Ch 6-4 Renting Graves

On my travels through Europe I’d wonder that any cemeteries were left at all.  Troops marching back and forth, pillaging and plundering, bombs smashing the landscape, mass graves, plagues. Is there a piece of land untouched by violence?  Or, on the other hand, think of all the hundreds of thousands of people that died in Europe. Where are they?

In post war Germany a cemetery plot is rented for 25 years. If the lease is not renewed remains are removed and the plot resold. Family is entitled to keep any monument (have been used on personal patios, just flip it to the blank side, maybe). Australia refers to it as renewable tenure. Mom found this out to her great surprise and dismay on a trip to East Germany in the late 1990’s when she went to visit the family graves in Neumark, Sachsen, my birthplace. She was accompanied by her good friend Marianne Popp, my godmother, to the cemetery with flowers. For years Mom sent money for grave maintenance and flowers. She reached the cemetery fresh flowers in hand and walked to the graves. In 1965 she visited for her father's funeral. Papa Redetzki's grave should be right next to that of Lieschen, the oldest child. And her mother Else's ashes were sent from West Germany in 1972 to be interred with them. My mother became confused as she couldn't find the graves. Where were the gravestones? She stood there, flowers in hand, looking around, not understanding.  How could you lose graves?

Finally Marianne spoke up, “They took away the graves and the stones.” 

It was all gone. The headstones, the coffins, the bones were gone.  Mama, Papa and Lieschen.  25 years were up, ding, contract over, plots resold! New people are buried in the site.  No names of relations appeared on cemetery records so they didn’t know how to get a hold of her, the next relative, to give her notice. In a town as small as Neumark they certainly would have known the connection with Marianne. So they just bury over them after digging things up a bit. I’m still confused that in a town as small as Neumark no one made the connection to Frau Popp placing the flowers. A gravestone photo is the only remembrance. 

Turns out this is also the practice now in West Germany. Is there a word specific to describing when a grave site has been dug up and reused, sort of recycled? The exception to this practice are historic graves, such as those of Berthold Brecht and Pastor Dietrich Bonöffer in East Berlin.

How did they come up with the timeframe of 25 years – one generation, enough time to get over it, the average time in between wars?  Pragmatic Germans probably did some sort of study and rationalized it. Their thought is that land is valuable and you just can’t have one dead body taking up space indefinitely. What do they actually do with the grave contents? Sounds like they just sort of make a little bit of room. Strange to think about being laid on top of a stranger for eternity, or at least 25 years. 

In today’s Germany most dead are cremated.  And there is a waiting time for this service.  It’s created a strange industry for eastern European crematoriums to which German bodies are shipped. Odd turn of events considering what was done in Germany to so many others from those countries. The wait may be some two weeks to get the remains back.  Sounds a bit gruesome, all these corpses being shipped around Europe to be burned; have to wonder about the ashes received back.

I have few family grave plots to visit. No place to contemplate ancestors, the past and reflect on my own mortality as part of a continuing line of descendents.  I do now have the gravesites of my parents in central Michigan, a 3 hour drive. With their deaths it is my own mortality  brought into sharp focus. But do I want to be buried there?  While the cemetery is a nice rural township plot the area has no relevance for me. Do I want to spend all eternity some place I never lived?  Is it enough to be among family?  Or should my remains be used for the planting of a tree to flower and fruit?

Grandmother, grandfather, aunt, have had their gravesites removed. Others didn’t even get a grave – paternal grandmother and aunt – just shot along a road escaping East Prussia.  Others had their cemeteries used for building materials. Simply gone and forgotten as are all but perhaps the famous.

The Second World War scattered our bones across the western hemisphere. These are the upheavals resulting from war an migration. Ashes stored in closets; people killed in the turmoil of war getting no burial. The countless soldiers killed, civilian casualties, never found.  

Ch 6-3 Fate of German cemeteries

Later back home I wondered why we couldn’t find even a trace of any of the old village cemeteries, especially considering the old big Catholic cemetery in town. It remained intact and in use. Was it religion or revenge or a combination of the two that determined which cemetery survived?

