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Polish-German Reconcilliation Seminar [491]
I know the name of the bauer my paternal grandparents had to work for
Actually, this is the experience of my family, too. My father-in-law was taken to Germany as a forced labourer during the WW2. At first he found himself on a farm in Eastern Germany with a bauer who was hostile and oppressive to him. Then after some time he decided to escape from that bauer and so reported himself to the local Amt (I think he had no chance to escape back to Poland from an area somewhere in Thuringen) to complain against that bauer and say he would not come back to him again . It may surprise you, but then they assigned him to a different bauer in the same village! He was very glad to work for that bauer and even developed some familial link with them which resulted in his making a child to the daughter of that bauer. This Polish-German friendship then continued and strenghtened to such a degree that the bauer asked him to marry his daughter and stay in Germany after the war. Meanwhile, my father in-law joined the US Army having already appeared in that area and became an American soldier. But as soon as the war ended, he did not decide to come back to that family and to his child, however, since he was afraid to be confronted by the former German soldiers coming back to the village after the war - or at least he said so. He returned to Poland where he settled in his native Mazovian village.
So, as you can see, the Germans had not been always so oppressive as you might think. The thing that amazes me the most in his story was that the local German authorities did not force him to go back to his original employer, but directed him to another one instead. Ironically, the more 'opressive' towards him may have been the Americans who supplied tons of cigarettes to their soldiers and as a result of this my father-in-law had beconme dependend of nicotine and later died of a lung cancer here in Poland.
I say, this is perhaps a better piece for the Polish-German Reconcilliation Seminar of Ms Atch than some ranting on war reparations.
