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After the city surrendered on May 2, 1945: Medical collection point for wounded German prisoners of war on Unter den Linden
Photo:
akg-images / SNA
In January 1945 I was brought near Oranienburg for ten days for shooting training.
There we sports attendant learned everything about carbines, small caliber and hand grenades.
The bazooka was also explained to us.
A young sergeant trained us.
Young girls and then two or three young soldiers - they joked around and flirted.
In April '45 we were called up to feed the Volkssturm.
My employer had to give me time off.
I started working for an armaments supplier when I was 15.
The brewery, where I actually wanted to work as an accountant, wasn't important enough for the war effort.
First I had to prepare vegetables in a facility with a large cooking device in Wedding.
After two days we moved on towards the Reichssportfeld.
I can't even say how many days we were there.
In any case, we were stuck - it was said that we were surrounded.
Since I knew my way around the site, I knew where to find water in the changing rooms.
I still remember how we washed each other.
That was an event: finally another drop of water to wash us.
Those who were hung up dangled from the trees
We sat in the trenches and begged the few soldiers who were still there to give us a pistol.
We wanted to shoot ourselves if the Russians came, or we wanted to fight back.
But they didn't give us anything.
Suddenly it was said that the Hitler Youth had fought us free, that we should make our way to the Hotel Adlon and help there.
So we, about ten girls, marched off from the Olympic Stadium, down Reichsstrasse in the direction of Theodor-Heuss-Platz.
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Halstenberg, Barbara
"Everything rocks, the whole bunker rocks": The story of the last war children
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The Russians shot their planes into the streets.
One of us girls was hit and she died.
Those who were hanged dangled from the trees, with large signs around their necks: "I am a traitor!"
We kept walking, shooting from above. I had a bike with me and took turns driving and pushing with two other girls. I trampled once, then the other two sat on the saddle and on the luggage rack and vice versa. Suitcases hung on the sides. I don't remember how we were able to drive there at all. On the other side of the zoo we heard the Russian guns and hopped from one ditch to the next. Everything was mined.
It was now night, the Hotel Adlon was cemented in as far as the second floor, the front door bolted.
We reached the first floor through a side door, were able to wash and rest for a moment.
What we saw there!
The beautiful faucets on the first floor, that was amazing!
In the middle of the great staircase was a system with a fountain.
We went down the wide stairs with real pride.
(She laughs.)
The many wounded on the beautiful carpets
The main first aid station of the Waffen SS was set up in the entrance hall.
The many wounded lay close together on the floor, on the beautiful carpets.
It was terrible, they wailed and wailed: "Sister, pool!
Sister, ouch, ouch, ouch! "
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I didn't know what to do ... I mean, I was 17, had no education, nothing.
We should give the basin to the wounded and feed them.
I tried and heard someone ask if anyone wanted to go to the operating room.
I answered.
My father was with the Red Cross, we used to meet every Sunday in the Red Cross station and practice bandages.
I could make wonderful bandages!
I made every bandage they wanted.
I thought it was good to be able to help.
The care of the wounded in the entrance hall had shaken me - the way they screamed was terrible.
Most of them were either very old or very young.
The other soldiers were out everywhere, outside of Berlin.
They had taken pimp to fight
I went downstairs where doctors and interns were operating in a basement room.
The bandages were made in an adjoining room.
I wrapped bandages day and night.
To keep themselves awake, some smoked, I sucked on coffee candies.
We hardly slept, we were busy.
Only briefly did we lie next to each other like pegs, very close to each other.
We connected like an assembly line.
I still remember one wounded man very well.
His hands were supposed to be amputated, they were totally ulcerated, and it smelled like hell.
Nobody wanted to answer, bandage his fingers.
I did it.
I just felt sorry for him.
Even afterwards in nursing - I did all the ugly things.
Out of pity.
The soldiers had everything - shot in the stomach, burns on their hands, head injuries.
Anywhere you could get a wound.
The boys called for Mama.
Once I was sitting by a kitchen shaft, where people were always sitting and taking a breath of fresh air, and I heard: "Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama!"
The boy was twelve years old!
They had taken the pimps for fighting and sworn in at the Reich Chancellery.
They were brought up that way, for leaders, people and fatherland.
A song was sung at each event: "Our flag flutters ahead, we march for Hitler through battle and hardship with the flag of the youth for freedom and death." First the Germany song was sung, then the Horst Wessel song and this flag song .
