Subject: Günther Kluge

born 28.06.1935

Fled as a ten-year-old with his siblings and mother from Königsberg/Ostpreußen in 1945.

Interviewer: F. Hülck

Mr Kluge: I, Günther Kluge, was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, on June 28, 1935. We grew up quite comfortably there, apart from the air raids which we were exposed to every day, sometimes even several times per day until finally, in 1944, or at the beginning of 1945, Königsberg was completely destroyed by bombs. The city was virtually bombed out. More than a hundred thousand people were killed. I don't know the exact number. But Königsberg had been devastated. And since the Russians were already getting quite close at this stage, it was obvious that we had better get out of there too.

What made it worse was that my father was unfortunate enough to be taken prisoner shortly before the end of the war. He had been exempt from military service because he was with the railway, but later he was taken prisoner by the Russians. They made him drive the demolition trains to Russia, up to where the tracks changed. In Russia the tracks are wider than in Germany. This made it possible for him to visit us several times while he was still a POW. And then my parents somehow decided that we should get out of there.

Interviewer: Where were you at the time?

Mr Kluge: We were still in Königsberg. But since it was getting rather dangerous there because the Russians were drawing nearer and you could hear the detonations at the front, my mother took us children - we were eight brothers and sisters - and fled from Königsberg. To begin with it was fairly easy and we were able to travel by train. But soon we had to pass through low-level attacks and bombardments and we had to get off the train again. We continued on foot, until finally after long marches and, in between, rides on trains and freight trains - we travelled in the freight carriages - we ended up in the Erz mountains, in Freiberg. Just a moment, first we were in Dresden where we experienced another bomb attack. Yes, and from there we went to Freiberg, and from Freiberg, where we stayed in something like a reception camp for refugees, we were sent to Seiler, which was situated in the Erz mountains too. In Seiler we were assigned an apartment halfway between Seiler and a village called Pilsdorf. There was an old pub there, a former pub, where two refugee families were already living. We were told to move in there. Then our life there began. My father was a POW with the Russians and there was very little food available. You could buy groceries once a week, eat till you had enough and then the food vouchers for the entire week were gone. Now and then food was available without vouchers. You could buy meat at the discount meat stall. And what was needed apart from that was - well, you were taught how to steal. Pinching potatoes from the field, cutting off cobs of corn, stealing bread from the bakery shelf. My brothers and sisters couldn't look after themselves. I am the second oldest child and the other six were even younger than me. The smallest one could barely walk. They were all really happy whenever we came home with stolen bread in our rucksacks. All in all life was not very pleasant there and then my parents decided that they wanted to leave for West Germany.

Interviewer: About when was that?

Mr Kluge: We left to cross the border to West Germany in the night from May 1 to May 2, 1949. We crossed in Heesten which is near Derzoll in the Harz mountains, but under different circumstances than we had imagined. It all happened so suddenly because my father had fled from captivity in Poland. The "Volkspolizei" (police force of the former GDR, translator) had been informed of his escape and told to keep us there because our father was bound to return and get in touch, but, thank God, one of the policemen gave us a tip-off that we should leave under cover of night, because otherwise we would be detained. This is why we packed what little we could carry as children. We didn't leave from the railway station nearby, because the policeman had also told us that the station might well be under the surveillance of the "Volkspolizei". We were told to leave from another railway station. So then we went to the station in Pilsdorf, as the place was called, about ten or twelve kilometres from where we had stayed. At the time we hardly had anything to wear. It was the end of April or the beginning of May and there was still snow on the ground. Some of us children had to walk barefoot, with our coats on and long trousers which my mother had made from old military tarpaulins. She used to make clothes for us from those camouflage covers. And then we set out from Pilsdorf to where the customs office is now in Hesen. We crossed the border in the Harz mountains. Then we went by train to a place which was fifteen or twenty kilometres from the border, because we had to be mindful of them watching out for us somehow, and the fact that all those trying to cross the border would be intercepted there. That's why we continued on foot. There is one thing I should mention. My mother was very fond of an old "Singer" sewing machine, so we children dragged the upper part along with us with the utmost difficulty. Somehow we managed to take it along all the way from the Erz mountains to West Germany and we even had to tow it across the ditch at the border. Yes, crossing the border was really quite hard. It was already 10 or 11 pm when we reached the watchtower area. The moon was so bright we couldn't carry on because the visibility was too good. So we lay down in the fields until the moon went down a little. We didn't sneak across the border until the night of May 2, because May 1 is an important holiday for the Russians. We had to move pretty close to this watchtower, but all in all it went smoothly and we crossed the border safely. The ditch was not all that deep - just above the knee for us children - and there wasn't too much water either. Well, then we ended up in West Germany where we were received very, very courteously by the West Germans. Then we children, the smallest one no more than one and a half years old, wanted to rest for a few hours in this old shed where oil barrels and cleaning rags were lying about, but we weren't allowed in and the West Germans chased us away. We had to lie in the ditch near the road. Our father had wanted to take us across the border and he had gotten in touch with my mother, but he was caught by the Russians. He had come too close to the border and was detained by the Russians for three days. So we were left there for three days, without anything to eat or drink. There was nothing to be had from the West Germans. Frankly, they treated us like cattle. I had somehow got hold of five West Germans marks from my grandmother as a child. I don’t know where she got them from. So we bought a couple of rolls and the first cake of soap with what was left. I was the happiest person on earth. Food was possibly not even as important as the soap. My father was released by the Russians three and a half days later. He had to clean herrings in the kitchen for three days and cook meals and do other chores for the Russians there. We finally managed to meet up where we had arranged to and we went on from there, first to Siegen, where there was a large reception camp for refugees. That was where we went first, and my father tried to find a job there. He inquired about his situation and he was told that as a railway worker he could expect to be re-employed by the railway here in West Germany. But he didn’t know exactly how and when, and he left to find an opportunity for us to settle down somewhere, depending on where he would be posted by the railway. Meanwhile, we stayed in the reception camp in Siegen. We lived there for eight or nine weeks. Then we were sent to Stuckenbrock near Paderborn where they had a proper reception camp and we stayed there for quite a while. But conditions weren't any better there, I mean, for us children it was interesting, but in retrospect, it was not exactly idyllic.

