The following text tells the family Walther their fate in times of forced removals under the code name "vermin" and "Corn Flower".
Legal Basis for forced relocation from the area along the border zone was established on 26 May 1952 by the Council of Ministers of the GDR adopted the "Regulation on action at the demarcation line between East Germany and the Western occupation zones "and the command 38/52 of the Central German Volkskpolizei. In the Regulation, the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) was commissioned to" immediately strict measures for strengthening the security of the demarcation line to to prevent penetration of saboteurs, spies, terrorists and pests..
While the workers of machine-tractor stations (MTS), the farmers and forest workers forced the plowing and clearing of a ten-meter-wide strip, the placing beginning of signs to mark the 500-meter protection zone and the 5-kilometer exclusion zone, have been using the spy documents in the police and the Stasi compiled lists of auszusiedelnden people.
Of all these changes, we were only the visible part, namely the fixing of the zone boundary. We did not know that was conducted on every person who lived in the 5-kilometer zone, an index card of the People's Police. Were we really so naive or did we not hear of it and see because it is difficult to live with the thought that anything said, done or told the only master table has been, is being held? There was also the spring much work on the farm, that hardly anyone thought about political states.
The unusual activity, the Umackern of the fields and meadows on the border, the bustle, which revealed the people's police, told us, however, already restless. But still, everyone thought nothing can happen to us, but we have killed anyone or hurt anyone else. It became increasingly clear that in the newspapers and on radio quite a rush delivery points striking against the Federal Republic. That the Ministry for State Security and the VP with the participation of local authorities in accordance with the above instructions a purge of "hostile, suspicious and criminal elements" carried out, we in no way related to us. By the time we knew nothing about the forced relocation of families in Saxony and Mecklenburg, which took place as early as mid to late May.
The 5th June 1952, a week after Pentecost, was for me a day like any other. I had to get up at 6:00 clock, get dressed, then put in the lounge chairs on the tables and sweep the floor. That was my daily task, before I took the bike out to drive in the county seat to high school. On that June 5 was all very different. The parents were traumatized from the barn into the kitchen and said, today I did not have to go to school, we would have gone. I understood nothing and said, "What do you mean, we have to go where we are, and why?" Parents shrugging their shoulders and told that today by five clock in the morning, a police officer was there who took the cards, and a document read to them, after we had to leave within twenty-four hours the village. Neither I nor my parents understood the importance of writing. That could only be a mistake. First would have milked the cows and fed the pigs and chickens are fed, it would hopefully this silly thing to have cleared up. We had done nothing wrong and also has to judge in a democracy, a court, whether someone should be jailed or otherwise punished. But we lived in a German Democratic Republic, there are no arbitrary punishments, so there was just a misunderstanding. Such were our thoughts and so I did not go to school, but went on a village street where there was great excitement.
came out from each property, the men and said the whole village must be evacuated, it would certainly be war. The SED press had predicted all along that the Americans are willing to drive over the border with tanks and bring the smaller German Democratic Republic to the great West Germany. Already for weeks were such assumptions and fears in the newspaper where these lurid propaganda war over again on the first page was presented and indeed so often that it no longer taken seriously.
now came during the morning policemen in large numbers to the village and gave instructions to the affected families to pack personal belongings, because it would truck to us and our furniture to the next station, go to Sonnenberg. To the cattle, we should not worry us, it is governed everything. Stunned, the parents stood around and only found out later in the day, that not all homes should be evacuated, but only selected families would be taken away.
Our neighbors were our relatives, were also selected for these families, as well as our Neighbor to another courtyard. The men who made the decisions in the family, agreed that after all this has to do with the border and could only be a temporary thing. They were just comply with the order of the government, because it would turn out that no one has something wrong that warrants a serious punishment. In addition, there would still courts and it would take this lying down.
Certainly not only with us that day was not cooked, eaten nothing. We were unable to understand this event, let it into perspective. The court and leave the house, which was only possible in case of death. Farmers are traditional, always act within the meaning of ancestors and remember the life of the offspring. My father, usually so energetic walked with its arms through all the rooms of the house in the stable, in the barns, in the garden, without doing anything or speaking. The mother stood with neighbors in the kitchen again. They made themselves thought of what will now be whether we would come around to Siberia, or only to the Polish border as a farm hand. Suddenly us the prophecy of the woman Janik from Estonia came to mind. If they are right so that you do not live under the Soviet system. The women were also considered to flee at night to Neustadt, so to Bavaria. We still had not packed, it was summer, maybe needed But if no winter clothes, but we thought that we are safely back home, until the cold season there. We stood around helplessly, I definitely took my school bag at me. Still in the village was an atmosphere like before the arrival of Americans on the war end of 1945. There were many considerations, which will probably be whether the remaining families have also gone the next day or in a month. "If a war is coming, you did it better, you are gone, but we will be here maybe involved in fighting just across the border." Sun splashed fears and forebodings back and forth.
Then came the evening father's cousin Edelgard to us and started bedding, duvets and blankets to stuff in bags. We watched as if we are nothing went on. She was an energetic young woman and asked if we wanted some sleep on cold floors. It did not matter where would we sat done: to have beds is the most important thing. They also brought baskets of home, where they stacked pots and pans and all packed with towels. I squeezed a canvas bag in his hand and told me to my underwear, my clothes and shoes to accommodate them. I did and grabbed my sister and suitable for a sack. For my mother and my father took over the Edelgard packing. My mother was looking for pictures, my father sat with his head on the water trough in the yard and cried. This has shocked me the most! I thought to my father in very different situations experienced. A man who had fought in the war, which was full of ideas for the future, she sat there and cried! He was 45 years old and was still full of plans. But such an event had been foreseen by anyone in the village.
