The witnesses: second world war survivors from across Europe share their stories | Second world war

Eighty years in the past as we speak, on 8 Might 1945, the second world conflict in Europe got here to an finish with the unconditional give up of Germany’s armed forces. The quantity of people that keep in mind the conflict – and the way it completed – decreases yearly, whilst European safety feels ever extra precarious.

Right here, seven folks, aged between 85 and 100, from Estonia, Poland, Britain, Germany and Romania, discuss to the Guardian about their reminiscences.

‘Eventually you could possibly flip a light-weight on and never have to drag the curtains’

Dorothea Barron, 100, joined the Girls’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) aged 18 in 1943. The retired artwork instructor, a great-grandmother, nonetheless teaches yoga and lives in Hertfordshire within the UK.

“I grew up in Hampton proper on the Thames. And, after all, the Thames was like a beacon day and night time. You possibly can’t disguise the glint of moonlight or any mild on water. So we had been being bombed.

“At night time, we’d all pile down into the shelter which we had helped to dig out in our backyard, after which cowl over with corrugated iron. The earth you had dug out you piled on high to disguise it so it didn’t glint within the moonlight.

“I joined the WRNS after I was 18. I used to be a visible signaller, which meant that I needed to exit in all weathers to sign to ships coming into harbour. In addition they flew flags on the mast to say ‘we want water’ or ‘we’ve got a casualty on board’ – issues like that.

“We additionally took half in coaching the boat crews who took the troops off the massive liners and transported them to the waters off Normandy for the D-day landings.

“When Germany surrendered, I used to be primarily based within the Isle of Wight. There was simply sheer delight. All of us went utterly mad. We had been broadcasting over loud hailers to all of the ships. We had been speaking to one another in morse code and semaphore.

“I used to be in a sign tower someplace. Out on the streets there was cheering and singing and dancing and every thing. The ships wearing celebration. It was great. It was such a aid. Aid that we’d removed nazism.

“I don’t assume [people] can conceive in any respect in regards to the aid. Eventually you could possibly flip a light-weight on and never have to drag the curtains. Sure, the liberty, the concept of freedom once more.

“However there was additionally the remembrances, the buddies who you’d misplaced, youngsters you’d grown up with who had been shot down, out of the sky or on the land.

“No one wins a conflict. No one. All people loses. And as quickly as folks start to understand this, maybe ladies’s widespread sense will prevail. The ladies have to choose up the items after a conflict, should reconstruct households and houses.”

‘We’ve not lived so dangerously since then as we do now’

Irmgard Müller, 96, from Northeim in Decrease Saxony, Germany, was working as an administrator for the native mayor in Might 1945.

“Northeim was a Nazi stronghold so was closely defended. We received by the conflict fairly nicely, till the final days when our railway station was bombed, our sugar manufacturing unit destroyed, a number of homes had been lowered to smithereens and 37 folks died. Within the evenings the British air power dropped their remaining bombs on us after they had been getting back from Berlin. They had been so low-flying, I swear I may see into the faces of the pilots.

“A type of to die was my faculty pal who I’d loved taking part in with within the grounds of the sugar manufacturing unit. She, her 4 siblings and her dad and mom had been killed.

“All in all, although, we had been fairly fortunate. When Kassel was bombed, which is 60km away, we may see the inferno in Northeim. Then got here the ultimate days and we knew the Russians had been coming from the east and had been simply 20km away from us, and the People had been coming from the west. And we had been terribly afraid that the Russians would get there first.

“Half of the inhabitants of Northeim escaped into the woods in worry. My mom and I took a handcart, by which we had put my grandmother as a result of she couldn’t stroll, and slept there for 3 nights together with one other 4 households we knew. And we waited, asking: ‘Will or not it’s the Russians or the People?’

“After three days I made my technique to the city corridor the place I labored to see what was occurring. However the mayor, who was a Nazi bigwig, and all the opposite Nazis, had fled.

“The People arrived first, then the British. Bartering for meals started because the ration provides had been inadequate. Cash had no worth, however gadgets like carpets or fragrance had been exchanged for, say, 5 potatoes. I had been very connected to a doll – it linked me to my childhood, which had been minimize quick by the conflict – and was upset after we needed to change it for meals. All of the wood fences had been destroyed for firewood.

“My father had fallen in Russia in ’44. I additionally misplaced an uncle within the conflict. I by no means received to see one among my grandmothers, as a result of through the 12 years of Nazi dictatorship we weren’t allowed to take the prepare to Breslau [now Wrocław in Poland] the place she lived, and she or he died through the conflict.

“These days I’m an avid client of reports. And I don’t perceive it after I see how a lot conflict there is happening now. Battle is the worst factor there may be. It appears like we’ve not lived so dangerously since then as we do now. Even the chilly conflict wasn’t a patch on what’s taking place now, whether or not in Ukraine or the Center East. It’s like we didn’t study something.”

‘I keep in mind the rationing – plenty of porridge, with black syrup, and pilchards’

Nick Treadwell, 87, an artwork gallerist in Vienna, lived in Hove through the conflict, alongside his mom, sister and aunt.