Interviewer: Feel free to explain why.

Mr Kluge: It was because of the housing situation. There were eight children cramped into one and a half rooms. There was one room to sleep in, and a small recess where you could wash a little and cook a little. It was not what you would wish for, the refugee camp in Siegen, and that reception camp was not great, either. It was the kind of life you could no longer imagine nowadays, nor how you survived all this without suffering any lasting damage. So we were there in the camp in Stuckenbrock. The food was very plain with a plate of soup at midday and three boiled potatoes in the evening. We didn't get any West German money, and people gave us nothing for free, either.

Going to the authorities was time-consuming. It often took six months before an application was processed. Administration wasn't the way it should be then. Things were not running smoothly yet, which hardly could have been otherwise, so soon after the capitulation. So we lived in the camp until one day we were notified that we were allowed out. We were referred to Borghorst, to a farmer named Schulze-Düding.

We lived in a loft above a pigsty. That was where we children and my mother lived. My father was in Münster working for the railway. The railway had employed him again, and we stayed with the farmer for some years, until 1951 - no - we started building our own house in 1951. Just a second, I got this wrong. We did, after all, stay in Borghorst for longer. My father was at one point introduced to the mayor of Hiltrup by someone at the railway. So my father made contacts there and that was how we ended up in Hiltrup. The mayor saw to it that my father was able to build a house there and so we moved to Hiltrup in 1951 or 1952.

So we lived in Hiltrup until I left home, because it was getting too cramped for us. As for me, I completed my apprenticeship as a bricklayer. Later I married and I have a wife and children and meanwhile I have become a grandfather. I live happily and to the full. What else do you want to know?

Interviewer: Let's go back to East Prussia, to Königsberg, to fleeing from there. Could you could tell us a little more about the flight from Königsberg, with the tanks, and how you had to cross the ice, with all the snow and the cold?

Mr Kluge: The thing with the ice was, we were too late to fully experience that. We did see that there was ice and that refugees who were fleeing in horse-drawn sleighs drowned in the Kurskyi Zaliv. [diese wohl russische Bezeichnung habe ich in meinem Websters für "Kurisches Haff" gefunden...] We waited until it was almost too late, we wanted to... my mother had thought of leaving onboard the "Wilhelm Gustloff". Somehow it didn’t work out, I don’t know why. My mother was really furious at the time. Today we are glad because the "Wilhelm Gustloff" never got very far because she was hit by a torpedo and sank. All the refugees who were on board drowned. We left a bit later, I don't remember the exact date. Goodness me, after all, it is more than fifty years ago.

Interviewer: That's right. Did all this happen before or after 1945?

Mr Kluge: That was still before the Russian invasion. The Russians had not entered Königsberg at that stage but they had encircled the city. They were, let's say, if we lived here where there this ice rink is now, the front would already have been over there. If we climbed up on the rooftop we could see the front. Well, that was - I don't remember the exact date.

Anyway, we finally left Königsberg rather hastily under cover of night. The Russian front was getting closer all the time, even German soldiers were fleeing, and in hindsight you can't really blame them. They had nothing to eat or drink and they were in rags.

Interviewer: All on foot?

Mr Kluge: All on foot. Many of the German soldiers were on foot, some even barefoot. Pardon?

