The Breslauers knew how to help themselves in this situation. A ‘jungle-drum’ system, using saucepan-lids, became the communication system in calling for help when the Poles forced their way in to where the Breslauers lived. The signal warned the neighbours, every one of whom joined in with a clash of cymbals, the din of which reached a crescendo, stretching from house to house. The commander then sent jeeps and soldiers. He simply enjoyed getting to grips with the Poles, between whom there was no love lost. The ‘Ivans’ showed no mercy, and very often shots were to be heard.
The Russian/Polish relationship had never been good, but at that time, when the Russians had ‘freed’ Poland from the yoke of Fascism it was, of course, worse than ever. Both sides were contemptuous of the other. Murder and manslaughter between the two occurred daily. This ‘peace’ after the war produced even more of a psychological crisis in many people. Suicides were at an even higher rate than during the siege of the city. The total result, including the high death-rate among both young and old, in appalling conditions including epidemics, was catastrophic.
Normal hygienic conditions were non-existent causing the high death-rate. It was not to be wondered at. The civilian population died off like flies, from typhus, typhus fever, dysentery and diphtheria. Babies were the first ‘sacrifices’. The deaths of very many infants caused by malnutrition was also not surprising.
It did not take long for the Poles to fill the central prison in Kletschkauerstrasse with people who were arrested under false charges and delivered there. For most that meant a gruesome death. A German railway-worker was taken there, on trumped-up charges that he was the Chief of the Breslau Gestapo. It appeared that his railway identification card, picturing him in his railway official’s uniform, proved this! His protest produced a forceful kick in the abdomen or genitals, and blows from truncheons. That lasted until the un fortunate candidate signed a (false) statement confessing to the charges.
The patrols from prison guards during the nights disturbed not only the sleep of the prisoners, but they had to report, standing to attention, that ‘our cell is occupied with German swine’. The nights were not only used for control, they were used for the most brutal of interrogations, accompanied by very loud music from the radio, to try to cover the screams of the tortured.
After the Poles took over the control of Silesia, they organised concentration camps where Germans were starved, beaten to death, or died from other methods. One of those camps was in Lamsdorf. The ‘Attrition’ called for by Stalin, was now replaced with that from the Poles. In this camp alone, 6,488 Germans were shot, hanged, burned, or died from the consequences of being forced into barrels and rolled ‘for as long as it took for them to die’.
In Breslau, as in the whole of Silesia, to be German was to be worthless. As such you could be driven from your home and used as forced labour. More and more soldiers, who were discharged by the Russians for any reason, were immediately re-arrested by the Poles and transported away. For me, that was a very big worry.
One could not fail to notice that international flags flew from various houses. Those ensured the safety of their occupants, being respected by both the Russians and the Poles. There were French, Italian, and flags from other nations, which gave me an idea. Even as a foreign worker, this would not give me 100% safety. There was a danger that I was classified as a DP, i.e. a displaced person, admittedly coming under the auspices of UNRA to be repatriated. That was not what I wanted, but it was worth the risk. I simply had to have false papers. Until I had them, I made myself an armband in the colours of the Dutch national flag and attached it to my lapel. My false papers, with a stamp, stated that during the war, I had been forced to work for public transport, the BVB. This vital piece of paper was procured for me by one of its former employees. For that life-saving gesture I was able, some years later, to return the favour. I testified at the ‘denazification’ of the said man, in the western zone. I confirmed that during the war he had always treated his foreign workers as human beings, and without any harassment.
The unconditional willingness to help each other, apart from those termed as ‘flexible shoe-cleaners’ was among the Germans second to none. People could trust their past, and also their origin to anyone German, without re percussions. The terrible experiences springing from the siege soldered them together into a brotherhood of conspirators. They formed a piece of German homeland, a colony in the middle of a very hostile world.
At all costs, those Germans wanting to return to their homes that they had left were not welcome and had to be outlawed. The Poles had set up control points and guards very early on. Even by the spring of 1945, a post was set up on the river-crossing at Görlitz, on the river Neisse. Some escaped at that crossing, increasing the housing problem in the city, which by now was acute. The Poles were organising ‘ghettos’ for the Germans, in anethnic-cleansing programme. The Germans could be controlled better in that way. Perhaps it would be better to say that it would be easier to steal what possessions they had left, to say nothing of an uncomfortable level of harassment.
They started this ethnic-cleansing programme in the autumn of 1945, in Carlowitz, where I lived. I had been there since my discharge. The inhabitants had been given 90 minutes to pack 20 kilos together, and had to leave their keys in the locks upon leaving. They had just one and a half hours to decide what would make up the 20 kilos, what they wanted to take from among their possessions, and what had to be left behind.
Before this happened, I made my way into the city, to my friend Markwart. He was the assistant doctor who had been discharged at the same time as I. The relationship was a good one, for we were of the same age. We had the same ambitions of surviving and always having a full stomach. He lived with a nursing-sister, in a bomb-damaged house, under the eaves in attic rooms. It was a house of flats into which the Russians and the Poles did not like to enter. Most of the remaining bomb-damaged houses were close to falling down, but that did not worry us old warriors. That was the least of our worries. We were left alone to try to live, or simply to vegetate would be a better description. Our daily bread was bought on the ‘black market’, paid for in Polish z3oty. Meanwhile the German mark had disappeared. My doctor friend made some money from the treatment of ill Russians or Poles, and from army medical reserves.
There were many Germans who made themselves voluntary prisoners in their homes, not daring to go out on the streets. I became a middle-man between them and the occupiers of Silesia, making good business and exchanges, using articles for sale or exchange. My ‘foreign status’ made this possible. There were usually a few z3oty left over for me, and therefore food could be bought. It was swings and roundabouts, for sometimes business was not so good. Then, of course, we went to bed hungry and could not sleep. There were other times when we lived like ‘kings in France’, and were full of Polish sausage and cream torte.
There was a very strange incident during this time, but one that is representative of the political relationship between the Western Allies and the Communists. Markwart was approached and asked to act as a spy. He came home one day and told me that two strangers had approached him. They were two Americans who offered him a large sum of money to inform them of the political situation in Breslau, under the Poles. To spy? To spy, and for the Americans who were our enemy? To spy against the Communists who were also our enemy? The Americans were already spying on their Communist brothers-in-arms? That was a double-edged sword, even a double-edged political sword, and Markwart said ‘no’. There was no question of him getting involved, al though the thought of the money was very attractive.