Against All Odds: From There to Here

By Willy Goellner

This is a story of a young boy growing up in a close-knit family in Eastern Europe, influenced by intrigues of national politics in pre-World War II.

This autobiography dramatizes his life and survival at the end of WWII and the terrible period after the war, where he lost most of his family. It shows that with Gods grace, a hopeless situation can be turned around by hard work and an iron will to succeed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543413564

Willy Goellner

Willy Goellner was born on the 5th of April in 1931 in a German-speaking community in Poland. He lost his parents and one sister in the aftermath of the war, and was forced to leave his home, ejected to devastated Germany. In 1948, after two years of struggling to survive, he ended up in Austria where he studied engineering. He was married in 1955 and moved to Germany. With two baby boys, he and his wife emigrated to the USA and eventually Rockford, Illinois became their home. In 1966 he started his own business, which grew into a worldwide enterprise by 2016 with two plants in the USA, three plants in Europe and joint ventures in China, Germany, England, and India.

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Copyright © 2017 by Willy Goellner.

Library of Congress Control Number:           2017905440

ISBN:                   Hardcover                               978-1-5434-1354-0

                            Softcover                                   978-1-5434-1355-7

                            eBook                                         978-1-5434-1356-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 09/12/2017

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CONTENTS

Quo Vadis? Where Are You Going?

The Land of Our Fathers

The Years under Polish Nationalistic Rule

My Foundation

My Childhood under Polish Rule

Life under German National Socialist Rule

Life under Russian Rule

Life in the German Democratic Republic 1946–1947

Wandering and Survival

My Life in Austria

My Years in Steyr, Austria

The Journey to America

A Whole New World

My Dreams Come True

The Birth of Advanced Machine and Engineering

The History of Speedcut Inc.

The Rise of Advanced Machine

Summary of AME’s Growth

The Final Act

Some Fruit of Hard Labor

The Woman behind the Man

My Association to the HTL Steyr, Austria

In Conclusion

Appendix

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Dedication

I never dreamed of writing the story of my life, as I am not a writer. Some of my early years were difficult. People who went through a difficult time often do not want to remember it. In America, when I would meet with friends, my daughter Marika would overhear me sharing bits and pieces of my life. She became very interested in learning more.

She asked me to write my life story. I began writing in 1993 but stopped a few years later. I lost the motivation, thinking I was wasting my time writing about a time so outdated and not fitting in with the present Zeitgeist period. However, Marika and my wife, Irmgard, kept encouraging me. In May of 2004 in Weyer, Austria, I returned to writing and finished the rough draft in 2011 in Weyer.

I would like to thank my daughter Marika especially for helping me to organize the text and photos never giving up on me.

I dedicate this story of my life to my wife, Irmgard; my children, Dietmar, Harold, Alvin, and Marika; their spouses, Kathy, Diane, Heide, and Darryl; as well as my grandchildren, Noah, Nicholas, Alexander, Tiffany, Crystal, Kaleb, Korey, Kira; my great-grandchildren; my sister Traude and other members of our extended family, as well as all of the friends who helped me to succeed.

This is written in memory of my loved ones who influenced me in my youth: my parents, Bruno Göllner and Sophie; her mother and my grandmother, Eva Schnürr, and her husband, Johann; my father’s parents and my grandparents, Johann and Susanne Göllner; my aunts, Emilie Pustowka and Berta; my uncles, Willi and Fritz; and my stepmother, Hilde.

Quo Vadis?

Where Are You Going?

As we were herded along familiar streets and past our houses, we looked at them for the last time as the proud owners of our ancestral homes. As we held to the few belongings we were allowed to take along, we could not help but wonder what we had done so wrong to be punished so severely. We had worked our land, and through our labors, it became fruitful. Now, this cultivated land was being torn from us. All we ever wanted was to live a peaceful life, speak our native language, and enjoy our forefathers’ customs, which formed this land from a wilderness and built prosperous settlements and cities.

We did not have to conquer this land, Upper Silesia, east of modern-day Czech Republic. Our forefathers were invited by the rulers there after the Mongols had devastated this area. In the thirteenth century, they left it as an unpopulated wasteland. Our families came from the western part of Europe, from Frankonia, now an area around the Main River in Germany. As long as new arrivals were hardworking, we accepted these new people into our community. We had no problem living among people of Slavic descent or the later Jewish immigrants, who had migrated from the East.