Interviewer: You included?

Mr Kluge: To begin with we travelled on a freight train for a while, but I don't remember how far we got. I can't remember where we had to get off and then we had to carry on walking too, from village to village, on this refugee treck. We couldn't carry much, or take many things along, because we had to carry our little siblings. My eldest brother who was one and a half years older than me had a child on his shoulders, and I another one. The other ones could already walk a bit. And then there were the bombings, because in the end the front caught up with us. The Russians finally got hold of us when we left Königsberg. We were probably too slow. But somehow we got through, although in retrospect you have to say that the Russians ravaged the whole area. They just ploughed through the refugee trecks with their tanks and didn't care one bit if there was something in their way.

There was nothing to eat or drink. The first time all of us were offered a sip of coffee was at a farm somewhere by members of the German Red Cross who had somehow also gotten there. They gave us a drink from time to time, but for all the other things you needed you had to beg or steal or whatever. There was really nothing at all to be had.

So we struggled ahead, sometimes on foot and we also got a lift from a military truck, but this was later when we were already closer to the Erz mountains. A military vehicle gave us a lift. There were soldiers riding on it who took us along, but then they left again because they had to go elsewhere. So we had to get off again and march on and in this fashion we made our way to the Erz mountains. We didn't know exactly where we were heading, and somehow I can't figure out why my parents chose the Erz mountains, of all destinations. No idea. In any case we ended up in Dresden which was the next railway station we knew. But at that time the war had more or less ended, and Dresden was heavily bombarded. As I said, from Dresden we carried on to Freiberg, walking for quite a distance. We didn't know what else to do. Since we didn't have any money or anything else, we walked until we got to Freiberg. And as I said, in Freiburg the refugees were distributed and that is how we got to go to Seidler. But conditions there were equally atrocious. First of all, going to school in the Erz mountains - there was a sort of school in Ullerdorf which was three kilometres away from us. The walking distance to Pilsdorf where we had to go to school was eight kilometres one way and we had to go the whole way on foot in the winter. Everyone familiar with the Erz mountains knows how much it snows there. Quite often the snow was lying one and a half or even two metres deep. And there was nothing to eat or drink. The Russians were really ruthless. You can hardly imagine how brutal they were. The women were raped, and we were standing nearby - ten-year-old children - and we even applauded because we didn't know what it was all about. All the Russians asked when they came was "Where is Magda, where is Magda?" It's really best not to think about these things. We somehow tried to survive under the Russians. We watched them closely which was also interesting. It was a big deal when the Russians stole a pig from one of the farmers or simply took it and slaughtered it, because the Russians just shot the pig and slit it up, and the offal was thrown away and the feet and head were cut off. They left all this and only took the carcass with them. On one side there was the farmer who meant to get hold of the rest and on the other side we were lying, about five or six school children, waiting for the Russians to go away. We ran over quickly and snatched what was left. In this way you had to see to it that you found something to eat. At the same time many people starved to death - a great many of them. Many people died or became ill with malnutrition. Sometimes it was quite...., many died, but we all survived, thank God, our whole family.

Interviewer: But didn't the family suffer later, during the fifties, when they remembered all the atrocities?

Mr Kluge: Because we were children at that time, we were not fully aware of what was going on. We did not really understand all this until much later. When we were children on the run we didn't grasp most of what was happening. You know, I wasn't even ten years old and there was so much to take care of with my brothers and sisters. My mother has difficulty walking because a shell splinter hit her here and the joint was destroyed. And the way the Russians behaved was really scandalous. If under those circumstances we had not stolen things and did God knows what else, we would surely not have survived. And we were living almost in the country, in that pub and it was a bit easier in the country. I was always sorry for those living in cities, especially the children, because they had nothing at all. At least now and then we were able to steal the odd potato from a farmer, or beg for something, but many of those living in the cities couldn't even do that and so they starved to death. That's the only thing I still suffer from. Even nowadays when I look back, I feel sorry for all those people who starved to death.

Another thing I didn't understand as a child was the brazenness of the farmers. For a hundredweight of potatoes some of them demanded that people traded in their complete living-room furniture. And the townspeople had to give everything they had in exchange for something to eat. I have always thought this highly unfair of the farmers. Well, anything else?

