Finding Refuge

By the late 1930s, 13,500 Latter-day Saints were living in Germany. The East German Mission, headquartered in Berlin, provided support to the more than 7,000 German-speaking Latter-day Saints living in parts of Prussia, Silesia, Saxony, Pomerania, Lithuania, and Poland.

With the rise of the Nazi Party and the start of World War II, government and party officials occasionally attended meetings. Scriptures, hymns, and other materials that referenced Zion or Israel were forbidden. Ernst Eichler, who lived in Danzig in West Prussia (Gdansk, Poland, today), was grilled by the Gestapo three times about his “American church.” Relying on the Lord to provide the best answers, Ernst was released each time.

In 1945 Paul Langheinrich, a counselor in the East German Mission presidency, wrote from Berlin advising the Saints in Danzig to flee to the West. However, Branch President Willi Horn was concerned about the elderly members making such a difficult trek, so he advised the Saints to have faith and remain in Danzig. Some stayed.

Already scarce food, clothing, and fuel became even harder to obtain. Water came from melted snow. Air raid sirens sounded in the night and eventually into the day until, Margarete Eichler reported, the bombings left no one to sound a warning.

Despite the danger, one morning the Eichler children, Lilly and Ernst, left to collect potatoes abandoned on the road. Allied planes spotted them and strafed the street. By diving into bushes, the children escaped the first attack. Grabbing their bag of potatoes, they ran toward home, taking shortcuts through neighborhood yards. When the planes returned, the children ducked into a doorway until they could go home safely.

As the war ended, many Saints living in the East were forced to flee. Along with many other Saints, the Eichlers made the difficult journey westward. “We have lost everything,” Ernst told Elsa Langheinrich, Paul’s wife, when they arrived at the mission home in Berlin. “We have no home, no food, and we are pleading for help.” Elsa responded, “We don’t have much food, but any one that comes through here gets at least a bowl of soup. And my husband will find shelter for you.”

Paul Langheinrich utilized the deserted apartments in his building as a waystation for hundreds of Saints and obtained governmental permission to house refugees in buildings in Cottbus and Wolfsgrün. These buildings formed part of a network the German Saints established to provide housing and employment for families seeking to reestablish themselves in the West. Paul gave the Eichlers train fare and sent them to Wolfsgrün, where they joined nearly 200 other refugees.

homes under construction

Homes for refugee Saints under construction in Langen, 1949.

Courtesy of Deseret News

The Eichlers later moved to Langen, near Frankfurt, to settle in one of two wooden barracks sent by Swiss Saints. Eventually 150 displaced Saints, including the family of Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf, settled in Langen. To house these Saints, branch members not only built 10 four-family apartment buildings, but they also quarried the necessary stone, felled trees for lumber, and constructed a carpenter mill.