A15 Escape and return

Narrator: Alfred Weisgram
Reporter: Stefan Winkelbauer

In 1945 I learnt from fleeing German soldiers that the Russian army had already occupied Vienna.

After two days they were in Thaures, the village I lived in. But to my horror they came to us after they had drunken a lot of wine in the neighbouring Region called Weinviertel (vine quarter). In this time many women were raped, food was stolen, farm animals were slaughtered and in their drunkenness the soldiers often shot aimlessly with their guns.

So I decided to go on the run in May 1945. I took my bike and escaped to the west to my uncle in Steyr, Upper Austria, because I had learnt that the American army had occupied this territory. There life was much easier. My uncle had not enough room for me, so I had to work and live on a farmhouse together with many foreign prisoners of war.

After many attempts to get new papers I got a new ID-card in October 1945. I needed it to cross the demarcation line between the American and Russian sector of Austria. In Upper Austria I organised two horses and a chariot to get back to my home village, Thaures, in October 1945.

When I arrived home I found an empty house. Almost everything had been stolen. I had to start from the scratch. This is how I experienced the last days of the Second World War and the liberation from the Nazi Regime.