STORIES OF DISPLACEMENT

We collect stories of displacement, diaries, letters, photos and other documents, thus permanently preserving these important testimonies of displacement and expulsion. We have already received over 800 unpublished personal accounts of forced migration and life-history recollections from private sources in recent years. They are available in our reading room.
Have you or someone in your family also experienced displacement or expulsion? Share your story with us.

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Heidi Nowrath steht 1943 mit elf Jahren vor dem Haus ihrer Großmutter in Obernigk bei Breslau, nachdem sie, ihr Bruder und ihre Mutter nach den Bombardierungen Berlin verlassen mussten.© SFVV, Schenkung: Heidi Huffmann

Heidi and Christa Nowrath

Heidi Nowrath lived in Berlin together with her family until the bombings in March 1943. She, her mother Christa and her brother Horst moved in with their grandmother in Obernigk near Breslau after their flat was destroyed. They received support from afar from their father, who was the head of the Luftwaffe's clothing office. Mother and daughter fled Silesia from the Soviet troops by different routes in February 1945. Heidi Nowrath travelled to Berlin by train where she met her parents again. Due to renewed bombings, they moved to Dresden, where they met the same fate. The family was only able to stay in emergency accommodation until the beginning of May. After that they wandered around without prospects until they found refuge with an uncle in Dresden a short while later. After the end of the war, Heidi Nowrath was taken from Berlin to East Frisia with other malnourished children by the organisation "Aktion Storch" (Operation Stork). Today she lives near Göttingen.

Astrid Paetsch fuhr im Alter von neun Jahren mit dem Frachtschiff Robert Möhring von Riga, wo sie seit 1941 wegen der Arbeit des Vaters lebte, nach Danzig. Im Anschluss flohen sie mit ihrer Mutter und ihrer Schwester zurück in ihre Heimat nach Fraustadt.© SFVV, Schenkung: Astrid Rogalski

Astrid Paetsch

When her father was appointed head doctor at the German clinic in occupied Riga in 1941, the entire Paetsch family moved with him from Lower Silesia and was able to build a comfortable life there. They managed to flee across the Baltic Sea to Danzig aboard a cargo ship in 1944. A short time later, the pregnant mother returned to Fraustadt in Lower Silesia with her two daughters. As the Red Army was approaching, they fled via Primkenau to Zwickau, where their brother Rudolf Heinz was born. They stayed there until the end of the war and fled to Gross Bülten in Lower Saxony at the end of 1945. After the father was released from British captivity, they built a new life for themselves in Salzgitter-Watenstedt, where they converted a former SS supervisor's barracks into a residential building with an integrated doctor's practice.

Thea Petereit berichtet im Jahr 1946 Charlotte Stöllger, der Schwester ihres Mannes, die sie durch das DRK wiederfand, von ihren aktuellen Lebensumständen. Sie schreibt ihr, dass die Familie ihren Mann Max vermisst, von dem sich nicht wissen, dass er zu diesem Zeitpunkt schon verstorben ist.© SFVV, Schenkung: Familie Petereit

Thea Petereit and Charlotte Stöllger

Thea Petereit and Charlotte Stöllger were sisters-in-law. Both came from Juschka-Budwethen in Memelland. The pregnant Thea Petereit fled at the end of September 1944 with her five kids. They walked to Königsberg-Rothenstein, then took a ship to Pillau and another one to Danzig, from where they took the train to Gotenhafen. The journey to Warnemünde was again by ship, until she finally arrived in Lower Saxony, where her son was born in April 1945. Her sister-in-law Charlotte Stöllger fled in October 1944. She followed a similar route via Königsberg and Pillau and then made her way to various refugee camps in Copenhagen, from where she then fled to Schleswig-Holstein. Her husband was killed in the war and she lost touch with her sister-in-law and brother until years later, when he was already seriously ill. They did not reunite before his death, but there was lively correspondence.

Contact

E-Mail: geschichten@f-v-v.de
Phone: + 49 30 206 29 98-23