The Subject of Religion

This is the appropriate time to discuss father and his religious beliefs.  Why?  Because you have to remember earlier I told you about father converting to Judaism before marrying Monika, the young female prisoner he had met while interned at Wöbbelin.  So father was circumcised and this knowledge may have lead to a mis-identification of him by the US military.

To the US Military they had a quandary on their hands.   Father was known to have escaped from the advancing Russians, placing him on the east side of the Elbe River.  He was Jewish, that was obviously apparent from his medical examination.  Jewish, eastern Europe, survivor.  That pretty limited him to Nordhausen or Mittelbau.  But, was it possible to have escaped the SS carnage the US Army had discovered before the Russians had advanced on the Mittelbau complex?  This also meant he was a scientist or at the least science labor.  He had to have been familiar with the rocket programs.  So, his enigmatic past drew attention to him he really did not want.  Could it be there was anyone whom could be found whom knew him before his marriage to mother?

Father was really born into a Lutheran family in the small town of Munchstein, in Baslestadt, Switzerland.  The year he ran away from home, to join the Nazi cause, was also the year he went through Lutheran confirmation.  His family, and the church's pastors, all believed father was destined to join the priesthood.

Those Lutheran beliefs were obviously killed by the war - he saw what Lutherans were capable of - first hand.  His conversion to Judaism I am fairly certain was completely based on his sense of national and personal guilt.  What happened in the concentration camps was to have quite an impact on all of Germany and all whom I grew up with.  (And, yes, I understand that it was not the Lutherans whom were running the Nazi Party, but this was HIS take on the situation!  In truth, 7.5 million Christians were sent to the concentration camps for opposing Hitlers agenda.)

Father still held to his Judaism.  When I was born he personally brought in a Rabbi from Sacramento, California to see to my circumcision, on the eighth day, as required.  I was unable to be taken out the hospital for the first several months of life.  Babies of extra young mothers have a great many challenges in just surviving.

As I grew up, father taught me the Law of Moses, how to pray - in Yiddish, God's language of course!, and with a firm understanding that there is God - but you really do not want to know Him since he is not a very good god to his people.  I should say that part was beaten into me more than anything.

As I grew older, into teenage hood, father and mother clashed more and more over religion and food, eventually this brought about their divorce.  But we can look into that episode much later!

Following his divorce from my mother, father became an outright atheist.  Except he knew there was a God, he just did not what any part of him any longer.  So, perhaps it would be best to categorize father as a gnostic for the final fifty years of his life.  And, my becoming a Christian was about the final straw for him concerning me.....

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.....

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 .....