Freya Von Moltke - Leaving Kreisau

Leaving Kreisau

In the spring of 1945 von Moltke and another Kreisau widow had evacuated their families to Czechoslovakia to avoid the Russian offensive, which ultimately bypassed Kreisau. After the fall of Berlin on May 2, 1945, the Russians sent a small detachment to occupy Kreisau. Using improvised notes in Russian and Czech, she obtained safe passage for both families to return to Kreisau from hiding. A Russian company was billeted at the von Moltke estate to “supervise the harvest" during the summer of 1945. When the Poles began to occupy the small farms, vacated by Germans, the Russians became protectors of the occupants of the von Moltke estate.

After a trip to Berlin, where she met Allen Dulles and received American rations for a difficult return trip to Silesia to retrieve her children, von Moltke followed the advice of Gero von Schulze-Gaevernitz to leave Kreisau. Gaevernitz was an American officer, who came to inspect conditions in Silesia. Von Moltke gave him for safekeeping the letters that her husband had written to her, which she had hidden from the Nazis in her beehives. Thanks to British friends of her husband, emissaries from the British Embassy in Poland arranged for her evacuation from Poland.