Listening To The BBC
The war years were chaotic times and I hope you will forgive me for finding it impossible to report what little I remember about my wartime experiences in strictly chronological order. As often as not when I am in the middle of writing about one occurrence, another one comes to mind. What now follows is connected with an air raid shelter, which at some stage of the war some people in our street built for themselves. Digging a bunker into the ground had left them with a heap of soil that was visible from quite a distance. More of this later, but first let me tell you how my father became involved in this enterprise.
Because he worked as a foreman in a factory whose products were important to the war effort, my father had been exempted from military service. His firm produced aluminium sheets from raw materials supplied to them, which other companies made into aircraft parts. Through this my father’s work was indirectly connected with the war effort. Because of the smelting process involved, the firm’s furnaces had to be kept going day and night, so the men employed by them had to work round the clock in two twelve-hour shifts.
Fortunately, this was not necessary for the sister factory across the road, where some of the sheets were made into aluminium foil. One night, one of the bombs the planes dropped somewhere along their flight path on their return journey fell on their premises. This was the only place in our town that was ever hit and being closed for the night, there was no loss of lives, only severe damage to buildings and machinery. Had the bomb landed a few yards over to the other side of the road, where men were on nightshift, quite a few of them might have been killed, including my father. How lucky we were!
When my father was on day shift, he usually spent his evenings at home. He was a double Sun Aquarius, i.e. born on the 31st January, and what would now be called a techno-freak. He loved all technology and especially his radio. Whenever the news came on, which was by no means as frequently as these days, and he was at home he was glued to his loudspeaker. The radio sets and also the reception in those days were so poor that all noises had to stop, as soon as the signal was heard. Heaven help anyone who dared to make a sound.
I remember how sometimes in the evening and at night, when we children were in bed, a faint sound came from downstairs that went: ‘Boom, boom, boom – boooom’. Many years later, I found out that this had been a BBC signal for its German language propaganda transmissions, which started with the words: ‘This is London calling!’ One of their German news bulletins followed these words. As my father did not speak a word of English, it cannot have been anything else. He was indulging in an extremely dangerous pastime; had anyone reported him as likely as not it would have cost him his life.
Anyone who did not like you or bore a grudge against you could go to the authorities and tell them that you had committed some kind of an offence, even a concocted one. So-called friends, neighbours and relatives were known to be guilty of this. The Hitler youth movement encouraged children to inform on their own parents. People were taken away on the flimsiest accusations. The end result was a modern version of the medieval witch-hunting. Standard punishment was the disappearance of ‘offenders’ into one of the concentration camps. Sadly, when millions are dying everywhere, life gets to be ever cheaper. As Stalin put it: ‘One death is a tragedy; a million deaths are a statistic.’
The Gestapo could knock on anyone’s door in the middle of the night – their preferred time – and take them away without questioning. The closer the end of the war came, the more the terror regime intensified its grip, and ever more people disappeared without trial or trace. There came the time when no-one dared to ask any questions. The turn of those who still spoke up was sure to come quickly. It is not hard to imagine how much damage and scarring is done to human souls who over some years are constantly exposed to this kind of terror. It is bound to leave impressions that mark us not only for the rest of this lifetime, but also beyond. The Heavens alone know how many times each one of us has to go through such experiences, until we have finally learnt the most precious lesson of all – the value of peace.
Under the Nazi regime, it was compulsory for boys and girls – in separate groups – from age ten onwards to join the youth organisation of the Nazi party. Girls went into the BDM, Bund Deutscher Mädchen, the Federation of German Girls. Boys at age 10 joined the ‘Jungvolk’, the Young People, moving on at age 14 to the HJ, the Hitler Jugend, Hitler’s Youths. These organisations were nothing but party tools for brainwashing children, from as young as possible, into believing that the Nazi was good and its propaganda true. It was so skilfully presented that from where we are now, it is not hard to see how easily swayed many of the youngsters were. They were urged to report anything they saw in the world around them, including their families, that could be detrimental to the party. From an early age, boys were trained in the use of weapons in preparation for their fate as cannon fodder. Alas, far too many went that way, as the following incident demonstrates.
On one occasion, in the sweltering heat of the summer of 1944, when it was all too clear that the war was lost and practically over, my eldest sister, then twelve, returned from town in a state of shock. In the market place she had seen five dead soldiers, who had not been much older than herself. They were spread-eagled in a line on the ground and covered in flies. A sign by their side announced that they were deserters, who had been summarily court-marshalled and shot. By that time, boys were drafted away from their school benches, to be used the way the Hitler Youth movement had prepared them.
This article is a chapter from ‘War And Peace Between Nations.
If it has whetted your appetite to read more, please follow the link below:
‘War And Peace Between Nations’