The Johmalites

By Johannes F Lisiecki

Following the air sirens, bombs, and rubble of World War II, many European citizens made the bold decision to immigrate to North America in order to build a better life from the ground up. After receiving his education and training in the volatile post-war economy, Johannes F. Lisiecki was one of the dreamers who made the journey across the Atlantic. Unfamiliarity with both the people and the language led him to the precipice of despair, but Johannes’s perseverance and can-do attitude would bring his dreams within reach. Discover his story for yourself in this captivating, thought-provoking page-turner of how he became a proud American.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Johannes F Lisiecki
• Release date: Mar 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301613038

Johannes F Lisiecki

Johannes F. Lisiecki was born in Horrem, Germany. After completing his basic and professional education in the field of mechanical engineering he immigrated to Canada in 1959. He was living with his young family in Toronto when he was invited by the Boeing Co to come to Renton, WA, USA, known as the jet capital of the world, where he joined the team working on the 747. He left Boeing on January 2nd 1970 be an Adventreneur which culminated in a life of fabulous successes and failures. He kept meticulous notes and diaries which he is now converting into books. He received “The Certificate of Merit” from Writer’s Digest at the 1998 National Self-Published Book Awards for An Adventreneur’s Odyssey. He has given over 200 Rotary and other presentations of this story in the United States and Canada. The second edition, retitled Following A Dream, was released Fall 2012. Johannes was also the final and certifying editor for the English to German translation of the book Conman or Saint written by Pulitzer price winning author John Fraska and has written numerous articles. He was featured in newspapers and magazines in Brazil, Germany, Canada, and the United States. He and Marlis, his wife of fifty-two years, reside in Lynden, Washington.

Book preview

The Johmalites

An Autobiography of Unusual Immigrants

The New World Beckons

Johannes F. Lisiecki

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Johannes F.Lisiecki

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Dedication

Divine Providence

and Mom and Dad Verbeek

Acknowledgments

For some people the story of a live is made up by tens of thousands of people one may have met or worked with. Over the years that has been my fortune. But it always comes down to the handful which become a special part of our lives. In the creation of this series I am thankful to those few who have been part of putting it all together.

First of all I want to thank Robert E. and Shirley LeCoque for their friendship during the past forty-four years. Always there, whether the chips were up or down.

Thank you to the best friends I have ever known, my dear wife Marlis, our son Cameron, and our daughter Jacqueline. Always astounded and puzzled by what their crazy husband/father may come up with next.

A special thank you goes to Lloyd E. George for reading the first draft of this manuscript and encouraging me to proceed with the book.

I like to thank Ja An Littlefield with assisting in the cleanup of the final draft.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1 - Growing Up

Chapter 2 - Learning a Trade

Chapter 3 - Canada, Here we Come

Chapter 4 - Selling Magazines

Chapter 5 - Returning to Germany

Chapter 6 - Returning to Canada (Again)

Chapter 7 - Back to NLG

Chapter 8 - Starting a Regular Life, Or So We Thought

Chapter 9 - Maria Luise and the Children Visit Grandparents in Germany

Chapter 10 - Going West and Back to Germany

Chapter 11 - Coming Home

Chapter 12 - Seattle/Renton, Here We Come

Chapter 13 - Will the last person leaving Seattle turn out the Lights

Epilog

Prologue

The suffix ‘ites’ means people of , along the lines of descendants, or people groups. The root name is a primary node in terms of the branch of a tree, and identifies your clan-relationship - your people. (Wikipedia)

The first 'ites' appear in Geneses of the old testament as 'Hamites, and Japhethites', the descendants of Noah’s sons Japheth and Ham.

'The Johmalites' is our clan which came into being with my birth in 1940. This is our documented story-not as I remember it, but as it was. I started keeping records in my early teens. Therefore it is not a memoir but an autobiography in it's true sense. I have elected to write in the present tense in order to put you into the journey as a participant. Enjoy this stunning ride.

Johannes L. Lisiecki

Growing Up

It all begins in the early days of childhood. Perhaps it’s the first dream we have in the crib. Perhaps the first influences that come our way. I have never met a person who could remember that far back. It may be what Mother and Father told us about our early years that influenced our earliest memories. Then comes the time when our own mind starts to register things we are later able to recall. Some think that this is the actual foundation of our beginnings. Some believe that it began even earlier than that, perhaps with dreams of our ancestors that somehow were transferred to us or we listed to our parents’ reminiscence. It may come from our grandparents’ or even great-grandparents’ memories and dreams. Often we have to ask where the line is. Our young memories reflect mostly the things that had the greatest impact on us.

