My Enemy - My Friend - My Father
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'On the 19th June 1941 in the small town of Strausberg located to the east of Berlin and not many miles from the German and Polish border town of Kostrzyn, at 05.45 in the morning I was born.
I was born into a country that had been at war for over two years, and it was going well for Germany. There were indeed plans being made by Germany’s leader to extend the war into the East and into Russia, which was in the leader's opinion the main enemy. Germany needed more room, so the leader, Adolf Hitler stated in his speeches, and anyway, the English had not given up as he expected, and it was important to keep giving the German people victories. Without this he could lose his power. He did not say this to the people in those words, but that’s what he needed most of all, more victories, if he couldn’t have them in the West because of the stubborn English, he would get them in the East where there was no Royal Air Force operating, and no Royal Navy. His armies would be free to roam over the vast plains of Russia without any major problems.
None of this was of any interest to me, all I wanted to do was to play with my mother and father.'
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'I was in our house and my mother had been out looking for food, it was normal to be left on my own for a short time, when she suddenly rushed back inside, and shouted, “the Russians are coming”, picked me up, and ran with me over her shoulder to the railway station.
There were many people in the streets; nobody was bothered about the shrapnel or bombs, for they were all rushing to the station.
There was the sound of battle very close, explosions, and the sound of gunfire.'
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'As it started to get lighter outside, we saw that we were passing very slowly through a deep cutting with trees on both sides, and saw with horror, that hanging on the trees were hundreds of men, women and children.
This was a scene out of some type of living Hell, and we were all very distraught and very upset.
Everybody was crying, and the engine driver must have felt the same, for the train speeded up, and we left this horror behind us, but it was never to leave our minds or our dreams.'
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'He asked why I did not mention our neighbours. I told him that though I have a faint memory of people living next door, there is no clear memory. He was very surprised at this, and laughed and said, “So you don’t remember Eva and Adolf who used to visit us, and we them?”'
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