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Bomb hit and neighborhood help: Albert Jungsstorfer's memories of the end of the war

2020-06-07T22:26:41.524Z


Albert Jungsstorfer (87) experienced the Second World War and the end of it in Gauting, a bomb attack on his family's yard in 1944, the invasion of US troops in April 1945 - and the time after that.


Albert Jungsstorfer (87) experienced the Second World War and the end of it in Gauting, a bomb attack on his family's yard in 1944, the invasion of US troops in April 1945 - and the time after that.

Gauting - Time seems to have stood still in the idyll of the Mesner farm at Menschenstorfer: in the middle of Gauting, next to the parish church of St. Benedict, the chickens are still cackling. This is where the 87-year-old eyewitness Albert Jungsstorfer, the eighth of 13 children, spent his childhood and youth. Before the inauguration of the newly built church on June 2, 1935, the pastor Josef Berghammer and the chaplain had climbed on the scaffolding at night, says the Mesner son. Instead of the NSDAP flag, the two clergymen raised the forbidden church flag on the 35-meter-high tower. The Gautinger also has many memories of the end of the war and beyond.

Since 1640, says the retired former school caretaker, who is extremely popular with Gautingen children, "our family has been in Gauting without interruption". His grandfather bequeathed the farm to son Xaver Menschenstorfer. Until shortly before his death in 1984, Xaver was a Mesner from St. Benedikt. Today the farm belongs to his youngest brother Ludwig, who was also a valet of St. Benedict, the 87-year-old says. "We were twelve boys and a girl," looks back at Albert Jungsstorfer. "On Christmas Eve 1933, my first mother died after a twin birth." The twins also died shortly afterwards. His father had overcome this difficult fate through his Christian faith. "With my second mother Rosa, we witnessed the bombing of Gauting," the witness continues. 

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A real Gautinger: Albert Jungsstorfer as a student.

© Andrea Jaksch

On July 21, 1944, the mother and the children of Rupprecht, Albert, Ludwig and "der Rosi" fled to the basement of the farmhouse on Münchener Strasse: "My father Xaver, who had been Gautinger's fire department commander for years, always had to go over to the siren alarm Rathaus ”(today youth center). Someone said to his father: "Xaver, a bomb hit your house." From the location of today's dung heap, where his grandfather's workshop once stood with a "wonderful workbench" and a large oven, the heavy anvil "flew over." to the gate ”, Albert Volksstorfer recalls vividly. The bomb tore away the entire front of the farmhouse, including the stable - even the wooden balcony was gone. The rooms were full of gravel and dirt. "Our oxen were one meter deep in the gravel," he says today. With his older brother Rupprecht, the deceased, former CSU councilor, and his father "we pulled 160 pieces of stone individually out of an ox's body". Because the farmhouse was no longer habitable, the family was moved to the small Waller farm, now the Schuh Linse business building. "I was still too young," says Menschenstorfer, but six of his eleven brothers had to go to the front. One fell - "it was terrible".

Concentration camp inmates driven by Gauting

The 87-year-old, who is married to the daughter of the former Mayor of Unterbrunn, looks back with horror at the end of the war 75 years ago. Shortly before the Americans marched in at the end of April 1945, SS guards drove starved, exhausted prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp through Gauting. "They weren't people anymore, just skin-covered misery made of bones." The eyewitness: "It was terrible. We have seen prisoners collapse exhausted on Munich Street because they can no longer do so. There lay dead. ”The prisoners guarded by SS men had to throw the dead onto carts. This misery took "a whole day".

According to local writer Karl Mayr, US troops marched into Gauting on April 30, 1945. "At the order of the pastor, Mesner Xaver Menschenstorfer hung a white flag from the western sound window of the tower of the parish church."

“At that time, the need in Gauting was great for workers and craftsmen,” recalls the contemporary witness. "But we ourselves had a farm with six cows, two oxen, two calves, chickens and a kitchen garden." But also fields with potatoes, grain and meadows. "At that time, many from the villa colony came to us in the village to get a few potatoes, a little milk and a few eggs." Between the villa colony and the village "there was a very good connection" through "our parish church," says the Mesner son . Because many Gautinger had known his father as an altar boy.

Christine Cless-Wesle

Also read:

Memories of the end of the war: Gilching mayor with bed sheet and treacherous cognac

Feldafing planned a commemorative weekend for 75 years of DP camps - because of Corona, it will initially be canceled

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2020-06-07

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