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.

A British Interrogation

I have shamelessly borrowed the following testimony of a British Interrogation at the Neuengamme Displaced Person's Camp, from www.dpcamps.org.  My father's new home at Wöbbelin, was part of the Neuengamme Prison complex.

For those of you whom are unfamiliar with this subject, American and British forces were ill prepared for what they encountered when they came upon the first concentration camps in Germany.  Their repulsion and anger should be considered only normal to any human being.  What happened in these camps is without excuse - both before and after the war.....

*****

Subject: British screening centre, the internment camp Neuengamme

I translated this a while back it is worth noting. ANTOH schlega.a@kabelmail.de

Heinz Harenberg, und Rudolf Heinz Beher –

“German Army Cossacks - II Battalion Bergmann“ - A translation from: ‚Freiwilige vom Kaukasus’

One day in a British screening centre, the camp administration announced the dismissal of everyone owning an heavy goods driving licence, and were from the Hamburg area. They were needed to clear away debris, etc. Accordingly, our comrade reported himself for the task and was summoned to the camp management.

Jews wearing the British uniform sat waiting for him in the office. He was asked for his Service and Identification book (Soldbuch). An officer spoke good German, and leafed through a thick book. 

Suddenly this Officer pulled a whistle out of his pocket and blew in it loudly. Two soldiers with machineguns (Sten’s) at the ready stormed into the room.

Then everything happened very quickly. Hands up! 

He was taken to be jailed in the nearby village fire station.

There he was met by another two British Army Officers, and a physician.

Our comrade, a corporal, wearing the tropical uniform, already a prisoner seem to make them curious. When the door closed and they were alone, one of the Officers took our friend aside and wanted to know why and how he, a corporal was arrested.

After explaining ‘Bergmann’ etc. This Officer gave our man a tip; to immediately destroy his service book and say at the next interrogation that he was found without identification papers in the camp, and this was the reason for his imprisonment.

After three hours passed, a German Paymaster, two SS Officers, and a Captain, were locked up with him. 

That afternoon, the door of the fire station opened, and four British Soldiers with Sten guns were standing outside. They commanded: “Hands up, and come outside!”  

The men were told to sit in the back of a Land Rover, and were driven away.

Where? They couldn’t tell? A tarpaulin cover blocked their sight, and three British Soldiers pointing their Sten’s, accompanied them. In the midst of an open road the vehicle stopped.

Then they were commanded to surrender all their valuables and money they had on them.

One of the SS Officer’s resisted the order with a determined No! 

He was told to dismount. And all feared for the worst.

This Officer was relived of all his valuables with force.

The journey continued, and through a gab in the tarpaulin they could see they were in city of Hamburg, but damn it, the vehicle didn’t stop. It drove on. They wondered where they were going? Where they being taken to the Russians? What a frightening thought. 
Conversation was strictly forbidden, and a depressing atmosphere arose.

An hour's drive later they stopped.

Shrill commands of unintelligible speech, and a spotlight glared on the vehicle as they dismounted. All around them they saw Barbed wire.

Rifle butts rammed their backs, driving them on like cattle, then singled out for interrogation. 

ing could be seen. Only a bright spotlight, and the questions came in broken German.

Where? Which unit? In which countries did you serve?

Suddenly a sharp pain was felt in our comrades back, and again the same questions were repeated.

His answer was always the same, “I was found in the prison camp with no identification papers. My last unit was Kraftfahrabteilung 10 Hamburg.” (Transport Company 10, Hamburg.) 

Then more blows. Then a roar, "You SS pig! You’ll hang!" 

Afterwards, solitary confinement. A dark room with a concrete floor, and wearing only light tropical uniform.

Every hour or so, he was dragged back out in the spotlight. The same questions, with the same answers. Again and again, solitary confinement, and darkness.

Approximately 3-4 days the same torture continued, and nothing to eat.

Although the torturers did not believe our comrade, finally they gave up and went away.

He was taken into the POW community. Thousands of soldiers and civilians in huge wooden huts with concrete floors.

Neuengamme

Now they could talk, but only softly so no supervisor could hear them. He found out that he was now in the former Neuengamme concentration camp, close to Hamburg.

Every day there was food. A few pieces of turnip swimming in hot water, served in mess tins. with a fist sized piece of bread, half of it mouldy. At morning roll call, which always lasted about three hours until they were all accounted for, they were told that mould was healthy for them.

The Electric Fence

Those who collapsed from weakness, or showed signs of a cold, were placed between two narrow electrified barbed wire fences. Those who fell, died. 

In the evenings they were locked up in the barracks by 6 pm.

Large bins were placed around the rooms where they had to do their necessities. It didn’t take long for them to fill and spill over. Then they had to lie in the faeces, all through the night. A savage stench of sewer soon filled the rooms.

Again and again, they were taken for interrogation. And, again and again, they were returned to the stinking mass piles. 

During the day they were allowed only to walk in the yard surrounded by barb wire, though only in silence,. 

Those who cracked up, ran against the wire and were immediately fried. Prisoners were constantly shoving barrows, wheeling away the corpses. 

Our comrades neighbour, a young raw recruit from Munich had only seen four weeks of service, 190 cm tall, caught tuberculosis in his lung and died.

Cripples with one arm, or one leg, the elderly, soldiers of every genre, they was all there, packed together. 

Our comrade was subdued to this drama for about four and a half months, then it was all over.

He was dismissed without a penny. But before leaving he had to sign an agreement that he would not testify about his experience in the screening centre, Camp "Neuengamme.”

Finally he found his freedom. But there is always the fear of re-incarceration, and with this comes a great silence.

