4 It Was the Hunger

Wilfriede Kiessling lives near her daughter in the city of Freiberg. As we interviewed her in one of the classrooms of the Freiberg Chapel, we could look through the windows behind her at the colorful grounds and white facade of the Freiberg temple. It seemed a fitting framework for a life devoted to serving the Lord.

Although Sister Wilfriede Kiessling does not talk about the bombing of Dresden, her story is placed here because she served as the president of the Relief Society of the Dresden Ward in the years immediately following the bombing. Her brief story gives a graphic picture of what conditions were like in those years (1945–1948). 

Wilfriede Kiessling. Freiberg, 1994. Courtesy Norma and Garold Davis.

Wilfriede: My parents accepted the gospel when they were living in Schwarzenberg. My mother and I were baptized in 1925; my father and brother, in 1926. My other brother, who is two years younger, was baptized in 1927. And my younger sister was also baptized in 1927. We helped establish the branch in Schwarzenberg, before moving to Plauen. We were in the Church in Schwarzenberg for only about a year and a half.

There were six of us in the family. We moved around a lot because my father was working for the railroad and was frequently transferred; each transfer meant a promotion. So we moved from Plauen to Auerbach. In Auerbach, they were waiting for us to help establish a branch, which we did. We lived there about two years. Then my father was transferred again, and this time we moved to Freiberg. Oh, they were happy to get a family of six in the branch in Freiberg! So we went to work in the Church there and stayed another two years. Then my father was transferred to Penig in 1931. But there was no branch of the Church in Penig, so we had to travel about twenty kilometers to Chemnitz to attend church. That was rather difficult because there were no direct train connections between Penig and Chemnitz. We got bicycles for everyone and went to church by bike. But that wasn’t so easy either—uphill, downhill, uphill, downhill. We soon had enough of that. And then there was the rain. It wasn’t an ideal situation.

At that time, I was about eighteen. In Penig, I met my husband, and we were married. My husband worked in Heidenau near Dresden, and we found an apartment and moved there. That was after 1938, when preparations were already being made for war. The trains had stopped running. My husband was not a member of the Church, and he didn’t much like it when I went to Church every Sunday. My husband was killed in 1944. He was called up into the army in the summer of 1943, quite late in the war. He had always been retained by his factory because he was an engineer, but that was no longer possible, so he had to go to war. He was there about only nine months when he died of pleurisy and lung infection. Just yesterday I was reading his last letter. Could I read part of that?

G. Davis: Yes, please do.

Wilfreide: “My dear Wilfriede! I send you my greetings. I hope a plane can get out to bring them to you.” They were hemmed in, but I think he was already sick. He wrote this letter on April 9, and five days later he was dead. So he must have been sick even though he didn’t mention it in the letter. He just wrote at the bottom, “Don’t write to me.” He died; there was no need to write anymore. That was his last letter.

It was hard when I received word about the death of my husband. But death came to so many in those days. However, I always said my prayers. I always remembered that I was a member of the Church even though I had married out of the Church. I always remembered.

In 1941 we had a daughter, Karla. That is Sister Liebscher. After the war, the suffering in the GDR and the other parts of Germany was terrible. The cities were destroyed. There was no money. They had no widow’s pension or survivor’s pension then, so I received nothing from the government. Then when the Communists took over the government, all the men who had been in the German army were declared war criminals, so we women received nothing from the Communists either.

In the apartment above me lived a woman whose husband also did not return from the war. He was declared missing, and they assumed he had drowned in the Danube when the army was retreating across the river. She didn’t have any income either, and she had two children. We made an agreement with one another that we would do sewing for other people. I had been taught to sew, and she had learned some on her own. We were able to earn a meager living, enough to keep us alive. Of course, the people we sewed for didn’t have any money either, so we worked very cheaply. But I must say that I never went into debt. I always managed to get what we needed. Of course, we never had a full meal; that was understood. That lasted through 1945 and into 1946, an entire year.

One day I heard from an old acquaintance, Sister Dünnebeil in Dresden, that they had a new meeting place on Dr.-Kurt-Fischer Allee. She invited me to come, and I went. From the first moment, I felt at home again, and from that time to this, I have been active in the Church.

N. Davis: That was a long distance, from Heidenau to the north end of Dresden.

Wilfriede: Yes, it was a long way, a very long way. I would travel on my bicycle with my daughter on a child’s seat behind me. We would ride as far as Leuben. That’s where Sister Dünnebeil lived. I would leave my bicycle at her house, and then we would ride together on the streetcar to the chapel on Dr.-Kurt-Fischer Allee. It took about two hours each way. I would leave home about eight o’clock in the morning in order to get there on time, and if I left right after Sunday School was over, I would get home about two in the afternoon. Then we ate our supper in place of our lunch—that is, we turned our meals around because we couldn’t go so long without eating. But from that time on, I have always gone to church.

