Class photo from Grade 1, Vera is sitting down, first from the right in the first row.
Vera and her class in Berlin.
Gosslerstrasse 18, Berlin. The Shimanski family lived on the fourth floor.
Vera with her mother Greta.
The Swastika
You walk into one of our Christian churches. An atmosphere of peace and serenity overpowers your body and soul. The knowledge of all the people before you who have sat in the pews, who have given their hard-earned money and often their own labour services, and with laborious day’s work built these churches with paintings, richly ornamented woodwork and heavy doors. Then one sees Jesus hanging nailed to a cross with bloody hands and feet. It is such a grim and dominant sight that the peace and energizing that one had just experienced gets transformed into disgust and a longing to get out of the building. Nevertheless, the representatives of Christianity have succeeded at converting this symbol, with all its cruelty and humiliation, to some sort of symbol for love and peace. This just proves how people’s thoughts and intelligence can be manipulated. Home-made biblical and sermon texts with connotations and assertions are pounded into the heads of generations of church-goers and get them to see such a sadistic and cruel symbol of Jesus on the cross as a symbol of love.
With the swastika the opposite has been done. With incessant lies and hateful rhetoric, they have managed to make the symbol of the sun and life into a loathsome symbol. The symbol of torture about the crucifixion of Jesus has been manipulated to be the message of Love, while humanity has been manipulated to view the sun symbol for all life on Earth as the sign of hate. How easily do the masses allow themselves to be deceived?!
I only remember fragments of my childhood before 1933, for natural reasons. But the suffering, tears, and scarcity that I witnessed around me in the struggle for existence can hardly be erased.
My family lived in a relatively new apartment building on Opitzstraße. It consisted of two rooms and a kitchen. One room was rented out to give our meager economy a boost. I had my bed in the kitchen. My father’s bad mood, which was caused by his being unemployed and poor, was a constant source for quarrels and tiffs. Mother worked as a cleaning lady for a few diplomats and their families for a few small coins, and it was probably not easy to accept that roll, given that she was a former home-loving girl from a middle-class home. But it was certainly a good experience about the value of work in all contexts.
Father and I walked out to Grunewald, a near-by forest, and collected ant eggs, which we sold to bird salesmen. I still remember the creeping and biting ants on my arms and legs, when they bravely defended their hills. To this day a chill still comes over me when I see these creepy-crawlies doing their industrious work. One time I tripped and fell with the basket full of glass jars with eggs and badly cut the underside of one of my arms on the splinters.
I remember my parents strictly warning me never to follow a stranger, not even to play on the street. They worried as soon as I was out of their sight. The boogiemen and beggars made life unsafe for the Berlin kids (and other kids in bigger German cities) before 1933.
If I were ever left at home alone, I was given strict orders never to open the door or answer through the mail slot if someone knocked on the door. People begging for bread were not always what they seemed to be. One such “beggar” man looked through our mail slot and, seeing my terror-stricken being, showed me his penis through it. I hid in the clothes closet, where my parents found me in tears. That is the way it was during the “wonderful democratic days of the Weimar republic”, an inferno with all sorts of scum who permeated the capital of the country.
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One strike changed everything!
When the National Socialists gained power, they made May 1 a national holiday. I quote Dr. Goebbels on May 1, 1933: “Parents and children, workers and citizens, entrepreneurs and employees, high or low, the divisions of the classes are wiped out. We are one people! The sun shines once again over Germany”.
In the summer of 1933 Mother and I travelled to Sweden with other children and mothers with the help of the Swedish congregation. Mother and some of the other women worked in the orphanage in central Sweden and we had a pleasant summer. The residents in the community looked on us with curiosity and wondered about our way of playing. The different environments that we had grown up in, compared to the Swedish children, made us inventive. We made “cars” with seats, hoods, and instrument panels out of dirt. Wheels from baby carriages were turned into steering wheels, etc. “You Germans can sure be creative and cooperative!” said our Swedish friends, a little jealously.
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Upon our arrival to Berlin Stettiner Bahnhof we were met by a happily smiling SA (Storm Troopers, translator’s note) man with a swastika armband in the familiar colours of red, white, and black around his arm and surprisingly I discovered that it was my father in that uniform! He was a completely different father than we had left about a month ago. It was a father who was straight-backed, happy, and proud who lifted me up and carried me on his arm.
But it was not only the person who had changed under the sign of the swastika. The times changed in 1933. Now I was allowed to play on the street where the big poplars framed the avenue. There was now a liberating atmosphere over the home’s protection and the parents’ mood. Gone were the quarrels, anxieties, and worries. A new time had come!
We moved to a three-room apartment on Markelstraße. Hermann Göring’s rental regulations for older buildings had made it possible to rent larger apartments. I got my own room until my brother was born in 1936.
Unemployment disappeared and an era of hopefulness took over. Everything got better under the banner of the swastika! For me, the swastika can never be turned into a symbol of fear, nor can I be convinced that it is a sign of darkness. To me it will always be a sign of the sun and the light. It is a symbol of luck with the banners decorated with flowers and golden bands.
