'Another lifetime': Thebes, Ill., resident recalls childhood spent as prisoner of war

THEBES, Ill.

Kathe Hale, 67, sees her childhood as a puzzle. After being swept away from her home in Germany and taken prisoner by Soviet troops when she was 2 years old, Hale said the pieces she remembers seem like another lifetime. But her puzzle-piece memories fit together to form a picture that is far from perfect.

"I've seen people's feet turn black from hypothermia. I saw people starving. I saw people staying up at night catching rats to eat. And I've seen them dead in the morning, with rats still clenched in their mouth," Hale, of Thebes, said. "To me, that was every day."

While many World War II stories tell of the death and destruction caused by Nazi Germany, Hale's story is that of the suffering inflicted upon German civilians in retaliation. The Nazis' attempt to kill all the Jews set the stage for the German expulsion that sent Hale's family and many others to prison camps in Russia. In addition to five million Germans who fled westward to escape, 165,000 Germans were rounded up by the Soviets and sent to the back country.

Hale, whose father was a German soldier, said her family was in Hindenburg, Germany, in 1943 when Soviet troops invaded and took the town captive.

ELIZABETH DODD ~ edodd@semissourian.comKathe "Kitty" Hale prepares frog legs at Fox Hollow Cafe in McClure Ill. Hale was captured during World War II in 1943 at age 2 and taken to a camp in Russia where she remained a prisoner for seven years with her family.

"They bombed and burned our homes when Russia moved in, so we had no papers, no birth certificate," she said. "They said they were cleaning and getting rid of Germans. Kids and parents were being separated, and the kids were screaming, wanting their mom."

Her family, whose last name was Matz, was taken to Russia where they spent almost seven years living separately and only catching brief moments with each other through a fence that divided the area into separate camps.

"My first memory in Russia, we were sitting on a freight train and right next to the train was another train that was full of soldiers and they were all wrapped up bloody and they were going another way," she said. "I remember seeing those bloody heads parked across from us, moaning and groaning because they were hurting. They were prisoners, too."

Hale's first memory was just one example of the death surrounding her, her mother and her three sisters. She said prisoners starved, froze and succumbed to disease.

"Someone died every day, especially in the winter time. The next morning when you woke up, you didn't know how many people were dead. And people fought over the straw underneath dead people because they had to sleep on it," Hale said.

She said her oldest sister disappeared before they were forced to Russia, but two of her sisters starved to death at the camp.

"People that were starving to death were losing their minds. There was no food. Our main diet was potato peelings," she said.

If it wasn't for the soldiers who allowed the two young girls to crawl under the fence to gather cabbage stalks, pine cones and "skin off a berry bush that was sweet," Hale said she and her sister would have starved to death alongside the others.

"They knew we wouldn't run off because our mother was around there somewhere," she said.

She and her sister weren't reunited with their mother until 1949, when Hale said all the Germans were gathered together and told they were going home. In 1950 they took a train to Germany, an experience Hale could remember, as it was the first time she had eaten real food -- rice pudding. The Red Cross provided them with sardines and crackers, food she said they had never seen before.

But when she got to Germany, her family continued to struggle.

"Everything was still like it was during the war," she said. "People were stuffed in there like animals. Not only Jews, but Americans, Russians and every nationality was there. If they couldn't prove who they were, they were taken prisoners."

The Dachau camp in Germany was converted into a residential settlement for "displaced persons," such as Hale's remaining family. Hale said she was 9 years old and weighed 36 pounds when she was placed in a subcamp of Dachau. She was hospitalized, placed on a liquid diet and received psychiatric treatment.

In 1958, Hale went to a Halloween party where she met her future husband, an American soldier. They married and moved to Thebes, Ill., where his family was located. They were together for almost 50 years, until he passed away three years ago.

Hale never forgot her childhood memories splattered with death, destruction, pain and suffering, but she used those experiences to create a different life for herself, her husband and their eight children.

She said she promised herself that if she ever got out of the prison camps, she would have lots of children and a "nice, clean house."

Sixty-eight children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren later, Hale said she enjoys her new life.

"My children say it is amazing, to me it's like another lifetime," she said. "It was just part of my life. I am thankful that my children didn't have to live that life."

cwest@semissourian.com

388-3654

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