In 1948, I was called to be the Relief Society president in the Dresden Branch. I was the youngest Relief Society president around, only thirty-four years old. I had been president for only a short time when the first welfare shipment came from the Church in America. You just can’t imagine how this welfare aid helped us.

We were literally starving to death at the time. Many people were cooking and eating the grains remaining from brewing malt coffee (malzkaffee) [malzkaffee is a hot drink made from barley and other grains] with a little flour mixed in. Many of the children were not getting any supper. They were put to bed with just a cup of malt coffee. We had never been so thin, that’s for sure. The children would come in around two o’clock in the afternoon and say, “Mommy, I’m hungry.” Well, what were we supposed to give our children to eat? We just had to say, “Go out and play; we don’t have anything to eat.” That hurt right down to the soul. But we couldn’t help it; we couldn’t help it. We didn’t have anything.

But then the shipments came from the Church in America. What an indescribable blessing that was! Of course, our chapel was filled like it had never been filled before. If you came late, you had to stand up in the back; there were no more seats. That is the truth; I experienced it myself. We had big sacks of food and got fat on it—peaches, canned milk.

The building up there on Dr.-Kurt-Fischer Allee was very large, and we had to clean it ourselves. But there were many grateful sisters who were anxious to help because of the food or the clothing they had received. They just wanted to do some little thing to show their gratitude for what they had received.

I lived on the side of Heidenau that was toward Pirna [on the side away from Dresden]. They told me I had to give up that apartment because there were only two of us, and we had a four-room apartment. The government said it was too large for one adult and a child under eight. So I had to get out of my apartment. It was really a nice apartment, too. Oh, how I prayed! How I prayed!

Normally it was this way—they offered you three apartments, and if you didn’t accept the third one, you were just put out on the street. I turned down the third one. I turned down the fourth one. Oh, how I prayed. Then they offered me an apartment in Heidenau-North, on the Dresden side, right next to the train station, right next to the bus stop from where you could ride straight into Dresden. I wasn’t doing sewing anymore then; I had found a regular job. Well, they called me, “Mrs. Kiessling. Please go look at apartment number 10 on Freedom Plaza [Platz der Freiheit] and tell us whether you will take it or not.” I said right on the telephone, “Yes, yes, I’ll take it,” although I hadn’t even seen it.

I was so thankful to the Lord that I had been given this apartment. It was a nice apartment on the second floor, right next to the train station and the bus stop, with stores all around. That was in 1952, and I was no longer the Relief Society president, but then I was called to be president a second time and then a third time. Each time with different counselors. One of my counselors lives in America, Sister Burde. She lives in Salt Lake City, but she is over eighty now. And then there is another sister in America.

G. Davis: After the war then, how did things go here in the Church? In the ’60s and ’70s?

Wilfriede: After the welfare shipments from America stopped coming, several members dropped out. Week after week, they stopped coming, they stopped coming. And from 1949 until about 1954, ninety members from the Dresden Branch emigrated to America. That left a very big hole in the branch. They were all young people, too. That was the future of the branch, wasn’t it?

G. Davis: So did you stay in Dresden?

Wilfriede: In 1982, I moved over here to Freiberg. That was an exchange between nine families. We moved to Freiberg, and they took our apartments in Heidenau. And I have been happy here in Freiberg.

I was visiting my daughter once, and she said, “Mother, do you know what is being whispered about? That we are going to have a temple here in Freiberg.” I said, “That can’t be true. It’s the Party; it must be the Communist Party who is spreading that rumor.” They always knew everything that was going on in the Church before we did. I worked in the mission office in Dresden for nine months as a secretary. So one day I said to Brother Schulze, “Now tell me, Brother Schulze, there is a rumor going around that a temple is going to be built in Freiberg. Is that true?” “We are going to build a chapel there,” he said. He couldn’t tell me the whole truth. But the rumor was true.

G. Davis: Maybe you could tell us a little about the programs and events you put on in Dresden.

Wilfriede: We had a centennial celebration of the Dresden Branch in 1955. That was quite an event. There was such a wonderful spirit there. When it was over, we didn’t get up. Someone said from the podium, “Brothers and sisters, the meeting is over.” But we didn’t get up.

Earlier, about 1947, we had a big event with Brother Walter Stover. The whole meeting was held outdoors in the park behind the church building. We set out chairs. There was a fish pond there with fish in it. And way back—the park went way back then, and there was a fence around it—that’s where we held our meeting. It was warm. I think the meetings lasted until nine thirty or ten o’clock. We had missionaries in those days, but all from inside the GDR. They came on their bicycles from all over and did missionary work on their way to Dresden. At night we slept out in the open. It was warm, very warm. That was in June or July. And we had just received a shipment of food from America, so we set up a cafeteria, and it was like a pilgrimage. We all got a plate with cooked wheat and milk mixed with peaches. Peaches in it! Oh, that was something wonderful. Many of us were nearly starved to death and to have something so wonderful to eat. Oh, my!