Along Gosslerstaße, where my maternal grandparents lived, the blue and yellow Swedish flag always shone in harmony with the black, red, and white swastika banners.
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During a trip to Helsingborg, Sweden in 1938, when we stayed with a well-off Swedish-Danish family with six children and a lot of servants, I, a Berlin child, experienced a wonderful, warm summer as a member of the family. I remember the summer cabin with the grass roof, and the sunny days that tanned my skin and bleached my hair as an unforgettable and wonderful time.
I often wore black running shoes, shorts, and a white tank top with the HJ (Hitler Youth, translator’s note) symbol, where the swastika shone brightly. At that time the people around me did not react to that symbol.
One day when I was at the beach, I met a uniformed youngster in blue and yellow who asked me if I wanted to come to their near-by camp to tell them about Germany. I suppose that this was the first time I had unknowingly come in contact with the Lindholm movement/Nordic Youth. Their camp was nestled in lush greenery by the edge of a forest and the youth asked many questions, eager to learn about Germany. I answered their questions and told them what I could. They were obviously satisfied with my answers, given that I was thanked with a big silver coin that I, like a child, could not resist the temptation to turn into candy, or in my case, coconut balls, which for me were a delicious and rare treat.
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The years passed by. The swastika became a symbol of security, the symbol of victory, and later, for the struggle and the will to resist, and finally the symbol of trust.
In March, 1945, when Mother, my brother Folke, and I went to Lübeck under Swedish protection, I for the first time experienced the winds of change: the hatred of the symbol. One of the men from the Red Cross with the so-called white buses screamed wildly about my brown HJ jacket with the HJ mark on the sleeve, the jacket I was so proud of. It was my possession, and totally taken by surprise by his hatred, I re
plied angrily that I will continue to wear it. But the pressure from our surroundings made my mother take it away from me at an “appropriate time” and replace it with a few eggs.
The poor swastika, I always think, when I see it doodled as a symbol of fear (often turned the wrong way, just like the clearly incorrect interpretation of the meaning of the symbol). But even the so-called sympathizers of National Socialism use our swastika/sun symbol so often in incorrect ways and for incorrect purposes. They want to “threaten” people with it by saying “Wait for the coming revenge”, “curse or executioner”. Think about how they play into the hands of our opponents. That is just how they want people to see our beautiful symbol. For us faithful National Socialists, the swastika will always be the symbol of joy and light, that in memories from special occasions is decorated with golden ribbons and flowers. It is the symbol of strength, beauty, morals, security, and progression in a healthy way.
Vera’s father Hans, as an SA man in Berlin in 1933.
Hans at home in his study.
Inside the Gates of the Three Crowns
The Swedish Church in Berlin runs through my life in the country’s capital like a blue-yellow ribbon, but the blue and yellow colours became more soiled with time, in time with the changes of the priests in the congregation.
At the beginning of the 1930s there was an understanding between the Germans and the Swedes that through Reverend Sebart something of an oasis was created for the Swedes in Germany. In the times of crisis and unemployment in Berlin, it was a deed in the true spirit of Christianity. The Swedish Church became a harmonious breathing hole in contrast to the immorality of the 1920s, Communism’s anarchy, street fighting, murder, and misery.
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Reverend Sebart was generally well-liked. He too experienced the great shake-up and changes in society that occurred with the victory of the National Socialists in 1933. The calmness and security returned. The pimps and prostitutes disappeared from the streets. The dirty old men and other shadowy figures disappeared. The clubs and nests for gays, drugs, and the uncontrollable moral decline were stopped and its practitioners were gone. Berlin woke up from its humiliation and decline and became once again a city of sound initiative, eagerness to work, and belief in the future, as becomes a capital city of a European country.
With this experience of change, it was with true conviction when he, in his church services, prayed to God for the protection of the King of Sweden and the leader of Germany. Perhaps this behaviour irritated certain potentates and Sebart was replaced by Reverend Forell, a man who had neither witnessed Berlin’s humiliation nor had a neutral stance when it came to National Socialism. His right-wing anti-National Socialism was no secret. Swedish-Germans found that they could no longer express their positive views of the regime and adapted their utterances accordingly because they still wanted to have contact with Sweden, speak Swedish, and practice Swedish traditions and customs. And as everyone should know, there is nothing more Swedish outside of Sweden than the Swedish Church. Every Swedish sailor can confirm that they visit the Swedish Church no matter where they are in the world, and it is not because they are particularly religious. It is a piece of Mother Earth one wants to feel, where Swedishness is experienced, the connection to the home country is felt, through the participation in various activities. The library, newspapers, for example. We experienced our connection to Sweden in the Swedish Church through activities such as folk dances, real Swedish Midsummer celebrations, Christmas traditions, and the like.
Schooling in the church was a plus for me and I gladly participated in it. Holidays from the German school coincided often with the school times in the Swedish one, and I could be with the purely Swedish children. I can mention, for example, that amongst my temporary classmates were both of singer Zarah Leander’s children, Göran and Bodel. On our breaks we played in a wonderful park by the church which was something quite different from the classic schoolyard.