Today we know that in every village in the border area were people who selected the families who are so certain that families should be forcibly deported. Now I know that this action was carried out under the code name "vermin" and intimidate the people in the border zone and should make them amenable to further transformation of agriculture within the meaning of the SED. The selection of individuals was responsible zwangsauszusiedelnden in first line in the police as the lead of any person documents were found on statements or opinions held by anyone. Involved were local organizations, such as party groups, trade union cadres, employees of the Stasi and the unofficial mayor.
In our village had eleven families receive this command, the Government, including the two guest hosts, so our family and the family Knauer. On 6 June 1952 were taken 29 people into trucks for transport to Sonneberg. This sounds very businesslike, but it was all a bad situation, a complete turning point in her life and a life not turning for the better. It was a life break, after which everyone had to reorient .- This we have not covered this time of course. The immediate events, let us not think that far.
As we have spent the last night in our house, I can not remember. After my parents were the last time in the barn to feed the animals, they took to the streets and gave the people the police, who were always present, all the keys. We entered the house again and joined by, not from it.
On the morning of 6 June was a truck in front of our house and we were ordered to furniture and personal belongings to recharge itself and then climb into the bed of the truck, to be taken away. Still, no one knew where we are placed. Rumors and speculation drove us fear. Is it perhaps about Buchenwald or another detention beyond the Oder / Neisse border? Again, we could not lift a hand and we stood before it and invited neighbors to our furniture. Again, it was Edelgard which determined what is to be taken, which needed a family ungedingt.
relatives and neighbors were standing around us, the sheer terror in his eyes, thinking it should go on as if they would also be collected. As we climbed up onto the truck between four bedsteads, a table and four chairs, a wardrobe, the sewing machine and the kitchen cabinet had been looking for a place to sit, all the people wept in the street and so do we. After the truck had set in motion, no one waved. All retreated into their homes and closed the door firmly behind him.
from any location that was within the 5-kilometer zone, drove on that day the trucks to the train station, loaded with furniture and disturbed people. The villages that we passed through were deserted. No one was on the road to see on the farm or at the window. Everything looked uninhabited. Not only we are on the trucks were very afraid to go where it is, even those left behind who wanted the image of departure not impress in his mind. You wanted to see and hear nothing. Man can only endure a certain degree of unhappiness, it is exceeded, is a displacement of what happened and heard. You want, and look no more. So it was on this beautiful summer day of the 6th June 1952.
Our transport into the unknown began in the late afternoon. The boxcar we shared with our relatives and neighbors the same surname. The train stopped often, but always in uninhabited areas, so we do not know where we were. Night at 2:30 of the clock stopped freight train, the doors were opened and we got out. We were on the freight station in Göschwitz, namely in Thuringia. All were breathing on, thank God it was not on the Polish border Russia. Yet no one knew whether it was terminal or just a stopover for us. Police unloaded the wagons. Again our few pieces of furniture were on a train station. Then came trucks, police verfrachteten each family with their furniture and then went out into the night. We traveled between 2 und 3 clock in the morning in complete darkness in a village, the truck stopped in front of the church. Windows in houses were opened, sleepy women looked out and saw the middle of the night, a truck stop in their village, which was loaded with furniture and with a family. The driver asked for directions to the address he had to take "temporary home 24 ".
One of the women offered us that the child, she said my sister would wait in her house for the night. My nine year old sister did not want to own away from parents. She was afraid. The driver finally found after long Look in the night the way to "temporary home". It was a shanty town that was located outside the village Lobeda on a mountain slope. Formerly there were accommodations for prisoners of war who had to work in Germany in factories. To this barracks led to only a fairly attached lane, the truck was driven on with the effort. At a barracks in a series of similar visual appearance accommodation was the final stop. It was still dark. At the behest of the driver increased we made. Incredulous, we saw our future home, it looked more like a shed. Nevertheless, we began to carry our furniture into the building. Light was present. Two rooms with one window, a stove, but without water connection - that was our apartment. These unacceptable conditions made my parents really hope. They thought that can stand in as a barracks during the winter no family, so it would only be a temporary accommodation.
The first were built in the night, nor the four beds, the bedding was removed from the bags and slept on my sister to sleep. When day came, we saw the whole shanty town and were amazed that it was inhabited by displaced persons from the territories beyond the Oder / Neisse or the Sudetenland. These families, who were but actually accommodated only temporarily in the barracks lived several years there. They had taken the property in winter, and still hoped for a better place to live, because homes could not call them shacks. There, now we put on our furniture and set up a few have brought the two small rooms somewhat "comfortable" one. The nicest thing about this shantytown of the situation. We looked far into the Saale valley, in the back was a lime, covered with dry grass and various shrubs and plants.
My parents had no idea how it should now go further. First, my mother tried the iron stove to light, but what? We had no coal or wood, but four people wanted to eat and drink. A central water point, we found at the end of the temporary road. But we had not even taken bucket. Edel has forgotten them. The neighbors, residents of other barracks were very helpful, they took us to eat and drink. For the first time in her life my parents were forced to seek a livelihood outside of the house. They had little cash, as we had at home after the currency reform, a new garden wall to the street can build a beautiful wall of granite Steinacher. In this way the account was nearly depleted.
From the city of Jena, we were given a transitional allowance and food stamps issued.
My father asked if someone would stop in a nearby butcher. But it was in the GDR, the time of the expropriation of the small business and you were glad to be employed by the former own business as a master. The last remained to the slaughterhouse in Jena. Our father began on 1 7. to work in 1952 in the VEB slaughterhouse, it's not as masters but as laborers. This was the further humiliation, he had to accept. He consoled himself with the thought that it could only be a temporary measure.
Source: http://www.familientagebuch.de/
0 comments:
Post a Comment