We Were Young and at War: The first-hand story of young lives lived and lost in World War Two

We Were Young and at War: The first-hand story of young lives lived and lost in World War Two
Sarah Wallis

Svetlana Palmer

Never before have the diaries and letters of young people from all sides of World War Two been woven together to provide an account of what it was like to grow up amidst the daily struggles and horrors of this devastating war.We Were Young And At War follows the stories of sixteen teenage boys and girls who write with a disarming directness about their reactions to and experiences of a very adult war. They are British, French, American, Japanese, Polish, German and Russian, each with a unique and heart-rending tale to tell.Only two of them are alive today. Some of them fought and died in the war, others starved to death; many were separated from their families. All were forced to grow up quickly, their lives changed beyond all recognition by their experiences.This is their story.

We Were YOUNG and AT WAR

The first-hand story of young lives lived and lost in World War II

Sarah Wallis & Svetlana Palmer

To Miriam, Claude and Hilda

To Ben, Eleanor, Joel, Lukas, Sergei and Tristan

Table of Contents

Cover Page (#u4c2f690c-d879-57ce-a4f5-f0e0ccae8e14)

Title Page (#u046f9420-b593-5d47-acd5-aff9cce8fc0f)

Dedication (#u15679004-4367-5773-953c-0fdb24586b95)

Preface (#u1b5bc3fb-64df-5876-a45e-999ba241f5a5)

Part One (#u94dcb20e-da00-54f8-aded-16375f90a9ea)

Chapter One: The German Invasion of Poland September-October 1939 (#u3314136e-df32-53d4-b7a5-32a2dbd3e34e)

Chapter Two: The German Invasion of Western Europe April-September 1940 (#u72626f66-9ee6-5516-9f60-9a54abb3d88b)

Chapter Three: Under German Occupation January-June 1941 (#u3c0656ea-1f91-5b86-9851-9da014b27634)

Chapter Four: The Invasion of Russia June 1941-January 1942 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Five: The War Goes Global September 1941-July 1942 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six: The Holocaust May 1942-March 1943 (#litres_trial_promo)

Part Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven: After Stalingrad May-September 1943 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight: Inside Germany September 1943 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine: Waiting for Liberation April-August 1944 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten: Inside Japan October 1943-December 1944 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven: Germany in Retreat September 1944-April 1945 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve: The Final Months of the War March-September 1945 (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

Bibliography (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Preface (#ulink_978ef036-ec46-5b1f-8d26-3d743715639d)

While the diary of Anne Frank remains the most famous child’s diary the world over, other young people’s accounts that survived the Second World War have been largely forgotten, or remain unknown outside their own countries. Yet, written in private, concealed from parental gaze or enemy capture, these faded notebooks and singed papers tell us so much of what it was like to grow up in that war. Intimate and often more direct than those of adults, these diaries were a place to confide and to question, to preserve one’s dignity, or maintain independence of spirit and thought.

The diaries and correspondence that follow have been chosen for the uniqueness of the personal narrative and the quality of the writing. Though we initially set out to find diaries that followed the authors through adolescence to the end of the war, we soon realized that, unlike fiction, real diaries couldn’t always be made to fit. While some span the entire conflict, others start later, or contain large gaps; a few end abruptly, all too often a measure of the author’s short life. Parts of some diaries are missing; it is a miracle some have survived at all. Where we have included letters, many are telling by their omissions, as well as the writer’s tone.

Though ordered chronologically, this book does not set out to be a history of the war. Instead, it is driven by the stories of the contributors, framed by historical events and interwoven to bring out the often unexpected parallels and collisions of thoughts, ideas and emotions of those caught up in historic events, sometimes on opposite sides of the conflict, or thousands of miles apart. None of the diarists can be said to be representative of their nation: some succumbed to the ideas they were fed by adults around them or by the state, others confound our expectations; many of them perhaps shed light on why it is that wars are fought by the young.

After years of gathering, translating and researching these stories, we feel very close to our diarists. This is due not only to the length of time we have spent with them but also to the nature of their testimonies, so candid and so often courageous; they tackle the unpalatable, and reveal so much of themselves.

Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, London, 2009

Part One (#ulink_3716b6ca-13d6-533f-a0e2-7da711685e32)

CHAPTER ONE The German Invasion of Poland September-October 1939 (#ulink_006a32c8-eaf4-5b40-91d8-114232627e34)

‘We’ll see what will happen to me…’

Throughout the summer of 1939 governments across Europe hoped war could be prevented, or at least delayed. Though France and Britain did not respond when Hitler annexed Austria in March 1938 and Czech Sudetenland in September, they drew a line at Hitler’s claims on Poland. Hoping their alliance would serve as a deterrent, the two countries promised to come to Poland’s aid if Germany invaded. Their calculation was proved wrong. At 4:45 a.m. on 1 September 1939, 1.5 million German soldiers and 2,700 tanks began to cross Polish borders.

Having regained its independence at the end of the First World War, Poland was a lasting symbol of Germany’s humiliating defeat and territorial losses incurred as a result of the 1919 Versailles Peace Treaty. For nearly twenty years Poland had been home to 700,000 ethnic Germans, but animosity was rife, intensified when thousands of Germans were forcibly moved inland in the run up to the war, lest they assist the invader. Now Hitler urged his commanders to liberate their fellow ‘Aryans’ and send ‘every man, woman and child of Polish descent and language to their deaths, without pity or remorse’. Once conquered, Poland would be depopulated and resettled with the ‘pure Aryan master race’.

A country made up of many ethnic minorities, Poland was also home to 3 million Jews, the largest Jewish community in Europe. On receiving news of the German invasion, thousands fled their homes, aware of Hitler’s threats to ‘annihilate the Jewish race in Europe’. While his neighbours fled, fifteen-year-old Polish Jewish teenager Dawid Sierakowiak and his family decided to stay put in their home town of Łódź in central Poland. With no savings to pay for any means of escape, and unsure which way to go, they decided to face their fate in the city.

Sixteen-year-old Polish teenager Edward Niesobski, from the small border town of Ostrów in western Poland, knew war was imminent. As a member of the Polish Scout Movement, which promoted the nation’s independent spirit among the young, Edward had been undergoing regular paramilitary training for months, expecting to defend his country when the time came.

Dawid Sierakowiak recorded his thoughts and experiences in a diary he had started earlier that summer, but Edward Niesobski began to write only on the day of the German invasion itself. While waiting for instructions from his scout leader on the plan of action and his own role, Edward recorded the stark contrast between his romantic image of war and the actual events on the day.

1 September 1939

We’ve been expecting something big to happen all week. People have been gathering in groups all over town, talking; reservists have been called up; soldiers have been confiscating horses and cars. We are not going to let the enemy take us without a fight. Our scout group has been on full alert too. On Wednesday afternoon posters were put up, warning citizens to make sure they’re fully prepared. Mobilization began on Thursday. My mother and siblings have already left the city, but I’m staying here with my dad. A siren went off at about 5 a.m. this morning; then came the air raids. It has started. The Germans are trying to take over our Poznań province, Silesia and Pomerania. The whole country is rising up as one today to fight them.

German planes are circling in the sky like black hawks. Their drone is the voice of death. This morning I saw large groups of people crossing over from the other side of the border. They said they’d been attacked last night by their German neighbours! That’s why they left their homes and came over to our side of the border, some of them only half-dressed. Some are on bikes, others on horses and carts loaded with their most precious possessions. I’m not all that surprised some people who live along the border are now declaring that they are German. Everyone has the right to say who they are, and if you’re German, you’re German. But the thing is, these are the same Germans who’ve been eating our bread for the past 20 years, who have lived in our country all this time. They tried to stop us from rebuilding Poland after the last war, and now they’re aiming guns at our chests, guns that they’ve kept hidden all this time. Well we, the Polish people, are not going to forgive them. They must have had so much anger inside. But I’m not afraid of war because I believe we are going to win and I believe that after a thousand years of fighting with our worst Western enemy we are going to destroy them, once and for all. ‘The Germans won’t spit in our face, and they won’t make our children German,’ as the song goes. No longer shall our brothers on the other side of the border live in pain under the German yoke. So I am actually very happy.

The entire Ostrów administration has been evacuated by train. Most people have left too. Our army is moving to new positions. It looks like Ostrów is going to be surrendered without a fight. I’m not really worried about it though, I am sure it must be part of our military plan…