Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Great-gran who resisted Nazi oppression reaches 100
In 1944 Waltraud Hollman was imprisoned in a Nazi prison and feared she’d be executed. 77 years on she celebrated her 100th birthday...
Aplucky underadolf ground “traitor” who was locked-up in Nazi Germany for sharing leaflets calling for a coup against Hitler has celebrated her 100th birthday.
It was December 1944 when Nazi stormtroopers burst into Waltraud Hollman’s office in Berlin to arrest her for “sabotage”. To the people of the city, it had become clear their country would lose the Second World War.
But Waltraud - who resides in the quiet village of Staple near Canterbury - was asked by a fellow anti-nazi to distribute illegal leaflets calling for a coup against their government and stop the war. Her act of rebellion was spotted by the ever-vigilant Gestapo, and two of Heinrich Himmler’s goons stormed into her office to arrest her as a “traitor and saboteur”. While most of those found to be undermining the regime were executed, Waltraud, who says her family had also sheltered Jews, managed to escape the firing squad. Almost 77 years on, the fearless great-grandmother has now celebrated her 100th birthday at home in Staple, receiving more than 100 cards from friends and family.
And she has shared her secrets on reaching the milestone, which include an acquired delicacy she eats like sweets in front of the television.
“My friends always say it’s telling the truth and pickled garlic,” she said.
“I am just lucky, and obviously being busy and active in every respect, because I’ve never been lazy.” Waltraud also likes to keep her brain active and enjoys crosswords, sudoku and the odd quiz show.
She admits she was spoiled on her birthday on Friday, with help from her daughter, and added: “I did have a lovely card from The Queen. I was very pleased and it had a lovely photograph.” Waltraud previously told how she had been spurred into action against the evil Third Reich after witnessing the horrors of Kristalnacht, and then seeing her parents shelter a young Jewish mother and her child.
One of her father’s customers was caught out after 8pm breaching a curfew imposed on Jews by the brutal Nazi regime - and went missing.
The customer’s wife was afraid to go to her house with their baby, so Waltraud’s family hid them in their home. “The trouble was that every time there was an air raid, we had to go in the cellar and we were afraid to take her,” she said. “Then one day she went out; we told her to be careful. She went out with the baby in the pram and we never saw her again.”
Today, Waltraud still wonders what happened to them both.
Asked by a fellow anti-nazi to distribute illegal leaflets calling on Berliners to rebel against their government and stop the war, Waltraud agreed. “I got involved in the group with friends, but I had to move away from them because I was evacuated from Berlin,” she said. “Then I met up with one of them again, Ernst. He said to me ‘Come on, help us. We have got to get rid of them’. “We handed out leaflets which said the public should start a revolution to end the war.
“I was told to hand the leaflets to as many people as possible, but it was so dangerous.” But on a cold night in December 1944, when the ever-vigilant Gestapo came for her, she thought she was done for. After being arrested she was thrown in a crowded prison cell in Stendal with six other suspects. “Someone split on me,” she said. “I was picked up by the police and held waiting for something to happen. You were just locked in a cell and I thought, ‘oh my god, how do I get out of here?’” There were just two beds and the other prisoners had to sleep on mattresses on the floor. To add to the squalid misery of the scene, they had to use a bucket as a toilet, which was emptied once a day. “You had dinner, usually soup, which had maggots floating on it already,” Waltraud said. “But we were all hungry so we ate it.”
By an incredible stroke of fortune, in the chaotic final weeks of Nazi Germany, the prison was liberated by soldiers from the Ninth United States Army in April 1945 and she was released. Waltraud’s amazing life story took another twist after the war, when she met Benjamin Hollman, who had been demobilised from the British army a week before, and they fell in love.
After what Waltraud called “a little bit of fiddling” on the British side, she got a passport which allowed her to visit England for three weeks.
She arrived on July 1, 1948, and went to the register office with Benjamin, but had to wait a fortnight for a marriage licence, and a further week to get married. On July 21, 1948, on the day she was supposed to travel to Germany as her passport was due to expire, Benjamin and Waltraud married.
The couple lived in Kent for the rest of their married life - with Waltraud still here to this day.
Benjamin passed away on April 1, 2007, aged 89.
‘Someone split on me, I was picked up by the police and held waiting for something to happen’