Hubert Babor

“Suddenly one of them screamed that he found a bone. At first we thought it was a deer bone and paid no attention. They went on digging and unearthed a human skull; eventually they found quite a lot of bones and I think three military dog tags, about the size of an egg with numbers on them. All soldiers used to carry those so they could be identified if killed. Then we found out that they were German soldiers. There were gas masks alongside, still in those tin cans. There were no weapons, just clothes residues, all rotten. So we buried it all in the forest. Nobody cared at the time, those were Nazi soldiers… Over time we found that US soldiers encountered young Nazis, Hitlerjugend, the fanatics in the area… They opened fire on the Americans; they fought back and shot them all dead, and then they buried them right there.”

“Some of the Germans here, the older ones, didn’t even know that there was a war. It didn’t really show here until Americans came here to liberate. All they had here was hard work, and in addition they lost their children to the war. Everybody was drafted and few, if any, came back… and there were many from around here. It wasn’t very nice initially, though later… Germans were looked down upon and sworn at… but I am not surprised really. There were not many German children going to school after the war – there were more Romanians. We were like that because we came from Germany. It was strange – Germans left and we came here. And we had problems, mainly mum – she wanted to go see her parents in Germany and she was not allowed to.”