February 15, 1945. We were all crouching together in the kitchen. Anna had heard a timid knock in the hallway. Mumbling as always, she went to the door to check. She returned, quite upset, to tell us that there was a beggar standing outside in complete raggedness; she hadn’t let him in. Our mother found this very strange, because although some people were very, very poor in the last year of the war, with refugees living five or more in a small room and having almost nothing to eat, she had never seen people beg or even come to the front door for this purpose. Suspicious, she went to check it out for herself. At first everything was as quiet as a mouse, and then we heard my mother sobbing loudly. She stood in the middle of the dark hallway and hugged the ragged old man, who really looked terrible. He had a thick bloody bandage on his head, and his olive-colored uniform was completely dirty. The first thing I noticed were the high leather boots, but then my brother shouted “Daddy” and we suddenly realized who we had thought was a poor beggar.
Today, it is hard to imagine how worried we were about our father in those last months of the war. We listened anxiously to every news broadcast about the Russian advance in Silesia1. Schweidnitz2 was his last post, had the enemy tanks already overrun it? Had he been taken prisoner, or had he managed to escape in time? Now he was suddenly sitting at our kitchen table, crying, and he was so happy to see us all safe and sound that he could only hesitantly tell us about his experiences. During the completely disorganized retreat of our shattered army, his driver had collided with a truck. Our father was sitting in the back seat, and that saved his life. The artery in his left hand was injured; But miracles also happen: there was a dressing station nearby that was still functioning, and there he even managed to get a paper from a staff doctor that allowed him to go to a hospital in Thuringia, which he managed to do after an adventurous journey with the last of his strength. Yes, chaos reigned everywhere, but a wounded man who was found anywhere on the country road in the devastated country without marching orders with a destination specified would have had to expect to be shot.
Meanwhile, old Anne stood silently by the stove, warming up something edible for her nephew. She was terribly embarrassed that she had mistaken the good, quiet Otto, who had annoyed her the least of all the children in his youth, for a beggar.
Our father could only stay with us for a few hours, then he had to report to the Sonneberg hospital “Erholung”3. But that didn’t matter to us at all, the main thing was that he was near us and had escaped the Russians safely, because now we had a protector if the Americans came.
In the days before Sonneberg finally surrendered, the wounded were loaded onto carts and transferred to Karlsbad. We were stunned: Now the Russians might get our father after all!
It was only weeks after the end of the war that we found out that he had managed to make it to his brother in Berchtesgaden on his bicycle4.
- The Soviet advance into Silesia during World War II began in January 1945 as part of the larger Vistula-Oder Offensive. The Soviet forces first entered Upper Silesia in mid-January 1945 as part of the Vistula-Oder Offensive. During this operation Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front pushed the German Seventeenth Army out of the industrial heartland of Upper Silesia around Kattowitz (now Katowice). By the end of January, the Soviets had established front lines in Silesia and captured significant industrial areas. Following the initial advance, the Soviets launched the Lower Silesian Offensive from February 8 to February 24, 1945. This operation aimed to clear German troops from much of Lower Silesia and besiege Breslau (now Wrocław). The offensive began with a 50-minute artillery bombardment on February 8. By February 15, Soviet forces had surrounded Breslau, trapping 35,000 German troops and 80,000 civilians. The offensive concluded on February 24 when the Soviets secured a small bridgehead across the Neisse River near Forst[2].
↩︎ - Schweidnitz, located in lower Silesia, now known as Świdnica, is a city located in southwestern Poland, in the Dolnośląskie province. It has a rich history that dates back to its first recording as Svidnica in 1070, when it was part of Piast-ruled Poland[1]. Over the centuries, the city has been a significant centre for trade and industry, particularly known for its beer production in the medieval period. It is about 500km from Sonneberg.
↩︎ - The Erholung in Sonneberg during World War II was a hospital that served as a key medical facility in the town. Originally, the term “Erholung” translates to “recovery” or “recreation” in German, and it was likely a convalescent home, sanatorium, or health facility before being repurposed during the war. During WWII, many hospitals, sanatoriums, and similar institutions were repurposed to care for wounded soldiers or displaced civilians. The Erholung in Sonneberg appears to have followed this pattern, serving as a hospital for military and civilian patients during the war.
↩︎ - This is a distance of some 450-500km, depending on the route taken. I suspect he would have taken a route that minimized the likelihood of contact with Russian or American Forces. In the February-March time frame, that might have been a route that went through Munich, or near by. The route crosses several major rivers, including the Danube, the Amper, Isar, Inn, All, Traun, and Saalach. We might expect that all bridges were blow up.
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