#SheInspiresMe

Heiko Mahr poured his heart out in this tale of loss, miracles and hope.

Originally shared by Heiko Mahr

#SheInspiresMe – My grandma, whom I never met.

My Grandma Dorothea grew up, married and lived in the former German city of Breslau, Silesia, (today is the Polish town Wroclaw in Silesia) with her husband and her four kids in a small apartment in the city.

Close to the end of World War II, in the very cold, and snowy Winter 1944/1945 she had to flee Breslau from the approaching front line with nothing more than a wooden pushcart so that her youngest daughter (1 ½ years old) didn’t need to walk, some supplies, woollen blankets, the family photo album and all the money and jewellery the family owned.

They moved out with others families forming a so called “trek” and walked day by day through freezing cold winter westwards. Some weeks later they were left behind by the trek and needed to get along by themselves for a few weeks.

The times were rough. Innumerable refugees, low supplies, nearly no medicine, lice and other nasty parasites. Hunger, thirst, sometimes no shelter for days. And a raging war around with bombings night and day, attacks by low flying aircraft, and a front line often moving faster than them.

In February they reached Dresden, and it was by sheer luck that they were transported out of Dresden just a few days before the Dresden bombing which devastated the city.

I’ve always believed it was a miracle!

In early April or May 1945, my grandmother and her kids arrived safely to the new place they would call “home” for the next few years – one room which they were billeted in by authorities against the will of the owner of the house, in a village not far from where my parents are still living today.

The end of the World War was their day zero to start a new existence from scratch. A new beginning – as they had lost nearly everything except themselves. She had no job, no income, nobody knew what the future might bring. Her husband, the father of her kids was missing. Since late Autumn she had had no news from the front lines.

At the end of the World War my Grandfather was in a Russian POW camp (in what is now Poland) and was blessed by another small miracle:

A doctor diagnosed him with a cardiac anomaly and he was released in 1946. He travelled to the Soviet Zone (which later become the East Germany Republic) and was luckily not relocated to Siberian POW camp where so many other POWs died from hunger, diseases and forced labour. So many never returned to their families.

My grandfather did not have any information on the whereabouts of his family, hence he gave out a small ad in one of the newspapers or Red cross search service (there are two versions in the family history) and a cousin, who by coincidence was in West Germany read it and gave him a lead as to where his family was.

Thus they were reunited in 1946. They were very, very lucky, especially when you consider that a lot of husbands never returned and some not before the mid 1950s.

I was born in 1974 and my grandmother died in 1976, thus I never met her, and I could never asked her questions.

All my knowledge about their life, I’ve picked up from my aunts and uncles, as they were old enough to remember parts of it.

So how does her story inspire me today?

She inspires me, by showing that some can always start again.

She inspires me, by showing that even if you lose all your belonging- you still keep your memories, your faith and your will to go on.

She inspires me, by showing that in the end all that really counts – is family, some documents, and the photos which are memories of days filled with laughter and light.

#SheInspiresMe

#InternationalWomensDay

The image shows my grandma Dorothea with my two aunts and my uncle. My mother wasn’t with the family at this time but in Switzerland for recovery.