The Second World War ended 75 years ago. In a series, the Dachauer Nachrichten published memories of eyewitnesses to the war years, the end of the war and the time after.
Arnbach / Großberghofen - The men who came to Großberghofen in 1943 looked miserable. Shovels and hoes in the hands, they looked battered, they were emaciated and didn't seem to expect much from life anymore. So Sepp Geer, now 86, still has the concentration camp inmates who were shipped to Großberghofen to dig an entrance to the local butcher's slaughterhouse. In the butcher shop itself, other prisoners were forced to make sausages, for the SS men who guarded them and for the SS men who exercised their reign of terror in the concentration camp not far from Dachau.
Little Sepp Geer, then nine years old, lived in a small agricultural estate right next to the church, which bore the house name "with the school teacher". Every day he saw the forced laborers and their guards come and go. “We felt sorry for the emaciated and hungry people, and despite close guard, my school friends and I were able to make contact. Some girls helped to distract the guards at short notice, ”says Geer, who has been at home in Arnbach since 1958.
Geer still has one of the wretched men in mind: "He was very dark and very young, at most 18, 19 years old, maybe a Pole," said Geer 77 years later. The dark young man - like other concentration camp prisoners - had homemade toys with him that he hid well from the SS henchmen. He hoped that the Großberghofer would have mercy and exchange his toys for a little food, in secret, of course. Not to imagine what would have happened if the SS had noticed it.
The young Pole mastered a few bits of German and had a small green wooden plane with him. And the nine-year-old Sepp really wanted this little plane. But give what for it? "I didn't have anything myself," recalls Sepp Geer. He decided to beg. And he was successful. His mother gave him "two wedges of bread". A neighbor, the "Mesner Hedwig", climbed into her basement and fetched potatoes, which she put in Sepp's hand. That was enough to be able to become a proud aircraft owner a little later.
The dark young man who built the plane was gone the next day. "I never saw him again," says Sepp Geer. Who knows what happened to him. At that time, Geer knew nothing of what happened behind the walls of the concentration camp. Neither his mother, nor all the other people in Großberghofen. In the fifth year of the unspeakable Second World War, these were predominantly women, the men had long since moved in. Almost all.
But then came May 8, 1945, and with it the Americans. Sepp Geer was eleven now, and he looked up at the GIs that gave him chocolate. And little by little he became aware of the unimaginable atrocities the Nazis had committed in Dachau. Sepp Geer thought of the young dark man and made a decision: I'll keep the little green plane. After his wedding in 1958, Geer moved to Arnbach, where he still lives today. Of course, he took the little work of art with him. It had a place of honor in the house - until 2008. Geer said that the plane had to be given a more worthy place than at home. So he handed it over to the then director of the concentration camp memorial, Barbara Distel, and the archivist Albert Knoll.
On May 8, the war ended for the 75th time. And Sepp Geer, who despite his now 86 Lenze is still “very close to each other”, made another decision: “I want to go back to Dachau and see where my plane is.”
And then he will surely be reminded of the time in Großberghofen, and of the young dark man who had to do rough work with a shovel during the day and tinkered with his filigree little plane at night.
What may also interest you: A pastor has strong memories of the end of the war in Bergkirchen when the Americans marched in at the end of April 1945.
