And He Came Back Alive!

By Margrit De graff

At the end of World War II in 1945 the Soviet Union held three and a half million German prisoners of war. One third died in Soviet labour camps It was not until 1956 that the last German P.O.W.'s were freed following the visit of West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in Moscow that year. Eleven years after hostilities ceased.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Margrit De graff
• Release date: Apr 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781773023519

Book preview

9781773023502

Cease, every joy, to glimmer on my mind

But leave-oh! leave the light of hope behind.

Thomas Campbell (1777-1844)

And He Came Back Alive!

Copyright © 2016 by Margrit de Graff

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-1-77302-350-2 (Paperback)

IN HONOUR OF MY FATHER

And All Who Suffered In Siberian Labour Camps

GUSTAV GOTTSCHLING

(1900-1980)

With daughters Margrit (12) and Heimtraut(6) in 1939

If you think life treats you rough,

Read Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

or Irena Rautushinskaya's Grey is the Color of Hope or

Ann Applebaum's Gulag and other accounts of detention in Siberia.

Index

How the title of this book emerged

Foreword

The true tales

My mother

Wheeling and dealing

Our family along with our friends

Since my mother learned

On July 21, 1947 (combined with This latest card)

After the astounding deluge of postcards

Postcard inserts

In came as no surprise

Perhaps some German Christmas

The doctors

How would my father take it

On February 3, 1948

Anyone who believes

Photo inserts

Bit-by-bit

I was resting

One of us is enough

My dad always asked

Last night

My father lived

Final words

How the title of this book came about

After the Soviet Union collapsed and was officially dissolved on December 25, 1991 people not only from Russia, but from other Soviet Bloc States as well, were finally free to leave their countries, be it to travel or to emigrate. In the summer of 1992 two young men came to camp at our resort at Gull Lake, Alberta. They spoke English with an accent I had not heard before. When I looked at the registration forms and saw their names-Vadim Vasiziev and Atyom Ivanoff-I asked in surprise and excitement,

Are you Russians?

How do you know?

"Your names ..:•

I have always looked at Russians and their country's history with great interest. Now I was welcoming some of them to our campground! These two young men would not be the only ones. More turned up in the following summers and young women, too. They always seemed happy to talk when they discovered my interest in their country and that!had some knowledge of it. I never forgot to mention that my father had been a Prisoner of War in Siberia. Without exception every one of these young people had the very same reaction; leaning towards me with intensity they all asked the same question every time,

...and he came back alive?

Yes! He came back alive! I responded gratefully.

I grew up in Siberia, smiled one young woman.

Really?

"Yes! I am of German descent and so were most of the communities along the Volga river, where my parents were born. When the German army advanced in WW.II whole towns were deported to Siberia. My parents were children at that time.

Not only ethnic German settlements were forcefully removed and re­ located to Siberia, many other nationalities suffered the same fate. I will touch on that at the end of this book.

Foreword

World War II had a profound influence on my life. Some who lived through a war want to forget. They manage to bury distressing memories deep within themselves and never talk about them, but the fact remains that surviving a war imprints a person for life. Growing up during war as a teen provided insight early in life into what is important and what not. The ability to find joy in small things and to make the most of sunny times while gaining strength from the darker ones, I consider a gift from Heaven.

The return of my missing-in-action father two years and eight months after World War II was over, has held a hold over me all my life. To survive years as a prisoner under inhumane conditions in bitterly cold, hard labour camps in Siberia is a miracle. A human being, diseased and emaciated, coming back from hell, eager to pick up where he left off eight years ago is truly a survivor. That my father survived the war - always in frontline action- and Siberia- surpasses anything that befell us, his family, at home. Although we had our share of war experiences, we have been very lucky. Bombs only blew our doors and windows out and the clay shingles off the roof, but we never suffered a direct hit. We had deep bomb craters in the garden and fruit trees uprooted, but that damage could be repaired. We had been shot at by fighter planes, but lost no lives. In our family it was our father who took the brunt of war and then he and many others with him could not even come home when the war was over-nor were they given a chance to contact their families for years.

At the beginning of World War II in September 1939 able bodied men in Germany were conscripted into the armed forces up to forty years of age. As a mature family man of 39 the very last thing my father wanted was to partake in war. Already as 17-year-old he had been in the terrible Battle of the Somme (France). With the enthusiasm of youth he had volunteered in 1917. He most certainly did not want do so again in 1939, but had no choice. He had to follow the call to arms-or else.

The true tales in this chronicle start with a plain postcard of coarse, yellowish paper- covered tightly in writing by my father's hand. This postcard, emblazoned with a red cross and the Soviet logo-a sickle-was delivered two years after World War II was over. No one had heard from my father in almost four years, but we refused to come to the conclusion that he must have perished in the carnage of the eastern front. At the time this postcard arrived I was nineteen years of age. My father had to leave for war when I was eleven.

My resourceful mother re-opened my parent's business-closed during war time-soon after I came home from my internment camp-with a Volkssturm group of 150 fourteen and fifteen years old Hitler Youth-in late August 1945. To help her family survive the tough post-war years she turned their high-end sporting goods store into a trading centre. It caught on at once. People flocked to the store with items under their arms to trade for something they needed more and saw displayed in the windows. The store was so packed with would-be traders that a line-up went out the door and along the sidewalk outside.

Onto this scene came our mailman, Herr Schultze. Usually he put our mail into a slot in the door but now he was elbowing his way through the crowd and people moved over when they realized this pushy guy was the postie. When he was almost at the counter my mother was working behind, he stopped, looked at her, then at me and made his way pushing and shoving over to my spot. He reached across some people's shoulders to hand me a postcard. His