Ingolf Beyer

"For five years, that is, the period of her imprisonment, from February 1945 to December 1949, my mother worked underground in coal mines. These lorries with the black coal that was broken… She always had to push, pull, transport them to the shaft. That usually consisted of heavy physical labour, what she had to do there. Well, it was a women's camp where she was. If I remember correctly, there were 1,200 or 3,000 women, of which 800 survived. And the others just died, starved, perished. And she described to me in detail that, for whatever reason, she had to work there as a forger. She also had to help out the raped women during childbirth and so has seen much, much misery and much death. She repeatedly assured me that it was a terrible time."

"It was in February 1945. Of course, everyone went into hiding. And in the case of my mother, specifically, she was betrayed by the neighbour because her daughter was taken away by the Russians. And then she said, “In the house next door, there are two other girls hiding upstairs in the attic.” And then the Russians went up to the attic and took my mother and her twin sister away. They were then put in cattle wagons or goods wagons, whatever. And they were shipped directly from East Prussia to Siberia. The flight or the displacement or the imprisonment or whatever you want to call it… They were travelling for four weeks. A lot of people died, be it of starvation, of thirst, whatever. And whenever the train stopped, the corpses were thrown out of the wagon."

"Yes, they were nine siblings. My mother has a twin sister, then another pair of twins died right after birth. And from the brothers, the eldest, he was spared from the war, because he was a blacksmith and shoed horses for the Wehrmacht in Berlin. And the second brother, Willi Olsowsky, died in the war. He was a commander of a Tiger tank and was shot dead in an attack. Back then, they had to look out of the turret, and he was hit in such an attack. And my mother's youngest brother went missing. He was drafted at 18-years-old to the flying school in Oschatz and then he was never heard of again. And another brother, Hans Olsowsky, was in the Navy. He survived everything safely, but then died of appendicitis in 1954. I can still remember that a picture of her fallen brother hung in our bedroom for a long time. She spoke of everyone with respect but was pragmatic about it: It was war. And war means loss. "