"I never stopped yearning for my true home"

"WHEN myself and my sister Marlene arrived in Dublin in 1947 we were sent first to Glencree where we couldn't get over the lovely comfortable beds," says Hildegard Jones (nee Grabsch). "Life in Germany had been pretty miserable. Our father was very pro establishment and was an officer in the Luftwaffe.

"My mother was totally opposed to Nazism and her refusal to accept the free food and clothing that Nazi officers were entitled to meant she ended up in a prison camp in Berlin. My father sent her to such a camp on two separate occasions.

"We lived in a children's home near Aachen and we were sent to Ireland. When I was seven years old. When I left Glencree I was sent to meet my Irish family, the Brannocks, in St Stephen's Green. They bought me ice cream but I didn't know what to do with the wafer. When we arrived at their house near the South Circular Road, I broke the wafer and threw it in the fish pond at the back. It nearly killed all the fish.

"I had a lovely time in Dublin and became part of the family. Mr Brannock used to take me fishing. Everywhere I went I was treated like a princess.

When I went back to Germany after two years, my parents were divorced and my father took me away from my mother to live with him in Aachen. He used to beat me so my grandmother managed to get me back to Ireland. I got married in Dublin when I was 22 and have a gorgeous husband, Frank, and five lovely children."

"My mother is still alive and I visit her in Germany whenever I can. I still feel more German than Irish but I know my life turned out better than it would if I had stayed in Germany. At the moment, I have a little Usterbaume [Easter Tree] up in my house. Although I love it here, I never stopped yearning for my true home."