Authors: Roger Moorhouse
There was little logic applied in the selection of destinations for Berlin’s
schoolchildren, and the schools themselves certainly did not have any
influence on the choices made. Thus, though classes were generally
kept together, siblings in different years of the same school could be
sent to opposite ends of the country. If one takes the example of the
Berlin suburb of Steglitz, the geographical spread of its evacuated chil-
dren is astonishing. In 1940, many school classes from Steglitz were sent
to Carinthia in Austria, although Silesia, Thuringia and occupied Poland
were also used. In the following years, East Prussia, Bohemia, Pomerania
190
berlin at war
and the Sudetenland were all added to the list.15 Berlin’s children could
be sent almost anywhere within the Greater German Reich.
Aside from the logistical challenge, there were other difficulties.
There was often a dramatic difference between the standard of living
in the capital and that in the often primitive hinterlands of Pomerania
or rural Silesia. Gisela Richter recalled her stay in East Prussia:
the accommodation was extremely primitive, consisting mainly of tied
cottages and the like . . . Mother was given one of these tiny places,
without power or running water, and with an outside toilet. Drinking
water had to be fetched with a bucket from a small hole in the ground,
which was covered with wire mesh. When I was confronted with it
one time, it turned my stomach. In my bucket of water, there were
leaves, spiders and beetles!16
Younger evacuees often faced rather different circumstances from the
older children. They tended to be quartered individually with a host
family, and so were entirely dependent on their hosts’ whim and good-
will. And that goodwill was sometimes a rare commodity. Regional
tensions within Germany could be quick to manifest themselves.
Berliners were often viewed askance in the south of Germany and in
Austria, and would routinely be derided as ‘Prussians’. Mothers accom-
panying small children to the countryside might also be mockingly called
Bombenweiber
, or ‘bomb wenches’.17 Those Berliners travelling to rural
East Prussia, meanwhile, were often seen as unwelcome reminders of
a war that had until then barely touched that remote part of the country.
Everywhere, it seems, ‘greedy’ Berlin children were seen as a burden.18
There were also social tensions and jealousies inherent in settling
city children in comparatively primitive rural areas. As one evacuee
recalled of his village school: ‘As a Berliner and someone from the
Reich capital, I was a novelty in the village; someone who was asked
a lot of questions and who was keenly listened to. And, as the girls
were interested in me too, I earned myself the enmity of the local
farmers’ boys . . . In time, I was no longer able to escape a beating.’19
There was moreover a financial aspect to complicate matters. From
1941, hosts were offered compensation for housing an evacuee, which
amounted to about 3 Reichsmarks per child per day.20 Many host families,
therefore, joined the scheme, not out of altruism but out of a simple
an evil cradling
191
desire for cheap labour. Berliner Gerhard Ritter found himself billeted
with an aged tobacco farmer in East Prussia, whom he had to help, not
only with the harvest, but also with the sorting and bundling of the crop.
Away from the arduous work in the fields, the highlight of his stay was
to help in the local pub, while the farmer himself played cards in a back
room. ‘I drew beer, poured schnapps, cleaned the glasses, selected ciga-
rettes and waited at tables’, he recalled, ‘the landlord was pleased that I
understood how to fill the glasses to his advantage, but without risking
complaints from the clientele.’21 Gerhard was nine years old.
Though the hosting arrangement for the under tens worked toler-
ably well in many cases, it was also open to abuse. Many children were
actively maltreated, housed in abominable conditions or simply left to
their own devices. It was not unusual, therefore, for children to be moved
– often many times – until their parents were satisfied with the quality
of accommodation and care. Dorit Erkner, for instance, was moved
seven times in eighteen months, being shunted through a succession of
schools and host families, from East Prussia to rural Thuringia.22
For the older children at the regular KLV camps, conditions were
generally better. In all, there were up to 9,000 KLV camps, ranging from
large-scale sites, which could accommodate over 1,000 evacuees, to
smaller locations suitable for barely a few dozen children. Geographically,
they ranged right across Greater Germany – from Aalen in Württemberg
to Zwönitz in the Erzgebirge – and even extended to foreign parts, such
as Slovakia, Hungary and occupied Poland.23
Conditions for the evacuees varied enormously. The camp build-
ings themselves could be former monasteries or country houses, luxury
hotels, youth hostels or children’s homes. Some of the larger camps
– those based in requisitioned hotels, for instance – could offer smaller
rooms and all modern conveniences. Many others, especially in occu-
pied Poland, could barely muster running water and heating.
