To be Human Again

It was Sunday November 18, 1945, and I was finally at the location I had given on my release papers. Uncle Gerd asked me if I had come alone. I didn’t get what he was driving at. When he saw the questionable look on my face, he explained that he meant, “Do you have any lice or whatever else?” I laughed and told him about his mother’s action in Berlin, and about the DDT attack at the transfer camp. I said that after the DDT attack all the lice had fallen out of my pockets dead, with no survivors. We broke out laughing. Uncle Gerd had an identical experience with his mother when he came back from World War I.

The world is good once more

I started to tell them about my trip, but said that I would like a bath first, because I again hadn’t been able to clean myself since my departure from Berlin. I sank into the large bathtub with warm water up to my neck and the world seemed to be good again. I considered my arrival here as my “magnum opus” as the old Romans would have said. Here I was at my dreamed of destination in Reichenbach, 192 days after I had started on May 9, 1945. Not only had I made it back to Berlin, but I was now already 500 miles farther west in the US occupation zone, approximately 1,250 miles from my starting point in Courland. That, I calculated to be about 6.5 miles (10 km) per day, not bad since I didn’t have a car.

I figured the odds for me to have succeeded in this venture must have been at least 1:10,000,000. I had made my mind up about doing it, planned it, prepared for it, and accomplished what I had planned and was really proud of it.

When I finished my bath I recited some poetry by Ringelnatz, probably the first real hippy poet in Germany. Translated it would read, “The knowledge surrounds me like heavenly magic, I am able to show myself today, because I am clean.” This was enthusiastically applauded by the family.

I sat down with the family and was introduced to my cousin Christa, four years old, and to Aunt Wally’s mother, Frieda Voigt, who was in her late seventies. Gerd and Wally Rausch were renting the upper floor above the local elementary school. Aunt Wally was a dentist and had her dental practice on the same floor. Uncle Gerd, a textile chemist like his father, was employed by a large textile manufacturer in Leinfelden and commuted there by train. They had not experienced any food shortages during the entire war! Most of Wally’s patients were local farmers, who often paid with produce, rather than money. They had the best of everything and plenty of it. I thought, that’s the way it is, in every disaster there are a few lucky ones.

When we sat down for a meal, I didn’t dare to eat the quantities my stomach asked for. I had to be polite and civilized at the table in order not to wear out my welcome. After dinner I would sneak into the kitchen and snatch some of the leftover food. Aunt Wally had gallons of fresh milk from one of her patients and she let the cream rise to the top and then scooped it into a separate container in the refrigerator. When enough was accumulated she would get out a small hand-driven butter churn and I had to crank for hours to produce their butter.

They had a maid, but much of the housework was done by Wally’s fragile mother, who was treated as if she were just a servant. Little Christa was quite a spoiled brat, who would cuss her grandmother and called her names. I had never heard any kid call an adult names like that. This type of household I had not experienced before.
The next day uncle Gerd opened the doors of a huge wardrobe in the master bedroom and my eyes just about popped out. There were stacks of brand new linens, underwear, shirts, handkerchiefs, socks, you name it, and it was there and in quantity. Gerd had also rounded up material for two complete suits. The material was not the best, simply “German Forest”, as synthetic material was sarcastically called in those days, but it was a start. I was infinitely grateful about those gifts.

The biggest problem was to find a tailor who could make me the suits, because more than just the outer fabric was needed to finish them. When I was growing up, my mother had always taught me to be independent and to stand on my own feet. She told me never to rely on other people to do things for me. That philosophy was so deeply imbedded in my brain that it bothered me having to ask for something. Sometimes I simply didn’t ask, because I was too ashamed to receive gifts without being able to reciprocate.

Soon I looked like a civilized person again. I had no identification papers and in Germany they were essential for getting work, for getting permission to move to a place that had work, and above all to get ration tickets. My only document was the Russian release document, and nobody here could read it. Uncle Gerd took me under his wing and we went to the local mayor and he vouched for me so I would get a temporary ID card.

Next thing was to look for a job. That was a hell of a lot more difficult. I was a refugee and had lost all papers pertaining to my technical education. I was an optician and optometrist, had finished an apprenticeship and passed all the final exams required, but, how could I prove that to a potential employer? I wrote to the board of examiners back in Frankfurt/Oder. They replied that all documentation had been maliciously destroyed, but they sent me questionnaires to fill out. I had to have them verified by at least two people who were familiar with my technical education. That was a sick joke. I didn’t know where the teachers, master opticians, and the board examiner lived, or even if they were still alive.

The next task was to get permission to move to Stuttgart, because that would be a place were I could get a job. All living space was rigorously rationed in Germany because every city and community had to cope with the enormous destruction of buildings and the influx of millions of refugees. Most had been deported from the eastern parts of Germany now under Polish administration. There was a set number of square feet in housing allowed per person. If a family had more space than their quota, they were forced to rent to other people. In order to be eligible for rental space in Stuttgart, I would have to have a job in Stuttgart. So it was a ridiculously complex world, but I was determined to stand on my own feet.

On January 28, 1946, I was in Stuttgart. The city of Stuttgart had 55% of all buildings destroyed by bombs. Rebuilding was a job of gigantic proportions, it included everything from buildings to office equipment. So, I learned to fix typewriters in a dinky basement shop to make some money. I was able to rent a room in a house but had to sleep on a couch in the dining room. The woman’s husband had not come back from a British POW camp and she needed the money.

There was considerable resentment and discrimination against refugees. In Schwaben that was not a new trend, it had been there before the war. They didn’t like people who didn’t speak their dialect, which had only a loose resemblance to high German. Fortunately I am a very adaptive person and had a knack for languages, so I didn’t have much of a problem.

The food ration tickets were barely enough to live on. As a bachelors the food situation was particularly bad, since I had to eat in restaurants. There was no way that I could cook in my cubbyhole room. The official “calories per day” count was about 1100 calories during 1946 in the U.S. occupation zone, but at times even these few calories were not available.

I had to find additional food that wasn’t rationed, and find the restaurants that gave the biggest portions for the ration tickets. That was almost a full time job. Everybody helped by telling where to get what, and the papers announced if there was an additional amount of food available and on what ration cards. There was a widespread practice of “modifying” the ration tickets to get additional food. People who had the equipment started to print ration tickets and sold them on the black market. As a single person I had little to fear if I got caught, but for the blackmarket sharks there was a definite risk of going to jail.

he retail trade had many opportunities to get additional supplies by falsifying their returns of ration tickets to the occupational government office responsible for food distribution. Personnel who worked for retail stores and who had to glue these various tickets on sheets, which had to be turned in at the end of each calendar month, could also get “rich” by letting some tickets disappear into their own pockets. Everybody was hungry and honesty often fell by the wayside.