Prisioner of War

Fühlsbüttel

It was south of Hamburg, in the Elbe River, where a British patrol intercepted father and his co-workers.  The little team was first taken to Fühlsbüttel, an ex-concentration camp.  Father and his team were not held as POW's for very long.  It did not take much interrogation for them to figure out that what they had on their hands were some very hungry teenagers, all of superior intelligence and scared beyond belief of the Americans.

From what I can piece together, they managed not to divulge their roles or knowledge of German weaponry.  And thinking about it, why would some scrawny youths have even been suspected of having designed the most terrifying weapons of the war!  Theirs was the tale of college students fleeing the bombing of Dresden and their long walk to Hamburg.  With the destruction of Dresden, so went the University records and naturally they knew they could bluff anyone on that account.

The British, satisfied they were dealing with non-combatants, transferred the youth to an various ex-concentration camps in the region outside of Hamburg.  These camps were used for the repatronization of undocumented Germans, which of course father and the team were considered.  Father was sent to a camp named Wöbbelin and from this camp, came some very interesting changes in my father's life.....

The War Years

Here father's life becomes rather murky.  I know my father's graduate studies in mathematics were through the University of Hamburg, as his doctorate before war's end was from there.  I know he worked on the theoretical mathematics for Heisenberg's atomic bomb project - as most of his post war life was based on this.  I know he also spent some amount of time on the V-3 (A-9) rocket program - as Werner Von Braun was a family friend and I knew him well.  Plus, three of father's team, from the war, were to be life-long friends of his.

Father was no longer associated with Heisenberg, by the time the German atomic stockpile had been captured - along with some staff.  In fact, father believed Heisenberg dead!  It was the greatest shock for him to learn that Heisenberg was indeed still alive and teaching in Munich many decades later!  And interestingly, father never contacted him that I am aware of, which you might think he would have done, being his old professor and all!

Father also managed to miss the capture of the V-2 rocket program by the American's, when an advance group of was rushed to Nordhausen to beat the Russians there (Operation Crossbow).  Also absent from Nordhausen, at the time, were the three others, whom with father, were to later be captured as a group.  But, I am getting ahead of myself.  So, although they had experience with the V-2, this group was more versed in the V-3 (A-9) program and I grew up with the tales of the ultimate rocket (the A-9) and their befuddlement as to what could have happened to it.

(Side Note:
The V-3 (A-9) had been mounted on a barge and was towed at night around Denmark, through the English Channel and was to be launched off the Irish coast - with the east coast of North America the target.  Think Washington DC or New York City the hoped for target.  The sub towing the barge, the barge and the rocket simply disappeared into history.  In the early 1990's I ran across a pilot's journal entry, whom was returning to England with a hung bomb.  They managed to "kick" it loose over what they calculated was the English Channel for safety reasons.  What followed was a massive explosion.  There was no reported loss of Allied shipping, in or around Le Havre.  So, could that bomb have hit the only V-3 (A-9) and been its demise?  Interesting thought.....)

Father, and his group, had been in Dresden at the time on leave - just in time to enjoy the American and British firebombing on day one and then strafing of civilians on day two.  No matter how you try to argue it, the Allies set out to annihilate one of Germany's oldest and largely unprotected cities.  (I will not get on my soapbox and spare you my Dresden rant.)  Net result was somewhere between 135,000 and 190,000 civilians dead according to the Red Cross, about 60,000 of them refuges, having fled from the advancing Soviet Army.  That burning pile in the background is one of the hundreds of piles of burning bodies.

Entrance to Mittlebau complex.

The Russians, by this time, had advanced to within a dozen miles of the east bank of the Elbe River and would be in Dresden within the week.  Their forward observers reported back on what the British and Americans were doing.  Stalin immediately filed a complaint with the League of Nations concerning the wonton destruction of a target his army had fought so hard to attain. Father, like so many of the residences, fled on foot north, his hope was to reach Peenemünde or at least Mittlebau, the underground assembly plant for the V-1 and V-2 rockets.

Mittlebau-Dora

Dodging the fighting, Soviet patrols, etc  - they did eventually reach Mittlebau and the horror of the Reich was to be firmly etched into each of their conscience.  The SS had been very effective in executing the entire workforce.  Tens of thousands of fresh bodies lay where they had been shot, hung, etc. But, at the time he and his team thought this the revenge tactics of the Americans!

And, at some point father was to travel past a burning barn.  I can still remember verbatim his description of it and his horror at what was later described as 1,016 Jews whom had been packed in there and burned alive.  The SS final solution for the Jews whom had aided the SS in the final solution in the Mittelbau tunnels!

Nordhausen

At Nordhausen they found the camp deserted, save for the prison labor, many dead and starving.  In Peenemünde they learned of the capture of the scientists by the Americans - remember, their last encounter with American's did not go so well in Dresden.  American execution was their only belief at this point.

Faced with the Soviet Army to the East and South, the Americans also South and West, father made a command decision - seek the British or Canadians and surrender.  They eventually did surrender to the British, finding a patrol on the Elbe River near Hamburg after nine months of walking and hiding from the Russians.

Father exited the war with the rank of a Naval Captain.  I have such a hard time understanding this, as you will understand later.  Here also is the intriguing question of where did his Naval experience come in?  Why was he flown to Spitsbergen at one point?  And, what on earth were the German's doing up there?  Father had nothing to do with submarines and Spitsbergen was a U-Boat base.  Could something to do with the V-3 (A-9) rocket have been executed in Spitsbergen?  Could the rocket have barged not from Nordhausen but Spitsbergen?  There is absolutely no data to show why he would have been there save for the atomic program or the V-3 (A-9).  Another of father's mysteries I must wonder at .....