In the compelling memoir Hidden Beneath the Thorns, Ingeborg Tismer shares her fascinating journey of what it was like to be an ordinary German citizen during the Nazi regime.
As told to her daughter, Gabriele Quinn, Ingeborg provides a glimpse into the world of a young woman who grew up on her grandparents’ farm with a pacifist mother and rigidly strict father; a father, who in order to put bread on the table, was coerced into joining Hitler’s private army, the SA.
Reaching the age of ten, it became mandatory for all children to enroll in the Hitler youth. Ingeborg, like most children, enthusiastically joined to become part of an exciting organization. She was thrilled to march to the beat of Nazi drums. But Ingeborg’s family detested the Nazis and disliked her compulsory membership. In the face of this, her family resisted the Third Reich whenever they could. Aided by Russian laborers placed on their farm, one of these acts was to hide persecuted Jewish families in a simple hillside dugout.
On January 30th, 1945, the Russians commandeered Ingeborg’s family farm, transforming it to a field headquarters for Marshal Zhukov’s First Bylorussian Front. Plans to invade Berlin took place on her grandmother’s dining room table. At this time, German citizens endured rapes, lootings and murder by vengeful Russian soldiers. Many were deported to Siberia. Amazingly, Ingeborg’s family
came under Russian protection because of their defiant actions during the war.
Yet, despite all good deeds, Ingeborg and the remainder of her family lost everything, including their farm, and were forced to live as refugees within dusty piles of broken bricks, sickly smells, and hungry survivors in the ruins of post-war Berlin.
Interjected with historical chronicles, Ingeborg’s story relates how Adolf Hitler was able to mold an entire people into a machine of madness and how the sanity of the outside world finally brought it all to an end.
As told to her daughter, Gabriele Quinn, Ingeborg provides a glimpse into the world of a young woman who grew up on her grandparents’ farm with a pacifist mother and rigidly strict father; a father, who in order to put bread on the table, was coerced into joining Hitler’s private army, the SA.
Reaching the age of ten, it became mandatory for all children to enroll in the Hitler youth. Ingeborg, like most children, enthusiastically joined to become part of an exciting organization. She was thrilled to march to the beat of Nazi drums. But Ingeborg’s family detested the Nazis and disliked her compulsory membership. In the face of this, her family resisted the Third Reich whenever they could. Aided by Russian laborers placed on their farm, one of these acts was to hide persecuted Jewish families in a simple hillside dugout.
On January 30th, 1945, the Russians commandeered Ingeborg’s family farm, transforming it to a field headquarters for Marshal Zhukov’s First Bylorussian Front. Plans to invade Berlin took place on her grandmother’s dining room table. At this time, German citizens endured rapes, lootings and murder by vengeful Russian soldiers. Many were deported to Siberia. Amazingly, Ingeborg’s family
came under Russian protection because of their defiant actions during the war.
Yet, despite all good deeds, Ingeborg and the remainder of her family lost everything, including their farm, and were forced to live as refugees within dusty piles of broken bricks, sickly smells, and hungry survivors in the ruins of post-war Berlin.
Interjected with historical chronicles, Ingeborg’s story relates how Adolf Hitler was able to mold an entire people into a machine of madness and how the sanity of the outside world finally brought it all to an end.
