Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part one War is a Terrible Thing!
- Part Two Guarding One’s Humanity During War: World War II
- 2 If Something’s Going to Get You, It’ll Get You
- 3 Prejudice, Bigotry, and Hatred. Love and Luck
- 4 Everything Went Downhill after that
- 5 In the Middle of a Hailstorm, One doesn’t Fear for One’s Own Life
- 6 Belonging to Something
- 7 Hard to Adjust After all that
- Part Three Other Voices, Other Wars: From Indochina to Iraq
- Part Four Civil Wars and Genocides, Dictators and Domestic Oppressors
- Part Five My Story, Your Choice How to Use it
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Acknowledgments by the Senior Author
- Index
4 - Everything Went Downhill after that
Gunther, Refugee and Displaced Person with an SS Father
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2014
- Frontmatter
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part one War is a Terrible Thing!
- Part Two Guarding One’s Humanity During War: World War II
- 2 If Something’s Going to Get You, It’ll Get You
- 3 Prejudice, Bigotry, and Hatred. Love and Luck
- 4 Everything Went Downhill after that
- 5 In the Middle of a Hailstorm, One doesn’t Fear for One’s Own Life
- 6 Belonging to Something
- 7 Hard to Adjust After all that
- Part Three Other Voices, Other Wars: From Indochina to Iraq
- Part Four Civil Wars and Genocides, Dictators and Domestic Oppressors
- Part Five My Story, Your Choice How to Use it
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Acknowledgments by the Senior Author
- Index
Summary
My name is Gunther. Usually when somebody asks me where I was born I always say I’m not from around here. My earliest recollection is of the fancy sort of a castle near Vienna that was a refugee station for the war. My actual birthplace as far as I know, well some people say the Northern part of Yugoslavia. But that's not what I understand. I understand Novi Sad. This was initially Serbia. It didn't become Yugoslavia until 1918. That would be on the border of Croatia, close to the border of southern Austria. I have no recollection of that since we had to get out because of the war. It was not popular to be German in what was considered Russian territory. We had to get out of there. We got half of a train because my people were part of the military and we went to Vienna through various steps. How we got to Novi Sad in the first place is beyond me. It could have been for religious reasons. We initially came from the Black Forest region, sometime around the First World War. All the way from there to Czechoslovakia. So we come from there. That's a long way from Germany.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Darkling PlainStories of Conflict and Humanity during War, pp. 76 - 95Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014