We kept a close community, worked hard, and did indeed become prosperous. Perhaps this became a problem as it made others jealous and suspicious. How easy it was to kick us out, once the majority, now the minority, after Polish immigrants came from the East. We were a people who no longer had rights, whom no one would protect or defend. There are impressions in one’s life that time cannot erase. The ones whom we once accepted and had welcomed were themselves not as accepting nor as welcoming as we had been as we were sent away.

For most of us on that day, we were stripped of our right to object. It was not so much that we lost everything. The houses had already been taken from us a year before, together with all our valuables. What hurt most was the humiliation, to be spit on, cursed at, and mocked as we walked the last few miles to the rail station, as we headed toward an unknown destiny. We went from being neighbors to unwanted persons, as most bystanders rubbed in the fact that we were now strangers in our own neighborhood, as a moment to be remembered for a lifetime.

A few months prior, we walked to a newly established concentration camp near the Bielitz (Bielsko) railway stations. We still had an old baby stroller my sister Grete rode as we walked. We were supposed to be transported to what was left of the Old Reich. With many refugees and deportees crowding this war-devastated country, the war’s Western Allies temporarily halted the forced exodus of civilians. This trapped people where they were when the transports stopped. Because of this, we remained in the camp.

After weeks of imprisonment with very little food, sleeping on straw left from others before us, and with minimum sanitary accommodations, we were sent back home—a home that did not belong to us anymore. We were fortunate to be allowed to stay temporarily in what had been our home until a final solution was found. Sadly, Grete, my little sister, did not survive this ordeal and died in my arms when we came home. She was not yet three years old, having been born in August of 1943, only to die in the fall of 1945.

It was a time of immense trial. We lost everything: our home, our passions, and for me, a sister who now lives only in memory. It was a time anyone would want to forget, but it cannot be erased from memory.

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The Land of Our Fathers

From early history, our homeland was the crossroads for many tribes and people. In 500 BC, the Illyriers moved out as the Celts took their place. Between 300 BC and AD 400, the Burers and other East German tribes came into our lands. Some of them settled; some roamed in nomadic fashion. Even the Vandals settled here for years before they wandered west and finally settled in North Africa. Roman coins dating back to the first and second centuries AD were found in our neighborhood. Wars between tribes must have waged during the first thousand years AD as fortified defense centers were found in our area dating back to the eighth century.

Christianity spread to our lands in the ninth century. This was followed by the expansion of the Roman and Byzantine empires. They reached our area around the year 965. This was when Christianity of the Holy Roman Empire finally took over. Monks from the Cologne area of Germany established the first monasteries. This growth of monasteries in the area began after Otto I was crowned emperor by Pope John XIII. As a result of this, the area became a firm Christian stronghold.

As Germanic and Slavic tribes moved in and out of the region, a number of wars were waged. Many of these were between the Duchies of Poland and Bohemia. Their rulers, throughout the eleventh century, fought for domination. In the thirteenth century, Mongols invading Europe were finally stopped at Lignitz in Silesia, though at great loss to the German army. They were led by Heinrich IV. He was killed and beheaded in battle. The retreating Mongols pinned his head on a lance and took it with them as a souvenir. Soon after that time, our forefathers settled in this war-ravaged no-man’s-land.

They were invited by the Slavic and German noblemen of the Roman Empire of the German nation. This was after Charlemagne the Great and his son Otto I stood as a barrier against Mongols and Tatar invaders from the East. The land was freely given in exchange for the blood of the peasants, who had to defend it for these noblemen. In this, our forefathers paid with blood as well as the sweat of their backs while building a barren wilderness into a strong and prosperous land. Our forefathers paid for this land by dedicated, hard toil of the land as well as with their very lives.

The town Bielitz was noted for the first time in the year 1312. Kamitz was recognized in 1313 as being one of the villages surrounding Bielitz that became a German-speaking island surrounded by Poles and Bohemians and was challenged from the south by Hungary. Bielitz held its German identity until 1945 when the new Polish government expelled nearly all native German or Austrian people. It would be at that moment that nearly six and a half centuries of traditions, culture, and family histories were destroyed by the stroke of a pen. My family would be one of these families whose traditions were dismissed.