Over the years rumors circulated among displaced East Prussians about what was done to the old German cemeteries. I thought about these rumors which claimed Lithuanians dug up graves ravaging the corpses for jewels and gold fillings. Maybe some post war grave robbing took place. The post war years had a totally abandoned and desperate population here so I wouldn’t be surprised if opportunists did resort to grave robbing due to their circumstances on top of hatred of Germans.  But I could never have imagined what actually happened in these cemeteries.

My internet research found a publication specifically about the cemeteries of East Prussia.  The Annaberger Annalen is a yearbook of Lithuanian and German-Lithuanian relationships.  Dr. Martynas Purvinas writes in great detail about the destruction of the cemeteries in Memelland after 1944, using eyewitness accounts. Purvinas maintains that unique to this area is the evolution of a Baltic death cult interwoven with Lutheran practices. Instead of one central cemetery, some cities had several cemeteries so that cemeteries could be located closer to the individual families who could actively maintain the grave plots. Some of the families went so far as to keep burial sites in the courtyard of their house and that way kept ancestors a part of their daily lives. People weren't buried at the farm around my mother's villages; one cemetery for each village was enough, unless someone was secretly burying people behind the barn, but it was hard to do anything in such tight village settings without your neighbors knowing.

After October 1944 all these traditions, including old Baltic practices, were destroyed and cemeteries vandalized. Perhaps more so than in other Soviet occupied areas, Klein Litauen (Memelland) presented an unusual combination of anti-German feeling, anti-Christian sentiment coupled with a need for revenge on both the part of the Lithuanians and the Russians. However Lithuanians are Catholics which is the religion of the country today. The cemeteries, full of all the heavy symbolism and taboos regarding death and desecration, resurrection, traditional burial practices, lure of riches beneath the ground, offered an opportunity to truly destroy the ancestors of a vanquished enemy. This is a familiar theme throughout history, something very primal to desecrate the dead of one’s enemies. And this they did.

In order to stop major flooding of the Memel River, the Soviet authorities needed to raise the damn at Kaukehmen. The material they used to do this was easily found in the big, still in use, cemeteries in Kaukehmen. An eyewitness recounts how everywhere lay rotted body parts and at the damn were a variety of grave contents piled up sticking out of the dirt. 

The authorities also found plenty of other uses for the cemeteries. Road construction was a pressing need, which is what was done with the cemetery in Gruenheide. Problem was, when you drove along this street you heard the wheels cracking the bones and in the ditches you could see human skulls laying about.

Some of the vandalism did fall to the local inhabitants.  As a result of shortages on construction material they pilfered the metal fences and grave markers to use on their farms.  Others stole anything that might be of value to sell – good granite and marble lay around for the taking. And then there were the actual graves, the bodies and what lay with them. Grave robbers looked for jewels, gold teeth, anything with a potential a resale value. They dumped out the bodies and plundered the coffins. Maybe it is good that the forest now covers what once was the old cemetery of Gnieballen.  Perhaps what remains now lies there in peace, reclaimed, never again to be disturbed.

These tactics of abolishing cemeteries not only served to destroy and cleanse the land of previous inhabitants, but was a warning to the current liberated citizens. The Soviets were atheists, but it is right to say that as a result this made them more brutal say than the Spanish Inquisition, or the Puritans burnings witches in Salem, Massachusetts? The degree of brutality or savagery is rather irrelevant. However it is rather a unique approach to ethnic cleansing by getting rid of those already dead. Genocide continues today but not with reports of disinterring the dead. It perplexes me, this act of taking out vengeance on bodies long dead. More than anything it violates a long-standing taboo regarding corpses, for whatever reason – disease, smell, religious resurrection, ghosts.

Yet there is something else about these cemeteries that puzzles me, something relating to the current day.  So many Germans go back, so many want to reclaim their land, so many have formed these pseudo political organizations to take back lost lands.  Do none of them want to ‘rebury’ the dead? Is there no one to even gather the bones in an act of respect for ancestors, burying the past in a deeper sense?

