Fifteen years in a childhood paradise

"If we use the road over the bridge straight after the station, it would take us at the most 15 minutes to get there!"

"Then we can sleep a little longer! Marvellous." It was indeed. We saw Posen from a different perspective. We could move around freely, and were not dependent on tram connections. We loved our bikes.

"Do you remember, when we learnt to ride a bike?" "It was easy. You were seven and I was eight then." "It was only easy, because we had learnt to ride a scooter before." "I just stood on the left pedal and held the handle bar like the scooter, and down I went the hill near the big house."

"When I tried to put my right leg over the saddle, I nearly crashed, but once I was on it, away we went."

That seemed a long time ago.

*

One by one the older boys at Tante Else's were called up. When they came home on leave, they brought back horrible stories from the war.

Goggi Mosebach had been near Stalingrad in February 1943, where a whole German army was defeated and over 100,000 prisoners taken. His unit had just escaped being circled in by the Russians. He was slightly wounded and was on home leave.

"I tell you," he said, "the situation there was a shambles. The Ruskis came from all sides, and to this day I don't know how our unit escaped."

"Were there a lot of casualties?" Tante Else asked. Her son was fighting in that area.

"Many. The German troops suffered the most crushing defeat in Stalingrad."

"No wonder, that Hitler declared a week of mourning for all Germans after that," said Rosel, who was usually full of fun and laughter. "You know, they closed down all cinemas, all amusement centres, no one was allowed to dance, and over the radio, only classical music was played for a whole week."

"I think, this is the beginning of the end," said Goggi. We didn't understand. The German propaganda machine was blearing out that victory was imminent, last heroic efforts were needed to bring this about, everybody was to work together to defeat the enemy.

Hitler declared the state of Totaler Krieg, or All-out War. This meant, that wherever possible, women replaced men in the factories, the farms, the offices, and the men were called up to the front. Call-up age was reduced from 18 to 17 years. A 'total' effort was to be made on the part of every German to win the war. 'Daylight Saving' was introduced to save energy. As a 14-year-old, I thought we could still win the war.

109