In 1526, our area was connected to Catholic-dominated Austria by an inheritance contract and would remain so for nearly four hundred years until the Habsburg rule ended in 1918. The German-speaking population in Bielitz and the surrounding area joined the Reformation in 1545. In 1559, the St. Nikolaus Church in Bielitz became a Lutheran parish headed by Pastor Matthias Richter, who was ordained in 1553 in Luther’s home church of Wittenberg. Until the Counter-Reformation of 1563, the Protestant pastors of Bielitz were always Luther Germans, not Roman Catholic Austrians, because most people in our area had converted to Lutheranism.

Most of us were Evangelicals of the Augsburg Confession. At least that is what we called ourselves. Our faith traced back to the Huss uprising in the fifteenth century in Bohemia. Later, when Martin Luther translated the Bible into German for the members of the public, the faith spread rapidly among the German-speaking and Bohemian population. Many converted passionately to the new evangelical branch of Christian faith. It spread even more rapidly in our homeland.

At one time, Silesia was more than 92 percent Lutheran, but the Counter-Reformation forced the people to convert back to the Roman Catholic faith. In the Bielitz-Teschen-Beskiden area, however, most people stood firm to their Lutheran teachings. They faced the constant oppressive actions by the Jesuit priests, but our people were very stubborn and firmly rooted in our beliefs. We were people who already knew sacrifice, having nurtured and defended the Homeland. It was just another outside force to unify the people.

Since our area was located at the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy’s northeastern border, close to Protestant Prussia, the Austrian Catholic rulers there did not push the Counter-Reformation harder than they might otherwise have done. This would make the land a strategic territory where allies and former aggressors took notice of our presence. It was practically unknown for a Lutheran to marry a Catholic or vice versa. Switching denominations was rare and would have been considered treason to our forefathers, some of whom had paid with their lives for standing firm. To switch to another denomination, one would have had to move out of the community.

Later, Lutheran pastors and Catholic priests in our area preached for coexistence among religious nationalities. When a fire destroyed part of the city, including the church, Jews, Lutherans, and Catholics, all pitched in. People did not talk about tolerance or ecumenical beliefs but instead just practiced it. Though people of different beliefs lived in peace and harmony together, they rarely mixed. Jews consider themselves first Jews, then Austrians or Germans. Most of the Catholic population was composed of Poles while the German-speaking population remained mostly Lutherans. The exception was those who switched views during the Counter-Reformation, which forced the Lutheran congregations to close their churches, forbidding pastors to preach.

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Lutheran religious activities were simple but sincere. Puritan influence could be traced back to the Bohemian Zinzendorf followers, who were known as the Brethren. A close relationship was kept with some of the Methodists whose missionaries frequently preached in our Bible school. For a people who toiled the land and defended it with their lives, the more that the Lutherans were oppressed, the more they stuck together. They held their church services in a wooded meadow outside the city still known as Heiden Kirche or Heathen’s Church or congregated in homes in small groups. Now and then, traveling pastors from Prussia or Bohemia came to baptize and give Communion.

They followed the traditions of the early Christian church, which were oppressed under Roman rule. When the Counter-Reformation began in the seventeenth century, the Bielitz Lutherans were not forced to renounce their Protestant faith or leave their homeland. Our area was the exception in the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy. The Salzburgers and the Tyrolians were forced to leave everything behind and immigrate to Prussia.

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The Lutheran church in Bielitz where I was confirmed with the only existing statue of Martin Luther in all of Poland

The Roman Catholic church and a Lutheran Protestant chapel were the only two churches in our village of Kamitz. The main Lutheran church with the pastor was in Alt-Bielitz, though church services were occasionally held in Kamitz, as were funerals for Lutherans. The graveyard still surrounds the chapel where there is a memorial to my family. The Lutherans in our area remained, perhaps because of the tolerance of the population and the need of the Habsburgs to have no disturbances at the border of their empire with Russia. Their need for a peaceful border allowed us to strengthen our faith.

During the eighteenth century, Frederic the Great of Prussia was very liberal toward religion. His slogan was Let everyone become holy in his own fashion. Joseph II of Habsburg became tolerant and opposed the Catholic domination in his administration. He signed the Tolerance Patent in 1861 that finally declared guarantees for religious freedom. However, it took nearly another two centuries to have it practiced freely. During that time, we did not waver in our faith in God or the land we loved.

