Gertruda Galle

“They helped us on the field. One of them was a teacher. He was young still, and he asked me if I had some books. He spoke very nice German. I gave him what books I had, and some paper to write on. In 1945 at the strike of ten, they came to say goodbye. He and one other who worked with him in the forest. I still have the ring that he made us from five pfennigs. They were Russians. In the evening, when they were returning to the camp from us, Mum always baked them a loaf of bread and filled it with smoked ham. Because we weren’t allowed to give them bread with butter or eggs for instance. Mum baked it like this because it looked like a dry loaf, and we could give them that.”

Rudolf Galle: “There was a tile stove in the house. Those always had a hatch on the side for cleaning out the soot. Except they didn’t keep the fire at the front part, but in the draught of the chimney, because they didn’t know better. They were from the mountains and they didn’t know. They only had sheep and goats, they didn’t know anything else. They didn’t know what cold was in Greece, there it was enough for them just to light a fire and they all was good.” Gertruda Galle: “We were already living here, and we had the stove here, my husband was doing military service and we already had one daughter. I was boiling nappies on it, and suddenly bam, the stove caved in. Because the way they’d used it, it burnt out the inside and it caved in.” Rudolf Galle: “You can’t take it like that, they never saw anything in their life. They were untouched by another culture. They had rabbits up here, and the mess trickled down the walls. They had sheep in the cellars, and so much manure. Of course they didn’t know anything. [...] But they weren’t bad. That they’d steal or something, that didn’t happen. I never heard that a Greek would have stolen something from someone here.”