The archive of the archdiocese of Munich-Freising keeps 562 “war and invasion reports” from the respective parishes. This unique resource, which comprehensively documents life in April and May 1945, is now accessible online.
Of
Hans Kratz
If you drove across the Bavarian countryside in the 1970s and early 1980s, for example as a beer driver, the World War was still almost as present in many places as the war in Ukraine is now. At that time there were still many war veterans alive. Old Lenz from the hamlet of Obereglhof near Landshut, if he sensed even the slightest interest on the part of his counterpart, immediately pulled down his trousers and showed the terrible scars from the shot in the pelvis he had suffered in France, mind you, in World War I. Today all 1914/18 veterans are dead and it is becoming increasingly difficult to meet WWII survivors. Members of this disappearing generation are approaching their 100th birthday, or have already passed it. Soon only written testimonies will provide information about the misery of the past, for example about the atrocities that happened in Götting in Upper Bavaria.