HiStory

This is a translation of the german story
“Erinnerungen an die Schwarzmarktzeit nach Beendigung des 2. Weltkrieges”
written by Horst Hommel

My father had fled captivity in Buxtehude near Hamburg and he came to us in Wilhelmshaven after an adventurous bicycle ride. He was integrated quickly.

Before then the biggest problem for us was having enough to eat. The ration coupons didn’t help much, as lots of the products either weren’t available or were in short supply.

In order to survive we had to get involved in the black market, which was forbidden and avenged! Read the rest of this entry »

This is a translation of the german story
“13. August 1961 - Tag des Mauerbaus in Berlin”
written by Rotraud Oelke and posted by Horst Hommel.

It was Sunday, a beautiful day during the holiday season. In order to boost my pocket money I had taken on a job helping out in a children’s holiday camp. It was the summer holidays between my eleventh and twelfth school year, I was seventeen.

We had just returned to our tents after having breakfast together when suddenly the camp radio came on. Usually it was used to broadcast general information to everyone. At that moment we thought: “now what is it? “ until we noticed that an official announcement of the Government of the German Democratic Republic was being read out. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a translation of the german story
“Grenzöffnung 1989″
written by Peter Baudenbacher and posted by Horst Hommel.

November 1989 until January 1990

A Utopian dream come true

The border in GDR times.

Impermeable for over 40 years, inhuman and as it seemed, unchangeable for ever and ever. The inhabitants of the borough Rhön Grabfeld had come to terms with it. No one ever imagined the GDR changing or the borders opening.

How wrong they were!

Suddenly, over night, the border to the GDR opened and everything changed.

People who lived in our neighbourhood in the east, they came – unstoppably, they came in droves. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a translation of the german story
“Die Glasmalerei Englischer Kirchenfenster von Deutschem Kriegsgefangenem”
written by Ernst Kramer and posted by Horst Hommel in March 2009.

After the invasion of the Allies in Normandy in 1944 I was taken prisoner by the English and brought to an English prison camp in England. After a while, the prisoners of war were divided up to work in different businesses. At the end of 1947 I was working in a large plant in the painters’ workshop as a painter for all sorts of articles of daily use.

One day an officer in charge of our camp appeared at my place of work and enquired whether I had painted the murals (a bouquet of roses in a wicker basket) for our supervisor on a voluntary basis. I explained to him that I had done it willingly because we got along very well and my supervisor often invited me back to his home. I was thus able to spend many an evening with him and his family. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a translation of the german story
“Der 17. Juni 1953″
written by Dieter Wilhelm and posted by Horst Hommel.
The large Frankfurter Allee in Berlin leads in an easterly direction away from the Alexanderplatz.
It was rechristened Stalinallee by the GDR government (formerly called eastern zone) and developed into a ‘boulevard’ in ‘Russian gingerbread style’. The labourers were paid according to so-called ‘Levels’ or ‘norms’, which had to be reached. Whoever worked above norm, was well paid.

One day the norms were raised randomly which set off the riots on 17^th June 1953. The eastern zone leadership was deprived of its power. One minister was abducted in his car by furious labourers and handed over to the police there. Ulbricht, the then head of government had to flee his seat of government in an armoured car. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a translation of the Italian story

 Uno spartiacque negli anni della contestazione: la morte dello studente Lorusso by Cecilia and Tamara - 67 and 73 years old, Italy.

After a quite peaceful period, between ’77 and ’78, there was a new period of violence. In these days Bologna was militarized, I remember that in Piazza Verdi there were tanks to control the access to the centre. In this period, a friend of mine who was a student, used to take always lemons with her: in fact to sprinkle lemon juice in the eyes helps to bear tear gas that often was thrown on the protesters by the police, many schools were occupied and there were also some raids of students…This was the time when Francesco Lorusso died* (A student killed by policemen during the student protests in Bologna in 1977). Read the rest of this entry »

This is a translation of the Italian story “ Ricordi non brutti“  

by A.L. - 79 years old, Italy.

