Eyewitness Testimony Henriette Gerth

"So it was actually quite terrible conditions" Conversation with a German conscripted worker at Walpersberg By Cornelius Lehmann, Kempen / Lower Rhine Henriette Gerth was born in 1920 as the daughter of a furniture manufacturer in a small town in the Thuringian Rhön. With the global economic crisis in 1929, the family lost their factory and their fortune. In 1935, her mother moved with Henriette and her younger sister to Weimar, the hometown of their grandparents. The father followed later and found work at the Gustloff factories. After training as a foreign language correspondent (English, French, and Italian) in Leipzig and Dresden, Henriette Gerth moved to Berlin, where she worked as a translator at the Institute of Labor Science. Afterwards, she was assigned to the administration of an armaments company there and thus came to Kahla in spring 1945, when Berlin was already in ruins. She remained silent about her brief employment at REIMAHG at Walpersberg for almost 70 years—because no one ever asked her about it. In spring 2014, a conversation was recorded by her great-nephew, which was editorially revised and is printed below in excerpts. You worked for one or two weeks near the end of the war in Kahla at REIMAHG. How did that come about? I was sent there by the Berlin employment office, and that’s how I only got out of Berlin a few days before; otherwise, I might not have survived there. I was already involved in armaments work in Berlin. Then an order came that I had to report to Kahla. I was still in Berlin in February 1945. Then I received this conscription order that I had to report immediately to Kahla. So I took the train to Kahla. That’s how I got away. What was it like in Berlin at that time? I still remember: when there was an attack—and Berlin had alarms almost every day—you had special cards that you filled out, something like: I am still alive, or so. And you sent that home by mail. I did that too. After every attack, I always sent such a card to my mother. And I got upset because I saw that our mother in Weimar didn’t really understand what it meant to live in Berlin at the end of the war. She kept complaining that I only sent her a superficial, meaningless card. And I was already satisfied that I always wrote her such a card so she knew I was still alive. And from that, I saw that she had no idea what was happening in Berlin. I still remember that I took it very badly at the time that she reproached me for something that was actually not worthy of reproach but rather praise. What did you have to do in Kahla? I don’t even know what we did there. Probably normal office work, I don’t remember exactly. I presumably worked in administration because I was an administrative employee. How were you accommodated there? We lived in an old factory. That’s where we were housed as auxiliary workers. And because I could speak Italian, there were nice men who then heated our room because I could ask them for help. They made a fire for us, lit the stove so we wouldn’t be so cold. That’s what my Italian brought me. One of them surely admired me because I could speak Italian. And it was like this: on one side of the wall were the rooms where the miners were housed. And in the other room, we women were housed, and between was the wall. Then the Italian would always knock on the wall and wish us "Good night" in Italian, that is, "buona notte." How many women were in the room overnight? Well, there were always two beds stacked, those were housewives and such, all kinds of people who had been drafted; we were probably about 10 women in one room. And some of them had duties in the kitchen and such. My God, yes. (laughs) It was like an emptied factory. And then there were lots of water taps next to each other and underneath was a drain. You had to wash yourself there. The miners also washed there, but not at the same time as us. Sometimes we also took a washbasin full of cold water into our factory room. It was very primitive. We had double-decker field beds where we slept. So it was certainly a factory building and not wooden barracks? No, in my opinion, it was not a barrack but a factory building. But how could the Italian then knock on the wall? It could be, I don’t know exactly, that wooden walls were installed to create several rooms. Because they couldn’t put us women in the same room with the men. How did you get from your accommodation to work in the morning? On foot! We left the house in the morning; mostly the miners had to go up the mountain. And you walked through the darkness because it was winter and cold and dark; you walked to the entrance at the mountain. And there you were received and taken into the tunnel where you worked. I only remember that in the morning I had to walk up the mountain with the miners who worked up there. I went up the mountain very early in the morning with these men. At the top, I met an Italian who also lived down with us in this home. He then took me to my tunnel. And because I was a young girl, he was very polite and kind to me and brought me to my office section. How long did you walk up the mountain in the morning? About half an hour. Then you were received at an entrance and led into the mountain. Were you checked there? Did you have a factory ID or something to show? I don’t remember anymore. That could be, but I don’t remember. But maybe not, because maybe they already knew the people if they came there every day.And what did you do then? I suppose clerical work. Because I was an office worker. But I don’t remember exactly. Was there a lunch break or something like that? I think we could get a meal there, certainly not for free, but maybe a stew or a soup or something like that. How many hours did you have to work in the mine? Did you still go out in daylight or back into the dark? I don’t know exactly. But none of that interested them. The working hours were fixed, whether cold or warm, light or dark: we had to do what was ordered. So we certainly didn’t work only eight hours. But I don’t remember how long the official working