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Maria Barnai (Barnay) was born on the 17th of August 1919 in Breslau, the main city in Silesia, Germany (Since 1945 Wroclaw, Poland), a Hungarian national.
Her father Paul Barnay was Hungarian, born in Vienna and was manager of the Breslau city theatre, one of the leading theatres in Germany.
Her mother Alice (Lilly) Groebe was of Czech German tongue origine but was born in Koenigstein on the Elbe river near Dresden. Alice Groebe, had studied singing and did some acting in her husband’s theatre.In 1928 she was playing theleading role in ‘Midsummer’s Dream’ besides the well known actor Rudolf Platte. They had an affair and as a result she divorced Paul Barnai.
Maria was sent to her grand mother Theresa Kletetschka-Groebee in a small village and then joined her mother and step father.The new couple had moved to Berlin where they were married and bought a house in Dahlem-Zehlendorf at Kronprinzenallee 255 (now Clayallee) in 1929.
Maria continued to spend some holidays with her father in Marienbad and on the island of Sylt (North Sea). She was sent to a smart school in Dahlem and became friendly with the daughter of the famous actress Maria Fine. The daughter Maria Becker followed in her mother’s footsteps and became a leading actress of the German stage. In 1935 both Marias were confirmed by Pastor Kleinschmid at the Swedish Church as he was black listed by the recently established Nazi authorities. Many of the Berlin intelligentsia made a point of attending as a show of defiance.
After finishing school Maria attended the reputed art school Reimanschule where she studied fashion design. Lilly divorced Rudy Platte in 1936 and Maria accompanied her mother on lengthy trips to Italy for three summers preceding the outbreak of war in 1939, thus acquiring a good knowledge of Italian.
In spite of her Hungarian nationality she was expelled from the Reimanschule because of her Jewish ancestry (Her father was Christian by birth but his parents were converts) and had to take on war work as industrial designer in a radio factory. Her step father Rudy Platte was able to give her a job as cashier in his theatre.
She then applied for a course as translator/interpreter (which was considered war work)
which took her to Vienna (out of bombing range at that time). In the meantime Lilly made more and more frequent visits to old friends the Von Wallenbergs who had a large estate at Siebischau near Breslau, to avoid the ever increasing allied bombing on Berlin.
In view of the large number of people loosing their homes the Berlin authorities were imposing lodgers on under-occupied premisses. To avoid having total strangers in the house Maria, on retuning from Vienna, arranged for a number of young Frenchmen to stay at the house. This group was mostly homosexuals from well to do Paris families who had volunteered to come to Germany thus being able more or less to do pre-arranged work rather to be sent to Germany as forced labour. Maria soon improved her school French and enjoyed their Jean Sablon, Charles Trainet and Hot Club de France records. One of the boys drove a postal van. In good weather he would drive the group out to the lakes for a pick-nick. No one dared checking a Reichpost van!
In view of poor gas pressure, due to continuous bombing, cakes were made ready to go in to the oven as soon as an air raid started and cooking stopped all over Berlin and
gas pressure returned.
Maria continued to ‘ commute’ between Berlin and Siebischau where she made herself popular with the work party of French prisoners of war, who laboured in the fields of the Wallenberg estate under guard of an elderly soldier, by lending them her French records. For her birthday in August 1944 they presented her with ‘éclairs au chocolat’ made from their Red Cross parcels.
In the fall of 1944, as the Russians were approaching, Lilly and Maria left Siebischau for Leitmeritz where grand mother Theresa had a house. Leitmiriz was in the Sudetend and had been Czechslovaquia until the German took it over in 1939.
In late April 1945 as the war in Europe was ending the reconstituted Czech authorities returned, expelling all the German speaking population. For some reason Maria’s family was spared (?). War ended on May 8th but on May 9th Leitmiritz (now Litomerice) was
bombed by unidentified planes. Theresa’s house was hit and Lilly gravely wounded. She
was rushed to hospital where most of the medical staff had been already expelled to Germany. Maria’s mother died ten days later due to lack of medical care.
In the months following the end of the war civilian transport was non existent. Maria was anxious to return to Berlin and grand-mother Theresa wanted to join her family (Kleteschka) in Prague. Which she did with great difficulty.
Litomerice was the nearest town to the Theresenstadt concentration camp. Maria heard
that repatriation trains where being organised to various destinations including Berlin.
She somehow organised to join one of the special repatriation trains and arrived at the Anhalter bahnhof Berlin in early August. She found the house at Kronprinzenallee with the front door boarded up and one had to enter it through the garden at the back. A Russian soldier had tried to set it on fire but the lodgers managed to put it out. The Frenchmen were gone but all rooms were occupied. She managed to get two rooms allocated to her by the American authorities who had taken over their Sector the previous month. There was relatively little damage as Zehlendorf is fairly distant from the centre and outside the fighting zone.
Maria found that many of her friends had either survived or had returned to the city and she settled down to surviving in post war Berlin. It helped her that little
had been looted and she was able to sell her family possessions on the black market or exchanging it for food but life was quite difficult as it was for all Berliners. At least the war was over. She had affairs with someAmerican officers who contrary to the British were allowed to invite Germans to their clubs.
One day in July 1946 she was having friends over at her house when a French officer brought along an acquaintance, a British officer by the name of Dick Hunter who stayed over for the night and in February 1948 they were married.