We daydream sitting by a brook or river, standing on a hill, or walking through meadows, or at play emulating our sports or other idols. Dreams are what make up our youth and what someday we hope to be. We look for idols, heroes, and guidelines. Many of them will become very important later in life. How much we actually retain is hard to tell. For our first influences are controlled by our parents, neighbors, the town or area we grow up in, the nation we are born or live in, or special events (good or catastrophic). Then little frustrations of childhood, such as having no one to play with or fighting with other children on the block as the first confrontations of combat appear. Then come the small trips to close and further surroundings—first with our parents, then with friends and others, which result in the early experiences of our dreams. We love the fiction of our dreams, often not realizing that if we hang on to them they may actually come true. Our world is built around our dreams as the past was built around the dreams of our ancestors. Ours will build the future.

* *

I was born in Horrem, a town of about eight thousand near Cologne, Germany, a quiet, rural community in the Erft River valley and located on the main railroad line between Aachen and Cologne. The town is surrounded by farmland, but the main industry is the huge lignite mines and the factory that produces the coal that is sent all over Europe. There are several medieval castles, and the old church was built adjacent to a lookout tower built by the robber knights who inhabited the castles over one thousand years ago.

My father was an orphan and grew up in an orphanage in Dortmund with his younger brother, Valentine. He was born in the district of Strelow in Pomerania, Germany, in 1909. His parents had moved from there to the Ruhr district to find work in the coalmines. It was customary for the expecting mother to return to their hometown so the first child would be born there. His father, my grandfather, died as one of the first, if not the first, casualty of WWI in 1914 within thirty minutes of the official declaration of war by a gunshot wound to the head.

In 1917, my father’s mother died of pneumonia, with him at her bedside when she passed away. He was only eight. Having spent his childhood in an orphanage, he was sent at age fifteen into the country to learn his trade at a blacksmith shop on a farm. As a young man of twenty, he came to Horrem near Cologne where he met my mother. She was only sixteen. Her parents came from the Eifel, a mountainous area near the German-Belgian border. In any case, their first trial run at love ended in the creation of my brother Siegfried, who was born in 1930. My sister showed up three years later.

* *

It’s 10:22 p.m. on April 8, 1940, when I exit the dungeon of darkness and see the first light. I have a big smile on my face. The midwife says, Here is an adventurer. I am not the least bit affected by the raging war around us and that my parents’ friends have been disappearing without a trace. My father was to register me at city hall as Hans Dieter. However, being snookered, he changes it to Johannes Friedrich, which turns into Friedel. My brother Siegfried is nine years old and my sister Maria Rosa is six. Since I am a wanted child, everyone receives me with great joy and hope that the war will be over soon, except this doesn’t happen. The war rages on for four more years and becomes more ferocious than any in history.

My father, Leo, is exempt from military service because of major medical operations in the late thirties. His skills are also in high demand in the armament industry of which the company he works for is a contributor. His brother Valentine is a rebel and dodges the military with the ingenuity of a cat. My first recollections go back to about 1943-1944.

My dad raises prize-winning rabbits, which are also usable as food. I am about four years old, and we have evacuees from Cologne at the house, which include a girl about my age. The rabbits just had a new litter. Wanting to show her the baby rabbits, we mix up the different litter from different breeds. When they are small, one can’t tell which litter they belong to. Some disappear or get stuck in the drainage holes. My dad almost has a heart attack when he finds out.

A few hundred yards from my grandparents’ house is a bunker/bomb shelter dug out of a hill to protect the locals from air attacks. Spine-curdling sirens announce the approach of low-flying bombers trying to hit a nearby paint factory. Since they only hit maybe twenty percent of their intended targets, the neighborhood gets the brunt of it. I already know the drill. My mother grabs me, and I run as fast as my little legs can carry me toward that bunker and disappear into its hole with other neighbors, holding our breaths and making sure my little dog Teddy won’t bark so that the attacking pilots can’t hear us. Then after hours of silence and fear, we slowly emerge from the underground air raid shelter to return to our homes. A bomb had exploded in our backyard and left a huge crater only a few feet from the house.