It is striking, in retrospect, that not all the local cemeteries are destroyed. Prior to the war the Jewish cemetery was destroyed by Germans; a plaque now marks the site. But throughout the area it is clear specific cemeteries were targeted for destruction. The effort was not directed at all sites. British and American graves at the POW camp are undisturbed graves; the bodies of Catholics in the city are safe. However all traces of German Lutherans are gone.  The only acknowledgement they receive is from the wind blowing over bones scattered among the heather.

Ch 6-2 Cemeteries - Gnieballen in the Forest

So where was our cemetery, that one that served the village of Gnieballen, where the Redetzki  girls were born? That’s where for 4 generations the Brumpreisches were born and raised. Taking out my trusty 1938 German topographic map I examine it closely. I can just make out a cross symbol printed right on the map fold, of course. I need a magnifying glass. The location is somewhere in those woods across the road. Time for us to take another adventurous excursion into the countryside, although in this case it will be away from open fields and deep into the woods. 

Current Gnieballen

My father told of the time his father died in Groß Sodehnen. It was a farm accident that killed George Klemm in November 1931. The body was, of course, laid out at home. As was the practice, the family took care of the preparation of laying out the body. They cut the fingernails and hair so he would be presentable and dressed him. People believed fingernails and hair kept growing out after death, even though in reality that’s not what happens. And when a person died in winter, the family might have to store the body for a while, at least until a grave could be dug with hand shovels in the solid, frozen earth.

When Edith was age six and Herta five, one of their schoolmates died. Mama wasn’t on good terms with the neighbors, pretty typical for her. She would not appear at the funeral under any circumstance, no matter how much it pained her to stay home and miss out on gossip. Of course she didn’t want to appear nosy or interested, but was nosy and interested to know details – who was there, what food was served, clothes people wore, what was talked about. So she sent her two daughters to attend the wake at the house a kilometer distant. The girls wore their finest, starched dresses as Mama pushed them out the door.

At the wake the little Redetzki emissaries stood dutifully in front of the casket. The custom was to sit around the room with the body laid out on a table. They watched all the people, who was there, who wasn’t, what they wore, who they talked to. When the food was served they ate, of course. No one thought anything odd about the presence of two little girls unaccompanied by their mother since many people did send children in lieu of adult family members. These little girls were familiar to the neighbors and certainly they knew Frau Redetzki. Many came to pay respects, but many are also there to see and be seen, a social event for the rural communities lacking other venues to gather and get community updates. The whole village showed up, a bigger gathering than turned up even for a wedding. Weddings, confirmations and baptisms – these were events to mark rites of passage witnessed by the community.  

Funerals are among the most significant life events for a group throughout history. It is a milestone for the village. We’re talking mortality here!  Death was a reality that they often dealt with. This gave them an opportunity marking the end of life, reaffirmation of faith and acknowledgement of the living.  People gathered to cook food served at long tables set up outside weather permitting.  There’d be plenty of cognac or schnapps – standard at any German event.  All this eating and drinking resulted in a pretty lively gathering.  It often ended with bawdy singing and even some dancing.  Given the hardness of everyday life, people didn’t have much to celebrate so they made the most of these gatherings.  You had to celebrate life, eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow can mean war, pestilence, death in so many little ways. Neighbors, acquaintances and the nosy showed up at the cemetery for the internment. People died at home; there was no embalming or funeral home to handle matters and disquise death.

Nowadays children are conspicuously absent from funerals.  Adults mill about and visit with each other there in the room where a body lies cold and still in a cushioned casket bed looking so unlike how we remember them.  It is thought too traumatic for children to experience perhaps?  Have we perhaps become too removed from death?  Can we pretend it doesn’t occur?

One day long ago before the war, my mother and her sister were in the Gnieballen cemetery. They found an extra gravestone near the family sites. When they returned home they asked Mama who was buried there. She gave them the usual ‘don’t ask questions’ response. Sometime later they were again at that same cemetery. They went to check on that curious marker they saw at their last visit.  It was gone!  A mystery! How could a grave marker disappear? Even more mysterious is that later they found it stashed in the attic of their home. My mother suspected it was the grave site of a child her mother had out of wedlock after WWI, before she married Julius. This child was the result of a brief liaison with a soldier passing through. There were fierce battles nearby against Russians, notably in August 1917 as described in Solzhenitsyn’s novel of the same name.  Family secrets, shame, disappointments. Soldiers and young women, a too oft repeated tale.

