days_unfolding

I asked my dad how his family went all the way from Lithuania to Bavaria in Germany during World War II. He's telling me the story in installments. I thought that some of you might find this story interesting. Here's part 1.

I will do this in installments so you'll have the complete story. Keep in mind I was very young at the time so I may not have the reasons why things were done the way they were.

We left Lithuania in August, 1944. Me, my mom, her two sisters, Linda and Ann, and Linda's husband, uncle Bruno. We left in a horse driven farm wagon going south, toward Poland. My father and Ann's husband, uncle Vince, were both in the German military. The reason they were in the German military was that everything was rationed in 1944 and the only people who got ration coupons were those who served the Reich. My father had given me a pop-gun. You cocked it, which compressed air in a cylinder and pulled a cork into the barrel attached to a string. When you pulled the trigger it released the compressed air with a loud pop and shot the cork out of the barrel. I loved that gun. Somewhere in Poland we were stopped by German military police (feldpolizei) and searched. My pop-gun was confiscated because refugees were not allowed to have weapons. I suspect the policeman had a son about my age and also thought the gun was a neat thing.

We were traveling southwest and ended up in a pre-war Czech army camp which the Germans had converted into a refugee camp. Somewhere on that leg the wagon and horses were disposed of and we began traveling on trains. At this stage of the war, the American and Soviet air forces pretty much ruled the skies. So when travelling on the train it would suddenly stop in the middle of nowhere because the engineer got a report that the next town was being bombed. No information was passed to the passengers so they didn't know whether the train would start up in the next few minutes or sit there half the day. If the wait was long some men would leave the train to see if they could buy some food from the local farmers and occasionally some got left behind when the train suddenly started up.

The next installment will cover our stay in the refugee camp and our trip to Berlin.