Yes, that the Russians raped many women. But you could say that the children were treated a bit better. Still, some things happened that were so outrageous it is better not to tell them. Some Russians had a bicycle which they kept pushing uphill to race back downhill. Then they somehow lost the valve. But instead of pumping up the tyre, they somehow turned the valve back inside, towards the slits where you normally insert the valve. Perhaps they though that the air would stay in this way. Then they dumped the bicycle behind a fence and this is where I found it. I replaced the valves in the old tyres, and so I had a bicycle. Were they really too stupid to fix it themselves? I don't know. Shoelaces were nowhere to be had, either, another one of those incidents with the Russians. They didn't get a thing and there was nothing to buy. Grocery shops opened once a week and then that was that for the entire week. We were constantly in need of shoelaces. There was always a big hassle about shoelaces in our family. Once I saw a whole bundle of shoelaces on one of the Russians vehicles and, being a child, I snatched the whole bundle from the vehicle and took it home. A little while later a Russian came to our house. That was still in the Erz mountains, in that old pub where we lived. That's where the shoelace episode took place. The Russian came to our home and screamed at my mother that I had taken the shoelaces. He really shouted his head off and my mother was quite frightened and about to return the whole bundle, but surprisingly, all he did was to stand there and say "The commander can’t get any shoelaces, all the shoelaces are gone". He took the bundle of shoelaces, pulled out five or six and then returned the whole bundle to our mother and left. This is something I won't forgot either, the way they pronounced the German word "Schnürsenkel" for shoelace, "Schnurisenkel". But even as a child I had more weapons than the Russians. The whole shed and the attic were stacked with weapons which were all stolen from the Russians. We also took motorbikes from the Russians, although we couldn't ride them, - only downhill, because we were living at the top of the hill.

We went down the main road and turned left to a sort of pond. That was how far we could get. From there we could not go downhill any longer and we had to leave the motorbike there. We were at the pond when a Russian tank arrived. There were three boys - my eldest brother, a schoolmate and myself - and we were near the pond when a Russian tank arrived which was also moving towards the pond.

Then the young Russians climbed down - they were almost one, two or three years older than us and wanted to chase us away [ich weiß nicht, was genau verjacken heißt, wahrscheinlich eher verjagen] and we ran for it. My older brother ran into the gateway of a farm and hid behind a post. When one of the Russian boys came, my brother tripped him up and he fell heavily on the paving, right into the gravel with his uniform and all. Two of them were coming up behind us, and the two of us ran into the forest. We ran to where there were stacks of wood lying about which had been cut and we found a sort of club about one metre long. We got hold of this club and gave the Russians a good thrashing until they fired into the air and told us to stop. Then we let go of the Russian boys and they ran away. You wouldn't believe the things that went on!

Interviewer: What about the episode you told me about earlier on, about using the five marks to buy something to eat and soap.?

Mr Kluge: A cake of curd soap, a cake of yellow soap.

Interviewer: Why this longing for soap?

Mr Kluge: Because we never had any. You couldn't wash. It was quite uncomfortable. When we were fleeing we couldn't wash properly for days. It was impossible, there was no way. Even in some of the railway stations there wasn't any water available. And then across the ditch at the border, there was all this mud. The water wasn't very clean either. At that time we hadn't washed for several days. So the first thing we bought was a small cake of soap and at some old pool we soaped down our faces and washed our arms and hands as best we could. My brothers and sisters were just as happy as I was that we had this cake of soap. We had also bought a couple of rolls, but at that moment the soap was just as important as the rolls. That was really terrible. Somehow it wasn't the way it is nowadays where you can wash at every railway station. That didn’t exist then.

Interviewer: And when you were fleeing from Königsberg? When you were going towards the Erz mountains, you probably didn't know exactly where you were. Did you really know where the front was? Could you hear anything, or was it just noises?

Mr Kluge: No, we didn't know anything until much later. When we were on the run the Russians almost caught up with us once. And then we got a lift, as I told you, with one of those military vehicles. They took us along for a little way, but it we couldn't ride on this vehicle for very long, either. They had to go in another direction and we wanted to go straight ahead, heading in a westerly direction. So we walked through the open countryside, which was no fun at all sometimes, to be honest. It depended on the weather. When the sun shone for a while and it wasn't too cold either, it was easier for us. But feelings of anxiety in the proper sense of the word - you didn't realise how dangerous it all was until much later, or what was really going on. At that time we were not aware of the danger. All this happened later when you were thinking that you might have been... the bombs, the low-level attacks, that they might have hit you. Or later, in the Erz mountains when the Russians really caught us, what they might have done to us. At that time you didn't really think about it. The only thing you were thinking of was if you had something to eat and nothing else mattered. Although you were sometimes convinced that this must be the end, there was nothing you could do and nothing to eat. It was all gone. But then a farmer had something or there were some potatoes you could pinch. As I said, it really happened that a farmer planted potatoes and we were waiting nearby to dig them out again. The next spring the farmer wondered why nothing was sprouting. Yes, and from time to time there was nothing at all to eat. As I said, grocery stores opened once in a while, then you took your food voucher and went shopping. Back home you could eat once until you were full, then there was a bit left for a second meal, but all the rest of the time there was not even a bite to be had.