a certain set time. Achieving this he would receive double wages and double food rationing, but if he finished the work before that set time, it would be treble the money and treble the food rationing.

The factory was built up again extracting coal from some expanded coal-fields, which was then transported to Russia. But in other factories machinery and other parts were being transported to Russia as reparations. One train after another left loaded up for Russia. Many people now think they took too much, but it must be admitted that Germans had devastated Russia and now the shoe was on the other foot they were within their rights to do this. Father had seen for himself how very poor the Russians really were. In spite of this, for those five years he had more to eat there, than the food he would have had at home. The food must have come from the new harvests in Russia. Even so father had more to eat then us, it was by far not enough.

At Christmas 1951, the Russians in the factory caused a sit-down strike by the workers. Every year they had received a Christmas bonus, but this time there was no extra money in their pay packets. The workers had the Russians running back and forth, not knowing what to do, until they came to an agreement to pay out a small sum to everyone.

Chapter 40

While father was away lot of things happened to us. A woman and her daughter, refugees, were quartered with us. After a while a leading Communist wanted our flat. We were moved out with horse and cart, to Grosstaedteln a small village not far from Markkleeberg. There was a small colony of "Behelfs Heimes", wooden huts with two rooms. One was a small bedroom and the other a large kitchen and sitting room combined, fitted with a raeburn stove for cooking and heating. The hut had double wooden walls, with a gap in between which worked as an insulation and kept the place cosy and warm but there were bugs. We called the pest control and the bugs were soon smoked out. We found them strewn all over the floor and swept them up. After that we had no more trouble with any.

The irony is, that father had designed those huts for bombed out people. Each hut had a piece of land attached to it, so we could grow our own vegetables. We grew potatoes, tomatoes, beans, lettuces, beetroot, radishes, peas, spinach and herbs on one side of the plot. Everything came on really well, as the soil was rich. On the other side mother grew tobacco. When the leaves were large enough we hung them in rows on the ceiling inside the hut. When dry, we sent them for treatment and when they were brought back we cut each leaf to sell it as tobacco. Mother did some sewing privately and she also made some Russian uniform tunics. All she had to do was, fetch the work from an agency and sew the parts together. The material had already been cut.

Most of our furniture had been put into storage together with two large boxes, as high as the hut. They had been standing outside the hut for a short while.

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Catalogue Information

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