"Letters to our soldiers"

[Peter Quambusch]

Hi Guys,

Hope I won´t bore anyone with my little true story:
About two years ago I bought an old inn (built around 1770´s), which I partially rebuilt into office space for my companies.
Today I finally found some time and started digging through the attic, which was used as a storage room for an old sports club, which was founded in 1889….
Most of the stuff is from the 1950 through to the 1980, when the club was swallowed up by a bigger one.
But I also discovered some old papers, pics, commemorating plates etc. dating back as far as the 1890´s.
I also found a binder with pics of German soldiers, sailors and airmen, all wearing WW 2 uniforms.
What caught my attention most though, were three binders titled “Briefe an unsere Soldaten” (letters to our soldiers) from 1939 to 1944…..
So far I knew WW 2 only from stories, told by my uncle or from the media and museums….
But finding and reading these letters touched me very deeply.
I will post some pics later this weekend.

Peter

[mark lawson]

I have a number of Kameraden in Germany some have told me the stories of their Fathers almost straight away some have taken 6 years before they told me the stories some won’t ever talk about this period in German history, history not shared is history lost forever, please could you carry on the thread and translate the letters they may not be that dissimilar to family histories in England but also there may be no families to read these letters in Germany.
Grüße und schönes Wochenende.

[Peter Quambusch]

Hello Mark,

Tahnks for your idea. I think I can do that once or twice...

I must appologyse for a Little error I made yesterday with the subject:
I must read "Letters FROM our soldiers"

The letters I read so far, were all sent to one Paul Breuking. (I think that he was the president of the sports club.)

As you can see from the pics, the letters are sometimes hard to read, thus it will take a while to read them all....

Regards

Peter

[mark lawson]

I know what you mean about old German style hand writing it can be almost impossible to read.

There is a plaque similar to this in Kaiserswerth, on An St. Swidbert in stone, I can’t remember if it had names beneath.

[Paul Wills]

Hi Both,

I researched a German officer after I acquired his belongings some years back, Major Heinz Schmeermann of the 116th Panzer-Division. http://www.paulstiger1.co.uk/Hauptmann- ... ection.htm his army biography is on the this page as well.

in his officers chest were all of his diary's from 1937 to 1945 as well as a few course notes referring to the use of artillery. They are all in old German Script, as you say it is a nightmare to read. I contacted a teacher from Koln university and between her and her students they managed to decipher 90% of the script. unfortunately since she got married I have lost contact, but you could try some where like that.




Paul.