G. Davis: Do you have any favorite memories from your years in the Church?

Wilfriede: That is difficult to say. Favorite memories! There is a Sister Schibblack who works here in the temple, who used to live in Pirna. She would ride from Pirna to Heidenau on the train, and then we would ride together into the branch house in Dresden on the bus and then transfer to the streetcar. It took about two hours each way. Of course, there were times when we missed the bus home and would have to walk from Sedlitz to Heidenau, and then she would have to walk from Heidenau to Pirna. Today we tell one another how beautiful those times were. And they were beautiful. We stood there at the streetcar stop in the winter, freezing. Red tail lights— we had just missed the bus. Waiting. Half an hour. Freezing, freezing. And today we say how beautiful those times were.

N. Davis: Why do you say that?

Wilfriede: The common friendship and the Spirit.

N. Davis: What kind of problems did the women in the Church have when you were the Relief Society president?

Wilfriede: It was the hunger.

N. Davis: The hunger?

Wilfriede: Yes, the hunger. And the lack of clothing. But the Church helped us so much with these problems. Naturally, there were some jealousies. Some of the members thought everything should belong to them. Of course, I couldn’t allow that. I can say with an honest heart that my counselors and I divided the things according to our best wisdom and with a clear conscience.

N. Davis: Were there many single women at that time?

Wilfriede: Oh, yes, there were a lot of single sisters. In the first place, there were always more single sisters in the branches than married sisters. In general, it seems, at least with us, that the men are less inclined to join the Church. Also, there were several brethren who had fallen in the war. And then there were several sisters who married out of the Church. Either they had to marry out of the Church or remain single. That’s the way things are here, and it’s the same today.

I am so thankful that I became a member of the Church. Whenever I say my prayers, I always remember my parents who were prepared to accept the Gospel. You have to remember that my father was an official, and it was quite unusual in those days to have an official in the Church. People used to point at him and say, “He is a Mormon. He goes to the Mormon Church.”

Once, in 1945, my father had a lot of business with the Federal Railroad Headquarters in Dresden; he was on the phone, and in the middle of the telephone conversation another voice came over the line and shouted, “Mormon!” They never forgot it.

My father was baptized when it was about twenty below. There was ice on the river. They had to dry him off immediately so he wouldn’t lose his skin. He just said, “If the Church is true, I will suffer no ill effects.” He didn’t even get the sniffles.

G. Davis: Did you experience any difficulties with the government because of your membership in the Church?

Wilfriede: For me, personally, no. Once I was coming home from Dresden on my bicycle late at night, about ten o’clock. We had received a shipment of food, and I was carrying it on the back of my bicycle. I didn’t have a light on my bike. There weren’t any. Whoever had one, had one. Whoever didn’t, rode in the dark. Anyway, here came this voice out of the dark, “Halt! Get off your bike!”

I thought, “Oh, now they’ve got me for something.”

“What have you got on the back of your bike?”

I said, “I’m a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we have received a food shipment. The State knows all about it.”

“Sure, sure,” he said. “We’ll just take that. If it’s authorized, you’ll get it back.”

I said, “You know what?” I was a little more aggressive in those days, although generally I am quite shy. “I want to tell you something. If one can is missing . . . Everything there is authorized. The State already takes from our church 60 percent of all the food we receive, and everything we get for ourselves is authorized.”

“Well, we’ll check that out.” Three days later, the Heidenau city officials or the police called and said I could come and pick up my rucksack. Not a thing was missing.

N. Davis: The State took 60 percent?

Wilfriede: Sixty percent. They kept more than half of what we received from America. The upper ten thousand got that, but we were helped with this arrangement. It was worth it. It came in boxcars, not only to Dresden, but to every branch.

G. Davis: It was President Benson who made all of this possible.

Wilfriede: He spoke to the Russians and told them that the Church wanted to send food and clothing to the GDR to help its members. He paved the way. 

Ezra Taft Benson in front of the mission home in Berlin. Elder Benson obtained permission from the Russians to allow welfare supplies to be distributed to the Saints in the Soviet Zone of occupation. Courtesy Edith Krause.

G. Davis: Were you there when President Kimball spoke in the church in Dresden?

Wilfriede: Oh, yes, I was there. He was scheduled to arrive at twelve, but the plane was delayed for a few hours. He had to be picked up in Berlin. Many of the members were already there by nine o’clock in the morning in order to get a good seat. We had to wait for such a long time. It was beautiful in spite of all that.