My Life in the Third Reich

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.

Read more at www.lucarinfo.com/giselacoo.

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.