Günther Klemm

“That’s how it went the whole time at this slow pace. The train stopped shortly in Ústí, the doors were pulled open and: ‘right, now you can go to the toilet.’ There weren’t any toilets in the cattle car, of course. So all the men, women, young and old, everyone had to get out of the cattle cars and do their business somewhere among the surrounding vegetation. That was pretty terrible. One of the adults commented: what the Germans did to the Jews, Communists and others, that’s what they’ll do to us now.”

“Until 1949 we stayed in Altmark, in a farming colony. I went to school there. In 1949 my mother’s sister found us there, people used to investigate through the German Red Cross. Nobody knew where the others had gone, even we had no idea where this would lead us. So only several years later would they find relatives and put people in contact. So our mother’s sister wrote to us saying she had a farming job for our mother. There in the Old March there was no work, there wasn’t much agriculture, the farmers had their workers and something in the summer, but otherwise nothing. And so she wrote she had a job for our mother, but no apartment. But my mother said: working for farmers means food, at least we’ll be fed. We won’t have to steal anymore.”

“As a child, as I’ve already mentioned, I was often in Rynartice, in Bohemian Switzerland. And there was a beautiful apple tree with wonderful apples. I used to eat from that apple tree as a little child. And then in 2015 I went to Rynartice with friends, a married couple, and we stopped directly by the house of Mr Eger and I went down to the apple tree, where the house today is gone and I wanted to pick an apple. And from the neighbouring house, this Mr Eger came out and asked me: ‘Looking for something?’ ‘No I’m not looking for anything, I just wanted to taste the apple I’d eaten as a kid.’ ‘What?’ he said, ‘that sounds interesting, please tell us your story, come inside.’ And he invited us into his cottage. He invited us right in and immediately: ‘Please tell us your story.’ He was very interested, so to say, to hear from a witness about the expulsion. Because here, just as it was in the GDR, everything about the expulsion was suppressed, people didn’t talk about it and he’d heard very little from what his mother told him, or the official story, not what was actually true. And so I told him a few things and also said I’d written a short book where I describe the time of my childhood until I learned my trade, so the time before, during and after the expulsion. And he wanted that book at any cost. I call that the story of the apple tree or a new friendship. And he, I think it was in 2017, he sent me an email: ‘Mr Klemm, a calamity! The apple tree died. That apple tree was old and a little rotten, but it still had great apples. But it’s not all bad, I’m sending you the heart of the tree, so we can plant a new tree together and call it Günther.’ And he sent me a wooden badge in the shape of a heart and it had 'Herzliche Grüße aus Rennersdorf' (Heartfelt greetings from R.) burned into it.”