Physical Labor

Few Americans realize that World War II did not really end until 1957, with the surrender of the last SS unit operating as a terrorist group in the Austrian and Bavarian Alps, against American targets.  Up north, it was 1946 now and another story.  The war was over and the rebuilding of Germany was to commence.  The only fighting was verbal between the British, Canadian and Americans - and then again, collectively against the Russians on the east bank of the Elbe River.
Fritz and Irma had been wealthy before the war.  He was an architect and a decent investor.  However, the banks were gone, the Deutschmark devalued and any bank balances decreased by 90% automatically.  They were wiped out, but at least they still had something to pull from in an economy where cash ruled - as few had it.  And luckily for them, there was a real need for architects.

Drilling a new well, father center.

Father was able to get a job as a day laborer for basically starvation wages, especially considering that he now had a wife to support.  Hamburg had been flattened and the entire infrastructure had to be replaced.  You also must realize that by the time of father's capture he was more dead than alive.  The regular meals from working on the farms had helped him to recover somewhat, however he had little muscle to rely on and he really had need of them!

Ditches needed to be dug for sewers, water supply and gas pipelines - there was little machinery to do the jobs.  Roads rebuilt, factories restored, apartment complexes built, everything everywhere had to be replaced.  So the work was there but the economics were not.  There was nowhere to live other than the street and a day's labor provide little enough food for one - much less two.  Then there was the question of being able to find food for sale in the first place.  And father was stuck as he had no real skills for this labor market.

Something had to change and father had few resources in his favor.  He held a mathematics doctorate, however the university was gone and little need for instructors anywhere.  He could go over to the Americans under the Operation Paperclip offer to German scientists, but he still believed he would be executed, if he did.  The British and Canadians had no use for him, nor did the Germans for that matter.  His education had left him fluent in French, 5 forms of German and English.  So on weekends he was able to hold down a job as a waiter.  Notice in the photo that he is 6'1" tall and weighed all of 96 pounds at the time!  Interestingly, at the table is Uncle Fritz; I assume the dress is attached to his wife Irma.

In the local paper one day he saw an advertisement for seaman needed immediately for shipping out of Bremerhaven.  And so he had to take a chance and identify himself as a Captain in the now defunct German Navy, in hopes of at least being able to feed his wife.  As I mentioned earlier, how he acquired his commission, much less in the Navy, is beyond my knowledge.  Yet, he had managed it during the war and as a teenager to boot.

His hope was a posting on a North Sea freighter.....

Monika

I know very little about Monika.  I know she was Jewish and had been a prisoner at the Wöbbelin labor camp outside of Hamburg.  Her presence here means she had been originally held in the Auschwitz complex, and was one of the 10,000 women transferred to Wöbbelin.  Seems there had been a female uprising at Auschwitz, with one of the oven buildings destroyed by smuggled munitions being dumped into it.  Those whom could be identified as complicit with the bombing were executed, others scattered to various camps.  Further, her presence in Auschwitz, meant she was originally from a conquered territory.  Dutch, French, or even a Sudetenland Jew are all possibilities.  Since she stayed in Germany after the war, I will go with her being a Sudetenland German Jew.

These were the only women to have been at Wöbbelin.  I know that father met her here.

In my research I have managed to find exactly 5 photos of females whom were held at Wöbbelin; three of them are of the same woman.  Quite photogenic considering what she had gone through and young.  If anything, father was always drawn to light haired, small, young women.  Could this have been Monika?  Absolutely no idea, but given father's taste in women, a darn good candidate.  As you will see for yourself much later in my postings, ALL of father's wives were not so far removed from this young lady's appearance.  Too much coincidence here for me to believe!  I think he kept marrying Monika.

I have mentioned already that father was haunted by what the SS had done at Middelbau-Dora and Nordhausen, and what he saw.  I sincerely doubt father had much interaction with the prisoner population, other than the prisoner scientists.  But, he probably "knew" many whom were working on the A-9/V-3 project.

So, father is fleeing from the advancing Soviet Army and expects to find shelter at the underground complex.  Only, everyone is dead.  Well, the prison population anyways, the Germans were long gone.  People he "knew" and saw daily had been gunned down, some had been hung.  On the road in he had to have traveled, he would have come across the smoldering remains of a barn which had been stuffed with the "final solution" helpers - some 1,016 prisoners whom had helped and were rewarded with the fiery death of a barn burning by their SS keepers and those whom got out were gunned down as well.

At Nordhausen, where the scientist prisoners had been housed, the camp had been deserted.  Hundreds of bodies lay where they had been felled.  And we will look at this later on.

But, point is, these were the Jews.  He saw first hand the Reich's ruthlessness in dealing with the Jewish question.  It was not a matter of killing those whom could help their enemies, which he could have understood.  No, it was killing Jews, because of who they were.  Genocide was a new concept for him to come to terms with as a teenager in the camp.  In all honesty, he never was able to understand how his Fuhrer could have done this - "..... no, this must have been on orders from someone in the General Staff....".  Always protecting the Fuhrer.....

