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War children: »Mutti was my home. I had no other home «

2021-08-29T11:09:34.139Z


Berthild Erika Tourrenc was five years old when she left Berlin. With her mother and brother, she survived the flight, low-level flyers, and hunger. Here she tells her story.


Berlin 1941: Berthild Tourrenc with her brother shortly before the evacuation to Silesia

Photo:

Private

Before the war, we often drove to my grandparents in the country.

In the vastness of the garden, my brother and I romped about, picking cherries, plums, and apples, and making small bouquets out of the many knapweeds, the scent of which was everywhere in the air.

From 1943 Berlin was heavily bombed.

Mother and I were evacuated to East Prussia with my brother's school, near Angerburg.

It was insane to take us so far east after the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943!

My brother had just turned ten.

I remember how we stood on the platform in Angerburg and the farmers ran around us.

They were obliged to give the refugees a room.

They looked at us.

Suddenly a woman came up to us and said, "I'll take you with me!" She chose us because she had a son my brother's age, and her daughter was my age - five years.

Enlarge image

Reinstorf, February 1946: After fleeing, Berthild Tourrenc (right) lives with a farmer with her mother and brother, as does her friend Heidi

Photo: private

It was a nice time.

I remember the linen fields, a sea of ​​blue flowers, and the Masurian lakes, water everywhere and the vastness of the forests.

Then the Russians came.

They were just before Angerburg.

We started walking, my mother, my brother and me.

In my small backpack I carried my doll and a chamber pot - I couldn't carry more.

I ran from Angerburg in East Prussia to Silesia.

As a five year old!

We slept outside in the open air and in barns.

During the day we ran.

Russian low-level planes fly just a few meters above us and shoot.

Dead horses lie on the street.

Many dead people lie in the ditch.

Dead children lie on the edges of the street.

People just keep walking - past the dead.

Nobody can take care of the dead.

People and animals are shot by the airmen and remain where they are.

Mutti calls: "Don't look!" She doesn't want us to look, we should keep walking.

We feel protected under the green blanket

The Russian planes are always there.

We throw ourselves on the ground.

We hear the hum and jump into the ditch or we run into the woods to hide.

Mum has a green blanket with her, which we put over us.

We feel protected under the covers.

My mom is here, so nothing can happen to us.

Mom was my home.

I had no other home.

Mutti always said: "With our prayers we have to trust God that he will let us and Dad live."

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We went on, on and on.

We sang a lot.

Singing works better.

Sometimes I also played while running, throwing stones, collecting longer and shorter sticks in order to toss the shorter one with the longer one.

We slept outside for many nights.

We were so tired from running!

When we got to a barn, we would lie down in the straw.

The people were generous.

We were allowed to spend the night in the straw.

We didn't have anything to eat.

I was skinny, but that didn't matter.

The main thing was that we were alive.

We ate dandelions and nettles, and sometimes we gathered turnips in the fields.

We ate everything raw.

How could we have cooked something?

We found water to drink on the way.

We ate a lot of mushrooms.

That's why I know all mushrooms.

We were on the road for two months.

That's why I can still run well.

I really learned.

I later taught my grandchildren and my children anyway - to walk.

The school became a hospital overnight

We arrived in Krauschwitz, in Upper Lusatia.

Again we got a room with a farmer.

I started school in the fall of 1944.

We had to greet the teacher with "Heil Hitler".

Then we sang the Horst Wessel song: “Raise the flag!

The ranks tightly closed! ”One morning I went to school happily, I liked school.

When they arrived in the schoolyard, there lay screaming, bleeding soldiers.

The school had become a hospital overnight.

I turned and ran home.

Weeping, I said to mom that I never wanted to go to school again in my life.

That wasn't a problem because the schools were all closed.

Enlarge image

Weißwasser 1944: The class from Krauschwitz, where Berthild Tourrenc started school after the first escape, was with a photographer

Photo: private

We didn't have much to eat.

There wasn't much left towards the end of the war.

We lived on what we found in the forest, on the mushrooms and the berries.

There were a lot of cranberries.

All the while we were looking for something to eat.

Mutti made something to eat out of everything we found.

If the farmer gave us leftovers, potato peels and dry bread, Mutti made soup for us out of them.

Again the Russians moved closer.

One day Mutti came running up excitedly and said, "The Russians are coming, we have to go!

There's a train that brings the machines to West Germany, so we can get a seat under the machines! ”We ran off.

In my rucksack I carried my Erika doll and the chamber pot again.

Mom took a box and my brother a bag.

We hid under a machine, then the train drove off.

Russian low-flying planes came again.

They wanted to destroy the machines, machines for agriculture and for making weapons.

The Germans had decided that they shouldn't fall into Russian hands.

There were only trains for Jews and for machines.

Not for refugees.

But we didn't know that at the time.

When the first low-flying aircraft came, we could no longer escape from the moving train.

It was too late.

I said to Mutti: "The planes can't come at all, the sirens aren't howling yet!" In Berlin, the planes only came after the sirens wail.

Mutti lies down on me, I don't understand

The low-flyers begin to shoot. Mom puts the green blanket over me, then she lies down on me. I do not understand that. I can hardly breathe. Mummy wants to protect me from the bombs - at least I should survive. We prick up our ears, the train stops, we jump down, throw ourselves on the ground and put the green blanket over us. We hear gunshots everywhere, then suddenly it's quiet. We crawl out from under the covers and see: the first three wagons have been destroyed, the engine driver is dead. A terrible sight!

