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Hans-Joachim Fritz as a pupil (around 1938): "After bomb attacks, we had to use Hitler Youths"
Photo: private
Hans-Joachim Fritz (born 1929) grew up in Berlin and later became a master baker and confectioner. Here he tells how he experienced the last months of the Second World War:
It was a bad time. When I was little, mom always said the day: "You must pray: Dear God, let no planes come"
(. He cries)
Yes, if two hundred airmen come ... where their bombs were unloading, was almost all gone. Once a bomb hit the cemetery next to our house. Then the body of our friend, Mr. Bodiga, lay in the cemetery corridor. The graves could not be dug deep because there were no more strong people.
During the war, my friend Achim and I were trained as Hitler Youths in the Red Cross association troops.
A Red Cross nurse taught us to connect.
She also wanted us to watch a Krukenberg operation.
Do you know her?
In this operation, soldiers who have lost a hand are split the forearm stump into a type of scissors.
So they had a hand to work again afterwards.
At the age of fourteen I shit my pants.
But I admired the doctors who did that.
From May 1944, the refugee trains from the east arrived in Berlin.
All Hitler Youth groups in Dahlem received the order: "Unload the wagons, new trains are already on their way!"
A mother died before my eyes
That was something ... Achim and I helped every day at the overcrowded Grunewald train station.
Children were looking for mothers, mothers were looking for children.
There were almost no men left, they were all at war;
only the old and weak men came with the transports.
We asked the women how long they had been driving.
One mother said very weakly: "Five days no water, no toilet, nothing." Then she was dead - died.
In front of my eyes.
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The wagons were rectangular, and the occupants had broken the wooden floor at one corner so that they had a hole to use as a toilet.
People had to pee and poop through the hole.
All - men and women not separated.
They helped each other, there was no paper.
Many died on the way, there were many dead babies.
The dead babies could be pushed through the hole while driving, the adults could not.
When three or four dead adults lay on top of each other in a corner, one of them had said: "The hole is too small, we have to make the hole bigger." But the women didn't want the hole any bigger, it was pulling so hard.
Such stories were told by the people on the trains.
The women and children were sick and weak.
How should we get them to the hospitals?
There was no longer any means of transport in the city, everything was needed for the war.
At home we had a retired war horse.
It had been wounded and was therefore extremely scary - it went through with every bang.
I hitched it to a little cart.
Achim and I used it to take the women and children to the hospital.
If I had to steer the cart under an S-Bahn underpass, I made sure that no train came - otherwise the horse would have run away.
We were only fourteen years old
At the hospital we got a plate of warm soup for our transport service.
(He cries.)
We were only fourteen years old.
No one had seen so much misery before.
There was a woman on the first train I helped unload.
"I'm saved now," she said
(he cries)
, and then she had her child.
Still in the wagon.
The paramedic said to me: "Whatever is hanging out of your stomach, just tie a knot in your navel."
I wiped the newborn with hay, straw would have been too hard.
Those were crazy things.
I brought the woman a roll.
Oh, how happy she was!
She hadn't eaten in a long time.
You know, I can't see how people handle food today.
The people had been on the move for five days.
Without stop.
Only when the locomotive ran out of water did it stop short.
Then a few dead could be dropped.
A long whistle sounded, and whoever wasn't on the train stayed behind.
So many trains arrived in Grunewald!
For months we helped the newly arriving refugees and looked after the injured.
Again and again.
Later that year the trains came with the men from the front.
The wounded trains.
We helped with the setting.
Some soldiers arrived with one leg.
It was poor pigs, the soldiers.
One only had one arm, the other no leg.
The comrades helped each other.
If you couldn't walk properly, two took you under your arm.
The camaraderie was enormous.
"Can we dit?" - "Yes, dit can wa!"
Our phones rang frequently after bombing raids.
Then we had to go to the Hitler Youth.
I particularly remember an operation on the Südstern.
There was a large block next to the church.
The number 130 was painted on the house wall at man height.
In addition, two arrows pointed to the right and left - an indication for the rescue workers that 130 people could seek protection on the right and left in the air raid shelter.
When we got there, the whole block had collapsed.
A group from Organization Todt, a semi-military construction group, consisted of half convicts and ate soup in front of the rubble.
They had already managed to get 40 of the 130 people trapped in the air raid shelter.
But then the cellar exit had collapsed again and again, and they had broken off their search.
Achim and I stood in front of the heap of rubble.
I looked at him: “Oh, Achim, can we dit?”
“Yes, dit can wa!
But we have to have a bowl of soup first. "
The dust was deadly
We got the soup and then we began to shovel, stone by stone.
We moved on, on and on, a real tunnel.
We got 34 people out of the rubble.
(He cries.)
We put one of them upside down to one side so that the others would know he was dead.
When a house collapses, it is not the fire or the stones that are bad, but the dust, which is deadly.
The children died instantly. They can't take it.
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Hans-Joachim Fritz: "Today I can't even see how people handle food"
Photo: Olav Fritz
The last thing a nurse came through with a couple of children was through the tunnel.
The children covered their mouths with rags.
The rag was wet and the children could breathe through it.
That was how the nurse was able to save her own children.
We didn't know the trick with the wet rag.
I once talked to my mother about these experiences.
At the birth in the car she said: "That's nice, you were also fetched by a sister, then you were the sister!"
(He cries.)
Otherwise I didn't talk much at home.
Yes that's it.
We talked to the disabled group about our experiences after the war.
No one else.
It was tough for us, but we were also happy that we could help.
That we could do something useful during this time of war.