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The re-unification of East and West 1 Germany into one nation has been one of. the most significant international news stories of this year. Although it kas been covered thoroughly by news organizations around

_. the world, there is aiso a Terrace connection to these events, Terrace _ Review reporter Tod Strachan spoke recently to local resident Willy —

Schneider, a well-known figure in ihe community and chairman of the-

in his home country in this two-part series.

by Tod Strachan

An August sun quictly dawns through the mist: peeking between gars of architecture from another era. It’s early. It’s Peaceful. Tree-lined

_ Streets drip in morning dew and commerce has not yet begun to disturb

the solitude of distant hills. Rolling hills, which have already in this new day begun to capture the imagination of its lone witness. A young

boy, alone, ready to challenge the world.

The boy wouldn't normally be on the street at this hour. It was August. Schools were closed for the second holiday of a school year which began in mid-April. And every young boy knows that holidays are for sleeping late, exploring long, and ayoiding chores. But this is Germany. The year is 1933. And young boys don’t idle their youth away like those in other lands, Here, there is purpose. Exciting purpose. —

Germany’s youth had been half-

lured, hhalf-dragged into ‘the countryside with a promise of Boy Scoit-style adventure. But, dragged or lured, few complained. By comparison, Boy Scouts were for mindless cowards. Hitler's youth were men. With no matches, they learned how to light a fire; with compasses, to read a map; with rifles, how to aim and shoot. - A boy doesn’t ask why he shoots a rifle at a target. It’s exciting, fun... grown up. He simply shoots at the paper, probably with dreams of some heroic conquest, but not with any vision of killing his fel- low man.

_ Still, a boy reveres his teacher, and learns. He listens to the nro. .

fessional soldier who shows him how to match the rhythm of his breathing with a careful aim. How to squeeze the trigger slowly, gently, with great sincerity.... as

_ though caressing the hair of a girl

or shaking the hand of a friend. And he listens intently when he is told how. to put these skills together in order to reap the greatest profit from the expenditure ‘of a single round, A boy doesn’t question these things. It’s exciting, fun... a grown-up game, Thousands of young German boys played these innocent but deadly games for nearly a decade, playing along the banks of nearby rivers, the same rivers where they often played and laughed like other boys in the world. Rivers where they swam with their friends, fished with their fathers, and in the winter, skated with the gang. Country hill sides. Running and playitig with loaded riffes at the ready. The same peaceful hill sides

where they hiked and picnicked ' fathers,

with their mothers, brothers and sisters, But then they were drafted into Hitler’s army and it was no longer a game. Boys became unwilling

men, shooting other unwilling men

in foreign countries. Knowing how, |

_ but not really why. But. if: ‘they didn’t understand, -

these: boys playing war wore Iub

Willy Schneider: Saw what was in store from behaviour of Russian occupying forces.

lant nevertheless. State-owned radio, the only radio they could hear, broadcast report after report of victory upon victory. The Ger- man people were the masters of all people, Hitler had told them, and they were making their mark on the world.

- By 1942,- though, things were beginning to change. Young sol- diers were beginning to ask ques- tions, Their Jewish uncle, or Rus- sian aunt, had disappeared and no one could tell them why. Least of all the feared Gestapo, the Geheime Staats Polizei, who knew everyone but answered to none, There were only rumours. Some people, it was said, were a threat

to the state; and no one dared talk |

openly to friends.

A year later, the German dream began to collapse. German soldiers, young boys, were dying. Their sightless staring eyes and blood- soaked bodies testament to the simple fact: Germany was no longer winning the war. Young men, scared: men, no longer defended the state. They defended their lives... until they were either killed or overrun by enraged allies determined to end the unwarranted and heartless assault of Germany on the rest of world.

On May 8, 1945, the suffering ended. The allies had taken Berlin

and were beginning to divide the [

spoils of war. German boys who once played with rifles, then went to war, were glad. The fighting

and killing had’ stopped. And,

although they would have no part in deciding their fate they looked towards the future with great opti- mism.

Hitter was dead. They would ‘make friends with the allies.

Rejoin ‘the world. Finally, things would be ‘as they" were. Young boys. — their sons — playing on. quiet river banks, Tunning over gentle country hills... Without any

. Tifles to tarnish their dreams.. Terrace Public Library board of directors. Schneider recalls his youth -

. in East Germany and offers some reflections on the new developments

But for. many, it- was a dream

with little promise. A.dream that"

would outlast their own brief lives; possibly even the lives of their children. For them, there would be

_ ho friends, no rejoining the world.

