Testimony

Herbert Römer – Walpersberg / Runway

Father and my cousin were killed in a bombing raid on November 3rd and my aunt was rescued alive from the buried cellar. She died a year later. In Thuringia Now a return to the life-threatening West was out of the question. My grandparents and the rest of the family stayed in Vacha. Life was peaceful again. The quaint little town with its beautiful town hall and the gentle hills of the Rhön Mountains all around were already a welcome change for city children. (That as a stranger you had to endure some fights, at least with an honorable defeat, to be accepted, is part of our Stone Age heritage). My brother and I attended the local secondary school. Unlike our grammar school in Düsseldorf, it was more ideologized and ritualized. In the stairwell hung a three-part board. The upper part showed the (weekly) "slogan", the middle the "weekly song" from the relevant song repertoire, and the lower the "core saying", which changed monthly. The class representative had to report attendance or absence briefly and militarily to the teacher at the beginning of the lesson and then let the slogan, weekly song, and core saying be spoken or sung one after the other. My family was fed up with the cruel war game. We sons did not join the Jungvolk, but engaged in the church (Catholic diaspora). I was soon integrated into my class, was a good student, and was even elected class representative. After about a year, in spring 1944, the deputy headmaster (the director was at the front) called me out of class and shouted at me: "I heard you don't go to service (Jungvolk), you are an antisocial element!" He called the responsible squad leader and ordered him: "Put the guy in your troop!" My mother complained to the headmaster, pointed out our sacrifices in the war, and threatened to complain to higher authorities. The brave headmaster became uneasy. He apologized servilely and meekly to me, but that did not change my situation. In May 1944, now 14 years old, I was taken into the Motor-HJ. (Refusal threatened punishment-HJ!). The school building became a hospital, lessons took place in the old elementary school, which had been expanded by two barracks in the schoolyard, in shifts with the elementary school. The rituals remained but degenerated, e.g., by singing off-key, probably less for ideological reasons than to annoy the teacher and delay the start of lessons. War-important assignments. Postman. In the summer holidays of 1944, I was seconded to the Reich Post as a rural postman. Two students each took half a rural postman's route, but otherwise with all the rights and duties of a postal employee: besides letters and parcels, also registered letters and even delivery of cash ("money postman"). There was no pay. This task was interesting, responsible, and even beautiful, e.g., when early in the morning the storks in the Werra meadows took off from the old defense towers with food for their young. Loading worker 2