Northern Escape Route: In Pomerania


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After six stopovers in Berlin, Mr. and Mrs. Krakauer set out from Stettiner Bahnhof in Berlin to Wusterhausen near Köslin on March 9, 1943. The Krakauers were able to hide in parsonages as well as at a physician’s home and with a farmer’s family located in the vicinity of Köslin, Stargardt and Stettin, sometimes for a few days, sometimes for up to three weeks.


They found a hideout with altogether thirteen different hosts in the next four and a half months and changed quarters twenty-two times in this period. Their stay was also facilitated by the helpfulness of farmers who left food. Pastor Karl-Heinrich Reimer from Naseband was the aid program’s “guiding spirit” and actively involved in the search for hosts.


The helpers were thoroughly aware of the dangers. One woman responded however: If Christ sends me people in such distress to my house, then I must take them in, quite regardless of the consequences for me (Krakauer, Lichter im Dunkel, 42).


As more and more people from the Rhine and Ruhr regions, who had been bombed out, were also sent to Pomerania, the search for places to stay became so much more difficult that the Krakauer family had to return to Berlin on July 28, 1943.


Source / title


  • Krakauer, Lichter im Dunkel, 48f. © Calwer Verlag, Stuttgart