The Austrian-Hungarian Empire can be seen as the forerunner of the European Union. Every nationality could live peacefully among others. Most land was annexed not by war, but by marriage of the Habsburgs to other rulers. The empress Maria Theresa with sixteen children, mostly girls, might have contributed the most to the growth of the empire. Although Vienna was still in charge, government employees working with people of other nationalities had to speak their language as well as German, the official language. Everyone had the chance to advance in the government or military. Often the noble families of different nationalities married each other. They were also high-ranking officers in the Austrian-Hungarian Imperial Army. Since most architecture students studied in Vienna where attractive building designs were created, they made the city of Bielitz just as beautiful that it was nicknamed Klein Wien or Little Vienna.

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My Cousin Renate Wieczorek exploring the city of Bielsko-Biala, Poland

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Historic Sulkowski Castle overlooking the centre of Bielsko-Biała, which is the oldest and the largest building located in the city of Bielsko.

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The Years under Polish

Nationalistic Rule

Even if a tolerant ruler is in power, nationalists still always want their own kingdom. Once a delicate balance is destroyed, anarchy rules. This happened after World War I. WWI marked the loss of ethnic freedom for German-speaking people as well as for other minorities in occupied areas of our Beskiden homeland. The losers, as is always the case in history, had to pay the price. Poverty was rampant. During the British blockade of Germany in 1919, many people, especially the elderly and children, died of starvation. Germany produced only enough food for about 65 percent of the population; the rest of the food had to be imported.

Jewish radicals led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht and their organization, the Spartans, took over German cities to declare a Bolshevistic government. Conservative Germans banded together as the Free Corps, led by ex-officers of the former imperial army, who fought the leftists. Finally, Marshall Joseph Pilsudsky restored order. This was the time when Hitler was created, from the fruits of the Versailles Peace Treaty. Chaos, fueled by the threat of communism, was ready to overtake Germany as well as Europe. Those of us who were German by nationality, called Volksdeutsche in Poland, did not feel the threat so much in Bielitz, which is now called Bielsko.

President Pilsudsky successfully defeated the threatening Russian Bolsheviks in the east. Polish nationalists, who tried to take land away in Upper Silesia from the defenseless German state, were stopped by the Free Corps and defeated at the Battle of Annenberg in Upper Silesia. President Wilson’s fourteen points to guarantee free elections and freedom to all nationalities was, in our opinion, simply a joke. Although the majority of our people elected to be part of Germany, we were nevertheless linked to the newly established Poland. Again, we were told that our national freedoms would be guaranteed; in reality, the opposite occurred.

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Anti-Semitism broke out in Germany. The Jewish World Congress, operating out of New York, against the will of the German Jews, declared war on Germany in 1933, calling for boycotting of German products worldwide. The boycott spread to Poland, giving Polish nationalists opportunities to spread their hatred. The Poles started to hate the Jews, who had immigrated from Russia and Germany and had taken over important positions in the communities. As long as Pilsudsky lived, we were left undisturbed. He felt that Poland must be closer to western Germany than the eastern Bolshevik Russians.

After his death in 1936, however, everything changed. The new Polish rulers became nationalistic as they were encouraged by England and France to become more aggressive toward Germany. Of course, we German-speaking people—and to some extent, the Polish Jews—felt this the most. We were forced to give up our German customs. Many people of German descent and Jews emigrated back to Germany and Austria. Those who stayed tried to make the best of the situation. The people living in close neighborhoods had good relationships, whether Poles, Jews, or Germans. In 1920, the German population of Bielitz (Bielsko) was 65 percent; in Kamitz (now called Kamienica), it was 79 percent. This gave the Germans a good ethnic base.

However, this level of tolerance was destroyed by Polish nationalists who dreamed of a greater Poland populated with only Polish people. Under pressure, some German and Jewish people changed their names to sound more Polish. They learned and practiced Polish customs and faded away from their roots. Most of the ethnic Germans, however, did not apply for Polish citizenship. The younger only spoke some Polish. Many, like my mother and grandparents, spoke no Polish at all.

