Helga Marsch

“Shortly after the war had ended, my dad decided that we would go back to Hopfenbruch. The driving force of this decision was the mother of my father, whose husband – my grandfather – had been buried at a graveyard in Hopfenbruch. My grandmother insisted that she would like to die at home, as well. So we went back home and on the way, we saw quite a few things. The Russians have plundered our car and stolen our things. But the worst thing was that when we finally arrived in Hopfenbruch, our beautiful house was not there anymore as it had been burned down in our absence. We had to stay at the neighbors house all of us in one room. My mother and my older sister had to work and us. We were small kids so we would play anyway.”

“Then there came the news that these areas would be ceded to Poland and we were all required to leave. Of, course, this was a pretty swift process and no one cared if we liked it or not. The Polish militia came and told us we would have to be gone within ten minutes. Well, our house had already been gone. So we borrowed a little cart and put the few things we were still able to keep on it. Then, the transport set out. It took weeks before we got on foot to Berlin. In Berlin, we weren’t accommodated so we had to go further to Babelsberg. My dad had some business friends there who had done business with him before and they accommodated us. Before the whole story began, my dad had told us: ‘if we don’t see each other again, we’ll meet in Babelsberg at the Müller family’.”