65+ years ago, a seven year old boy…

[NeoGreen]

… responded to the request of one of his elementary school teachers to gather any toys he might not be using so she could send them to the children who were living in refugee camps in Europe.

The little boy gathered some plastic cowboys and horses that he hadn’t played with in a while to take to the teacher, but before he brought them into school, he wrote his name and address on a small piece of paper and stuffed the note into the hollow belly of one of the horses.

The little boy forgot about the toys, until one day, after a couple of years had passed, he received the following letter in the mail:



But he could not read German, and none of his teachers could either.

The little boy forgot about the letter and grew up, had a family, retired, moved and was doing well.

Then one night after dinner, his son and daughter were discussing the impact of WWII on the people of Europe, and he remembered the letter, and showed it to them (to anyone) for the first time since he was a little boy.

No one who has seen the letter could read the hand written German fluently.

After two hours of using various translation websites, and some best guesses,we have only accomplished the following:

Thank you for your toys that you sent.
They got here yesterday in Germany from the welfare office
The animals say thanks too.
Please let me know how old you are.
I liked receiving the animals in the mail.
I write that my parents are refugees
My father is out of the free State of Danzig. My mother is Austrian from Graz.
We do not have toys(?) here in camp.
My dad is a damaged (wounded) war veteran
We get here monthly 84 deutsche marks which is about 25 dollars.
Now I've described my basic conditions.
Yet another one, I will be 2 years old.
Now I have a request, write me.
Would you like to know German.
Now please my friend do not be angry that I have written you.

Which conveys the very basic essence of a 2-year old living in the Hummelburg II refugee camp (near Würtzburg) within the USA administered zone.

He is the son of a wounded soldier from Danzig and an Austrian mother from Graz.

And, as best we can tell, the letter was not written by either of his parents.

Is there anyone who has the time to improve the translation and help us possibly complete the story?

The little boy from Buffalo would like to write back to his German friend, if he can...

Thanks,
Neogreen

[NeoGreen]

1. Photo that came with the letter...

...

[Tuesday Afternoon]

2. DU Rec. Thank you for sharing this and please keep us updated. I would like to know the rest of the

story.

[NeoGreen]

3. Thanks, and will do (nt)

[mackerel]

4. What fascinating story. I grew up in an American German town but never took German.

They don't teach it anymore in the schools here

[mackerel]

5. I just checked with a friend of mine who is fluent in German.

I'll try and c&p this and get it to her and hopefully have an answer for you.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

6. My dear Neogreen...

Thank you for posting this letter and the picture...

What a beautiful story. I hope mackerel's friend can help translate the letter!

Wow.

[Kali]

7. I know there are a couple of German DUers and my best friend is German.

I can try to send the image to her by e-mail and see what she says. Her mother might be better yet as she would be of similar age and writing style.

Fascinating story. I hope the search is interesting and fruitful.

[DFW]

8. I live in Germany, married to a German and we speak German at home. I can improve on this for you.

It obviously was not written by a 2 year old, but not necessarily an adult, either. There are some minor mistakes in the German that might be expected of an elementary school or junior high school kid:

My little friend Thomas,

I thank you for your toys that you sent. I got them yesterday from the Welfare Office here in Germany, thank you (misspelled in the original, hence the incorrect "animals&quot for them. Please write me how old you are, I would like to correspond with you (i.e. be pen pals). I'm writing (telling) you my current situation. My parents are refugees. My father [is] from the Free City of Danzig. My mother is an Austrian from Graz. I have no home, was born here in the Camp. My father is unemployed, war-crippled (wounded). We're living from charity, we get 84 Marks a month, about $25. Now I have described our situation to you. Oh, one more thing, I will soon be two years old. I only have one request to make of you, please write to me soon and send me a picture of you. I would like to get to know you. Now I'll close my letter, please don't be angry that I've written you.

Good bye (god bay)

[mackerel]

9. Is the year 1951? How long were there refugee camps in Germany after the war?

[DFW]

10. For displaced people, a long time

The Russians kept some people--POWs as well as civilians-- for as long as 10 years after the war ended. My wife was born in 1952, and there were still ruins everywhere while she was a child, but her family were mostly farmers in a very rural area occupied by the British, so they were spared displacement.

