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Chapter 15
The Red Army arrived at Auschwitz on 27 January 1945 at 15:00. Two hundred and thirty-one Red Army soldiers died fighting to liberate the complex of camps. There were 7,500 prisoners alive.
Battle-hardened soldiers, used to death were shocked by the Nazis' treatment of prisoners. Red Army general Vasily Petrenko, commander of the 107th Infantry Division, remarked:
I who saw people dying every day was shocked by the Nazis' indescribable hatred toward the inmates who had turned into living skeletons. I read about the Nazis' treatment of prisoners in various leaflets, but there was nothing about the Nazis' treatment wof women, children, and old men. It was in Auschwitz that I found out about the fate of the Jews.
In the Spring of 1945, the Red army took Berlin with a massive loss of over 80,000 men. Following the collapse of Nazi Germany, the four powers divided the country into four occupation zones - under the administrations of the USA, the UK, France and the Soviet Union.
Altenburg, in Thuringia, became part of the Eastern bloc belonging to the Russians.
The Soviet bloc of Germany in 1945
In Henner’s mind, he fought in North Africa to defeat the Nazis, and return home to Altenburg. It’s impossible to know how he coped on learning the fate of his family. How much news had got through from the Red Cross, before he left Africa, I don’t know.
At least when he went to Amsterdam in 1946, he could meet with his cousin who had survived the camp. Once in Holland, Henner wanted to return to Altenburg, but it wasn’t easy to achieve, being part of the Eastern bloc.
In 1946, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, the SED, became the ruling party of the East German Communist Party.
The Town Hall in Altenburg then
Henner went to Zurich. He was shocked to see people going round as normal, like there had been no war. Switzerland, of course, had been neutral during WW11. While there, he wrote to the President of the State of Thuringia, asking for permission to return to Altenburg:
What causes me to make this application is, on the one hand, the desire to continue my father’s life’s work, where he was violently forced to leave it, work with which he strongly identified, and on the other hand, my wish to actively contribute to the building of a better Thuringia and Germany. Surely it is the case that today more than ever all honest hands, and every positive man will be needed to create a better future out of yesterday’s evil.
The President passed the letter onto the Mayor of Altenburg, Paul Berchert, who offered condolences for the fate of the family, and sent Henner an entry permit. However, the President sent a subsequent letter, saying permission could only be granted by the Soviet Administration in Berlin.
They told Henner to report to the Soviet Embassy in South Africa, but at this point, his application was turned down. There was no possibility to return, to continue the work of his father and grandmother.
In addition, the family home passed from the ownership of the Third Reich to ‘the property of the people‘.
However, Henner was determined to visit his hometown once more, and through his work, managed to get a pass to the Leipzig Trade Fair. Once in Leipzig, he made a clandestine visit to his hometown. Years later he wrote:
When, after 1945, my various attempts to obtain a permit to visit Altenburg, my hometown and the place where I was born, fell through, I took matters into my own hands during a business trip to Europe (at the time I was living in South Africa) and traveled to Altenburg without permission using a Leipzig Trade Fair pass. I absolutely wanted to see my hometown, to follow my memories, and to visit well known places. However my spontaneous reaction was completely different than I had expected: I stood in front of our family house like a stranger. Of course, I could not enter it. There were no longer any relatives or friends in the city. After a solitary walk through the streets, there was nothing else to do than to leave the city again quickly. For the first time it was quite clear to me that my love for Altenburg, obviously was always related to our harmonious home, our happy childhood, and our happy family life at that time.
This was Henner’s last visit to Altenburg. He could not entertain going back again. He persuaded the South African and later, British authorities to put Altenburg as the country of birth in his passport, so that ‘Germany’ was not mentioned. He refused to speak German again.
However, I grew up with the stories about his childhood in Altenburg, and although I never knew most of the family, he ensured they lived on in memory. He often said that he would always be a smalltown boy.’
Franze with her girls
The family story with Altenburg does not stop here. On my father’s passing, I realised I was free to visit the family hometown, without fear of disrupting my father’s equilibrium. A new chapter of my life opened, the day I arrived in Leipzig, en route to Altenburg.
🌿 This will be continued in two weeks time on March 20th. Thank you for reading.
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