After parking the car properly and securely, we got out and walked into the woods on the hunt for the Redetzki family cemetery of Gnieballen.  Mom has a vague idea of the cemetery’s location, but the woods back then were not as dense and widespread as they are 60 years later. Most all of this growth occurred since the war, at least according to the 1938 maps that show very little forest.

With a touch of nervousness the two of us head off into the woods. I wouldn’t do this in an unfamiliar area of the U.S. so why was I doing this here? Why do we so often view a foreign country as safer? I could be dealing with the Russian mob here smuggling plutonium and sex slaves! How about old land mines lying around here?

Forward we go, Mom taking the lead, driven and determined to find her family graves. Maybe it is a need to connect with her past, some part of her ancestors.  Maybe that is my need, too.

The woods are very quiet.  No aircraft, no machinery, no people, no birds, no barking dogs, no cattle lowing. We try to explore entry from the western section of woods, but we are not outfitted for trailblazing through the tall understory growth. Need a machete or maybe a chainsaw. Everything is so overgrown and the trees so large it seems impossible to find any sign of an old cemetery. We could be walking over it and not even know it. There are no signs activity like litter, plastic water bottles, abandoned cars – the usual artifacts discarded by civilization. But what would they want with an old German cemetery – you’d think it would be left alone.  However as seen in the Kallningken cemetery, it is of the wrong religion and definitely the wrong ethnic group.

Back in the car we drive around to find another access road entering from the southeast, closer to Didzeln. I find a dirt road that is better maintained so we are able to drive further into the woods. We have the safety of the naive, the innocents abroad. Not having any idea what really might be going on in these woods we are fearless. At one point we come to a wide clearing and I park the car, again facing out to speed away if needed. On we go by foot. 

Tall, thin pine trees with reddish bark line up like sentinels guarding the secrets of the woods. Moss lays thick on the ground, some turned over by wild boars. Wait, could this really be evidence of wild boars?  Do they even have wild boars in the woods here?  My mother never mentioned them in her reminiscences, only talked about horrific enraged moose and her fear of them (her evil animal theme).  After the war I’m sure pigs would have roamed the area and gone wild, same as happens in the U.S. The Lonely Planet guidebook didn't mention any sort of animal life that might kill me. But then tourist books generally focus on shopping and dining and not wildlife that kills when out looking for old abandoned cemeteries. 

The boar potential takes me to think back to my student days in Germany where I was instructed of a sure-fire method to stop a boar in his tracks. Visiting friends at the University of Göttingen we were drinking beer with some Germans, likely too much. Our discussion strayed to the topic of how to defend yourself against wild boars should you encounter one in a German forest. I didn’t realize this was even a possibility. Turns out that yearly, over 200,000 boars are killed by hunters in Germany. That’s a lot of wild boars! When you come upon one in the woods (actually it will be coming upon you!) you take a stick and point it at the boar. This is exactly what I was told. It will thus stop dead in its tracks and I will not be savagely torn to bits. I think back to that lesson. How much trust can I place on information imparted to me by drunken people? I start looking for good size sticks laying about, good size so that if pointing doesn’t work I can try to beat up the wild boar.

I don’t say anything to my mother who is focused on walking straight through Lithuania to Outer Mongolia. I say nothing to her about potential boars -some things are best left unsaid – to protect her, maybe me or to pretend it isn’t so.

Her biggest fear about the woods goes back to her childhood. She feared the moose, the very big moose, convinced they were out to kill her. Come late summer blueberries were ripe. The children were sent into the woods with little pails to gather berries. These are the woods made famous in East Prussian song – land of dark forests and crystal clear lakes. These forests were full of bull moose not mentioned in those idyllic songs. One day when the little girls were off berry picking suddenly in front of them there stood a huge moose. Their little pails flew up in the air spilling the berries and the girls ran for home terrified. They got in trouble for coming home without blueberries and worse they lost their pails! 

