Hundreds - if not thousands - of books have been published about the atrocities which occurred in World War II. What has not been written, however, is the story of an average German’s life during Hitler’s dictatorship.

Friedl is practically the German “girl next door,”^* and what she experienced during the 1940’s will help readers understand WWII in its’ entirety.

This is not a book for those desirous of blood, gore and carnage, but for readers who are interested in the real life experiences of a young woman who managed to survive during a time fraught with danger. Millions of Germans survived Hitler’s “reign of terror” by forcing themselves to adjust and get by; they preferred to bend rather than break. For decades readers have been overexposed- inundated, if you will- to one aspect of Hitler’s impact. Now it is time to complete the story by telling the other side-- the story of a non-Jewish girl and what she endured.

Most readers know a bit about World War II. The fact that it was caused by a German dictator named Adolf Hitler who hated Jews, and attempted to annihilate the Jewish race has been taught to subsequent generations to insure that something as heinous as The Holocaust is never again repeated. Unfortunately, many people have mistakenly assumed that the entire German population were in line with the Nazi dogma and shared Hitler’s irrational hatred and diabolical solutions. They are taught of the six million Jews annihilated but hear nothing of the six million non-Jews who were exterminated. Friedl tells another side of the story. Her true story shows many beliefs to be very wrong. Although most German citizens knew of the concentration camps (as Americans knew of the relocation camps for the Japanese), and even knew neighbors who had been sent away for “political crimes”- such as listening to the BBC broadcasts on their radios. But most Germans knew nothing more than whispered rumors that the Jews were not just being relocated to other nations-- away from Germany-- but, instead, were being systematically murdered in what were really the death camps. The average Germans didn’t know about this until the Allies liberated the death camps, and the tales of the atrocities were unveiled.

In recent years, books have been published telling how non-Jewish citizens hid Jews, assisted their escape to other lands, or took in Jewish children and masqueraded them as their very own children, knowingly putting their own lives- and those of their families- at risk.

Friedl is divided into two parts, which helps the reader absorb the duality of her wartime experiences. Part One relates her experiences as a member of the German army while Part Two follows her journey at the end of WWII to her reunion with her family back in Frankfurt. Two sample chapters from each of these sections have been included. As readers will deduce, Friedl contains many similarities to other fictional / historical sagas, which remind us of how poignantly history repeats itself. Like a German Gone With The Wind, Friedl contains elements of a defeated army, a harshly punished civilian population, a quick-thinking independent young heroine and the suggestion of a welcomed sequel.

Friedl is an unusual young girl, even for her times. She tells us that she was “born old,” or very mature for a child. She was very much a loner whose music, pets, sister and parents were her best friends. She didn’t play with dolls as a young girl; she had a baby buggy, “but always there was a dog, not a doll, inside.” Fortunately, Friedl was born to a very loving family that gave her solid values; life soon gave her an opportunity to use her God-given intellect to think for herself and make her own decisions. She was born with exceptional musical talent and, through these loving parents, she was encouraged to develop and expand that talent.

Friedl didn’t have many outside friends as a child; the two Jewish girls next door were among the few. When Hitler’s henchmen turned the numerous youth clubs into instruments of Nazi brainwashing, Friedl hated to go to the mandatory BdM meetings each weekend. So she quit! And then, the problems began.

When her Landjahr^* was nearing, Friedl, the loner, told her father of her dislike at being forced to live among a lot of other girls her age. Her father talked with a social worker friend, and was told that his daughter could be assigned to a private farm. Friedl liked this idea and the social worker had her assigned to a private 50-acre farm run by Herr and Frau Daniels and their adopted young daughter. This is where she learned that nothing was free; you must give a good day’s work for your rewards.

When her Landjahr was over, Friedl was accepted at the Schule fur Musiker^* in Frankfurt where she was permitted to advance as fast as she desired to work. She loved her music professors (most were Jewish), and enjoyed being with only highly talented music students (many were Jewish). She was saddened when she was ordered to leave the Schule and forced to work in support of the war effort. At the same time many of the professors were leaving (or disappearing), too.

Friedl then opted to accept her Tante^* Friedl’s offer to get her a job as an office clerk in her company, a supply division for supporting the Nazi Panzer (tanks) troops. Friedl took a cram course in typing and breezed through it. She started work the next day. She and the other office workers were civilians and worked a normal day and went home at night.

By then, war had come to Frankfurt; bombing and artillery raids were frequent and growing more numerous. Suddenly Friedl’s unit was ordered to Warsaw, Poland; a civilian employee, Friedl thought she would be assigned to another unit, but her commanding officer said she must go. Friedl was sworn in the Nazi army, given two hours to pack, and then boarded an ill-fated train to Warsaw.

Enroute, Friedl saw death and war up close and personal for the first time when, just a short distance north of Frankfurt, her troop train was attacked by British Hurricanes; numerous soldiers were wounded or killed, and one died in Friedl’s arms. Just over the Polish border, the train stopped for the night. Later that evening, Allied aircraft attacked Friedl’s railway car, wounding and killing a number of soldiers. After fires were extinguished, it was later discovered that the car Friedl’s troops had exchanged places with contained ammunition stacked to the ceiling. Allied intelligence must have learned that the car with a big red cross on the roof contained ammo. Her car had switched places with that car and the Allied aircraft had bombed the one in the position his intelligence had specified. Friedl swore when she realized that her own army had used them as human guinea pigs to save their ammo!

