Scrapbook Pages

Another view of the HJ gathering with speakers and other dignitaries, such as the Gauleiter of Kärnten and Gebiertsführer Schoas-Regger.

Below, Trude's boss, BdM leader Lore Peterschinegg, who married Odilo Globocnik.

From Life of WLK "I got lucky again during a bombing raid in June over the railway junction Wolhov-Stroj (also spelled Wolhof), near Leningrad. A Russian anti-aircraft shell tore a big hole into my fuselage and killed my radio operator. Two German fighters from the Gruen Herz squadron winged me back to the Luga airfield."

The certificate reads:

In the Name of the Leader and Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht, I award to Sergeant Wilhelm Kriessmann the Iron Cross 1st Class ... 20 January, 1943.

It is signed by Ritter von Greim but unfortunately the signature doesn't show up on the copy.

Pictured below: Col. Gen. Keller of the Luftflotte presented the awards and visited with Willi's squadron. I'm sure that is Willi in the picture on the left.

Leck was a secret airbase in Nordfriesland, Germany where 7 Staffel KG 76 was headquartered in May 1945. Willi is identified in the back row. Standing on the far left is Staffel Captain Hptm. Schillinger (my mother's maiden name). From the map you can see it is close to Klixbuell and Flensberg, on the North Sea.

From Life of WLK, Willi tells us how he arrived there:

From their headquarters at Korovje Seco from 12 January to 18 July 1943, Willi's Staffel 7 went on missions to these 13 destinations. Welikije Luki was the worst. As he wrote in Life of WLK:

We survived as a group of 23 airplanes and 115 men ... 23 horrible missions to save Welikije Luki. We were very lucky to have survived.

More portraits of Trude Kriessmann as a dedicated National-Socialist woman. The ideal for German women at this time was "Faith and Beauty" (Glaube und Schönheit).

By 1946, Trude had gone into hiding in Germany from the Yugoslav partisans at home who would surely have killed her. Her father and brother were held in a detention camp under British control; her mother and sister were alone in Feistritz, struggling to keep body and soul together.

From Life of WLK: 

BdM girls of different age groups performed for the public. In the center photo, we see Trude standing at the far right as the girl's leader.

Sport Rally for the Youth, Krainburg , 1942

Trude, Willi's sister, was a high BdM leader in Kaernten from 1941 to 1943, although she was a follower of Adolf Hitler's National Socialism long before that. The Bund Deutscher Mädel was the National Socialist organization for girls and young women, comparable to the Hitler Youth for boys and young men. When Austria became part of the German Reich in April 1938, the BdM became popular.