European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

I was born on 13th of October 1912 in Tempelhof (Berlin).

My mother definitely had a hard time during the war.

In 1915 my sister was born.

It was especially hard in 1917 (as my father was conscripted as a soldier),

where the food situation for the German population became more and more difficult.

I started school in 1919.

The school was not far away from our parents’ flat.

Role model functions developed later with progressing age.

But there was no role model between the teachers I had.

Partly, they were teachers who had been demobbed by the imperial army

and who were put into teaching profession; like the sports teacher

or the teacher of religious education who had no educational skills.

And characteristic for this time was that we had a teacher who was a real bully.

When the lesson was about to start, first two or three pupils were given a good thrashing, with the cane.

Maybe another thing: I was malnourished and was given 'Quaker feeding'.

That was from the United States, from the Quaker association

and there I got half a litre of milk soup and a bread roll.

You have to see that this was 1920/21, where a lot of problems occurred in this post-war period.

Post war period – deserting the army

They wanted to keep me in the army when the war ended.