We don't know what to do with the dead under the machines.

We pulled out the dead.

Maybe they were still alive.

But what would we have done with the seriously wounded?

We had nothing to connect with.

Mom wasn't a doctor.

We couldn't do anything.

We had to leave the dead - everyone was dead. My mom, my brother and I were alive.

We kept walking.

Mom only had a few oatmeal with her.

We ate the oatmeal with the water we found along the way.

Always just oatmeal.

I couldn't see any oatmeal later.

At some point, trucks took us and we took the train for a while.

We arrived in Lüneburg.

Our escape ended there.

For years, I already had children, a packed rucksack stood next to our front door.

Inside was a knife, toothbrush, bar of soap, and something durable to eat - things you need to survive.

That was important to me.

The fear since the escape was always there.

For years I kept dreaming that the wall would open and someone would murder me.

Each night.

The wall opens, I see a dagger and then a man.

I jump out of my bed.

I felt sorry for my first husband for jumping out of bed screaming so often.

That only subsided when I moved to France with my second husband.

I felt safer in France.

I told the trees my life

From the refugee camp in Lüneburg we were again distributed to the surrounding villages. We came to Reinsdorf, where we got a room at the village bakery. Sometimes I was allowed into the bakery, I breathed in the scent of the bread deeply, and once I was given a warm roll. When the British occupied Reinsdorf, we had to leave our room to the English soldiers.

Together with other refugees we moved to the village church.

It was nice there.

The teacher played the organ in the evening and we children were allowed to sleep on the confirmation rugs - it was cozy.

We lived in the church for four months.

During the day I played with my doll and with sticks and stones that I found in nature.

My brother and I climbed the trees and took an egg from each nest.

I knew all the birds and all the eggs they laid.

We blew out the eggs and pulled them on a long thread.

Enlarge image

Berthild Tourrenc today: »I can still run well.

I learned it"

Photo: private

We lived with nature. I knew a weeping willow, under which I always sat when I was sad. And I knew a wonderful walnut tree, under which I would sit when I was particularly happy. I told these trees my life. I knew every plant, every flower. My mom taught me everything. "Education is the only thing you can take with you," she always said.

Since we didn't have any books, Mutti told us everything she had read.

She sang with us and learned poetry with us.

We ran into the forest, singing "Joy of beautiful sparks of the gods" or reciting the small and large multiplication tables, hopping into the forest and collecting everything that was edible.

We were always hungry.

It was important to Mutti that we do something for our head.

Later on I always said to myself: If I should ever end up in prison, I could get away with the poems and songs on my own.

This is what our mother conveyed to us.

We lived on nettles and turnips

The post-war period began.

We left the church and moved into a room with a farmer.

Mom worked for cornbread and skimmed milk in a shop.

She worked as a secretary for a doctor who gave us free care when we were sick.

In our room there were two beds for my mother and my brother, in front of that there was my cot and a table with three chairs.

We had an oven and the pots were stowed under the beds.

We had to get everything.

We had come with nothing and the peasants gave us nothing.

The chickens got eggs with nettles, we lived only on nettles and turnips.

We worked in the fields for potatoes, we did all the harvests.

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For nights we made syrup from sugar beet.

We stirred the peeled and chopped sugar beets in a large kettle for 24 hours.

We took turns.

During the day we stirred the children and at night the adults.

After that we had wonderful syrup, there was corn bread and syrup - it was delicious!

My brother went to high school in Lüneburg, 13 kilometers away.

To do this, he had to get up at four o'clock to catch the workers' train in the neighboring village.

When he came back in the evening, he often did his homework by candlelight.

I found it comfortable when I lay in my bed in the evening and my mother asked my brother English and Latin vocabulary.

I learned all of them.

A friend for life

It took a lot of convincing my mother to accompany me to the school in Reinsdorf, since I had decided never to go to school again.

Once there, I hung up my jacket in the hallway in front of the classroom.

The teacher sent a student to us.

When she saw me, she said, "Oh, a face without freckles is like a sky without stars." I had an infinite number of freckles on my face.

I liked that sentence, I said to my mother: "Mummy, I'm staying here, this girl is my friend now." She is still today!

When we went to school, mother gave us corn bread, two slices, with a potato in between as a topping.

We didn't have any vitamins.

My legs were open from top to bottom - due to a lack of vitamins.

These are memories of a time that you can no longer imagine nowadays.

There was an apple tree in front of our room. I once tried to grab a fallen apple through the fence. An apple for the three of us! The farmer's wife saw me. She said to her dog: "Kiss, kiss, grab her!" The dog bit me. After that, I never tried again to get a fallen apple through a fence. I've been afraid of dogs ever since.

In Reinsdorf we were the poor refugees.

The villagers accused Mutti: "You Berliners started the war, you lost the war, and now you have to pay for it!" That was the opinion.

Mom quickly taught us: We are the refugees and we have to be humble.

Because the more humble we are, the more likely we are to be accepted in a new community.

Mutti managed to have us greeted in the village - we had to conquer that too.

At first we weren't even greeted.

What did I learn from the war?

That money can't make you happy.

What matters in life is the love that carries you.

This is what our mother gave us - absolute love.

She was always there for us.

And she showed us how important it is to be happy.

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2021-08-29

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