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.

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 .....