“Throughout the conflict I used to be surrounded by ladies. My aunt Kate got here to stay with me, my mom and sister. She’d pay me and my sister a ha’penny a toe to scrape her nail vanish off, which we cherished. There was a fantastic sense of leisure and good togetherness.

“Throughout the air raids I keep in mind my mom and I used to get into the cabinet beneath the steps in our basement flat in Cromwell Highway in Hove. My father had made the intelligent resolution when conflict got here to maneuver us out of the town so we’d be safer. We’d take candles with us and play I Spy With My Little Eye, or generally sing Ten Inexperienced Bottles. My mum was excellent at making the perfect out of adverse circumstances.

“I keep in mind the sound of the excitement bombs, which not often dropped within the Hove and Brighton space, except it was a mistake, and I keep in mind the rationing – plenty of porridge, with black syrup, and pilchards; the barbed wire on the seashore, which stopped us going there, and the American and Canadian troopers who my mom and her sister used to entertain. They’d come and see us and produce me Hershey bars, and say to my mom: ‘Has the child been good as we speak, Eileen?’ I nonetheless keep in mind the style.

“We youngsters would grasp round the place they had been staying, and ask them: ‘Have you ever received any gum, chum?’

“I used to be seven years outdated when my soldier father, who had been the commander of a tank touchdown craft taking folks over to the D-day landings, got here dwelling. He was horrified after I advised him I needed to make clothes like my mom, and some days after my eighth birthday, he despatched me to boarding faculty in Bristol, to study to field, play rugby and to ‘be a person’, to study to take a couple of knocks. So the top of the conflict for me was relatively an abrupt finish to the beautiful life I’d recognized. After that, between ’45 and ’54, I solely actually noticed my dad and mom annually.

“All I’d recognized was the conflict. That was kind of my total life till then. When it ended that’s when my new life started, away from the heat of my dwelling. A minimum of I learnt to field nicely, and nonetheless accomplish that to this present day.”

‘I lit a candle and cried like a river’

2Lt Józef Kwiatkowski, 98, born in Łuck in Volhynia, then a part of Poland, now in Ukraine, was a part of the First Polish Military, 180,000 of whose members, many former underground fighters, fought alongside the Purple Military and allied forces in April and Might 1945 to liberate Poland from fascism.

“I keep in mind the stench of dying, the destruction, the filth, the lice, the ulcers, the hate and the distrust of these days. Battle is a horrible factor.

“On 3 March 1945, I used to be strolling with my comrade Tadeusz ‘Tadek’ Sokół and we had been tasked with fixing phone cables. After we reached the spot the place a cable had been broken, a German soldier pounced out. One other was hiding behind a tree, however I couldn’t shoot at him as a result of he was behind Tadek. Then, the primary German kind of minimize Tadek in half with the burst of fireside from his rifle, whereupon I killed him, and took the opposite prisoner.

“For many years, I’d needed to search out Tadek’s grave, however was by no means in a position to find it. I had by no means forgotten this jolly chap from Lvov [now Lviv in Ukraine], who had made us snigger together with his Yiddish songs and hadn’t had the possibility to stay a full life like I’ve. I named my very own son after him.

“Then, simply earlier than the pandemic, all of the Polish conflict graves data was digitalised. My carer, Łukasz, present in eight minutes what I’d spent 80 years looking for. We went to go to his grave on the eightieth anniversary in Drawsko, north-western Poland. I lit a candle and cried like a river. I wouldn’t say I fairly really feel closure although. I nonetheless ask myself: may I’ve managed to save lots of him?

“When the conflict ended, I used to be within the city of Sandau on the River Elbe, the place we met American forces and celebrated collectively. I keep in mind the shock of the profound silence – no explosions, no whistling bullets, no noise, simply quiet.

“The present conflict in Ukraine fills me with anxiousness. It’s a failure of humanity that we’ve got not managed to cease the Russian aggressor and says to me that we discovered few classes from the second world conflict.”

‘Shrapnel from the grenades was flying over our hedge’

Aasa Sarnik, 85, from the Estonian village of Pihlaspea, was 5 in 1945. Soviet troops had invaded the Baltic international locations – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – in 1940, however had been pushed out by the Nazis a yr later. The Purple Military retook the international locations in 1944 and occupied them till the collapse of the Soviet Union within the early Nineteen Nineties.

“In September 1944, we had packed all our issues, able to flee to Sweden [as the Soviet army was coming]. However on the final second, my dad and mom determined that we might keep.

“I keep in mind the massive battles that befell right here on the ocean. There have been German ships all over the place and the Russian aeroplanes flew over our home and began taking pictures at them. My father referred to as me to come back out and see how a Russian aeroplane, which had been hit by ammunition from a ship, was falling into the ocean. Shrapnel from the grenades was flying over our hedge. When the subsequent airplane began its descent, all of us bumped into the cellar.

“Whereas others in Europe may need been celebrating, Might 1945 right here was a time of worry, which I keep in mind nicely. Nobody was cheering. We had been simply scared.