[NeoGreen]

12. Wow! Thanks for the translation...

... the letter belongs to my 73-year old father who brought this letter out after my sister and I were having an after-dinner discussion about the rise and fall of the Austria-Hungary empire (my sister is a history teacher).

He had apparently forgotten about the letter since he was in grade school (he was 10, in 1951) and after the few teachers he showed it to could not decipher it (they told him it was in a dialect they were unfamiliar with).

I will print your translation and give it to my Dad and see what he has to say and post his reaction here.

Thanks again for your help,
NG

[DFW]

14. Those were some lazy teachers

It is written in plain standard German (Hochdeutsch), just not by a highly educated adult. The grammatical errors are minor, but will obviously confuse any mechanical translator. Where the writer wanted to say "Dir (to you)," at one point he wrote "Dier," which isn't a word, but is close to "Tier (animal)," which the automatic translator picked up on. It's also how you say "animal" in Dutch, which is very close to German. If the program had access to more languages than just German, it might have grabbed the Dutch word in desperation.

A mechanical translator would go nuts trying to translate Republicanese into another language, since they always use apostrophes to form plurals of nouns, and in English the apostrophe usually indicates possession. For example: "the cat's meow" in English means "the sound a cat makes," whereas in Republicanese, it means "several cats are making a sound." And if you want a translating program to crash altogether, just feed it anything said by Sarah Palin.

[NeoGreen]

15. My Dad speculates that maybe...

... the teachers were "protecting" the 10-year old he was at the time.

The war had been over for only a few years, and there was (is) no guarantee that the story has a happy ending, or it might have triggered something in their recent past that was difficult to deal with.

He does remember that the few adults he showed it to had "odd" reactions, from his point of view as a kid, which lead to him keeping the letter hidden for so long.

He clearly remembers one adult who curtly handed the letter back saying she could not read this "dialect" and who was clearly upset as she quickly walked away from him after seeing it.

Funny, we figured out that "Tier" was Dutch for "Animal", and was likely incorrect, but left it that way to be true to the text (as best we could read it).

The word I am curious about is the "jetet" or "getet" (sixth line, first word). I struggled with that one and eventually gave up.
It is bugging me to know what I missed.

[DFW]

19. It's neither "jetet" nor "getet." You only missed the odd (to us) handwriting

After my German wife and, especially, mother-in-law (born in 1927), I'm used to some of the quirks of older-era German handwriting. The word is "jetzt," or, simply, "now."

I can imagine that people were upset about someone claiming to be two years old and writing a letter like that. I wonder if, quite simply, that the writer was careless, as he was with a few other details, and simply left off a "1," and was really twelve years old. That would explain a lot.

[MADem]

11. I'll bet Der Spiegel or some other publication would love to do a little story on this.

Have you contacted any media? New York Times, Guardian, even UK Daily MAIL (they love this kind of stuff) or Der Spiegel?

I'd reach out to a few of them and I'll bet they'd do your legwork for you. Who knows, they might even give you a ticket to go meet your little friend!

[NeoGreen]

13. My sister plans on pursuing the story...

... depending on how our Dad reacts.

I'll let you know how it progresses.

Thanks for the suggestions,

NG

[cyberswede]

16. Thisis really cool. Thanks for sharing!

My German is pretty rusty, and I could understand a lot of it, which leads me to believe it was written by a kid, rather than an adult. I wonder if it was written by an older sibling to the little boy?

Great story!

[malthaussen]

17. Whoever wrote it, his penmanship beats mine.

Lovely little story.

-- Mal

[KurtNYC]

18. two bits to add -- Camp Hammelburg was the real Stalag 13 (Hogans Heroes)

It was closed in 1956 after going through many uses before, during and after WWII:

http://www.uncommon-travel-germany.com/stalag_13.html

I have friends and relatives in this area of Germany (Darmstadt) who may be able to help locate Erwin.

A fascinating story -- thanks for sharing.

Also: I am named after Kurt Vonnegut, an American writer who was a POW near Dresden.