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German native's teen diary reveals other side of World War II

 
“It was a horrible time. But I got through it, and I knew I would have a better life.”
Giselle Diehm-Dietrich, who now lives in Tampa
“It was a horrible time. But I got through it, and I knew I would have a better life.” Giselle Diehm-Dietrich, who now lives in Tampa
Published March 18, 2016

TAMPA — Giselle Diehm-Dietrich vividly recalls her childhood.

Even at age 90, she remembers the stench after British and then American pilots dropped bombs on her hometown of Mannheim, Germany, the harrowing efforts she and her neighbors made to put out postbombing fires and the constant hunger pangs as a result of extreme food rations.

When World War II broke out in 1939, Dietrich was 13. On that birthday, her mother gave her a diary. For an only child, it provided a way for Dietrich to share the events of her life, both big and small.

"It was a horrible time," said Dietrich, from her apartment in Tampa's University Village. "But I got through it, and I knew I would have a better life. "

Over the course of the war, Dietrich penned six journals, chronicling her near-daily life through 1953, when she left Germany for the United States, to fulfill the only childhood dream not destroyed by war.

Dietrich took the diaries with her. But after marriage, three children, several careers and several moves, Dietrich thought the diaries were lost. When she moved two years ago, she discovered the books and photos after a mover dropped a box.

As she started to read the diaries, she told her new neighbor, Catherine Barber, about them. Barber, a self-published author, was amazed at Dietrich's ability to recall so many details of her youth and encouraged Dietrich to translate the diaries. Although Dietrich resisted at first, six weeks later, she handed Barber the first few pages.

"It needed editing," Barber recalled. "But I read the first 50 pages, and I was blown away."

Dietrich translated all of her diaries, which have been turned into the self-published book, Always Almost … WWII Diaries of a German Teen. The title speaks of the many times she and her family narrowly escaped death. Their home was never directly bombed, but aftershocks broke windows time and time again.

Like another well-known war-era journal, The Diary of Anne Frank, Dietrich's book is filled with the musings of a teenage girl who enjoyed spending time with friends, longed for her first boyfriend and dreamed of becoming a doctor. But the book also delves into the responsibility she had to help take care of her chronically ill father, the worry she had that her father's anti-Nazi opinions would become public and threaten the family's Christian, middle-class standing and the sexual assaults she endured at the hands of both a relative and a family friend.

"I was wondering whether I should leave it in," said Dietrich of some of the more the harrowing subjects. "But I decided it's the truth, and I had to leave it in."

As part of her schooling, the local Nazi Party required Dietrich and her classmates to attend sports clubs. A few months after her birthday, Dietrich was tapped to hand Adolf Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, a bouquet of flowers at a rally in her hometown. Because so many schools were bombed, Dietrich was separated from her parents several times in order to attend class and was even moved to the Black Forest with other classmates to finish high school.

Throughout the book, it's clear that students like her never knew of Hitler's sinister plans against Jews. Still Dietrich remembers, "The Nazis had a hand on you. There were rules." At the close of the war, Hitler and his troops had killed more than 12 million people, including 6 million Jews.

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Seventy-seven years later, Dietrich's story is still important, as fewer and fewer World War II survivors are alive to recount their war stories and Americans and other Westerners become more removed from the events of that time.

"To have proof of a family that was going through this is extraordinary, along with its relevance today," according to Elizabeth Gelman, executive director of the Florida Holocaust Museum.

"The war was the worst," Dietrich noted. "It will always be a part of you."

Contact Candace Rotolo at hillsnews@tampabay.com.