Secret love in the war: "Flee! You are lost!"

Something is different with me, my mother Ellen always had that feeling. She felt different from her three brothers and sisters and felt a strange distance from her father Franz, a down-to-earth East Prussian farmer.

And then there were those rumors. On a wet, happy evening, an uncle called out, "It's clear that you're from another stable!" Was he just drunk? Or was there more behind it?

"You have no father left!"

Questions arose even a violent quarrel after my grandfather Franz returned in 1948 from Russian captivity. Doors slammed, my grandmother Emma said to her children: "So, you have to go begging now, you have no father!" But after a few days, Franz returned to Emma - and my grandparents stopped talking about the incident.

Today I know the reason of the dispute, after years of research: My mother had a different father than her siblings. A French prisoner of war. I'm the granddaughter of a Frenchman. There is no doubt for me. For example, my grandfather's only front leave for months does not fit with my mother's date of birth in July 1945.

My grandmother Emma took this secret to the grave. During her lifetime, however, she always talked about two French prisoners of war who saved her life in the spring of 1945 when fleeing East Prussia.

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My grandfather had been at war for years at this time. The two Frenchmen helped my grandmother since about 1942 on her farm in the village Groß Klingbeck, Kreis Heiligenbeil in East Prussia. Without them, the farm, livelihood for the family, could not have been managed.

One of the French was called Paul, a farmer from Brittany. From him my grandmother almost only reported that he could work well. On the other hand, she remarkably spoke of the second Frenchman, whom everyone called "Salomon," because the Germans could not pronounce his complicated first name.

Expensive gifts from France

From Salomon, my grandma has really raved. Polite and reserved he had been, but also very funny and cheerful, intelligent and cultured. He spoke several languages, was well read, and said he wanted to be a teacher. My aunt, 1944, six years old, helped learn to read and write. She also remembers letters and parcels from France. There was a bottle of perfume and a beautiful, white blouse made of magical material, which my grandmother treasured like her eyeball.

Even after the war, there was still a fine, pentagonal wooden box engraved with Solomon's address. My grandmother said that she wrote Salomon after the war, but never got an answer. These letters, so much I know today, were never found later by the French family. Perhaps she intercepted and destroyed Salomon's wife, for he had married in 1939 and later had three children with his wife.

Anja Fischer

Emma (right), 1944 in East Prussia

My grandmother was always sad and bitter when she talked about him. She probably guessed that Salomon had not survived the war or wanted no contact. At some point she made a radical break with the matter. She destroyed the beautiful wooden box and all photos of Salomon. That's what my aunt told me when she broke the decades-long silence in 1995 after the death of my grandmother. For months she struggled to tell the truth.

For my mother, of course, that was initially a shock, but also an explanation for her dark hunches. She learned that her birth father and mother lost sight of each other in January 1945. Maybe my grandmother already knew that she was pregnant. Maybe she even told him.

The Russians come: "Flee!"

The circumstances of the escape were dramatic. Paul and Salomon had intercepted foreign radio stations and were informed about the course of the war. "Get lost! You're lost!" They kept telling my grandmother. It was forbidden on death penalty to leave the village. Nevertheless, my family ventured with the French at night to escape. After a few kilometers they were stopped and had to turn back. They were fortunate that they were not shot and hung as a deterrent on the trees like others who had run away.

Only when it was too late for an orderly escape, they were allowed to set off. But at the end of January 1945, the area around Königsberg was already surrounded by the Russians. There was only the way over the frozen fresh lagoon to the Baltic Sea. Salomon and Paul led the horse-drawn cart over the cracked ice. The refugees were shot at by airplanes. My family saw horses and horses drowned beside them, drowning humans and animals; The roadside was lined with many frozen people.

The French laid wooden planks over the cracks in the ice for my family's cart. It was a very dangerous journey and a miracle that they survived. When they finally reached the headland with the rescue ships, my family had to wait for days because there was no progress. Paul tried to supply the horses and went to the ice to a water hole. At that moment a shrapnel hit him from a Russian plane and severely injured his arm and head.

The French lifesavers

My grandmother and Salomon escorted him to a hospital, but no one wanted to take him in because he was not a German. My grandmother made a pagan uprising and said she would not go back until Paul, who had saved her life, was taken care of. So in the end he was allowed to be treated, and Solomon stayed with him. Here separated the ways of Emma and Salomon.

My mother later wanted to know more about his fate. But we only knew his last name, Salomon, and knew that he came from the Savoy. That's how I started looking eight years ago. I collected all the memories from the family and asked for official posts in Germany. But there was no evidence. Finally, I found a website where former French prisoners of war are looking for their peasants, and another that deals with the Stalag IA camp where Salomon must have been.

There were 85 Salomons on the official list of French prisoners of war, but none of them had German names inexpressible. I came across an association of veterans from the Stalag I A. They looked up a list that the Russians had sent to Paris after the dissolution of this camp: Only one Solomon was assigned to it in a command in the area around Ludwigsort which belonged to the village of my grandparents. This name is missing in the official list of prisoners of war, as this is incomplete.

Salomon had the date and place of birth determined. I tried to find relatives over the mayor, unsuccessfully. Finally, I came across the association "Coeurs sans Frontières" ("Hearts without borders"), which sensitively researched in such cases. So I got in touch with Guy: a son of my French grandfather - and my new uncle.

The best present

In July 2015, I was able to give my mother a very special present for her 70th birthday. I called her in the morning and said, "I found your father's name!" Unfortunately, I can not name this name here and I do not want to show any photos of it. Because a daughter of Salomon, Guy's sister, may not believe the whole story. She is adamant that her grandfather never went alien - not even at war.

Anyhow, my mother was overjoyed, especially when she learned that her biological father had survived the war and then worked as a bookseller. As a child, there was never a more precious gift for her than a book.

From what I know today, I imagine that the relationship between Emma and Salomon for two years was a friendly, respectful one. No one, however, can imagine what the dread and despair of the last months of the war will do to people's emotions. If the existing order and all lived values ​​threaten to be destroyed, then people may find each other very differently than in normal life.

Read more about "French children":

Forbidden love: The German "children of shame" and the search of Rainer Gessert for his French father
The hushed execution: Allegedly "sudden cardiac death - as the Nazis in 1944 most likely killed a German by fall ax, because of their affair with a French prisoner of war