That went into the blood.
The boys were so trained.
Body searches while we slept
I had some distance from my parents' house and also from doing sports.
Various small threads ran through my life so that the back of my head could keep a distance.
Especially when my mother came home from work and told how terribly the Jews and the forced laborers had been treated again.
That impressed me tremendously - and the »Kristallnacht«.
We flirted with the wounded soldiers.
They had an unlikely courage to face life and flirted.
I was a pretty young girl.
We also took civilian clothes with us to the mission, so we didn't just have to wear our uniform.
I was wearing the skirt from my uniform, but with it I was wearing a very pretty blouse.
Must have looked cute.
The doctors flirted too, so we had to be very careful.
We had a chief doctor who always tried to do body searches while we slept.
We slept close together.
Once I suddenly woke up and found my blouse unbuttoned.
I was so exhausted that I didn't even notice.
We were totally naive then.
Today every girl would expect it, but it didn't exist in our time.
Hitler dead?
The officers were then suddenly called to the Reich Chancellery.
There it was said that Wenck's army would come and knock us out.
The officers were supposed to make their way to Wenck's army.
From the Reich Chancellery everything was tunneled under, from there they could have gone anywhere else.
But the officers stayed.
A few days later, I don't know when exactly, we were working all the time, they came back and said that Adolf had shot himself.
Hitler shot himself?
Yes, did we believe it or not?
We actually thought he got out.
We thought he was somewhere in Argentina.
We were not told that he was then cremated.
They only said that Hitler shot himself.
It wasn't long before the Russians came.
They discovered the hotel's wine cellar and walked around shouting.
Then they infected the Hotel Adlon.
We had to carry the soldiers with the stretcher or something like that, with two men, to Pariser Platz.
It was May, a warm day, and there was fire everywhere.
In the middle of the square lay the wounded soldiers.
We dragged her on to Wilhelmstrasse, through Vossstrasse into the bunker of the Reich Chancellery.
Again we begged the officers to give us a weapon so that we would not fall into the hands of the Russians.
Fortunately, it's not me.
Engagements like on an assembly line
In the Reich Chancellery, I went straight back to the operating room, where the operation continued. I joined together with an elderly gynecologist and a clerk named Link, who came from Zehlendorf. The girls then slept between the soldiers so that the Russians couldn't fetch them. How many got engaged! It was terrible! What were they fooling around with the soldiers? I remember hearing from everywhere: "We are engaged, we are engaged!"
I was separated from the soldiers, bandaged all the time in the operating room and also slept in the rooms where the operating room staff were - apart from the Russians and the wounded soldiers. A doctor offered me to do everything carefully before I was raped. Of course I refused. Yes, yes, our doctors weren't that perfect either. They wanted to sleep with me, very carefully. I thought that was mean. I really didn't want that!
Once it was said, come with me, we can go into the basement of the employees of the Reich Chancellery.
There are all suitcases full, we could take anything.
The basement rooms were thickly barred.
At one point we were able to crawl through a hole.
What was there!
We had nothing left, now there were suddenly wonderful pieces of clothing.
I took a pair of boots, there weren't many shoes left.
"We're leaving!"
After a few days the Russians drove us from the Reich Chancellery to Buch in trucks.
There were no more patients in the hospital, the wounded soldiers were all taken there.
We worked with a famulus who spoke Russian and had to interpret.
I was washing the instruments in the operating room when he came and said: "Come on, take a little bag, we'll be transported on to Frankfurt (Oder), we're leaving!" The three of us, with another girl, ran to the Exit. He told the guard that we had to go on a mission. Then we started walking - all the way to Neukölln.
My goodness, you forget everything, but if I tell you that now, it somehow comes up again. When I see the pictures of Aleppo on television today, I can no longer imagine that it was the same with us. At that time we didn't understand what was happening to us. As we walked towards the Hotel Adlon, under fire through the rubble, it was as if I were walking through a fog. A reality that I did not perceive as this actually difficult reality. I didn't understand what was happening to me, I didn't understand it. Under normal circumstances one cannot empathize with that.
Shortly after the end of the war, I began training as a nurse.
My experiences are relatively small.
Bombed out and fled - luckily I never experienced any of that.
That's why I hesitated to get in touch with you at first.
