April 20, 1945. We had heard of Russian foreign workers1 who worked in the munitions factories around Sonneberg2. These girls worked all night long and were strictly forbidden to leave the factory premises during the day. They were only allowed to stay in their bar corners. But somehow some of them always managed to sneak over to German families to get a bit of food. In return they were prepared to do any work. In short, two Russian girls also helped my mother and, without any agreement, they regularly turned up once a week to offer their services. At lunchtime they were rewarded with a bowl of soup, which they greedily spooned up at our kitchen table. My mother often asked me to sit down with them, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that. Not that I saw these girls as Russian enemies, quite the opposite, they just seemed exotic to me and I felt terribly sorry because they spent their few hours of sleep, which they certainly needed very much, just for a bowl of soup in our washhouse. I can still see the two of them in front of me; they never took off their headscarves that reached down to their foreheads. I suspected that they might not have any hair. They also never took off their completely ragged quilted jackets, but sometimes they looked shyly at me and smiled timidly. No conversation of any kind ever took place, only when mother pressed a piece of bread into their hands as they left could you see how grateful they were. They would then sneak away very quietly down the stairs and we were never sure whether they would appear again the following week.
This continued until the Americans had already reached the heights of the Thuringian Forest and occupied the entire Rennsteig. About a week after the surrender of Sonneberg3, the doorbell rang at our hallway door. Our mother opened it and there were two women in smart dark blue suits and light blue blouses. It was the clothing of our Luftwaffe helpers and if the two girls hadn’t been wearing the inevitable headscarves, mother would have thought they were so-called anti-aircraft helpers. But she suddenly recognised our two Russians and froze in shock. So the two had come to pick her up. She had taken advantage of the victors for a bowl of soup and now she would get her punishment for it. But one of the girls just pressed a pack of white stockings into her hand and the other said: “That’s always good.” Then they turned on their heels and disappeared. We never found out what became of them; we were only the happy owners of four pairs of knee-highs and wanted to share them with Aunt Anna, but she spurned the pair that had been intended for her; she would not accept anything from our enemies; it had been bad enough for her that they had sometimes eaten at our kitchen table.
- During the Second World War, about 4300 men and women, mainly from the Soviet Union, but also many other nations occupied by Germany, had to work mainly in armaments production: in the Thuringian gear trains, at Siemens-Schuckert (SSW) in Oberlind, in the companies Louis Siegel, JC Eckardt and Kopp & Solonot. In the KZ Buchenwald Auskommando Sonneberg concentration camp opened in September 1944 at the Reinhardt works site in Hallstrasse 39 an average of 400 mostly Jewsiah, Polish and Hungarian detainees worked under conditions that were unsuitable for men.
↩︎ - Forced labor camps like G.E. Reinhardt were part of a broader network of camps across Germany and occupied territories, where millions of people were coerced into labor under harsh and inhumane conditions. These camps were integral to the Nazi war economy, providing labor for industries and infrastructure projects. The use of forced labor was a significant aspect of the Nazi regime’s exploitation of occupied regions and its own population.
↩︎ - Sonneberg surrendered to American forces on April 13, 1945. ↩︎