When the attacks become too numerous, many women and children are sent to the interior of Eastern Germany, an area called Der Harz. My grandparents refuse to vacate their house and stay behind. As I look back just before turning the corner, I see Teddy sitting in the middle of the road looking at me with sad eyes, wondering why he can't come along. This picture of Teddy looking and me raising my little hand waving good-bye stays with me for the rest of my life. I will not see him again.

A train takes us to the town of Queenstedt near Aschersleben. The people living here are required to share their homes with evacuees coming from other parts of Germany, whether they like it or not. Some take us in willingly, others only reluctantly. We find room in the attic of a house, which has been prepared for temporary living space. The family’s name is Luther, and they are decedents of Martin Luther's brother, Jakob. They have a son, Bodo, who is about two years older than me. I will magically meet him again forty-seven years later.

Once we have settled in, my father returns to our hometown. Knowing the farm country, he can barter and trade for food and other essentials we need. He does all his traveling on bicycle. He is gone for weeks bartering for potatoes, vegetables, bacon, meat, and clothing. He returns with his bicycle pulling a small handmade cart loaded with meager necessities to help his family survive.

Then typhoid strikes. First, it's me; then my mother gets it and my sister after that. My mother is the worst, and we think we’ll lose her. I don't know yet that my father lost his mother when he was only eight and that his father died on the first day of WWI. Miraculously the disease spares my brother, and he takes care of us at age fourteen. Like any little boy who is immune to the real world, I go on playing and find interesting things to do. I love the water, and the town pond is a major attraction—except it's infested with blood-sucking leaches that will adhere to my naked feet within minutes of stepping into the water. When this happens the first time, I run home frightened and screaming, looking for help to remove them. On days when Daddy is here, he puts me on the back of the bicycle and we head for the fields to glean potatoes, cabbage, and carrots at harvest time. Except this time we get into grave danger. We are several miles out of town when suddenly airplanes appear in the sky. I get so frightened that my foot slips off the support in the back of the bicycle, and my right heel ends up in the spokes, tearing up half of it. Daddy grabs the bike and me, throwing us into the ditch, hiding from the airplanes. Only about a mile away, we see the low-flying planes attack two military buses, annihilating everything that is in and around them. We can hear the screams of the soldiers as they try to escape the burning buses.

Sometime in early 1945, the Russians are within a day of the town. The word is that they are plundering everything in sight and raping the young girls. My father and some of the neighbors find an open truck with a trailer, throw us all in it, and bribe the truck driver to return us to our hometown. It is none too soon, for within hours after we leave, the Russians overrun the town.

With only a few more miles to go, we almost meet calamity. The driver, being in a hurry to get rid of his load, drives much too fast, almost capsizing the trailer with us in it bunched together like cattle. We make it around the corner on two wheels with the women screaming at the top of their lungs. Only a miracle prevents us from flipping over. I still hear the screams as we look certain death in the eye just before returning home.

Then we are here. Only the two pumps are still standing from the gas station on the corner. Our house has its roof blown off and some of the walls have caved in. The garden is a collection of huge bomb craters. It’s amazing that my grandparents are still alive. They are already working on rebuilding what’s left.

The impact of the war is the first impression of my youth. Some of our dreams adjust to conform to current reality.

The Nazis are trying to make a last stand by using the teenagers. My brother and sister are at that age, and so is the neighbor's son. They take him to the front where he gets torn to shreds by a grenade and then put into a box. His father insists on seeing him one more time, despite being warned not to open the box. After seeing his son's pieces, he is so shocked that he walks to his tool shed and hangs himself.

One of the so-called old friends of my parents who had turned Nazi comes to our house with another person to take my brother and sister away to the final front. I am clinging to my mother's legs as she stands in the doorway defying their entrance. She simply says, The only way you will enter this house to take my children will be over my dead body. She is so forceful, making the men realize that she means business. By a miracle, they turn away and leave.

They put my uncle Valentine on a train, from which he jumps at full speed and breaks his leg. When they catch him again, they take him to a concentration camp from which he escapes. Before they find him again, the allied troops have advanced into our territory.

