Berlin at War (41 page)

There was little logic applied in the selection of destinations for Berlin’s

schoolchildren, and the schools themselves certainly did not have any

influence on the choices made. Thus, though classes were generally

kept together, siblings in different years of the same school could be

sent to opposite ends of the country. If one takes the example of the

Berlin suburb of Steglitz, the geographical spread of its evacuated chil-

dren is astonishing. In 1940, many school classes from Steglitz were sent

to Carinthia in Austria, although Silesia, Thuringia and occupied Poland

were also used. In the following years, East Prussia, Bohemia, Pomerania

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berlin at war

and the Sudetenland were all added to the list.15 Berlin’s children could

be sent almost anywhere within the Greater German Reich.

Aside from the logistical challenge, there were other difficulties.

There was often a dramatic difference between the standard of living

in the capital and that in the often primitive hinterlands of Pomerania

or rural Silesia. Gisela Richter recalled her stay in East Prussia:

the accommodation was extremely primitive, consisting mainly of tied

cottages and the like . . . Mother was given one of these tiny places,

without power or running water, and with an outside toilet. Drinking

water had to be fetched with a bucket from a small hole in the ground,

which was covered with wire mesh. When I was confronted with it

one time, it turned my stomach. In my bucket of water, there were

leaves, spiders and beetles!16

Younger evacuees often faced rather different circumstances from the

older children. They tended to be quartered individually with a host

family, and so were entirely dependent on their hosts’ whim and good-

will. And that goodwill was sometimes a rare commodity. Regional

tensions within Germany could be quick to manifest themselves.

Berliners were often viewed askance in the south of Germany and in

Austria, and would routinely be derided as ‘Prussians’. Mothers accom-

panying small children to the countryside might also be mockingly called

Bombenweiber
, or ‘bomb wenches’.17 Those Berliners travelling to rural

East Prussia, meanwhile, were often seen as unwelcome reminders of

a war that had until then barely touched that remote part of the country.

Everywhere, it seems, ‘greedy’ Berlin children were seen as a burden.18

There were also social tensions and jealousies inherent in settling

city children in comparatively primitive rural areas. As one evacuee

recalled of his village school: ‘As a Berliner and someone from the

Reich capital, I was a novelty in the village; someone who was asked

a lot of questions and who was keenly listened to. And, as the girls

were interested in me too, I earned myself the enmity of the local

farmers’ boys . . . In time, I was no longer able to escape a beating.’19

There was moreover a financial aspect to complicate matters. From

1941, hosts were offered compensation for housing an evacuee, which

amounted to about 3 Reichsmarks per child per day.20 Many host families,

therefore, joined the scheme, not out of altruism but out of a simple

an evil cradling

191

desire for cheap labour. Berliner Gerhard Ritter found himself billeted

with an aged tobacco farmer in East Prussia, whom he had to help, not

only with the harvest, but also with the sorting and bundling of the crop.

Away from the arduous work in the fields, the highlight of his stay was

to help in the local pub, while the farmer himself played cards in a back

room. ‘I drew beer, poured schnapps, cleaned the glasses, selected ciga-

rettes and waited at tables’, he recalled, ‘the landlord was pleased that I

understood how to fill the glasses to his advantage, but without risking

complaints from the clientele.’21 Gerhard was nine years old.

Though the hosting arrangement for the under tens worked toler-

ably well in many cases, it was also open to abuse. Many children were

actively maltreated, housed in abominable conditions or simply left to

their own devices. It was not unusual, therefore, for children to be moved

– often many times – until their parents were satisfied with the quality

of accommodation and care. Dorit Erkner, for instance, was moved

seven times in eighteen months, being shunted through a succession of

schools and host families, from East Prussia to rural Thuringia.22

For the older children at the regular KLV camps, conditions were

generally better. In all, there were up to 9,000 KLV camps, ranging from

large-scale sites, which could accommodate over 1,000 evacuees, to

smaller locations suitable for barely a few dozen children. Geographically,

they ranged right across Greater Germany – from Aalen in Württemberg

to Zwönitz in the Erzgebirge – and even extended to foreign parts, such

as Slovakia, Hungary and occupied Poland.23

Conditions for the evacuees varied enormously. The camp build-

ings themselves could be former monasteries or country houses, luxury

hotels, youth hostels or children’s homes. Some of the larger camps

– those based in requisitioned hotels, for instance – could offer smaller

rooms and all modern conveniences. Many others, especially in occu-

pied Poland, could barely muster running water and heating.

In many cases, the arrival of the first batch of evacuees was the most

critical time. Especially at the outset, much of the organisation of the

KLV programme was improvised, and some of the locations were ill

prepared for the immediate accommodation of dozens of children, with

the result that the first arrivals were sometimes obliged to sleep on loose

straw while their dormitories were being finished off. Others were better

prepared. Gisela Stange recalled that upon her arrival at the village of

Strobl near Salzburg, her class was greeted by local children with sledges

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berlin at war

to carry the baggage. When they then reached their destination – a local

guest house that had been commandeered for her class of forty children

– they were met with plates of warm jam dumplings and custard.24

Perhaps the primary challenge facing the evacuees were the pangs

of homesickness. Gisela Stange remembered:

