Internment, Again

So father and the surrendered German sailors were held in the Portland city jail for the mutiny.  At some point, the city attorney figured out that Portland could not charge anyone with mutiny - which comes under international sailing law.  But, the police did not want the German's released, so they turned the prisoners over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, whom then held them for illegal entry into the United States (the act of diving off of the ship!).  Which the Oregonian had a hay day with!

It turns out that father and five others could conceivably be charged with illegal entry.  However, it was in the rescue of US citizens and a public relations nightmare for the Portland INS office.  They were besieged with calls demanding the release of the German sailors.

At some point during this internment process, the Oregonian was able to bring enough public pressure on the INS that they released my father for a photo opportunity at the request of the newspaper, for one day.  So, father was taken over to my grandmother's houseboat for a day with the Americans and the 13 year old girl he had saved (my mother).

This photo is from the original newspaper clipping my grandmother saved.  However, the article has been lost.  It would have been interesting to know what it said they all did that day!  Other than have lunch.

In any event, this is one of the few photographs of father in his German officer's uniform and his ubiquitous pipe. Trimmed from the picture was the fact that he was wearing slippers as the INS would not allow the Germans to wear shoes since it was still thought they would run if given the opportunity.  At the end of the day, the Germans involved in the rescue were returned back to INS for holding.

After several months of being held, the agent, family friend Bill White whom was in charge, managed to negotiate a release during the daytime for the Germans.  After all, they had actually done nothing wrong and were model prisoners (compared apparently to others in the jail!).  And, then there was the whole problem of the press not letting the story die.  Father apparently spent most of his free time with grandmother's family and I have numerous pictures of him and my teenage uncles goofing off.

But, let us not forget the lawyers - whom were busy little beavers in the background.  The strike was to be broken when the courts ruled that since there was no agreement between the US and German Seaman's Unions, the US longshoremen were involved in an illegal strike and ordered back to work.  Completion of the inspection satisfied the insurance company so the ship could be released for repair and reloaded for return to India.  The courts ruled that with no physical evidence concerning the death of the German sailor, and with no evidence of lack of provisions aboard the ship, the German sailors were deemed 'dissatisfied' and the owner ordered to return the sailors to their harbor of departure, to compensate them for their wages and release them from employment.

Father, however, was to be returned to Germany in chains.

Wöbbelin

To me, it is almost a sacrilege to even add comments to these pictures of the Wöbbelin Concentration Camp.  As a German, I have been appalled by the actions of my countrymen.  Lots of excuses but no sound reasons for what they did, save for as a group, they abandoned their Lutheran upbringing to cause chaos and destruction on a scale I hope to never encounter again in my lifetime.

I post these in hopes that by knowing what happened, you too will strive to do what you can to see that politicians are never again trusted with sufficient power to ever repeat what was done to Europe from 1933 to 1948.

*****

On May 2, 1945, the 8th Infantry Division and the 82nd Airborne Division encountered Wöbbelin. Living conditions in the camp when the U.S. 8th Infantry and the 82nd Airborne arrived were deplorable. There was little food or water and some prisoners had resorted to cannibalism. When the units arrived, they found about 1,000 inmates dead in the camp. In the aftermath, the U.S. Army ordered the townspeople in Ludwigslust to visit the camp and bury the dead.

 

200 Found Dead in 1 Barracks

The Dead and the Dying Found Together

Compulsory Viewing

On May 7, 1945, the 82nd Airborne Division conducted funeral services for 200 inmates in the town of Ludwigslust. Attending the ceremony were citizens of Ludwigslust, captured German officers, and several hundred members of the airborne division. The U.S. Army chaplain at the service delivered a eulogy stating that:

    "The crimes here committed in the name of the German people and by their acquiescence were minor compared to those to be found in concentration camps elsewhere in Germany. Here there were no gas chambers, no crematoria; these men of Holland, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and France were simply allowed to starve to death. Within four miles of your comfortable homes 4,000 men were forced to live like animals, deprived even of the food you would give to your dogs. In three weeks 1,000 of these men were starved to death; 800 of them were buried in pits in the nearby woods. These 200 who lie before us in these graves were found piled four and five feet high in one building and lying with the sick and dying in other buildings."

The Funeral Service

The 200 Graves

The death register at Neuengamme indicates that about 40,000 prisoners died in the camp by April 10, 1945. Perhaps as many as 15,000 more died in the camp in the following week and during the course of the evacuation. In all, more than 50,000 prisoners, almost half of all those imprisoned in the camp complex during its existence, died.

Beds made of barbed wire, rags and straw

Forced labor

The Survivors.....

This is the heritage, the legacy, left to those of us whom are the next generation of Germans.  Yeah, try growing up as a child in a country destroyed by war, a heritage of racism and an occupation force willing to make your life miserable because your forefathers deserved execution.   Yeah, as a child, it was galling.