Germany had made at least one enemy who had yet ‘to level its revenge. Russia, the Bear, had been mortally wounded — sixteen million had died at Germany’s hands — and they weren’t about to let anyone forget. .

Willy Schneider returned to his home town of Plauen, Germany, in November 1945, The memories of war were fresh. He had been

‘drafted into the German Heavy

Mounted Artillery on April 16, 1942, spent a few months at boot camp in East Prussia, and on June 25 was sent to war. First in the Crimean Peninsula; and | four months later, to northern Russia where Germany held Leningrad under siege for more than two years. On January 14, 1944, how- ever, Russia began their march, their great offensive, and within 15 months met their allies in Bertin, ending the war.

But as Schneider neared his home town, more distant memories began to surface as well. That early moming August sun in 1933, Heading into the country to learn how to shoot a gun. The 1920's, the Prosperity Years, had faded into depression. By 1932, there were 5.6 million unemployed in ' Germany alone. President Hinden- burg named Adolph Hitler as the German Chancellor in January 1933, and in March, the Reichstag gave Hitler dictatorial powers. Opposition parities were. dis- banded. The Nazis alone were in control of German lives, but-

. Terrace Review — Wednesday, October 10, 1990 AIS /

EST... again

Schneider was only 10 and: the

significance of these events were. -not a part of his young mind.

For Schneider, there was only the

exuberance of youth. The promise: and optimism of a future, which,

for any 10-year-old boy, is never much. further away than tomorrow.

There was the excitement and .

challenge of Hitler’s version of Boy Scouts. Learning how to shoot a gun.

It was a time when days lasted forever and no detail was worth wasting a moment of life on point- less worry. Playing on the banks of the Weise Eister River. Hiking swimming, picnics. But for many German boys, Schneider's boy- hood friends, those days would be the final happiness of their lives. Early morning walks to the coun- try, lured by Hitler’s fate. Shot dead by an angry world who re- fused to accept Hitler’s will.

Much of. Plauen had been destroyed, As in the rest of Ger- many, about 60, perhaps 70 per- cent of Schneider’s home town had been bombed or levelled by allied artillery. Yet, there was hope. True, Hitler’s promise of German rule for a thousand years had been dashed. But their homeland, Ger- many, was still whole.

And it was with acceptance, with the knowledge that there would be no more war, that Schneider and his countrymen watched in silence as the allied forces drew a line on their map. This line began near Lubeck on the Baltic Sea, headed south to the Elbe River, which it followed in a southeasterly direc- tien to the smail Schnackenberg, swung sharply westward and travelled nearly to the town of Bodenteich, zig-zagged south along the Ohre River and Weser-Elbe-Kanal to Hdtenslebin, Elirich, Lauchréden and Spahl, and finally swung southeast past Um- merstadt and Hirschberg to meet the Czechoslovakian border near

” Bverything to the west of this

- line was to be administered by:the western allies, primarily the United

States, Great’ Britain and. France,

and. everything. to the east of the line was to fall under Russiait rule.

Why such 2 a ‘division? According

to Schneider, World War II had -

cost. Russia dearly, and half’ of Germany was their reward. Berlin, the capital of Germany, was located well within the Russian sector, but it was agreed by the allies that Berlin would also be split between cast and west, and that a corridor between Berlin and. the western world would ‘be granted to the western allies.

West Germany soon began to recover from the war and eventual- ly showed signs of renewed pros- perity. But it was different in the east. Russia annexed large portions of East Germany and it became a much smaller version of what had existed before.

"I began to see what was in store for East Germany," Schneider tecalls from the few months he remained in his East German home

in Plauen, “when I saw. the beha- viour of the Soviet occupation forces and the behaviour of the German puppet government.”

At that time, travel between cast and west was relatively easy and Schneider, not liking what he saw, moved to’ West Germany in the Spring of 1946. Until 1990, he only returned once, for a single day in August, 1947, And already, the "decay was setting in", he recalls. "It was clearly visible."

town of -

The challenge: a building i in an East German community that still bears bullet holes and destroyed windows from the war. Rebuilding East Germany will be a formidable task tor the reunified nation.

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