This article is published with the authorization of the official account "Nibelungen Factory"
Hans-Joachim Fritz, born in 1929, grew up in Berlin and later became a pastry master and also worked in the confectionery business. During the war, he was a member of the Hitler Youth, responsible for helping the Red Cross resettle refugees and wounded at the Grunewald railway station.
Today's Hans-Joachim Fritz.
It was a tough time. When I was young, my mother used to say, "Son, pray to dear God, don't let the plane come again!" "That's right, if more than two hundred bombers come over at once and drop bombs... Then we will definitely be razed to the ground here. Once, the bomb fell into a cemetery near my house, and the body of an old friend of my family, Mr. Bodiga, was lifted out of the grave and dropped at the cemetery gate. At that time, there was a shortage of labor, so the graves were not dug very deep.
During the war, my friend Achim and I were both members of the Hitler Youth, and the Red Cross took us to work, a nurse taught us how to bandage, and she showed us an operation. Did you know that it was a Krukenberg operation, the kind of surgery that separates the ulna and radius of a disabled soldier who has lost his palm and creates a forceps-like limb? I really admire the doctor who did the operation, I was so scared that I pulled my pants.
Krokenberg reconstruction, an invention of a German physician, is a commonly used 20th-century procedure to maintain the function of the stump arm.
From May 1944 onwards, trains carrying refugees were sent from the east to Berlin. All youth members in Berlin's Dahlem district were called to the train station to empty the arrival train and vacate the platform for subsequent trains as soon as possible.
Grunewald train station was very crowded at the time, and Athim and I would come over every day to help. It was a mess, the children couldn't find their mothers, the mothers couldn't find the children, they couldn't see a few men, only some old, weak, sick and disabled, healthy young men went to the front line to fight. We asked the women how long the train had been on the road, and one woman weakly replied, "Five days... No water to drink... Can't go to the toilet... Nothing..." Then she died in front of me.
Grunewald train station.
The carriages carrying refugees are all square, and people dig holes in the floor in the corners of the carriages to serve as toilets, and and pee are all here, regardless of men and women, only everyone can help each other to cover up, and there is no hand paper. Many people died in the middle of the road, especially babies, and dead babies would be thrown out of the car from the hole, but the bodies of adults could not be stuffed in. In the other corner of the carriage, the bodies of three or four adults were stacked. On the way, someone said, "The hole is too small, we have to make it bigger." "But it's not easy, women don't want to do it at all, and the people in the car bring a lot of such tragic stories."
These women and children are very weak, many of them are still sick, so how can we take them to the hospital? There was almost nothing in the rear, and the traffic in Berlin was about to be paralyzed, but I still had a retired old army horse, and that horse had been wounded on the battlefield, and from then on it was startled, and whenever it heard a little movement, it would run wildly. I put the old horse in the cart and drove the carriage with Achim to the hospital. Whenever a carriage passes under the S-Bahn bridge, I have to check if there is a train coming, otherwise the old horse will be frightened and run again.
Berlin in 1944 had been badly damaged by Allied air raids.
The S-Bahn station at Potsdamer Platz, the Berlin S-Bahn is an important part of Berlin's public transport system, similar to a hybrid of the light rail and the underground.
After arriving at the hospital, the nurses brought us hot soup, we were only 14 years old at the time, where have we seen such a miserable thing!
The first time I helped out on the train, there was a woman on the train who said she was finally saved, and then she gave birth to a child in the carriage. The doctor told me that when I encountered this situation, "first tie the umbilical cord on the navel, and leave it alone." ”
I wiped the baby clean with the hay in the car, and the hay could be too hard for the baby, and I was going to be driven crazy at that point. I went and got the woman a bread roll, and she was so happy that she ate it in three bites and two bites, and she hadn't eaten in days. I still can't see any waste of food.
The train ran for five days in a row, except for a short time when the front of the train was filled with water, and there was almost no stop in the middle. When the water is added, the dead are carried off the car in a hurry, and after a long roar, the train starts, and the dead stay there. Trains full of refugees went on one train after another, and we went on at the train station for months, resettling refugees and caring for the wounded, and the days went by.
After a while, there was another train to deliver the wounded soldiers, and we were busy resettling the wounded soldiers again. One-legged, one-armed, legless... Appalling. Soldiers help each other, two can still walk to support one can not go, this is the camaraderie.
Whenever an air raid followed, my phone rang non-stop. I still remember one time in Südstern, next to the church there was a large residential area with an air raid shelter with the inscription "130" written on the wall of the entrance to the bomb shelter with the words "130" written on it as tall as a person, and arrows pointed to each side. It was used to remind rescuers that there were 130 people in the bomb shelters on the left and right.
German civilians walking into an air raid shelter.
By the time we got there, the whole neighborhood had been blown flat, and in front of the rubble was a group of Totite laborers, half of whom were prisoners, busy drinking soup. They had rescued more than 40 people from the bomb shelters, but the building ruins were still collapsing, and the dug entrance would soon be blocked by rubble again, digging several times with the same result, and they had given up.
Thoth labor, during the war, were men who were not suitable for serving on the front lines, and were generally older.
Achim and I stood in front of the rubble pile, and I looked at him and said, "Achim, shall we dig again?" ”
"Okay, dig and see, let's drink the soup first."
After rubbing the soup, we picked up shovels and began to dig, shovel after shovel, opening a passage through the rubble and rescuing 34 people from the bomb shelter. One of them was out of breath, and we put him face down there to indicate that he was dead. During the bombing, many people were not burned to death by fire, nor crushed by bricks, but choked to death by dust. Children simply can't bear it and can easily be choked to death at once.
Finally, out of the entrance came a nurse, and she had several children, all of her own, all of whom covered their noses and mouths with damp cloths to block out the dust. We really didn't know that a wet cloth could save our lives.
I later told my mom about my experience, and when I was delivering the woman on the train, my mom said, "You're awesome!" You were delivered by a nurse, and this time you were a nurse. "Other things, I didn't mention much at home.
Let's talk about it here, except for my mother, I only talked to them about my wartime experience when I was taking care of the disabled after the war, and I never told anyone else. It's hard to look back on, but I'm honored that I can do my part, at least, I did something meaningful during the war.