Dieter and East Prussia

Dieter spent the first 6 years of his life in Willenberg, a small town near the Polish border in those days. It was a border town in Masuria, a beautiful lake district, though Willenberg was on a river. We visited the town a few years ago we saw that idyllic river with dragonflies and even a beaver. The Russians were advancing on East Prussia in January 1941 and they bombed Willenberg on 19 January so everybody left in a great hurry. His mother, two sisters and Tante Friedel left together and went to Ortelsburg by train and then got a train west. His sister Baerbel was only 2 weeks old and had to be pushed through the snow in her pram . Dieter nearly got lost as he hung onto the wrong pram at one stage. When they got to the next big town called Elbing, the Russians were suddenly in front of them again. Their retreat to Germany was suddenly cut off and they took the next train to Koenigsberg, the capital of East Prussia where they hoped to get a ship. They stayed there for a few days during which time there were frequent bombs. They couldnt get a ship as there was not enough room for the size of their family group. This was the Wilhelm Gustlof, which was sunk with the loss of 6 thousand lives, mainly soldiers and women and children. It was sunk by a Russian torpedo . When they had a quiet spell they decided to leave Koenigsberg they decided to go up to the Samland peninsula and wait for the end of the war. It was a very nice Baltic Sea resort. They stayed in an old villa - the ground floor was uninhabitable but they lived upstairs. It was about 100 metres from the forest where they collected edible things in summer - blueberries, wild strawberries and sorrell, out of which a soup was made. Tante Friedel worked in the kitchen of the local collective farm and supplemented the family's meagre diet with potato peelings and anything else she could get, a bit of flour now and again. There was a weekly market where they could trade what they got in the forest. Dieter used to try his luck by hanging around the kitchen of the collective. One of the old cooks had a soft spot for him and gave him some food, but the Russian women upstairs did not like him and tipped buckets of water over him a couple of times.