Trümmerfrauen, the Rubble Women

A couple of days ago I had some deliverymen from Germany at my house here in Paris, nice guys who worked hard for hours and kept up a steady stream of jokes and good humor.

One of them stood looking at my bookshelves. "You like to read," he said.

"Ja," I said. "Do you?"

"Ja," he said. "I see you have a lot of books on World War II."

I was slightly embarrassed at all those books on Hitler, Nazis, the Holocaust, D-Day, etc.. "It's nothing new-- I've been interested in World War II since I was a little girl." I didn't say that I'd become obsessed with the war when I first lived in Germany, like so many people who move there.

"My mother was 17 years old at the end of the war," he said.  "She was a Trümmerfrau, spent ten years of her life cleaning up the rubble. She lost her two brothers in the war. One at Stalingrad. Kopfschuss. Shot in the head. One stepped on a German mine in the retreat from Russia. My father was in the Hitler Youth. He said everyone wanted to be in it, it was an honor and a lot of fun. They didn't know any better, they were children. They've spent the rest of their lives being sorry for it.

"I'm interested in World War II, too," he said, "but in Germany I couldn't have a bookshelf like this. Everyone would say I was a Nazi."

The Trümmerfrauen were a tragic generation. They were little girls, trained to be mothers only, as the Hitler Youth took all German children; they spent their adolescence at war. Half the young men died or came home wounded; after the war, Germany was rubble and the women had to rebuild the whole country from the ruins. When Germany started to be prosperous again, their youth was gone. And all along, of course, people outside Germany felt they got what they had richly deserved. They had been the enemy. They were the generation that had been the most convinced Nazis.

A Trümmerfrau, Helene Lohe, taught me German as my babysitter years ago when I first moved to Germany. I'll write about her some day.

Here are two statues to the Trümmerfrauen in Berlin, and a couple of photos of the real ones.

Comments

[deb]

Thank you for this insight. I have always wondered about the everyday people caught up in the hysteria. So sad to lose one's life - to death or to cleaning up after it.

[Greg]

Interesting.

[Sedulia]

Liebe Rosmarie! Thanks. What is your book about?

[Philip]

Interesting entry, although I'm surprised you claim the Hitler Jugend took all German children, because they didn't.

[shane]

Hello,

My name is Shane, I am currently doing a project on Truemmerfrauen for my University. I find this topic very interesting. If you could return an email to me, i would greatly appreciate if you could answer a few questions, which you would know from your Mothers stories.

Any help would be greatly needed
Shane McCaul
Ireland

[Sedulia]

Shane, Everything I know is in the post above, sorry.

[Andrea]

Hello,

I need some information about the "trümmerfrauen" for a school project.
Could you send me an e-mail to my address telling me what do you know of this topic?

Any help would be fantastic!
Thanks,

Andrea (from Barcelona)

[Sedulia]

Read the comment right above yours.

[Rika Ohara]

Thank you for sharing this story and the beautiful photos.

http://www.bluefat.com/ThePotatoWoman.html

[Heide]

Can you direct me to the provenance of the 4th photo posted on your entry?

I am doing a body of artwork about trummerfrauen and related material. I am a bit shocked that the mass rape of women is not connected to the story of trummerfrauen, many of whom had been raped prior to (an during) their often forced labor. Instead, it seems as though they are lionized, with their abuse supressed.

Thank you in advance for your help.

[Sedulia]

Hello Heide,
The fourth photo is of an Aufbauhelferin in Berlin, as you can see from the photo info if you save the photo. The sculpture is by Fritz Cremer and here is more info about them: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Berlin,_Mitte,_Aufbauhelferin_und_Aufbauhelfer_von_Fritz_Cremer.jpg
Hope this helps.

Regarding the rapes, I have been reading about World War II most of my life, but the mass rapes tended to be mentioned only in passing until quite recently. You got the feeling a lot of the writers thought it was to be expected in wartime. In the past, women were also very often or even usually ashamed to say they had been treated so. Times have changed.

I feel sure that my babysitter (linked story) was raped by Russians, like most women in Berlin when the Russians arrived. It explained why she felt they were "animals." It is indeed shocking. But it wasn't something she and I would have felt comfortable talking about then. Things are different now.