Wolfgang W. E. Samuel - German Boy

GERMAN BOY

A Refugees Story

WOLFGANG W. E. SAMUEL

With a foreword by
Stephen E. Ambrose

In memory of Hedy

Willie Morris Books in Memoir and Biography

Photographs courtesy of Wolfgang W. E. Samuel unless otherwise noted.

www.upress.state.ms.us

Copyright 2000 by Wolfgang W. E. Samuel
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America

08 07 06 05 04 03 4 3 2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Samuel, Wolfgang W. E.
German boy : a refugees story / Wolfgang W. E.
Samuel ; with a foreword by Stephen E. Ambrose.
p. cm. (Willie Morris books in memoir and
biography)
ISBN 1-57806-274-8 (alk. paper)
1. Samuel, Wolfgang W. E.Childhood and
youth. 2. World War, 19391945
Germany. 3. World War, 19391945
Refugees. 4. Germany (East)Social
conditions. I. Title.
D811.5. S2478 2000
940.548143092dc21
00-024662

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication
Data available

In early June 1998, the National Archives in Washington hosted a oneday conference on the fiftieth anniversary of the Berlin airlift, with speakers ranging from elderly men who had been in the Truman administration to young scholars just beginning their careers. The high point came at the end of the day, when eight men gathered on the podium. Seven of them had been pilots, the men who took the cargo planes into and out of Berlin on a three-minute basis, day and night, for over a year. The eighth man was listed as retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Wolfgang Samuel, but he looked to be ten years younger than the other men and surely could not have been a pilot in 1948. Each pilot spoke, telling stories that were funny, sad, and gripping, stories that left you weak with admiration.

Finally it was Colonel Samuels turn. He told us that at the time he had been a thirteen-year-old boy living near the Fassberg airfield, which was one of four bases used by the U.S. Air Force in the airlift. He had watched the planes take off and land on an assembly-line basis (it was one of the greatest feats of flying history). He spoke of how his mother had traded her body for food for her children; when the Americans came, she didnt have to do that anymore, and young Wolfgang and his sister had enough to eat for the first time in years. He told us that he had come to the States in 1951, had attended college, and then had joined the air force. He looked down the row of pilots with him on the podium, and said with the greatest admiration, You guys were my heroes. I wanted to be like you when I grew up. Colonel Samuel told this brief story with such simplicity of language and openness of spirit that the entire audience was in tears.

I sought him out at the reception at the German embassy that evening and asked for more. When he said that he had written a memoir, I asked if I could take a look. He sent it on. I was not impressed by the title or by the table of contents, which revealed that this autobiography was going to cover only the period of January 1945 to January 1951, from Samuels tenth birthday to his fifteenth. That didnt seem to me a very interesting part of some-ones life, and surely, I thought, could not be worth over five hundred single-spaced pages (the size of the original manuscript). Still, I wanted to know more about the airlift and Samuels unusual perspective on it, so I took the manuscript along on my next plane ride. Once I started reading, I couldnt stop. I read in the cab going to the hotel. I read in my hotel room until it was time for the dinner and speech. I read when I got back to my room, at breakfast the next morning, in the cab going back to the airport, at the airport, during the flight, and when I got home. I read the whole thing in less than a day, and Im writing this the following morning indulging the full flush of my enthusiasm because I can think of no reason to restrain it.

A number of remarkable elements are woven into the fabric of this autobiography. Most notable is Wolfgangs honesty about what he saw, said, felt, and thought. He is an attractive, sympathetic, and active character, full of determination and grit, with big eyes, a wonderful imagination, and a fun-loving spirit. A boys boy. But he lived in the most awful poverty, almost never adequately fed or sheltered, owning one shirt, one pair of pants, and wooden shoes. And not only was he poor and hungry; he was also being bombed at night and shelled during the day. He was a refugee caught up in one of the biggest and bloodiest mass migrations in history, the flight of the German people from the Red Army. The year 1945 was the worst in the worlds history. That year Wolfgang turned ten, and he was at the epicenter of the catastrophe. His story begins just before his birthday in early February 1945, and recounts the stages in his familys journey, beginning with the flight from eastern Germany, near Dresden, to Berlin, by train. For a few weeks that March, Wolfgang lived in Berlin, where he made four and more trips each night to the air-raid shelter. Then his family went on farther west, traveling by horse-drawn wagon in a convoy of German soldiers, described in scenes that are reminiscent of Napoleon retreating from Moscow.

At the center of this story about a German boy is his mother, a woman of strength, character, and wit. She is remarkable in so many ways. Having grown up a poor farm girl, she has moved up in life and has married an officer. When we meet her, she is depicted as someone who loves to party and is uninterested in politics or the progress of the war or in anything serious. She is a good mother, although she does at times exhibit a bad temper and can be physically cruel in punishing Wolfgang. Her husband, who has flaunted his disloyalty in her face and whom she intends to divorce when the war ends, is away in the Luftwaffe. This young woman of thirty had to take the responsibility of holding the family (including grandparents) together while escaping the Russians. That she did it is astonishing; how she did it is mesmerizing.

The story of a mother and her son may be in some ways familiar territory, but this voyage is unique. After leaving Berlin because of the incessant bombing, they joined a refugee column headed west, but they didnt get far enough and were sealed in on the Soviet side of the zonal boundaries. The view through an eleven-year-old boys eyes of the general tightening of Communist control over East Germany in 194546 is fascinating and instructive. Wolfgang was hungry to learn, and the author is especially good in recounting how the Communists set up the school system and how bad it was. In a harrowing escape, including crossing the border on foot in the midst of a severe snowstorm, the family reached Fassberg, in the British zone, where they lived as refugees. Eventually Wolfgangs mother married a U.S. Air Force sergeant, and he lived in the American zone. He tells us in each case how the system looked to a boywhat it was like to be growing up under Russian rule, British rule, and American rule. He also relates, in vivid detail, what the Berlin airlift was like from his point of view.

I think German Boy has all the qualities of greatness, including a strong narrative, the depiction of high drama in ordinary peoples lives, memorable characterssome of whom are evil and some of whom perform extraordinary acts of kindnessand two strong-willed and courageous central figures, mother and son, caught up in a cataclysm but enduring, surviving, prevailing. I love the book.