“We had finally arrived at our destination of Gmund am Tegernsee Bavaria after 5 days on the train from Berlin. We were grateful to have arrived at all, after having narrowly escaped repeated attacks on our train that had only held women and children. I guess that it hadn’t mattered, it was a German train, and to the Allied Forces we were the enemy.

Upon arrival, all passengers of the train were interviewed and classified into different groups. Even though our parents had divorced years before, because our father was a member of the Nazi party and a Haupt Sturmbannfurhrer in the Waffen SS, we were given some special privileges. Mutti, my brother Gottfried, and I were allowed to stay in the attic of a hotel in town called the Maximilian in the center of town.

Although we had a place to stay and we had chosen the least expensive room, we were still expected to pay for us to stay there. Mutti had very little money, so she took a job in the kitchen in exchange for our lodging. We were happy to be out of Danzig and away from the war, but Mutti did not like that we had to be affiliated with the SS people here at the hotel which had been commandeered to cater only to SS, Nazi officials, and their families.

Food shortages were now all over Germany, and once we left Berlin, our food was gone. Everywhere people were begging for food, but Mutti kept us fed better than anyone else by saving the peelings from the vegetables that were served at the hotel. We survived mostly off of carrots and potato peels that she would cook into a vegetable stew for us on a small smuggled burner plate in our room. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

Often the cooks needed extra help and would ask us boys to help wash dishes. One time, when no one was looking, I was so hungry that I decided to try and steal a slice of hard bread. No one was in the kitchen, so I hurried in and grabbed a big kitchen knife to try to slice a big chunk of bread. The knife slipped on the hard crust, and instead of a slice of bread, I sliced my left thumbnail right through the middle. I was bleeding like crazy and knew that now I would be in BIG TROUBLE! I used a kitchen towel to try to stop the bleeding and squeezing my thumb back together, quickly finished slicing my bread and ran full speed from the kitchen into a wood shed out back where I hid and gobbled down my stolen prize as quickly as I could. Hard bread soaked in my own warm fresh blood now filled my empty belly.

I bandaged my thumb as best I could and wore gloves to hide the injury from Mutti. I bribed my brother Gottfried with the last chunk of bread to keep the secret of what I had done. I was still terrified that my crime would be caught and I would be punished, but next time I saw the cook, he only looked at me and winked. From then on, the head cook would always give Mutti extra left over food with a smile. “For your boys”

We were safe and had a roof over our head, but we were still surrounded by people Mutti did not want us to be influenced by. My brother Gottfried was getting close to the age where he would have to register for the mandatory entrance to the Jungvolk, which you may know as Hitler Youth. This was mandatory for all children aged 10-14, and Mutti wanted to get us out of Germany before her son would be forced to participate in something she was adamantly against. In those days, you couldn’t just travel out of the country, you had to gain travel papers, which we did not have, so she would need to find some way to get us out of the country and away from the programs that would seek to indoctrinate her children into believing the ideas of the Nazi regime.

One of Mutti’s friends, another refugee who was a seamstress, had been asked to go to the cottage of Marga Himmler to sew some curtains. Yes, Marga HIMMLER, wife of the notorious Nazi leader, Heinrich Himmler. She asked Mutti to come along and help hold up the curtains as they were being fitted. Mutti agreed and took this opportunity to ask for help procuring travel papers to Austria. She knew you had to know someone with influence to get permission to go anywhere, and this was her chance. Mrs. Himmler agreed to help, and made sure that we got the documents that were needed for us to leave the country.

Mutti had found us a way out of Germany and into the Alps of Austria. She hadn’t had to make a deal with the devil, but she sure had to help make curtains for the “devil’s” wife. But she did what had to be done to get her children out of Germany and away from having to participate in Hitler’s Jungvolk. Although from the outside, it only looked like the Boy Scouts in America, she knew that it was not something she wanted either of us to have to take part in.”
-Jochen

I went into this story thinking I’d be reflecting about the starvation and the survival off vegetable peels and stolen bread, but the more I read and researched, that no longer seemed as important as who they were surrounded by. Who had gotten them out of Germany.

This week’s story didn’t bring me to tears, but instead made my blood pressure rise and my stomach feel a little like throwing up. The town they had gone to was a favored place for many elite Nazi officials. And although I said I haven’t seen any documentaries that tell what my father went through, I’ve seen plenty of documentaries about Heinrich Himmler. Turn on the history channel right now, and you’re likely to find one nearly any day of the week. Having to read and write about my Omi’s encounters with his wife just filled me with rage. She helped them get out of Germany, which is a good thing, but she did so with the help of someone who was married to a monster.

If you don’t already know, Heinrich Himmler was a powerful Nazi leader known as the “Architect of the Holocaust.” He was the Chief of Kriminalpolizei (Criminal Police) and Minister of the Interior. Which means he also was the head of the Gestapo and the Waffen-SS, of which my grandfather was a part of. As the principal enforcer of the Nazi racial policies, he oversaw the concentration camps and extermination camps, playing a role in the death of millions of Jews and others.

He was one of the truly evil German men.

I will never stop being grateful for my Omi (Grandmother) for doing her best to protect her children from believing in the ideas of the Nazi Party, despite her ex-husband being a part of the Waffen-SS.

I looked up what a “HauptStrurmfuehrer” in the Waffen-SS was, in my quest to learn a little more about the man I never met, killed by the Russians in the Battle of Budapest, who’s life choices have always been a cause for much inner turmoil. HauptStrurmfuehrer translated into Head Storm Leader. A Nazi Party paramilitary rank, a mid-level commander with the equivalent seniority to a captain in foreign armies. He’s buried somewhere in a mass grave in Budapest.

In doing my research, I actually found his SS number, the one my father hated that was tattooed on his arm. There he is, Franz Robiller, my grandfather, SS #218 905.

I need a drink. That’s all I can take for today.