There are no moose now, I know that. The silence of the woods is broken only by raven calls.  Are they guiding us or making fun of us?  After some time I decide this search is futile. Even if the cemetery hadn’t been dug up it would be overgrown with trees, the tombstones displaced by roots. Clearly, the local populace wasn’t going to maintain the local Lutheran, i.e. German, cemetery. For that matter, returning Germans have no interest in restoring long forgotten cemeteries with their forgotten ancestors. It is unlikely we will find anything any trace of long dead relatives.  And I don’t want to meet wild boars or wild woodsman.

Ch 6-1 Cemeteries - Discovering the Dead

“They would browse among the neighboring stones of long dead elders with the look on their faces you see in libraries and museums where we study the lives and work of others to learn about ourselves.” Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking.

Today we head out to find other villages, or at least the places they once stood. On the road from Grabuppen, about one kilometer northeast heading toward the old border with Lithuania, is a bend in the road. Mom tells me the cemetery for Kallningken is located at this small curve ahead. Visible is a large area of overgrown grass. Cultivated fields surround it, trees line the back of the overgrown plot delineating it from the plowed fields of the collective beyond. I turn the car onto a field track that ends a few yards in from the road. This grassy section has never seen a plow, somewhat odd, because it means they have to take the tractors around this section and can’t cultivate straight rows as part of that large field beyond.

Years ago each village of only a couple hundred inhabitants had their own small cemetery. Several villages filled the landscape. Of course, the cemeteries are differentiated by religion, but Catholics in this area were such a minority they didn’t need scattered cemeteries. A large Catholic cemetery, very large, very intact looking, is in Heydekrug that we pass almost every day on our excursions. The rural burial grounds are Lutheran, or Evangelisch. There was a Jewish cemetery located on the edge of Heydekrug but all that remains is a memorial plaque; destruction took place prior to World War II.

Didzeln in 2001

Here in this field we get out of the car as my mother is certain this is the right location even though there’s no visible sign of a cemetery. She recalls the time she and sister Herta were sent off on an errand to Didzeln, a village just across the road, maybe a kilometer away. Tante Anna Brandt, their mother’s sister, and her family lived on a farm there near a patch of woods. With night approaching these roads were dark and lonely. The surrounding woods looked scary to the little girls. Nighttime was filled with creatures that came right out of their bad dreams. But their mother Else didn’t care about their childish fears and they had to go. They hurried along as fast as they could to outrun their fears. Even in bright daylight fifty years later, standing on the quiet roadside, the memories are frightening.

We wander through the tall grass looking for evidence of a cemetery. There are two old gravestones left above ground but only a faded outline remains of pictures and plaques ripped off. A small rectangular planter that once lay on a child’s grave now stands askew; it has a full bouquet of wild meadow grass. Clearly this area has been left untouched and untended. Wild heather sprouts up in patches of purple blossoms between the grass. It brought to mind the old German song “Auf die Heide”. Then I thought back to the military songs my father would listen to, where soldiers sang about Erica, a female name but also the word for heather. Erica was in bloom, small purple flowers on a woody stem.

As I walked around I notice the ground lumpy and full of hummocks. Long grass covers everything and it sways gently in the soft breeze. It is quiet. In present day Germany cemetery plots are tightly placed next to one another. Those plots have borders of stone or bricks, are meticulously groomed, separated by wide gravel paths. It is all very orderly and densely crowded in today’s Germany. I thought these older cemeteries should be similar. I look about for more signs of broken headstones, granite stone borders, brick edging. It shouldn’t all be covered up as grave markers stick up quite a few feet after all.  At one time this was a rather big cemetery. 

A white object in the grass catches my eye. I pick it up and study it. It is round, about two inches across. Looks somewhat like a little seashell. I hold the white disc between my fingers turn it around and ponder as to how a seashell would end up so far inland here next to cultivated fields.

"Mom, why would there be seashells here?”

She has no idea and is also busy looking around through the grass for traces of the cemetery she once ran past with in the dark with Herta. She knew people who were buried here, she attended their funerals. 

