Waldenburg Group, Breslau District
Roger P. Minert, In Harm’s Way: East German Latter-day Saints in World War II (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2009), 151-2.
The only information collected about this group of Latter-day Saints came from one eyewitness—Luise Böttcher Winkler. She had been widowed in January 1943 and by 1944 was encouraged by the government to take her little children (born in 1939 and 1941) out of the city of Berlin to a safe location. She traveled to Waldenburg, Silesia, because she had been told that she could attend church meetings nearby. She later described the experience of being a Latter-day Saint in that small town:
We visited the branch in Waldenburg every Sunday while we were there. We had to take the street car. [The branch] was very small with only twenty people meeting in two little rooms. The branch president came from Hamburg. I was responsible for the children and the singing, and I also took the children of my cousin (who was not a member) to church with me. Once, we went to Breslau for a [district] conference.[1]
Sister Winkler was determined to maintain contact with the Church even while away from home. She returned to Berlin in September 1944.
Nothing more is known about the members of the Church in Waldenburg. It appears that no members of the group lost their lives in the war.[2]
Notes
[1] Luise Böttcher Winkler, interview by the author in German, Leipzig, Germany, June 2, 2007, summarized in English by Judith Sartowski.
[2] The town of Waldenburg is now known as Wałbrzych.