Relatives sent many of the wolf children in Lithuania memories of family and their earlier lives because most of their belongings were left behind when they evacuated from East Prussia. Here, Reinhard Bundt looks at old family photos.
Photograph by Lukas Kreibig
The German Red Cross received thousands of requests to find missing children and parents, and worked to reunite families after World War II. In this 1961 letter, the Red Cross notified Gisela Unterspann that her mother was located in Germany.
Photograph by Lukas Kreibig
Years after they were separated, Gisela received a letter from her mother who was nearly a thousand miles away. Although they reconnected through letters, Gisela was unable to travel to Germany to see her mother before her death.
Photograph by Lukas Kreibig
Elfriede Müller, born in 1934, became a refugee when she was 11 years old. Elfriede is pictured here at the home of her friend and fellow wolf child, Margot, in Kaunas, Lithuania.
It was not until the fall of the Soviet Union that Erna felt she could speak freely about her heritage.
When she was eleven years old, Elfriede was separated from her mother and brother after they were discovered by the Soviet army. They were sent to a labour camp in Siberia.
Reinhard Bundt left East Prussia for Lithuania after his home was bombed. Of the wolf children that Kreibig met with during his time in Lithuania, only Reinhard could recall enough German to communicate effectively. "My heart is German but I'm Lithuanian," he says. Here, he sits in his bedroom at home in Vilnius.
Born in 1936, Reinhard was three years old when the war began.
Erna Schneider, born 1936, escaped into the forest from a windowless cattle train transporting East Prussian children to Russia. She went to Lithuania in 1946 with her sister and brother. People provided Erna food and shelter. Erna wishes the German government gave more attention to the stories of wolf children. Here, Erna walks near a lake close to her home in Lithuania.
