Caitlin Tan
ctan@uwyo.edu
Growing up in former East Germany and surviving WWII and the aftermath, Ilse Killian Tan never thought she would fall in love with the West, that being Wyoming.
On a still German afternoon, an American jet pilot dropped a bomb on the high school Ilse Killian Tan and her sister were attending – completely destroying the school and city.
“The whole city was completely bombed out and school,” Tan said. “We heard the planes coming closer and closer and knew next would be us.”
The two girls survived; Tan said she does not know about the fate of her other schoolmates, as she and her sister could never return to the school or village again.
After evacuating the school Tan and her sister made the two-hour journey back to their home in Oelsnitz, Germany.
“We were outside and there were dead people all over – smoke, you could barely see,” Tan said.
It was ultimately World War II and the aftermath that segregated Germany that ultimately drove Tan to immigrate to America to seek a more stable life.
Although America has never replaced her first love, Germany, she found a love in the Wild West of Wyoming.
“I just had that feeling that I wanted to see what it was like over here [America],” Tan said. “Maybe it was wrong – I don’t know.”
Tan was born in 1928 and raised in the former East German village Oelsnitz. She was born to an upper-middle class family – her father, who drove a “car better than a Mercedes,” owned a world-renowned lace shop that brought customers from places like Pakistan, England and Africa.
Often the family would vacation for four weeks in the summer along the Baltic Sea.
However, this did not last for the latter parts of Tan’s childhood.
When she turned 10 years old she was enrolled in the mandatory Hitler youth program. At 13 she became a leader, in charge of eight girls from 10 to 12 years old.
“There was nothing of hate,” Tan said. “It was innocent. At that age I couldn’t care less about politics.”
The days were comprised with games, learning activities, meetings and playtime.
The girls wore uniforms consisting of a dark blue skirt, short sleeve white shirt and a black kerchief tied together with a brown leather knot.
“Of course they were talking with Hitler and how he came to power,” she said. “I personally couldn’t care less about it. Hitler was somewhere – you kind of admired him. One saw him as a great person – I did and others all did.”
Tan said she began to notice a change in her quality of life when the war began. Many young people had to leave and all the men were drafted to the war.
Tan said she remembers one Jewish boy in her school that began to be teased by other boys due to the ever-present anti-Semitism Nazi agenda.
“In the war there was nothing that I really liked about the Nazi idea,” Tan said.
There were several Jewish-owned stores in the town her family continued to shop at through the war, but later on it became clear the Jewish families needed to seek asylum elsewhere due to pressing danger.
Tan said life became progressively worse.
Her father was immediately drafted in the artillery for the entirety of the war, leaving Tan’s mother in charge of the lace factory.
Shortly after, Tan’s 16 year old brother was drafted.
Both her father and brother returned home alive, but Tan said the time while they were gone was unpredictable and ultimately life altering.
“Our school in town was completely bombed out,” Tan said. “We were in the basement when they threw the bombs – the Americans. That was terrible.”
T
an said her family never felt hate toward any country during WWII. Hate was “never a word in our family.”
They had relatives living in America; with one cousin fighting for the U.S. military.
“He lost his legs fighting against Germans who were his relatives, but in a war that’s how it is,” Tan said.
Tan’s father went so far as to help his Jewish lace customers find safety, also sending their belongings discreetly through the mail to them.
Ultimately when the war ended Hitler’s inhumane acts were unveiled. Tan said it was stunning to learn how many people were against Hitler and the horrid murders he allowed.
“One is almost ashamed to be a German,” she said.
As if the terror of WWII was not enough, soon the Russians invaded East Germany.
“The Americans retreated and overnight the Russians moved in,” Tan said.
She said the aftermath was even more horrid than the war
Tan said while the Russians governed there was essentially no food. Tan and her sister worked on a nearby farm from sunrise to sunset, not for money, but for food, such as grains and butter.
In the same year of the conclusion of the war, Tan’s brother was arrested by the Russians and put into a concentration camp for three years. It was later discovered a neighbor had falsely accused him of being against the Russian government in exchange for a small portion of food.
“You were never safe,” Tan said. “It was always someone who could denounce you, and then they [Russians] came usually in the evening and night and they just take you away.”
Tan’s uncle, who owned the farm she and her sister labored on, died in a jail designed to be a concentration camp.
“They starved him to death there – he died,” Tan said.
Once some Russian soldiers came to Tan’s house, looking to take Tan and her sister.
“My mother opened the door and here he put his pistol right in her chest,” Tan explained.
Tan said she and her sister hid in the neighbor’s apartment until the soldiers eventually left.
“The thing is you were never safe,” she said. “You never knew what was going to happen.”