Another barricade was our faith. Since most Poles were Roman Catholics, they considered all Lutherans to be Swabian (Germans), though not all were. Quite a few Slonsaks, the people of Upper Silesia and especially people of the Teschen (Czechin) area near the Czech border about thirty miles from Bielitz, were Lutherans since the Reformation. Changing our denomination would have been a betrayal of our forefathers who had fought for their beliefs. The church was one place where ethnic Germans could congregate. Most were very active. They went to church services and Bible class every Sunday.

The Germans founded a German singing society, Gotia; gymnastic clubs; and a hiking club called the Beskidenverein, which had many active members. The Jungdeutscher Verein, a German nationalistic organization, fought for the interests of the ethnic Germans. Its members were especially persecuted in 1939 because of their affection for Hitler.

Life was simple, but difficult. Unless one was born rich, the only ways to get ahead was to work hard, study, and learn from those who were more successful. It meant saving every penny by improvising and substituting with less and adapting what you learned from the success of others. Stealing, cheating, gambling, and taking advantage of others were rejected outright by our people. Tales of emigrants going to New York and being employed as dishwashers, who would later become millionaires, were considered very suspicious and branded as fairy tales.

Bleibe im Lande und nähre Dich redlich is translated as Stay in your homeland and feed yourself honestly. This was common advice that was practiced through generations. For our people, it was always considered to be an honor to work hard, to make an honest living, and to help your family, friends, neighbors, and even strangers who were in need. It was important to protect one’s community, church, as well as one’s country with one’s life, if necessary. They were industrious people, who started weaving-factories, built machinery, and worked as government officials, educators, and farmers.

My Foundation

In 1938, in my first grammar class, still under Polish rule, a courageous German teacher taught us a poem I still remember. This poem became a guide for the remainder of my life.

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Deutscher Rat

Vor allem eins, mein Kind: Sei treu und wahr!

Laß nie die Lüge deinen Mund entweihn!

Von alters her im deutschen Volke war

der höchste Ruhm, getreu und wahr zu sein.

Du bist ein deutsches Kind so denke dran!

Noch bist Du jung, noch ist es nicht so schwer!

Aus einem Knaben aber wird ein Mann;

Das Bäumchen biegt sich - doch der Baum nicht mehr!

Sprich ja und nein, und dreh und deutle nicht!

Was du berichtest, sage kurz und schlicht;

Was du gelobest, sei dir höchste Pflicht;

Dein Wort sei heilig, drum verschwend es nicht!

Leicht schleicht die Lüge sich ans Herz heran,

Zuerst ein Zwerg, ein Riese hintennach;

Doch dein Gewissen zeigt den Feind dir an,

Und eine Stimme ruft in dir: Sei wach!

Dann wach und kämpf, es ist ein Feind bereit:

Die Lüg in dir, sie drohet dir Gefahr!

Kind, Deutsche kämpften tapfer allezeit;

Du deutsches Kind, sei tapfer, treu und wahr!

This poem was written by Robert Reinick. It was taken from a 1910 reading book for the Protestant elementary schools Württemberg. Below is the English translation of that poem.

German Advice

Of utmost importance, my child: Stay true and honest!

Never let a lie dishonest your mouth!

From ages past, the German people considered the highest honor to be true and honest!

You are a German child so always remember!

You are still young, and it is not too late!

A boy becomes a man;

The little tree bends—but the fully grown tree no more!

Say yes and no; do not twist words and hesitate!

What you have to report, say it short and simple;

What you promise, let it be your highest duty;

Your word is holy; therefore, don’t waste it.

Easily a lie takes root in the heart,

First like a dwarf, followed by a giant;

but your conscience will point out the enemy,

and a voice cries inside you: Be alert!

Then be alert and fight, an enemy is at hand:

The lie in you is an enemy to you!

My child, Germans always fought bravely;

You German child, be brave, true and honest!

I must confess that I did not always follow this advice, especially in business life. In this, truth is stretched in many ways, and the desire to succeed can poison one’s heart. However, when temptation threatened my conscience, these verses popped up in my mind and helped me to get back on the right track.

Bauern Weisheit

Spare, dann wirst Du was;

Lerne, dann kannst Du was;

Stehle, dann hast Du was,

Aber lass jedem das Seine.

(Author unknown)

Farmer’s Wisdom

Save, then you will be something,

Learn, then you will