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QUESTION Are there any
Germans still living in what was once Prussia?
FURTHER to the earlier
answer, in the Treaty of Versailles, after the First World
War, in 1918, East Prussia was separated from the main part of
Germany, because of the so called Polish
Corridor.
In 1939, Hitler asked
for the return of the Corridor, and when this was refused by
Poland, he marched in with his armies. We then had the
beginning of the Second World War.
When the Russian Armies
entered East Prussia, people started to flee, out of fear of
what the soldiers would do to the civilian
population.
Although Swiss by birth,
my family and I lived in Koligsberg (Kaliningrad now) at the
time, and I was one of the refugees.
Thousands of people
marched west in the terrible winter of 1944/45, in
temperatures of 15-20 degrees below zero. They were shot at by
Russians and those caught were brutally treated and often
killed.
We had no warmth, no
food, no shelter. That is the reason why hardly anybody is
left in Königsberg (once the capital of East Prussia) and the
northern part of the country.
Most people in England
don't really know what happened in the East - Russia was an
ally. I wrote about it in my Autobiography called HELGA, which
has now been reprinted.
Helga Gerhardi -
Aylesbury Bucks![]() | 
