Book "Weeds like Us"

"Weeds Like Us" is a personal memoir written by a German-American by the name of Gunter Nitsch who grew up under the Nazi regime in East Prussia, the easternmost province of the then German Reich. Gunter was born in 1937 and this memoir is of his memories as a boy during the tumultuous period from Summer 1944 until 1950. In the final phases of World War 2 the Soviet Army captured East Prussia and most of the 2 million Germans who lived there tried to flee to Germany from the advancing Russian troops. Some 800,000 suceeded and according to Nitsch, 400-500,000 died in the fighting and the attempts to flee and 800,000 remained stranded in Russian-held territory once the fighting stopped. Nitsch, his mother and grandmother were amongst those East Prussian Germans who were caught in East Prussia and scraped by with great difficulty until they were repatriated to Germany in 1948. Most of the book deals with these difficult years and chronicles their existence as refugees in Germany thereafter.

Gunter Nitsch is not a professional author but it is a gripping and touching personal story of survival under very difficult circumstances. Until recent years it was not considered bon ton outside Germany (and often not even within Germany) to relate to the suffering of ordinary Germans during and after World War 2. The prevailing feeling in the Western world was that the Germans, by electing and supporting Hitler, had brought their tragedy upon themselves and deserved the cruel fate they suffered when their country, regime and aspirations collapsed. German cities were bombed mercilessly by the Allies, over a million German civilians died and some 10 million Germans from the former eastern provinces of Germany became refugees. Some settled in East and some in West Germany and had to rebuild their lives. Alongside the difficulty of the rehabilitation of Germany after the War, these refugees were probably at the bottom of the pile.

All war is a terrible thing and World War 2 with 6 millions Jews slaughtered and 20 million Russians who died was devastating. It's too easy for us to say who was right and who was wrong - we tend to overlook the personal tragedies on the losers' side. This book fills a vacuum. And for anyone who thinks I am being soft on the "hated" Germans, please note that I am Jewish, my mother's family was also from East Prussia and my East Prussian grandmother perished in the Holocaust.