It was in 1944 and we were evacuated at a farmer’s house at the Bellaria hospital at S.Lazzaro di Savena, near Bologna. Bellaria has been a bequest of Carlo Alberto Pizzardi and it also had a pigsty to cover the needs of the hospital. When the German army requisitioned everything, when we became enemies, they requisitioned the pigsty for themselves, it became their property and they used the wheat - requisitioned from the farmers - to feed the pigs. I was at that time 14 years old, and I knew afterwards that to feed pigs with wheat is a very bad thing to do because they die, it ferments in their stomach and the pigs die. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a translation of the Italian story  “Aspettando la Liberazione (parte I)”

by G. Berni, 86 years old, Italy

I remember that in the countryside near Pistoia, close to my home, there was a German camp where many British soldiers were kept as prisoners. Some of them escaped and we, the local people, helped them by feeding them and dressing them as if they had been Italians and we brought them into the wood where they could hide all day long. In this period German soldiers were writing on the walls that all those, who would help British soldiers, would have been shot on the spot, while on the other hand the British army was throwing leaflets from their aircrafts promising rewards to all those that would help British soldiers. The name of the British soldier we helped was Giovanni: Read the rest of this entry »

This is a translation of the Italian story  “Ricordi di Scuola“

by Pierina Z. - 76 years old, Italy

I attended primary school just before the World War II begun in 1940, and I don’t have good memories of that period. My teacher was a very good one from the teaching point of view, but she was always in contrast with my father. She was a fascist, a fanatic fascist, while my father wasn’t. On the contrary, he suffered because of fascism and that’s why I had to bear conflicts and to suffer humiliation.For example every week, a weekly magazine titled “Il Balilla” (i.e. denomination of the young members aged 8 to 14 of the Italian Fascist Youth Movement), was distributed at school and children and their families had to buy it. The teacher always gave me a copy to take home, asking me the money for it – I don’t remember how much it was – not much, but my father always refused it and I had to bring the magazine back to school. Therefore my memories of the school in this period are not so good. I have very good memories of her teaching, because she was an extraordinary teacher. What she taught me has been really useful even afterwards, when I studied to become a teacher. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a translation of the Italian story “Questa è la guerra”

 by Giovanna C. - 71 years, Italy

In April ‘44, I was attending the first year at primary school. I lived with my parents and grandparents in Villanova, a hamlet near Bologna. Nowadays, Villanova is at Bologna’s periphery, but at that time it was a small village of about 10 houses and Bologna seemed far away to us. It was at the time of World War II, but we were quite untroubled. Daddy had not been called to the arms because he worked in a explosives’ factory; my grandfather was a bricklayer. Bologna had been heavily bombed and all the people who could do it, already had taken refuge in the country side. Also my family was giving hospitality to other 2 families of evacuees, as we called those who ran away from the town.Although I try, I can’t remember how so many persons could live all together in this small house: we were 3 families, 13 persons in total. The 7th of April of that year was the Holy Friday. I bear in mind a sunny day, I was playing in the courtyard, while mum was ironing. Then we heard the unmistakable noise of air raids. It’s a terrifying, unmistakable roar that fills all the sky. We were all in the courtyard, looking at the sky, and when we realised that aircrafts were going in the same direction where we were, we went to take shelter in the house. My grandfather, who built the house, recommended, in the case of danger, to go to the basement where iron beam ceiling was more strong. Read the rest of this entry »

When I am thinking about my father, I found each time how extraordinary person he was, and I am so sad, that we did not communicate more and live more time together.

He studied economy at Prague before WWII. Czechoslovakia was one of most advanced economy in Europe, example of democratic country. And very left. So he became attracted with idea of socialism there. When he returned to Kingdom of Yugoslavia he became member of Communist Party (but he was never orthodox communist, all his life he was following the idea of democracy he experienced in Prague. And he was excluded from Communist Party in 1948 or 49, I do not know exactly why). Read the rest of this entry »