'My German family was torn apart hours after VE Day'

Ute Smeed and her mother Maria Gebauer were captured by the Soviet Army immediately after VE Day

A woman whose family were captured by the Soviet Army just 24 hours after VE Day has written a book about their escape.

Ute Smeed, 83, from Bridgwater, grew up in Silesia. It was once part of Germany but the land was handed to the Polish after the Potsdam Conference in 1945.

Aged three, she and her mother Maria Gebauer were made to march towards Russia. Her father, a non-commissioned Luftwaffe officer, was taken to a Soviet labour camp.

"Few people in England know what happened in mainland Europe after the war ended: the brutality, the disease, and the starvation," she said.

Ute Smeed's father Alfred Gebauer was a non-commissioned Luftwaffe officer, who had refused to join the Nazi Party

The family were among 12 million ethnic Germans who were forcibly evicted or fled from their homes after World War Two ended.

The Potsdam Conference was a meeting between Winston Churchill, Clement Atlee, Harry Truman, and Joseph Stalin to decide the future of postwar Germany.

At the meeting, it was decided that Germany's territory was to be reduced by 25% of what it was in 1937, displacing many like Mrs Smeed's family.

Forced march

Speaking to Radio Somerset, Mrs Smeed said that on VE Day itself, "neither side knew the war was over".

The next day, Russian soldiers arrived and "took whatever jewellery and luggage they fancied", before forcing her family to march, she said.

"The men and women were separated, and we began walking through Austria.

"The people in the towns and villages we came through couldn't believe what the Russians were doing after the war had ended.

"They were incensed, they were shouting at the Russians and throwing food to the women.

"My mother and I were suddenly grabbed by a couple of Austrians and taken into the crowd.

"They took us home, and many days later they helped us to get back to my grandmother in Silesia," she said.

Meanwhile, her father, Alfred Gebauer, who had refused to join the Nazi Party while in the Luftwaffe, was taken to a labour camp in Ukraine.

He became very ill after six months, and when he left the labour camp he weighed just 38kg (83lbs).

He was released from the camp and sent home, and the family reunited in Świebodzice (Freiburg in Schlesien), Poland.

From there, the family sought refuge in Braunschweig, West Germany, and opened a shoe shop using an heirloom necklace as a guarantee for the loan.

Mrs Smeed's mother had smuggled the necklace into Germany by baking it into a cake to stop it from being stolen.

Eleven years after VE Day, Mrs Smeed became pen friends with an English teenager, Philip Smeed, which eventually led to love and marriage, and her relocating to Somerset.

The couple have three children, and six grandchildren, including Somerset County Cricket player Will Smeed, and rugby player Henry Smeed, who plays for Germany.

Ute Smeed settled in Somerset after falling in love with her pen friend

Mrs Smeed said she wanted to write the book, called Silesia, A Homeland Lost – One German Family's Story of War and Survival, for her grandchildren.

"It was important to me that my grandchildren would know their Silesian as well as English roots, and that our family's story lives on for future generations," she said.

"This is also my parents' story, their love for each other and for me, and their determination to survive firstly the Nazi regime, then the war and its aftermath.

"Millions of Germans were forced from their homeland, with little idea of where they were going, and often in freezing temperatures taking only what they could carry."