Later, while attached to the same supply unit in Warsaw, Friedl was called into her commanding officer’s office for a “closed door” meeting. She was nervous. As it turned out, he had been testing Friedl’s ability to keep a secret by telling her something and watching to see if others heard the same thing. He then had a cursory security check run on her and now offered her the assignment as a secret code clerk; she would be trained to decipher top-secret message traffic. It was with this new position and access to sensitive material that Friedl learned that her fears that the Nazis were killing the Jews was confirmed; she then learned of the Nazi “Final Solution” to the “Jewish Problem.” She was sick with this revelation, but she knew she couldn’t say anything to anybody; couldn’t breathe a word-- couldn’t object or stop the madness for fear for her family’s lives. And that’s when the nightmares began!

When her unit was ordered to move to Prague, she was told by her commanding officer that no travel accommodations had been made for the women, “you’re on your own; just get there the best way you can!” Friedl was furious! “First they use me as a human decoy to save their ammunition and now, ‘get there on your own.’ Well, I won’t stand for it. I’m going home!” And she did. When three other abandoned women soldiers came looking for help, Friedl included them in her plan. She forged their discharge papers, stole a general’s Mercedes car, fuel, boots, food and a weapon and drove back home to Frankfurt for an unofficial, week-long furlough.

Months later in Prague, Friedl and her co-workers could already hear the Russian tank treads and guns. When her commanding officer entered the office and walked to his podium, the look on the leader’s face told them there was cause for real concern. Nobody smiled when he said the war was over for Germany and thanked them for their support and contribution to himself and their country. Nobody shouted with glee when he told them they’d be released to proceed to their homes as soon as the unit and assets were secured and they’d been released by their superiors. Everyone shared a look of disappointment and anger at Hitler and his Nazis who caused this “unnecessary war.”

In Part Two, Friedl begins her post war journey home. We travel with her as she goes as far as the train tracks allow and then she begins to walk and hitchhike. She gets an occasional ride on a truck, a tractor-pulled wagon or car, and works for her room-and-board from farm-to-farm enroute to Rosenheim, where she had been told the trains were running. As she rides the last several kilometers- in an ancient auto driven by a kindly, old Bavarian doctor- she learns that the Russians had taken Prague only two days after her departure. Thanking God that she hadn’t been captured, she also learned that the Americans are now in charge of the border at Rosenheim, and no one is permitted to enter Germany without the proper paperwork. She decided to walk back to the pretty farmhouse she had passed earlier to ask to work for her room-and-board. This begins a six-week stay at the Kruger farm, where she is “adopted” by Herr and Frau Kruger who had recently lost their only child-- a daughter who had been studying at the music conservatory in Berlin when the school had been bombed. Friedl begins a thrice-weekly horse-drawn-wagon trip to the American army headquarters in Rosenheim where she applies for approval with the assistance of a German-speaking Sergeant Jackson with whom a friendship grows. At the sergeant’s request, Friedl begins to entertain the American soldiers in their “club” with her piano music as a special friendship begins to kindle between her and the sergeant. Day after day, Friedl is disappointed by the prolonged absence of the Major who must sign and approve her papers until one day she is told, “the major is back!”

The partings with the Krugers and the sergeant are very difficult, but because Friedl has not had communication with her family in more than five months-- neither knows the fate of the other-- she can’t wait to get home. After the wagon-ride to the station with the Krugers and their tearful parting, Friedl boards her train and the journey home begins. Her thoughts are of the past years of war, and she wonders, what is in store for Germany, for the citizens, and for herself. Friedl assumes that the top Nazis-- Hitler’s colleagues-- would be severely punished or executed for their heinous crimes. But what about the conscripted soldiers like herself and the ordinary citizens like her family? Would they also be punished?

As her train plods through the countryside and the destruction of war is viewed, Friedl is saddened. As Frankfurt comes into view, her once beautiful and beloved city is in shambles-- her eyes take mental photos that her mind won’t accept. As she walks and rides three different buses to make her way to her home in the suburbs, Friedl looks for remembered landmarks only to see them missing or lying in a pile of destroyed rubble and ruin. When she finally exits the last bus at her stop, a neighbor man calls out to her. He’s very thin, as all people she’s observed have been, and his tattered and mended clothing hang loosely on his diminished frame. Then she remembers his name, asks about her family, and learns that, thankfully, they have survived.

Friedl arrives at her war-worn home only to have Margot scream and slam the front door in her face; a few moments later, it is reopened by her shocked father. War weary, Friedl is alive and home with her family.

Friedl enters the parlor and slowly walks over to her beautiful piano. She touches its shiny, lacquered finish as she opens the cover from the keyboard. She strokes the white-and-black keys, slowly sits on the seat, and begins to play.

The music doesn’t shut out her memories; the bad ones of the war flash back in her mind.

“Friedl is back; and I hope that Adolf Hitler burns in hell!”

The Beginning