In many cases, the arrival of the first batch of evacuees was the most
critical time. Especially at the outset, much of the organisation of the
KLV programme was improvised, and some of the locations were ill
prepared for the immediate accommodation of dozens of children, with
the result that the first arrivals were sometimes obliged to sleep on loose
straw while their dormitories were being finished off. Others were better
prepared. Gisela Stange recalled that upon her arrival at the village of
Strobl near Salzburg, her class was greeted by local children with sledges
192
berlin at war
to carry the baggage. When they then reached their destination – a local
guest house that had been commandeered for her class of forty children
– they were met with plates of warm jam dumplings and custard.24
Perhaps the primary challenge facing the evacuees were the pangs
of homesickness. Gisela Stange remembered:
the greatest malady [. . .] was the wretched homesickness, which affected
almost all children. Only occasionally was there someone there who
had already been away from home for any length of time. We missed
home, and especially our mothers and fathers, very much, and some
evenings we cried ourselves to sleep.25
Renate Bandur wrote to her mother in 1941 from East Prussia: ‘Now
I have found the bar of chocolate and I felt so homesick that I cried
and cried and I can’t stop. Please write me a really long letter, which
never stops . . .’26 There were other fears. ‘One was always so worried
when one heard about the air raid alarms in Berlin’, recalled Dorit
Erkner. ‘When one girl in the dormitory of thirty started crying, then
it quickly spread to all of us.’27
Such emotions were often assuaged by the evacuees’ need to swiftly
acquaint themselves with their new routine in the camp. A typical
day in a KLV camp was strictly regimented. Reveille was sounded at
6.30 a.m. and was followed by an hour set aside for washing, making
beds, tidying and roll call. At 8.00 a.m. all children in the camp had
to partici pate in the flag ceremony, the
Fahnenappel
, when the camp
leader would give the children their slogan for the day, usually some-
thing snappy and suitably National Socialist, the significance of which
would be explained in a few sentences. The children would then be
called to attention for the raising of the flag, and would sing perhaps
the ‘
Deutschland Lied
’, the ‘
Horst Wessel Lied
’, or the Hitler Youth anthem
– the ‘
Fahnenlied
’ – a jaunty ditty composed by Baldur von Schirach
himself:
Uns’re Fahne flattert uns voran
Our banner flutters before us
Uns’re Fahne ist die neue Zeit
Our banner represents the new era
Und die Fahne führt uns in die Ewigkeit
And our banner leads us to eternity
Ja, die Fahne ist mehr als der Tod.
Yes, our banner means more to us
than death.
an evil cradling
193
The flag ceremony was a vital part of the day. As the official instructions
ran, it was to be ‘short, terse and profound, so as not to become a daily
burden to the children’. When poor weather prevented the ceremony, it
was to be held inside.28
After breakfast, classes were given by teachers or representatives of
the Hitler Youth from 8.45 a.m. until 1.00 p.m. Following lunch and a
short rest period, the afternoon session began at 3.00 p.m. and was
given over predominantly to sport, games and singing, with a number
of periods set aside each week for homework, laundry, shoe repairs
and sewing. After supper at 7.00, an evening session offered more
of the same, including a weekly lesson on current affairs and the
so-called ‘political report’. Weekends were less minutely structured
and tended to contain more communal and local activities as well as
a weekly ‘camp evening’, which generally consisted of stories and
singing around a campfire. Lights out was at 9.00 p.m.29
Even a cursory glance at such a routine demonstrates that conven-
tional education was not especially high on the agenda. Indeed, the
official instruction booklet given to all KLV camps devoted fully ten
pages to the subject of physical exercise, yet was curiously silent on
education, stating vaguely that ‘classes are to be carried out according
to the teaching plans of the evacuated schools’.30 In some instances,
the teachers went to great lengths to ensure that the children were
stimulated and engaged. Yet, in many cases, education came a very
poor second to virtually all other subjects. As Gerhard Ritter recalled:
Our teacher’s lesson consisted of him dictating, for one subject after
another, all sorts of homework for us to do. Then he disappeared. We
remained in class for an hour, then marched back to the camp. The
afternoons we spent in the yard, sitting on the ground, singing songs
or discussing matters. The next morning, we arrived punctually in the
classroom. When the teacher arrived, there was absolute silence. He
demanded to see our homework. Then, he would become enraged as
he realised that no one had anything to show him, in any subject.31
Crucially, though the educational responsibilities were theoretically
divided between the teachers and the representatives of the Hitler Youth,
in practice only the latter held any real power. Any conflict between
the two, therefore, would invariably result in a victory for the Hitler
194
berlin at war
Youth – after all, only they had access to the higher echelons of the
Party machine – and led inexorably to a further dilution of any genuine
pedagogical content in the daily timetable. In addition, shortfalls in
teaching staff were routinely made up by drafting in older students
from the Nazi ideological schools, the Napolas, who were sent on three-
month tours of duty to the KLV camps, prior to their military service,
to organise parades, sports events and entertainment.32 To a large
extent, therefore, the schoolwork component of the timetable was
systematically reduced and sacrificed to the paramilitary drill regimen
of the Hitler Youth and the Nazi Party.33 In some cases, education as
such was quietly abandoned altogether.
There were, of course, other activities. Writing letters home was
encouraged, as was tidying, cleaning and sewing. Much of the timetable
was given over to sport, especially boxing and the game of
Völkerball
,
a variant of dodgeball, which was very popular during the Third Reich.
Yet, in all their activities, KLV children were subjected to an almost
militaristic regime, more akin to a boot camp than a school. As one
young evacuee enthused in a letter to his parents:
Yesterday we had a field exercise. We went to Heinzelshof and from
there marched into the nearby wood. One group had to defend a flag,
which was located on the other side of the river. The defenders stood
on a bridge. We attacked in two groups. The first group was to provide
a diversion. Then the second group was to attack. The first attack failed.
Then the second attempt began. Of course, it was chaotic. Some of
them were bleeding, one was half-unconscious. The battle was a draw.
How did you spend Easter?34
In the KLV camps even everyday matters were infused with a martial
spirit. Gerhard Ritter remembered: ‘At roll call, extreme military-style
tidiness and cleanliness was demanded. Mattresses and blankets had
to be smoothed completely flat, and the bed had to be “squarely”
made. The clothes in the locker had to be folded and stacked. Not a
speck of dust was to be seen.’35
Discipline, too, was rigorously enforced. And, though corporal punish-