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Ingolf Beyer (* 1953)

• he was born in 1953 in Bischofswerda

• later that year, he moved with his family to Dresden

• he started school in 1956 in Dresden

• he completed an apprenticeship as construction worker

• he was involved in the reconstruction of Dresden, notably the Prager Strasse

• 1976 – 1978 basic military service in the NVA (East German Army)

• in 1978 and 1979 he travelled to Poland, to visit the village where his mother grew up

• he went to university and graduated as an engineer

• marriage, birth of his two children

• in 2019, he took his wife to Poland to show her his origins

We spoke to Ingolf Beyer, born in 1953, about his parents’ life stories. His father, Bernhard Richard Beyer was born in 1920 in Schmölln, a village in Saxony. Ingolf Beyer’s mother on the other hand was born in 1923 in Groß Wilmsdorf, a village in today’s Poland, back then still East Prussia.

Bernhard Beyer grew up in a musical family. His father was already a musician, so he decided to study piano and trombone at the conservatoire in Radebeul. However, the young man had to halt his studies when he got drafted in 1939. After a short time of basic training, Bernhard Beyer was sent to the Western Front in France. After two years of combat, the 21-year-old got transferred to the Eastern Front where the true horrors of the war began for him. Since he worked as radio operator, Bernhard Beyer did not fight in the front lines but still saw the piles of corpses and the destruction caused by the war.

On the 8th of May 1945, when Germany capitulated, Bernhard Beyer’s force was taken captive by the Red Army and shipped off to Siberia where they were forced to work in collieries. This is where Bernhard Beyer’s musical abilities came to his rescue. He formed a band, together with other prisoners and got to play for the Soviet officers instead of working in a mine. As a reward, he received extra portions of scarce goods, like potatoes and onions, and started an illegal trade with the Russian staff. Another time, Bernhard Beyer was rewarded for his performance with a permit to enter the women’s section of the camp. This is where he met Annameta Olsowsky, a young woman who had been taken captive from her home and brought to Siberia.

Annameta Olsowsky had grown up in an East Prussian village where her family owned a farm. They lived relatively undisturbed from the war, except for the forced workers from France, who had to live and work on their homestead. It was only when three of her brothers got drafted and only one of them returned, that the family got to feel the consequences of the war. In February of 1945 the Red Army moved in Annameta Olsowsky’s village. First, they took her 56-year-old father and sent him to Siberia, where he died shorty after from typhus. Annameta Olsowsky and her twin sister managed to hide from the Soviet Army until they were betrayed by their neighbour. The two young women were spotted and locked up in a cattle wagon. For four weeks they travelled to Siberia. Many of the other captives died of hunger or thirst. On every stop, the soldiers threw out their corpses. In the meantime, Annameta Olsowsky’s remaining family, consisting of her mother, her older sister and her sister’s two children, was forced to leave their home in East Prussia and move to Germany.

Annameta Olsowsky’s time in Siberia was much harder than Bernhard Beyer’s. She was forced to work in the mines where she mainly transported trucks. Apart from that, she had to help out during the childbirth of her fellow captives who had been raped. While the camps were separated by sex, the work in the mines was not. This meant for Annameta Olsowsky, that she was safe in the camp but not in the mine. Fortunately, her foreman, who was imprisoned for murdering his wife, took care of her and became her protector.

This is when Bernhard Beyer started coming to her camp. He was immediately smitten by her even though she resented him for living a relatively easy life as musician while she had to do such physically demanding work. It took a lot of wooing on Bernhard Beyer’s part to get into Annameta Olsowsky’s good graces. When they finally got dismissed in late 1949, the two stayed in touch. Annameta Olsowsky moved to Lauenburg in the British occupation zone, where her family had found a new home. Bernhard Beyer however moved back in with his parents in Bischofswerda, a small town in the Soviet occupation zone. He finished his studies at his old conservatoire and got a job at the orchestra Staatskapelle Dresden in 1951. In the same year, Annameta Olsowsky decided to move to the GDR and get married to Bernhard Beyer. Two years later, she gave birth to their first son Ingolf and in 1957 to their daughter Ilona.

The family lived in Dresden where Bernhard Beyer worked, and the children went to school. Bernhard and Annameta Beyer set great value on educating their children about the war. When Ingolf Beyer was 14 years old, his father gave him a copy of “All Quiet on the Western Front” to read so that he would understand the horrors of war. The parents frequently spoke about their experiences in war and captivity during dinner and answered all of their children’s questions without sugar-coating anything. Whenever old friends from their time in captivity came to visit, they told their stories. One of these friends was Dieter Hartnick who became Ingolf Beyer’s godfather. He had been drafted shortly before the end of the war at 18-years-old and got taken captive by the Red Army. In captivity, Dieter Hartnick managed to learn Russian within a few months and got transferred to the office. Like Bernhard Beyer, he therefore held a privileged position within the camp. This is what brought the two young men together who quickly became friends and remained close for the rest of their lives.

However, dealing with their losses was not always easy. Annameta Beyer could not bear to return to her old home in Groß Wilmsdorf. Instead, Ingolf Beyer travelled there twice in the late seventies. On his first visit, together with his cousin, they went to see the house where their mothers had been born and had grown up. They even talked to the owners of the house who let them have a look inside which Ingolf Beyer found incredibly generous. During this visit, Ingolf Beyer met a young Polish woman who invited him for another visit the following year. When he visited her and her family in 1979, Ingolf Beyer met her aunt as well as the aunt’s husband, an Auschwitz-survivor. Ingolf Beyer was worried that this aunt’s husband would not have the highest sympathies for a young German man but when he voiced these concerns, he was invited to stay with them for a few days. In the following days, the Auschwitz-survivor took care of Ingolf Beyer as if he were his own son. This impressed him deeply.

On a different occasion, Ingolf Beyer travelled with three friends to Ukraine. While they stayed in Kiev, they went out dancing, where they were approached by a Ukrainian who had overheard them speaking German. The Ukrainian only said two words: “Voina plocho” (Russian: “War is bad”) and Ingolf Beyer agreed by saying “Da”. Then the Ukrainian ordered a bottle of Vodka, and simple as that, they became friends.