the greatest malady [. . .] was the wretched homesickness, which affected

almost all children. Only occasionally was there someone there who

had already been away from home for any length of time. We missed

home, and especially our mothers and fathers, very much, and some

evenings we cried ourselves to sleep.25

Renate Bandur wrote to her mother in 1941 from East Prussia: ‘Now

I have found the bar of chocolate and I felt so homesick that I cried

and cried and I can’t stop. Please write me a really long letter, which

never stops . . .’26 There were other fears. ‘One was always so worried

when one heard about the air raid alarms in Berlin’, recalled Dorit

Erkner. ‘When one girl in the dormitory of thirty started crying, then

it quickly spread to all of us.’27

Such emotions were often assuaged by the evacuees’ need to swiftly

acquaint themselves with their new routine in the camp. A typical

day in a KLV camp was strictly regimented. Reveille was sounded at

6.30 a.m. and was followed by an hour set aside for washing, making

beds, tidying and roll call. At 8.00 a.m. all children in the camp had

to partici pate in the flag ceremony, the
Fahnenappel
, when the camp

leader would give the children their slogan for the day, usually some-

thing snappy and suitably National Socialist, the significance of which

would be explained in a few sentences. The children would then be

called to attention for the raising of the flag, and would sing perhaps

the ‘
Deutschland Lied
’, the ‘
Horst Wessel Lied
’, or the Hitler Youth anthem

– the ‘
Fahnenlied
’ – a jaunty ditty composed by Baldur von Schirach

himself:

Uns’re Fahne flattert uns voran

Our banner flutters before us

Uns’re Fahne ist die neue Zeit

Our banner represents the new era

Und die Fahne führt uns in die Ewigkeit

And our banner leads us to eternity

Ja, die Fahne ist mehr als der Tod.

Yes, our banner means more to us

than death.

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193

The flag ceremony was a vital part of the day. As the official instructions

ran, it was to be ‘short, terse and profound, so as not to become a daily

burden to the children’. When poor weather prevented the ceremony, it

was to be held inside.28

After breakfast, classes were given by teachers or representatives of

the Hitler Youth from 8.45 a.m. until 1.00 p.m. Following lunch and a

short rest period, the afternoon session began at 3.00 p.m. and was

given over predominantly to sport, games and singing, with a number

of periods set aside each week for homework, laundry, shoe repairs

and sewing. After supper at 7.00, an evening session offered more

of the same, including a weekly lesson on current affairs and the

so-called ‘political report’. Weekends were less minutely structured

and tended to contain more communal and local activities as well as

a weekly ‘camp evening’, which generally consisted of stories and

singing around a campfire. Lights out was at 9.00 p.m.29

Even a cursory glance at such a routine demonstrates that conven-

tional education was not especially high on the agenda. Indeed, the

official instruction booklet given to all KLV camps devoted fully ten

pages to the subject of physical exercise, yet was curiously silent on

education, stating vaguely that ‘classes are to be carried out according

to the teaching plans of the evacuated schools’.30 In some instances,

the teachers went to great lengths to ensure that the children were

stimulated and engaged. Yet, in many cases, education came a very

poor second to virtually all other subjects. As Gerhard Ritter recalled:

Our teacher’s lesson consisted of him dictating, for one subject after

another, all sorts of homework for us to do. Then he disappeared. We

remained in class for an hour, then marched back to the camp. The

afternoons we spent in the yard, sitting on the ground, singing songs

or discussing matters. The next morning, we arrived punctually in the

classroom. When the teacher arrived, there was absolute silence. He

demanded to see our homework. Then, he would become enraged as

he realised that no one had anything to show him, in any subject.31

Crucially, though the educational responsibilities were theoretically

divided between the teachers and the representatives of the Hitler Youth,

in practice only the latter held any real power. Any conflict between

the two, therefore, would invariably result in a victory for the Hitler

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berlin at war

Youth – after all, only they had access to the higher echelons of the

Party machine – and led inexorably to a further dilution of any genuine

pedagogical content in the daily timetable. In addition, shortfalls in

teaching staff were routinely made up by drafting in older students

from the Nazi ideological schools, the Napolas, who were sent on three-

month tours of duty to the KLV camps, prior to their military service,

to organise parades, sports events and entertainment.32 To a large

extent, therefore, the schoolwork component of the timetable was

systematically reduced and sacrificed to the paramilitary drill regimen

of the Hitler Youth and the Nazi Party.33 In some cases, education as

such was quietly abandoned altogether.

There were, of course, other activities. Writing letters home was

encouraged, as was tidying, cleaning and sewing. Much of the timetable

was given over to sport, especially boxing and the game of
Völkerball
,

a variant of dodgeball, which was very popular during the Third Reich.

Yet, in all their activities, KLV children were subjected to an almost

militaristic regime, more akin to a boot camp than a school. As one

young evacuee enthused in a letter to his parents:

Yesterday we had a field exercise. We went to Heinzelshof and from

there marched into the nearby wood. One group had to defend a flag,

which was located on the other side of the river. The defenders stood

on a bridge. We attacked in two groups. The first group was to provide

a diversion. Then the second group was to attack. The first attack failed.

Then the second attempt began. Of course, it was chaotic. Some of

them were bleeding, one was half-unconscious. The battle was a draw.

How did you spend Easter?34

In the KLV camps even everyday matters were infused with a martial

spirit. Gerhard Ritter remembered: ‘At roll call, extreme military-style

tidiness and cleanliness was demanded. Mattresses and blankets had

to be smoothed completely flat, and the bed had to be “squarely”

made. The clothes in the locker had to be folded and stacked. Not a

speck of dust was to be seen.’35

Discipline, too, was rigorously enforced. And, though corporal punish-