Hitler's Forgotten Children by Ingrid Von Oelhafen

mystery of who I was and where I had come from was never discussed? Perhaps. At the time it was simple: I did not have enough of a relationship with Gisela to ask her difficult questions. It would be a long time before I understood that she might have had good reasons for wanting to leave the past alone.
    Whatever the reason, the subject was never broached: to all intents and purposes I was Ingrid von Oelhafen, the name under which I was registered at school. I did not have one of the new identity cards, issued by the Federal government from 1951 onwards, but since I was a child no one thought I would need one until I reached the legal age of majority: twenty-one in those days.
    As it turned out, the problem of my identity surfaced rather sooner. I wasn’t doing well at school: academic work – particularly maths – was not my strong point. I had decided that I wanted a career as either a children’s nurse or a vet, but Gisela had other ideas. Although she sent me for tests that showed that I had sufficient potential to take theGerman equivalent of A Levels, Gisela wanted me to earn money as soon as possible. And so it was arranged that I would leave school at the age of sixteen.
    I was unhappy about this decision and felt convinced that behind everything lay the fact that I was not Gisela’s biological child. But I didn’t ask her to change her mind. I made a point of never asking her for anything because I was afraid she would refuse. Looking back I think this was a form of self-protection stemming from the time when I had pleaded in vain with her to take me away from Hermann’s house.
    Gisela’s plan was for me to train as a physiotherapist, with a view to at some point coming to work in her practice. But as it turned out, I couldn’t begin the college course in physiotherapy for another two years. I still have no idea why I was pulled out of school so early but as a stop-gap, I was sent off to live with the son of a friend of Gisela’s mother, who owned a farm near Lake Constance on the border between Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Here I was supposed to learn household management. The farm was in a village called Heiligenholz: it was remote and tiny, with only three or four houses nearby. For the first four weeks I cried every night because I was so homesick. Gradually, though, I settled in: the farmer had six daughters and the youngest two, aged twelve and fourteen, became good friends. The farmer’s wife was kind and warm, just as I supposed a mother should be. I stayed with them for eleven months and though I didn’t really learn any household or cooking skills – my duties were mostly washing up and helping in the fields – they were very good to me, and inadvertently forced Gisela to do something about my lack of official documentation.
    At some point during my stay, the family wanted to go on holiday to Switzerland. But I had no papers – no ID card, no passport, not even so much as a birth certificate – which would be needed to cross the border. The only documentation that anyone seemed to have for me was my state health insurance certificate, and that was in the name of the mysterious Erika Matko.
    In 1957, children could be included on their parents’ documents. Faced with the prospect of leaving me behind (or abandoning his holiday plans altogether), the farmer passed me off as one of his own daughters. We crossed and re-crossed the border without incident. But it prompted him to write to Gisela, urging her to sort out my identity documents – if for no other reason than I was shortly to be dispatched to somewhere where border controls were likely to be less relaxed.
    There was still almost a year before I was to begin my physiotherapy training. Rather than spending it back in Hamburg, it was arranged that I was to be sent to England to work as an au pair. I would need a passport.
    To this day I have no idea how Gisela arranged it. I