Guest Post: When They Made Us Leave by Annette Oppenlander

Please join me in welcoming Annette Oppenlander to Let Them Read Books! Annette is celebrating the release of her new historical novel, When They Made Us Leave, and I'm thrilled to have her here today with a guest post about the subject of the novel, Nazi Germany's KLV child evacuation program.

When They Made Us Leave tells the touching love story of Hilda and Peter, whose budding relationship ends abruptly when they are forced to attend separate evacuation camps during WWII. Each confronted with terror and cruelty as well as unexpected kindness, they must rise above to survive the war and find each other once more. 

Solingen, 1943: As bombs carpet Germany and fourteen-year old Hilda is falling in love with her childhood friend and next-door neighbor, Peter, he excitedly takes off to an evacuation camp in Pomerania, six hundred miles from home. Though Peter soon finds that his expectations are far from reality, he is ordered to write happy letters home, even when things take a turn for the worse and a new Hitler youth leader attempts to convert camp into a military battalion.

Meanwhile, Hilda must unwillingly accompany her classmates to a cloister in Bavaria run by a draconian Abbess. There Hilda struggles to overcome her homesickness and yearning for Peter while helping a classmate hide her bedwetting accidents.

As Germany is buried under rubble and supplies shorten, Peter lands at an inn near Gdansk. By now, all he wants is to go home. But his new teacher, a staunch national socialist, deems their place safe despite the refugees from the east whispering of German defeat by an advancing Russian Army.

When the cloister is converted into a German field hospital, enemy planes destroy Hilda’s homebound train and kill her teacher. Weeks later, tired and hungry, she arrives home to find her mother safe. But Peter has not returned, nor is there any news of him. Refusing to believe the worst, she must survive in a barely recognizable world.

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Few people outside Germany realize that during World War II Hitler created a wide-sweeping evacuation program, the Kinderlandverschickung or KLV, for its German children and youths. This supposedly voluntary program intended to send children and especially teens aged 11 to 16 to camps. Not just for a few weeks, but for months, and as of 1943 for years. Since exact statistics are missing, it is estimated that two million children participated.

The word evacuation or Evakuierung was not to be used because it carried the wrong connotation not suitable for the propaganda of the Third Reich. Instead, the KLV was sold to parents as a vacation during which children could study, exercise and play in healthy environments, eat well and enjoy themselves tremendously. Posters showed happy children going on adventure, newspapers ran beautiful stories of summer trips and joyous parents sending off their kids. That was the official version.

The unofficial true intent was to raise Germany’s children and youth as national socialists far from the influence of families, friends and churches. To do this effectively, many camps assumed militaristic programs with strict all-day schedules, inspections, reports and training.  Boys were supposed to be tough and heroic and become soldiers. Girls were supposed to be strong and brave, but also beautiful and healthy to grow into mothers to produce more children to become more soldiers and mothers.

With the increased bomb threats in the later war years, the once voluntary KLV program turned into something entirely different. Employers, schools, and communities pressured parents to enroll their kids in the KLV. They were accused of ‘endangering’ the lives of their children. German children received compulsory education, but could, due to the school closings, no longer attend. Thus, entire classes and schools were evacuated together and parents forced to go along.

Undoubtedly the KLV saved lives. With the increased British RAF bombings on German cities, and later the sophisticated combination of air mines, impact-bombs and phosphor bombs to incinerate buildings by the thousands, targeting civilians, women and children often succumbed in firestorms. On the other hand, children who attended camps in the east/west, in German-occupied territories like Poland, Hungary and France, encountered life-threatening situations when the Red Army and Allied troops advanced through these regions. Whether the KLV administration was inept, uninformed or plain didn’t care is unknown. Fact is that children and camp leaders were told to ‘stay put’ or that the enemy wasn’t going to reach them.

Countless children experienced serious trauma evidenced by the many incidences of bed wetting, nail chewing and serious illness, reaching from diphtheria to hunger typhoid. Infestations of bedbugs, lice and scabies were common and difficult to combat. Weaker children, bed wetters and those exhibiting sensitivity were beaten and abused by their classmates and/or camp leaders.

The KLV presented one more program to control the population, but because it affected children and youths, it added to the long-term effects of already existing war trauma. Such trauma not only influences a person for life, research shows it also manifests genetically and is carried on by future generations.

Based on true-life accounts of KLV participants, When They Made Us Leave takes readers to the later years of the war and into the lives of two teens, fourteen-year old Hilda and her neighbor and best friend, Peter, both forced to attend separate evacuation camps. Realizing how much they miss each other and dealing with deeply buried secrets, they endure terror and cruelty but also find unexpected kindness. When They Made Us Leave is a story of love and endurance, of inner strength and hope.

About the Author:

Annette Oppenlander is an award-winning writer, literary coach and educator. As a bestselling historical novelist, Oppenlander is known for her authentic characters and stories based on true events, coming alive in well-researched settings. Having lived in Germany the first half of her life and the second half in various parts in the U.S., Oppenlander inspires readers by illuminating story questions as relevant today as they were in the past.

Oppenlander’s bestselling true WWII story, Surviving the Fatherland, was elected to IWIC’s Hall of Fame, won the 2017 National Indie Excellence Award and is a finalist in the 2017 Kindle Book Awards. Her historical time-travel trilogy, Escape from the Past, takes readers to the German Middle Ages and the Wild West. Uniquely, Oppenlander weaves actual historical figures and events into her plots, giving readers a flavor of true history while enjoying a good story. Oppenlander shares her knowledge through writing workshops at colleges, libraries and schools. She also offers vivid presentations and author visits. The mother of fraternal twins and a son, she recently returned to her home, Solingen, Germany, where she lives with her husband and old mutt, Mocha.