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Through the agency of the Swedish Church, trips to Sweden were arranged every year, which contributed to my knowledge of this long country. I spent my summer holidays in areas that were so different from one another, such as Mörrum in Blekinge and Ljusdal in Hälsningland, where not just the climate, buildings, and scenery are different, but even the dialects.
My mother had a good laugh when I came home from Mörrum, Blekinge. With my bags full of new clothes from my relatives in Karlshamn, I met my mother at Stettiner Bahnhof and discovered surprisingly that my mother had a baby carriage with my few weeks old brother in it. I exclaimed in Blekinge dialect: “OU! Han haur inget hauur!” (Oh! He has no hair!).
In Ljusdal I was amazed at how light the nights were.
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In 1938, King Gustav the Fifth of Sweden visited Berlin. It was a very festive time, especially for the Swedish Church, but it left me very disappointed. We stood there as quiet fools I thought, in rows up the steps to the entrance, and waved idiotically with swishing Swedish paper flags. I was completely lacking in joy, merriness, and spontaneity. Everything was so forced and stilted. Then his majesty the king came, an old, sullen fart crouched down under an umbrella that was held up by the ambassador. Outside in the rain the always curious Berliners crowded around and loud comments were heard: “Was that a king?”, “He’s so old!” They were just as disappointed as I was, when the king, without a word or a smile, climbed the steps.
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The teacher in the Swedish Church was a strawberry blonde Valkyrie named Miss Höök. A congregation sister who looked like Herman Göring’s late first wife Karin, I perceived her as an accommodating and friendly person. The sister visited us from time to time in our home on Markelstraße. We were all surprised by her choice of husbands: a small, spindly musician, who we parishioners saw as an odd little fellow. I do not know what his profession was, but he always played the fiddle, dressed in folk costume for Midsummer and Christmas celebrations.
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Upon my return from KLV in 1942, everything had changed. The Swedish-Germans who had National Socialist ties felt an uncomfortable freezing out by the new Reverend Perwe. This Jew-lover built up around himself a clique of fifth columnists against the regime and forgot in his zeal his real Christian calling, to be a neutral link between the church and all the members of the congregation. Those Swedes who felt this uncomfortable atmosphere built up their own group, the Swedish Socialist Congregation, which still remained a part of the Swedish Church, as the little piece of Sweden that it felt like.
I joined the folk dance group, but the priest did not at all like the pin that held my scarf together. It was a silver broach that my father had sawn from a silver coin to an open sunwheel. I answered frankly that the pin belonged to the folk costume of Blekinge and that it is suitable there.
The “shunned” people could however through their solidarity with pressure on the German and Swedish Red Cross ensure a fair distribution of the food packages that came to all the Swedish-Germans directly from Sweden. Before this pressure, the packages were distributed arbitrarily.
The packages and their contents were a real source of joy with their somewhat unusual dietary supplements. But no one wanted the Swedish coffee substitute because the German one was much better. Real coffee was allotted in small rations on the weekends, which made them special occasions for Mother and Grandmother in the pantry in Friedenau. We graciously picked up pancake flour, cooking oil, margarine, rolled oats, semolina, etc. for a small fee from the Swedish Church after we got a message from the Red Cross.
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The Swedish Church in Berlin did not have the “Our Father garage appearance” of today in the form of a square brick building. Instead it was a really magnificent building with a church tower in the park, which gave the building on Landhausstraße a churchly touch inside the high, richly ornamented iron gates. The entrance on the main street facing the park was ornamented with the S
wedish coat of arms, Three Crowns.
I took the double decker, that is to say the bus with two decks, from my home in Steglitz to get there. I learned to take the bus when I was 6 years old, just like city kids get used to doing, and I saw bus routes as a natural part of life. I sometimes hid behind the steps up to the upper deck and saved my ticket money for candy. Many “Schaffners” saw my plan and turned a blind eye to my trick, but every so often an ardent driver took payment with the words “You don’t do that”, but I cannot remember getting a direct reprimand.
I liked to go to the Swedish Church, but the atmosphere of friendliness and understanding diminished more and more. I am very sorry that I was not mature enough to understand what went on and was not able to do something to make sure that this piece of Sweden had remained free from various fifth columnists who to this very day at home in Sweden seriously brag about their undermining exploits against the host-country’s regime. I lived in the naïve belief that friendship, like Swedish-Germans, was honest, reliable and honourable, without reservation. I could not believe that amongst these “Christian Swedes” there could be inside enemies who worked underground with the outside ones, at the same time as they lived under the protection and responsibility of the German regime.
When the truth was revealed to me, it was too late.
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The first real let-down came in the winter/spring of 1945. The Church transformed into a meeting place for Swedish descendants who would be sent to Sweden through Lübeck in cooperation with the Swedish Church there.
When the Flagpoles Bloomed Page 3