I was born in Lithuania in the small village of Paschnen. I was born just before World War II started. We were Germans that had been living in a German colony in Lithuania. We lived in a farmhouse with a thatched roof, adobe walls, and dirt floor. There were eight children born into our family, but only three survived childhood. I was the youngest, my father was in his 50s when I was born. At the beginning of the war, we were forced to move out of Lithuania to East Germany. My father was a farmer, and soon after this move, the Germans ordered us back to Lithuania following the Germans successful invasion of Poland. As the German army needed a supply of food, we were assigned to farm again—on a different farm that probably belonged to a Jewish family who were gone.
We were there one season and then we were ordered back to East Germany where we remained as refugees until early in 1945, when we had to flee from the invading Russians. Fortunately, dad found a horse and a wagon. spent six weeks in cold winter weather traveling on foot and wagon from East Germany to West Germany. It took a long time due to the extreme cold and deep snow. Traveling on the main roadways was prohibited because they were reserved for the military. We could not use the bridges , and were forced to cross rivers on the frozen ice. One wagon in our caravan actually broke through the ice, which terrified us all. Eventually we were relocated by the government into northern Germany. My mother died when I was six years old, and eventually most members of my family left for the USA. I attended a one-room school until I was fifteen, then went to work. I remained alone with my aged father in the attic of a farmhouse until we immigrated to the USA when I was seventeen.