hours were. Were you afraid of the supervisors? No, actually not. At least not in Kahla. Up in the mine you also had contact with the Italians. Yes, there were Italians. There were also Russians as prisoners of war. But I couldn’t talk to them, only with the Italians. But contact is too strong a word. I could greet them and they were so delighted by the familiar sounds of home that they were so kind and always made a fire for us down in our room. Otherwise, we would have come into a cold room. But because one Italian made a fire for us, it was at least warm when we came back into the room. Does “Stelle Null” mean anything to you? That was the entrance to the mine where the offices were located. That is certainly the beginning; from there you were taken into the tunnel where you belonged. But always only by friendly people. I was a young girl. And a young girl has many more chances than someone else. For a young girl, they did some things that they might not have done for someone else. And that’s why I think I was brought to my tunnel by some Italian. Otherwise, you might get lost. Because it’s dark, apart from the small lamps. Did you also see workers being beaten there? Yes. And I told my mother about it because it upset me. I wasn’t used to such things. But if you have to justify something, they always have an excuse. Then they said, if I remember correctly, that the people hadn’t worked well or something like that. And we were used to obedience. But not so much that it didn’t bother me to see someone being beaten. And who beat whom? I don’t know. I only saw it through the window. Because the rooms were partly connected by windows or doors or something like that. And it was really awful in the toilets. When you were on the toilet, you always looked out over the door. So you could see exactly if someone was on the toilet. So the conditions were actually quite bad. 3 And then you got typhus there. I only remember that I felt sick and then fainted up there in the mine and was kept all day in the sick tunnel up there. In the evening I was taken to the company hospital because I still wasn’t healthy again. I was put on a truck and then taken to this castle. That was the company hospital. They probably already suspected that I had typhus. Only I didn’t know it yet. And from the hospital they then informed our mother in Weimar that it would be good if someone came because I was sick. Of course, I hadn’t told our mother. And my sister was already with our mother in Weimar from Dresden after the attack. My sister was a nurse with the German Red Cross at that time. Can you remember your hospital stay? My sister told me that from the hospital, that is from this castle, it was quite steep down to the street and it would have been very exciting if she had had to ride her bike there. She told me that recently. She could still remember it well. Do you still know the name of the castle where the hospital was? It was called Hummelshain. Exactly, that is the Hummelshain Castle. And that was the company hospital of REIMAHG. Can you still remember what it was like in the hospital? Well, I was well cared for because everyone was afraid of typhus. I was well accommodated. I was also alone; in the end, I was the only one left. And there was a professor... But I can’t remember the name anymore. Do you maybe still know on which floor you were or in which room? Not on the ground floor! I think I was on the first floor. But I can’t say for sure. Were there prisoners of war in the hospital or only Germans? There were also foreign workers. And then it was like this: at first the German patients were in the castle. There were other buildings, such as barracks, where the foreigners were then housed. And then there was a reshuffle, the Germans had to leave the castle, except for me because I had typhus and they were afraid, and then the foreigners came into the castle. It was no longer right that the foreigners lived in barracks and we, who had lost the war, were then in the castle. I was one of the few Germans who were allowed to stay as a patient in the castle. That was from April 1945, at the time when the Americans occupied Thuringia. Yes, and there was a Polish doctor, but fortunately she was still polite to me. And my sister can still remember that they took in discharged German soldiers up there without saying that they were German soldiers. And then they put their medals and honors, their Iron Crosses and so on under my mattress. Nobody looked there because everyone was afraid to come near me and catch the infection. And so I lay on their decorations and, so to speak, guarded them as a typhus patient. 4So German soldiers hid in the Hummelshain hospital from the Americans? Or they were hidden there. And so that they wouldn’t know they were soldiers, they had to make sure that everything indicating that disappeared. That’s why they put the Iron Cross or whatever they had under my mattress. How long did you have typhus? I was sick for 9 weeks. And then they said the Russians were coming. We didn’t want to be under the Russians, so I was discharged. Afterwards, Henriette Gerth was first taken by her sister to a hospital in Jena and then to their mother’s apartment in Weimar. At the town hall there, the three women applied to the Americans for permission to leave Thuringia and flee to Hesse before the Russians arrived. Because Henriette Gerth looked deathly ill from typhus, the Americans granted the request. A neighbor helped them on the trip to Hesse. He organized a small car and a driver who took the three women to Bad Hersfeld. In return, they gave him their household goods. In Bad Hersfeld, Henriette Gerth worked for three years as chief secretary in the hospital and, among other things, handled correspondence with the American occupiers. With the founding of the two German states, the three women could not return to Weimar and moved to their relatives on the Lower Rhine. There the two sisters and their descendants still live today. Cornelius Lehmann, M.A. Kempen / Lower Rhine Doctoral candidate at Goethe University Frankfurt/Main 5