German "Wolf Children"; The War's Forgotten orphans

Wasn't familiar with this story.
"Forced to flee then-East Prussia to Lithuania at the end of World War Two, these orphaned German children survived hunger, cold and the loss of identity. Their fate has remained long overlooked by the German government.
They were barefoot and they had lice. It must have been April 1946, but after so many decades, Erika Smetonus isn't entirely sure about the dates. Her mother hadn't survived the war, her father was missing. Smetonus was completely alone when the great expulsion and flight of the East Prussians began and tens of thousands of Germans moved west from what was then the city of Königsberg (today Kaliningrad). The 11-year-old was desperate — on top of everything else, she had lost her little brother in the Red Army's advance.
She instead latched on to an older boy, who always ran away from her when he found food so he wouldn't have to share it. Together, the two of them made it to Lithuania, where Smetonus found a new home with a couple. They sent the boy away because they didn't want to take in two orphans. Smetonus stayed with them for decades.
Lithuania and the 'Vokietukai'
Semtonus is one of the "wolf children" ("Wolfskinder") — German children orphaned after World War II in East Prussia, an area bordering the Baltic Sea that had been German territory between the two world wars and today corresponds to parts of Russia, Poland and Lithuania. The total number of wolf children can only be estimated. Some say there were up to 25,000 of them roaming the woods and swamps of East Prussia and Lithuania after 1945. Russians were forbidden from taking in these "fascist children."
The kids were told to go to Lithuania where there would be food. If they were lucky, the "Vokietukai," or little Germans in Lithuanian, passed through villages with sympathetic residents on their march to the Baltic states. These locals would put out buckets of soup in front of their doors. If the children were not so lucky, residents would set their dogs on them.
Young children were more easily taken in by families than older ones. Boys and girls who didn't find a home had to survive in the woods. And even those who did get a roof over their heads never knew for how long they'd be allowed to stay. Marianne Beutler, who was only 10 at the time, was taken in by Lithuanian farmers to help take care of their children over the winter. But after half a year, they sent her away again."
German 'wolf children': the forgotten orphans of WWII | Germany | DW | 02.11.2017

 

Thanks for sharing Gordon. Very interesting. Children refugees were a heartbreaking outcome during the push towards Berlin.