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SUDETENLAND, the western frontier region of the Czech Republic a 16,000-square-mile territory that covers nearly a third of Czechoslovakia and contains a third of her inhabitants. Before 1945 more than 3 million Sudeten Germans inhabited the region, which was then part of Czechoslovakia. In 1938 German dictator Adolf Hitler obtained the Sudetenland for Germany. The region was restored to Czechoslovakia at the end of World War II in 1945.
— Encarta® 98
Hansi: The Girl Who Loved the Swastika by Maria Anne Hirschmann, Tyndale House, 1973
This worn paperback especially
caught my attention as I was going through books in the library. When World War II ended I was 6. To me that whole
era is interesting. What would I find in Hansi?
Hansi grew up in an ethnically German village in the Sudeten Mountains of Czechoslovakia. She lived in a difficult family situation, benefited from the 1938 German invasion of Czechoslovakia, excelled at learning, and earned her way scholastically into a Nazi school in Prague where she became a member and leader of the Hitler Youth. She long regarded Prague as her home.
Events from 1945 were devastating for her, especially as the area was invaded by the Russians, who were unimaginably brutal. Unlike many of her friends, Hansi survived. Many times she felt she had some sort of unknown special protection. In several hard steps she made it to the American Zone of Germany, where, in time, she was able to use her learning to find a job as an elementary teacher in villages at the foot of the Alps in Bavaria.
After the war and her escape Hansi became nominally (but not more) Catholic, which was necessary for her to get her job. Her ex U-boat officer husband Rudy was nominally (but not more) Protestant. He and the village priest were "at war". (The priest had only married them because he was ordered to do so by the bishop.) Rudy bought a used Bible and studied it intently so he would be able "to tell that priest off!" Eventually Rudy found "an old, retired minister who was willing to visit with us every weekend who would introduce both of us to religion and doctrines."
Precious old Brother Schneider! Will he ever know until we meet in eternity what he did for us? It wasn't so much what he said, though he knew his Bible well, admonished us with conviction, and was very fundamental and convincing--it was his life that impressed us the most.
It was winter when he began his visits, Bavarian winter. We lived at the foot of the Alps and one night could bury us in snow up to the eaves. His shoes were leaky, his coat old and threadbare, but snowstorm or sunshine, ice or slush, that old man came walking miles from the railroad station to my schoolhouse, having a cheery "Guten abend" and no complaints, though his hands were often stiff and his lips blue from the cold. He bought me my own Bible, a translation by Martin Luther.
"What is it that makes the old man come out in the worst weather?" Rudy asked repeatedly after the minister had left us to visit other people in the mountains. "What is in the deal for him? It couldn't be just his great concern for my rotten soul. Or is he really that worried about our spiritual welfare?"
So here you have an outline of part of Hansi’s life, but none of the fascinating details. Why did she love the Swastika? How did she react to the German surrender in 1945? How did she survive the invading Russians? How did she get across the border into the Russian Zone of Germany, and then across the no-man’s-land to the American Zone? How about the men in her life? Did Brother Schneider’s work pay off?
And then, there’s the rest of her life. What happened to her later? Where did she live and what did she do as the years went on?
The book is well worth reading. And it is all true.
-- Dean Brown
“Hansi is indeed a gift from a sovereign God still at work in hearts behind the Iron Curtain. High adventure with insight and inspiration!”
— Catherine Marshall, 1973
“Don’t ever forget Jesus!” This tearful admonition of her foster mother followed the teen-aged orphan girl as she began her trip to Prague. Maria (“Hansi”) … had won a scholarship to the Nazi school in the capital and would be able to serve the Fuhrer. …
— From the back of the book.
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