“Quickly after their arrival, the Russian military began to manage the seashore close to our home – the sand on the seashore was flattened each night time in order that they might detect any footprints. Generally they’d even come to the homes at night time to test and measure our footprints.

“All of the boats had been confiscated and entry to the ocean was barred. Even youngsters’s rubber dinghies had been forbidden.

“I keep in mind how in 1945 German PoWs had been held captive by the Purple Military in our village, behind a thick barbed wire fence. My mum sewed me an apron and baked some bread. I went to deliver some bread to them, although I used to be fairly scared, however I made it again safely.

“I’m afraid, after all, these days, particularly as a result of I’m always following these world occasions. The sense of foreboding just like what we felt again then is right here once more.

“In fact, the massive plus these days … is that we’re part of Nato along with Finland and Sweden. However I let you know I merely don’t need to expertise one other conflict. One is sufficient, thanks very a lot.”

‘Round a 3rd of my 31 classmates had been killed’

Hans Müncheberg, 95, an creator and TV scriptwriter, was despatched to a militarised boarding faculty in Potsdam aged 10. At 15, he was conscripted into the Waffen-SS, tasked with serving to to defend it through the Battle of Berlin in 1945.

“In April 1945 our faculty was destroyed through the bombing of Potsdam, and I and my classmates had been advised to placed on our uniforms, take our weapons and journey our bikes from Potsdam to Spandau, the place there was one other army faculty. As a substitute of being taken from there to security in Schleswig-Holstein, the place the British had been heading, we had been put beneath the command of the Waffen-SS and headed proper into the fray believing wholeheartedly that we had been making a extremely vital contribution to the battle to defend the honour of Hitler and Nazi Germany. The motto of the varsity had been: ‘Reward be, what makes us sturdy.’ We understood our objective.

“We headed in the direction of the centre of Berlin, always dodging bullets, grenades and tanks. On 2 Might, I used to be caught up in road preventing in Staaken, a suburb of Spandau, and was fired on by a Soviet T-34 tank and left unconscious, earlier than being saved by two ladies who discovered the bandages which had been included into the buttons of the SS-uniform, and had been in a position to cease the circulate of blood and save my life. I used to be briefly captured by the Purple Military, till a girl identified to them I used to be only a ‘ditya’ [child] and so they launched me.

“Round a 3rd of my 31 classmates had been killed within the battle … I feel I’m now the one survivor. One in all my associates, Bertram Freitag, had his face shot off, proper subsequent to me. I keep in mind shouting: ‘He shouldn’t have been killed!’ I nonetheless have a leather-based pouch stained with my very own blood after I received wounded, and my so-called Wehrpass [military identity card], which jogs my memory how my childhood abruptly ended on the age of 10 after I was taught how you can use a Karabiner 98K rifle at college.

“After I received dwelling to Templin [a town around 30 miles north-east of Berlin] after the unconditional give up of Berlin, our household dwelling had been destroyed. I discovered my mom at my grandmother’s home. At first she didn’t recognise me, then she greeted me with amazement. They made me relaxation for a very long time, I used to be a nervous wreck. I basked within the stillness.”

‘There have been no celebrations on the streets of Bucharest’

Victor Pitigoi was 18 and learning to be a mechanical engineer in Bucharest when the second world conflict ended. His household had been pressured to depart their dwelling in Chișinău, Moldova, when conflict broke out. Aged 98, he nonetheless works as a journalist, submitting common columns on Romanian politics.

“The conflict didn’t have an effect on us a lot till 1944, when Anglo-US bombers began attacking Romania. We evacuated Bucharest on 4 April 1944, forward of an enormous bombing raid the next day.

“My household took refuge within the mountain valley resort of Vălenii de Munte in southern Romania. College was stopped however life was OK, as we had entry to an enormous orchard and the individuals who had taken us in had been variety.

“The Soviet Union took over Romania in August ’44 … I’ve by no means been so depressing as I used to be throughout this era between 1944 and 1948, 1946 being probably the most sinister time of all as a result of famine. They behaved savagely, firstly taking our meals, and helped by Romanian communists who needed to be within the first row when the time got here.

“Refugees who had been ravenous arrived within the capital in droves, and I keep in mind on my technique to faculty crossing {the marketplace} at Gara de Nord railway station and seeing the our bodies. Each morning folks from the morgue would ship vans and kick the our bodies. In the event that they moved they had been alive, if not they had been carted away.

“Folks had been sick of the conflict, revolted, offended due to the settlement Stalin made with Churchill, which gave the Soviet Union enormous affect in Romania and paved the way in which for many years of dictatorship, of homegrown Romanian communism beneath Ceaușescu, after we lived in a continuing state of worry.

“There have been no celebrations on the streets of Bucharest when the conflict was over. There was nothing actually to rejoice. The truth that Hitler had killed himself was a sidebar. We needed to cope with the presence of the Soviets. I took consolation, and nonetheless do, in the truth that our 23-year-old king, Michael, had stood as much as the Germans and led an riot towards them, whereas all the opposite leaders ran away. He was somebody we might be pleased with. We hoped he’d do the identical to the Russians, nevertheless it didn’t occur.”