Tales of Charity Amid Horror In the Last Days of World War II
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT Tales of Charity Amid Horror In the Last Days of World War II By William E. Bohn More than a year ago, a paper-covered volume called Documents of Humanity was published in Germany...
...There is an implication, even in the midst of all this misery, that she belongs with these Frenchmen rather than with the lower-class people by whom she has been engulfed...
...In numerous ways, it comes through in these tales...
...Many of them were among those who helped and protected women and children...
...The book is the result of a brilliant idea which occurred to a group of men at Goettingen, Germany...
...They looked out on the present world of cruelty, hate and slander, and they said: "Let us make up a book filled with stories of love and trust and understanding...
...One of the best of the tales is about an American Negro private in Czechoslovakia...
...He took my hand and helped me get up, put on my shoes, and then gave me his arm to help me along...
...That is precisely what they have done...
...They tell a tale...
...Once in a while, it even happened that a Russian soldier would exhibit a trace of decency...
...Like the others, they may be shot the next minute, but they do not act frightened or miserable...
...Many died of exposure or starvation...
...Raping, of course, was carried on wholesale...
...After being rescued by a group of Americans, she was left to wander along toward the border...
...They sing a song...
...Some managed to cover the hundreds of miles that lay between them and refuge in the Western-occupied zones of Germany...
...After a while," she proceeds, "an American Negro soldier with a gun slung over his shoulder came toward me...
...Many were murdered...
...The men of Goettingen, led by Professors Herbert Kraus and K.O...
...The evil which formed the substance of the whole rapidly moving tragedy was created by the Russians...
...I patrol as far as the frontier.' He told me that in America he had an old mother...
...In Eastern Germany, there were many Russian prisoners of war who had been detailed to work on the farms...
...Beginning about February 1945, more than 15,000,000 persons were uprooted from their homes in Central Europe, robbed of their property and sent out over the wintry roads...
...A 70-year-old German woman tells how she was picked up by some Russians and carried off in a truck...
...The longest of them is the work of an East Prussian noblewoman...
...Kurth, asked those who had taken part in this tragic migration to send in tales of goodness...
...There are several hundred of these tales, relating the experiences of men and women during the very worst period of the Second World War...
...We went on a little way and came to a village where there was an inn...
...Utterly discouraged, she sat down by the roadside and "left herself in the hands of the Lord...
...Despite the wars and the official enmity, the Germans have always had a deep admiration for their neighbors across the Rhine...
...THE HOME FRONT Tales of Charity Amid Horror In the Last Days of World War II By William E. Bohn More than a year ago, a paper-covered volume called Documents of Humanity was published in Germany in an English translation...
...And the young Frenchmen not only help the poor souls all about them...
...He soon came back with a cup of coffee with sugar and cream and a buttered roll and said: 'Now get your strength up again and we'll go on...
...The background, of course, is one of horror...
...But the good deeds they recount were, of course, performed to rescue victims from the misery all around...
...Thirty-four of the tales of goodness are about the French...
...He put me on a bench under the trees...
...The masses of fleeing humanity consisted chiefly of Germans, but included many others as well...
...To make things worse, a Czech stole what little hand-baggage she had managed to bring...
...Again and again, these narrators return to the assertion that the Russians were not all bad, inevitably bad, equally bad...
...He came straight up to me and said: 'Now...
...They do it with verve...
...It first came to my attention last week, and I have been reading it since with an interest little short of fascination...
...This was in April 1945...
...and I thought my end had come...
...But, every now and then, some Russian private or sergeant would help a woman to elude his comrades...
...In the midst of her anguish, trying to make her way among the straggling escapees along the icy, rutted roads, she comes upon a group of Frenchmen...
...Ma, can't you get along?' 'No.' I replied...
...Since the horrors were produced by the Russians, I must put at the head of my account the fact that 18 of these tales of humanity are about Russians...
...Being a member of the upper class, she can talk French...
...When the war ended and Stalin's armies were approaching, these POWs, almost to a man, made common cause with the Germans and started down the road toward the American Zone...
...The people who sent in their stories did not set out to recite the cruelties which they endured or witnessed...
Vol. 37 • January 1954 • No. 3
