Time running out for war stories
GERMANS are being urged to overcome their reluctance of dwelling on the nation’s role in two world wars and instead to dig out the letters and diaries of soldiers who lie in 832 cemeteries around the world.
The Volksbund, Germany’s war graves commission, is asking families to send in personal accounts from the front so it can better tell veterans’ stories. The war biographies project is aimed at stoking the interest of younger generations and deepening the Volksbund’s co-operation with schools.
It is a challenging task. There is limited public interest in World
War I in particular within the nation and the vast German cemeteries in northern France and Belgium receive few visitors from home.
The burial at Langemark in Belgium last October of the remains of 84 German soldiers found in a crowd-funded archaeological dig in Wytschaete near Ypres received little coverage in German media.
The war biography project got under way in 2017 but the Volksbund has felt the need to issue a new appeal in the hope that people clearing out their attics while under lockdown will provide it with unearthed wartime correspondence.
Arne Schrader, the initiator of the project, said: ‘‘Especially at events at war cemeteries we are seeing how much the unadulterated presentation of individual fates moves people. This especially applies to adolescents and young adults.’’
The biographies of soldiers from World Wars I and II are read out at remembrance ceremonies and the Volksbund plans eventually to present selected ones in each of the cemeteries. ‘‘Time is running out. The last witnesses and even their next of kin soon won’t be able to tell us about it any more,’’ Christian Reith, a student working on the project, said. ‘‘So it is very important to record these individual perspectives of the war and its consequences for posterity.’’
The Volksbund is also looking for information on forced labourers and child soldiers buried in war cemeteries.
One recently presented biography tells the story of Hans Lochner, a Wehrmacht soldier who was killed in Cervaro, central Italy, in 1944 after being wounded in the stomach and lung. The death notice sent to his wife said the infantryman had fallen for ‘‘the freedom of Greater Germany in carrying out his military duties, true to his oath of allegiance to the Fuhrer, the people and the fatherland’’. His wife, Katchen, received the letter on February 8, 1944, almost a month after his death, just as she and one of her two daughters were about to go to Nuremberg station to meet him as he was due to return on leave that day.
The Lochner family provided the Volksbund with photographs, letters and documents. ‘‘Their example stands for millions of similar fates and is as unique as each single one of them,’’ the Volksbund said. Hans Lochner lies in the German war cemetery at Cassino and his story is told there.
The Volksbund tends the graves of 2.7 million dead in 46 countries. ‘‘Every single biography is a warning,’’ the Volksbund said. It has installed exhibitions in some of its larger cemeteries, including La Cambe in Normandy, Langemark and Costermano in Italy, that include personal stories.
The Times