And then he was to meet a Jewish girl, one of the prisoners for her faith, and discovered that maybe Jews were human after all.  And knowing the way in which my father thought, he saw in her his ability to atone for what his chosen country had done.  He married her.

But, first he had to convert to Judaism himself, a Rabbi found - whom were a little scarce by this time and he had to have some form of support.  I like to think of her as sort of a female version of Daniel, standing for her faith even in the ruins of her life.  I will talk about these things later.

And he did convert, did marry and you guessed it - later abandoned Monika.

I only knew her through her letters.  She wrote father weekly, through the entirety of my young life.  She lived in Frankfurt and that was about all I can say.  When the internet became a reality, I spent many hours a year sifting through all of the Monika's living in the Frankfurt area and eventually did find her - about three months after she had died.  She had never remarried, which I found a little interesting - until I realized there had never been a divorce filing!

I also found she had a daughter, my half sister, and was very surprised she had been named for father's mother.  I thought about striking up a long distance relationship with her - but to what end?  What can you say to someone whom shared the same father, and she had been too young to even have a memory of him?  "Hi, I am your half brother and never knew our father either."  Yeah.  I am guessing the daughter was told he had died.  It would have been far more comforting than the truth.

And I know, as a post-war child of Germany myself, there were darn few children and even fewer men in my village.  No reason to assume Frankfurt was any different.  One thing war is good for is leaving a lot of widows and fatherless children behind.

So, if you are reading this and you are of Hebrew extraction, named Martha, had a mother named Monika - email me! 

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.

Uncle Fritz' Story

Fritz returned from the North Africa POW camp and so was well documented by the British already.  He had been a SS colonel under Field Marshall Rommel.  Somewhere, I have a photo of him with Rommel, standing by a half track vehicle watching a tank battle from the first El Alamein battle.  Fritz actually had two claims to fame from his North African campaign, both involving El Alamein.

First, he had come up with an idea of using trucks at night to shift dead tanks around.  The German Army had run out of diesel so many of the tanks were inoperable.  By shifting the tanks it kept the Allies guessing at actual tank strength and held back the British and American forces long enough for Germany to remove some of their men and supplies.  (Supporting his idea, the Italians had come up with the idea of hauling a wheeled axle around at night so that there would be tracks in the shifting sands to make it look like there was much more activity going on at night!

Second, he had cautioned General Stumme, not to execute Rommel's complete orders - which would have led not only to a slaughter of the Allied advance but harsh reprisals against the Germans in their retreat for the survivors.  Fritz had been planning the retreat and surrender for months and indeed the Germans had been shifting important operations back to their base in Tunisia.

And, why you ask would an SS Colonel be thinking this way?  Seems not all SS were completely evil nor equal in their politics.....

Fritz was from Hamburg.  Under the German confederation, Hamburg was a Free State.  Yes, it was a member of the German community, but it was free from the national politics, interests, etc of the German State.  Once Hitler had seized power, one of his first moves was against the Free States, of which there were many.  Hence, the residents of Hamburg believed themselves to be prisoners of war and unwilling participants to the war.  And so, Fritz, was not only smart enough to know that in a battle, where you are out numbered two to one by your  enemy, your supply lines are hundreds of miles long, and you have NO fuel - you are going to lose.  He also hated the Nazi's.

The first Battle of El Alamein had already proven the Germans had no hope of capturing the fuel fields.  The continued build up of the Allied Forces only shifted the inevitable further into the realm of an Allied victory.

He told me it was his greatest joy to surrender and end his part in supporting Germany's war, as well as, saving as many lives as he could - on both sides.  However, it was his greatest sorrow to hear of the firebombing of Hamburg (an innocent captive city to the Nazi's, per him) and not knowing if his family survived or not.

I had always held a belief in Rommel as being perhaps one of the greatest German leaders, certainly of WWII in any event.  And Fritz agreed to a point.  But, his breaking point came when Rommel's complete orders for the taking of El Alamein included the command to fight to the death for each and every soldier.  Rommel expected the North African Army to commit suicide rather than retreat.  For that, Fritz lost all respect for Rommel and held that Stumme's willingness to stare facts in the face and listen to reason made him by far the greater German.

I remember commenting to Friz that he ought to have been awarded medals by the Americans and Brits for his effort, if he had told them the role he played.  The man actually turned white, broke out in a sweat and commented that he would have been killed, had something like that even have been suggested!  And a year later I was to find why and exactly how powerful the post-war SS organization still was.

In any event, the fact that Fritz was documented - allowed for the release of his wife, her release allowed for my father's, and his release allowed for Monika's.  And this little group of refugees were returned to the cindered remains of Hamburg.

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.....