Helga Siegmund
“My parents said we were the first refugees in Bremerhaven,” recalls Helga Siegmund, who fled from Stettin, the former capital of Pomerania, to Bremerhaven in 1945 with her mother and younger sister when she was five years old. As the attacks on the port city of Stettin increased during World War II in 1944, Helga Siegmund’s mother decided to flee with her two daughters. Initially, they went to visit relatives in the nearby village of Siegelkow, but as the war situation intensified there, they had to flee again. Helga Siegmund’s mother actually wanted to leave Pomerania on the “Wilhelm Gustloff,” but could not secure a passage – the ship was later sunk. “My grandpa was a railroad worker and made sure that we could still flee by train” – heading west, with the destination Bremerhaven, where Helga’s father was stationed with the Navy. “I don’t know how long we were on the way, only that it was very cold. We had to travel in a freight car.” On February 19, 1945, Helga Siegmund finally arrived in Bremerhaven. Her father, a lieutenant, initially accommodated the family in his room at the barracks, “but that was not a permanent solution,” and “since Bremerhaven was also heavily destroyed, my father looked for accommodations for us in Spaden.” To this day, Helga Siegmund lives with her husband in Spaden. They met while working at the city administration of Bremerhaven, where Helga Siegmund began her career as a city employee at the age of 18 – “I worked in the same building where we first settled in Bremerhaven.” Later, she worked for 21 years with Lebenshilfe Wesermünde. “As avid hobby gardeners, my husband and I visited many beautiful nurseries and parks with the cacti club of Bremerhaven, even in England.” Now, Helga Siegmund is taking it easier: “We are now over 80 years old and only garden in our beautiful garden.”
A portrait of Helga Siegmund is one of the faces that has been displayed on the facade of the new German Emigration Center since June 2021. Before the opening of the extension with the artistically designed facade, Nordsee-Zeitung introduced the individuals behind the faces. You can watch the corresponding film portrait of Helga Siegmund here.