With that comes the realization and the aftermath of the destruction no more evident than on my first trip with my mother and sister to Cologne. Europe’s gateway railroad station has its roof blown away. Not one glass panel remains in its framework, and the world-famous Hohenzollern railroad bridge crossing the Rhine River is blown into the riverbed. Except for the cathedral, not a single house is standing. Streets have turned into trails leading through the rubble of total destruction. I am walking through these ruins in complete awe and not really understanding what has happened. They actually find an unexploded five-hundred-pound live bomb in the center of the cathedral. In all this upheaval, the majestic Father Rhine continues its silent flow undisturbed by history’s events as he has for millions of years.

The physical and mental struggle of reconstruction has begun, especially the daily chore of defusing live bombs, at times blowing up the team doing it.

House construction in Germany is of brick and mortar. We recover usable bricks from other ruins, pick them up in wheelbarrows and hand wagons, and then spend weeks chipping off the old mortar so the bricks can be reused. At a nearby gravel pit, we set up a four-inch-by-eight-inch screen made of fine mashed wire. With a shovel we throw sandy gravel against it, separating the sand from the gravel. We'll load the sand into a wheelbarrow or hand wagon and then haul it to the house. I have no idea where my grandfather found the cement to create the mortar needed to join the bricks, which we hand mix in a wheelbarrow with a garden hoe, one batch at a time. That's how our house gets rebuilt. We have no time to wait for government handouts. There are none. The German mentality is to do what it takes to get it done. Life has not stopped. We are down but not out.

They are still removing bombing debris at the Volkswagen Company when the first VW bug is delivered in 1946, and by 1955 number one million comes off the production line.

Food is still scarce. We pick nettles, dandelions, and other greens, which my mother turns into spinach or veggies. My mom tells us in later years that she often turned her head from the food she had prepared for us, for only she knew what was in it. We fill the craters before we can plant the garden, hoping not to run across or hit an unexploded bomb that may have landed somewhere unnoticed. Farmers start planting their fields. We go out gleaning potatoes, cabbage, and other foodstuff after the harvest. We hope to find enough potatoes to store in the basement for the next winter. My dad slaughters rabbits for meat. The blood is used for blood sausage and the pelts for coats, gloves, and hats. My grandmother does the chicken. She'll hold them by the legs, put their heads on a wooden block, and chop off their heads with a hatchet. Sometimes a headless chicken would get away and still fly around the yard.

Others cultivate assigned 30x30 meter garden plots on which they build small garden tool sheds and put up a small table with a couple of chairs so they can have lunch and visit with company. Sheds are very artistic as the plot owners compete with ideas to enhance their gardens.

In many places, people use soldiers’ steel helmets for cooking and baking utensils. Outhouses are supplied with scraps of paper squares, which are wrinkled up in the hand to make them soft enough to wipe.

In June of 1948, the Reichsmark is being replaced with the new Deutschmark and every German, man, woman, and child receives DM 40.00 to start over.

Of the first entrepreneurs to appear are vendors who come to the neighborhood with old trucks selling farm products like eggs, veggies, chickens, etc. Others bring baked goods, and others come to buy scrap metal. The knife and scissor sharpener comes on a bicycle. He props up the rear wheel and clips in the belt that drives the grinding stone, which he propels by pedaling and so sharpens the knives and scissors. We even sweep the ground on the sidewalk for the weekend to give it a nice design for Sunday.

My father goes back to work at the bombed-out factory and bargains with farmers to obtain the needed grub to sustain us. He discovers that light bulbs are a great commodity. The only ones to be found are the clip-on types, which will not work in screw-in sockets. However, those sockets are not available, but he is able to get clip-in light bulbs from the company. We scrounge trash bins and garbage dumps to find broken light bulbs with screw sockets. It is like looking for gold. He removes the sockets from the broken glass. After filing off the clip-on ears, he slips one of the screw sockets on and solders them in place. He now has a hot barter item worth its weight in gold. Just one bulb could fetch a nice ham from a farmer.

Food coming in via the Marshall Plan during the early years is corn and cornmeal, which is not used for human consumption here. In Germany, corn is used only for animal feed. I understand that this mistake came from the interpretation of the German word Korn, which in English means rye, and when Germany requested Korn spelt with a k, the translation turned it into corn/maize. We end up with enough maize to get sick of it. It is so bad that it actually makes me sick when I eat it in the morning.

We go