The Internment Population

The internment population of the Wöbbelin repatronization camp, outside of Hamburg, had to have been very interesting.  First, you had refugees from the complete destruction of Hamburg via its firebombing.  Then you had captured soldiers.  And, finally, there were people like father whom were caught fleeing the Russian advance.

For those of you whom do not know of what life was like during the Cold War:

• There was no internet nor its abundant supply of information available
• Most of the documents captured by the Soviets were held until just recently.
• Britain and Canada sealed their repatronization files and are still not available.
• The Red Cross lost most of its European documents in the bombings.
• Even the Lutheran Church's records were sparse beyond just names of people and towns.

So, it was very hard to mine the information about father, except for what he was willing to talk about.  And, talk he did but on things he should have had NO knowledge of.

Which brings us to the point that he must have been able to gain a great deal of knowledge during his internment years from first hand witnesses.

Case in point is knowledge of Breslau.  This an old German city in what is now Wroclaw, Poland.  Father decided that this was the city of his birth - since he was able to learn of the destruction of both the University and the city hall (along with all records).  This allowed him to begin to fabricate a new identity.  You have to remember he was still convinced that he would be turned over to the Americans and executed.  And Poland did not exist back then.  So, safety for him - with a story which could never be verified.

Someone in either the British or the Canadian camp had to have been from Breslau.  Someone whom was released early on and someone whose identity father then stole.  This will come up again much later and you will find what happened about as appalling as I.

Also amongst this crowd were some number of SS troops whom were in hiding.  Unknown to most Americans, SS troops were executed without trial by the Americans under the direct orders of then General Eisenhower.  Were it not for the eventual Canadian protests before the League of Nations, no SS staff would have ever survived their capture.  I am not arguing what Eisenhower did was "wrong" - the SS were a brutal group whom took life lightly and had dedicated their lives to the Fuhrer - in fact, many did not surrender and continued the fight into 1957!  But, it would still be nice to have a trial so guilt could first be established, and then execute them.  More on this later as well.

So father learned all of the SS trivia, all of the songs, all of the stories of what had been going on.  Some of this had a great impact on father - he had after all stumbled upon the remains of his old posting involving Nordhausen and Mittelbau-Dora/Buchenwald concentration camps.  He learned about the cold winters outside of Leningrad and the building by building siege and battles.  And what worked or did not work in German armament during those long Russian winters.   All of this began to form the background of his new identity.

He also learned, from those fleeing from the east, the existence of the Soviet execution squads whom were patrolling and executing those found in the area to the east of the Elbe River.  I really do not believe he had encountered these patrols since his three friends never told similar stories.  So, again, gaining information to help with his new identity.

And all of this knowledge not only laid a groundwork to hide his true identity but also was to become his own truth.  As later in life he could no longer remember which story he had told to whom or even what was actually true ...

There was one other population group in the camp, they had been there since before the British had liberated the camp - they were the Jews whom had been rounded up from elsewhere in Germany.  One of them was to soon be his bride.....

Internment

Internment was not at just one camp for the little group of teenagers, they were split up - each sent to a separate camp in the Hamburg region.  I know that it would be six years before the four of them would be together again.  And even then, conversations were still very guarded and switching between the various German dialects was performed based upon whom was near - for the rest of their lives!

Wöbbelin, when liberated.

Father was sent to Wöbbelin, a part of the Neuengamme complex, an ex-Nazi concentration camp. For father, camp life was very hard.  He was in poor health by the time of his surrender and were it not for the care of a "foster mother" probably would not have made it.  Her name was Irma and I was to know her as one of my aunts.  I will write more on her and her family later on, an interesting rabbit trail.

There was little food provided for those in the repatronization camps.  I doubt there was much in the way of food for the troops guarding them either!  So, there was great incentive for those able to, to work.  The local farmers were contacted by the British to see if any of them would be willing to hire the inmates during the day.  Father was sent to a potato farm to work in the fields with three others.

Father cutting firewood in the Buchholz area.

He was transported each day with another inmate of some stature, Curt Jurgens (in English).  Jurgens had a daily radio program he did and the potato farm was on the way to the radio station.  Father was angry that Jurgens did not have to labor and was given better rations than everyone else.  Jurgens also was not housed with the rest of the inmates.  So, it seems there was a bit of a class warfare problem the British, in their typical fashion, managed to create.

Of course, being a prisoner, and given a little freedom, you will seek other opportunities.  Father was a very good swimmer and loved to dive.  The farm owners of the area all capitalized on this and used him (when the British guards were not around) to retrieve their firearms they had sunk in septic tanks, sewers, ponds and lakes back during the firearms confiscation of 1936.  And they paid him very well.  Farther quickly managed to amass several thousand in new German Marks this way!  With some of those diving tales, I am amazed he survived or was not covered in some form of weird hideous skin disease!

Father remained in the camp for a year.  His release was only due to the release of Irma - when her husband came to claim her.  He had been in an African POW Camp since the surrender of Rommel's army.  I am not sure how well Fritz welcomed the idea of having a teenager, but he was a life long uncle to me and must have accepted the situation with grace and dignity.