I am perplexed by this odd shell. It is round, but has no hinge side, which I’d find on a seashell. Slowly I continue walking through the grass, peerng intently as I look for more shells.  There among the blades of grasses and tufts of heather I see another white object.  I bend over to get closer. Now this one is long, it is very long, not round. I start to reach for it when suddenly it strikes me what I’m looking at!  It looks like a bone! It is a bone! A human bone!

Whoa! I call Mom over. We both stare in the grass and now we see bones, more bones, they are all over the place. There are many bones laying about but the grass has grown over and around and through them effectively hiding them. With horror I realize my round shell is a kneecap! The ground everywhere here is littered with the bones, pieces of bones, human bones. This cemetery has been dug up. The reality takes a moment to sink in. Gently, I lay my ‘shell’ back among the grasses and stand there silently, absorbing this revelation. 

“Oh my gosh,” my mother finally speaks. Now it makes sense - the lumpy ground, the reason tractors plowed around the area, trees growing only at the far edge of this field. It is a burial ground; everyone knew it. They avoided the site.

After a moment of thinking about this, our dark sense of humor returns.

“Mom, since Sabine didn’t want to come along on the trip, maybe we should take one back to her as a souvenir of her relatives.”

My mom replies quick as a flash – “No, this wasn’t our cemetery.  We’re not related to them.”

We wondered about what happened to this burial ground. Maybe it was true that poor Lithuanians envisioned rich Germans buried with their gold so dug up the bodies in the aftermath of the war. They were destitute. That seemed a likely explanation. Why else would anyone dig up a cemetery, desecrating the dead?

Ch 5-3 Matzicken - Stalag Luft 6

Located in Matzicken are the home, and one-time estate, of the Sudermann family where Herman Sudermann (1827 – 1928) was born.  Once considered one of Germany’s important literary figures he was as successful as Hendrik Ibsen.  After completing schooling at the local Gymnasium he moved to Konigsberg and then later to Berlin so didn’t actually live in Heydekrug ever as an adult.  Sudermann dominated the German stage for a quarter of a century. Later was held in high regard during World War II largely due to the nationalistic nature of his works; romanticized ideas of ethnicity and homeland fit well with the politics. But I suspect he was held more in reverence than actually read by the locals. When would farmers and fisherman have time to read in the reality of their daily existence? Did Sudermann celebrate that?

His novels did much to popularize the land and the people. These days he is a forgotten author from a forgotten area.  Probably the most important of his works is Lithuanian Stories written in 1917. Now that I’ve actually experienced this countryside, if not the life of bygone days, I might try to find that book to read so I can capture a sense of that lifestyle, those years about which my parents would reminisce.

The house of the former Sudermann estate is easy to miss.  Only after our second drive by did we notice the small plaque stuck on the front. The estate is long gone. It wasn’t clear if the building was a museum, or a private home, or if it was even open to the public.  No idea what might be on display there so we didn’t try to go inside. The place looked forlorn. 

More interesting is what we found down the road from the Sudermann house - an actual prisoner of war camp.  The grounds are fenced off and the gate locked so we couldn’t go in or look in the buildings.  My mother recalled this camp from the early 1940’s.

Ruth Redetzki

Ruth, youngest of the Redetzki girls, belonged to the BDM – Bund Deutscher Mädchen, a Hitler youth group for young girls.  We have this little photo of Ruth in her uniform, about age 13.  It shows a young girl dressed in a white blouse, black bandana held with a leather bolo, hair in two long, straight, pigtails. The family were supposed to purchase one of the regulation outfits that would have ensured the highest conformity with uniform standards.  The Redetzki family didn’t have the money to buy a new uniform and told her and the group she had to make do with the clothes she already had.  My mother remembers the old blouse Ruth had to use for the photo. Money, or lack of it, overrode politics and the need to conform to the prevailing group think.  Standards were likely to be less strict among poor, rural areas, as they often are.

My mother fought repeated exhortations to join any political youth groups. She proved evasive and avoided commitment. I don’t think it was opposition to the politics – more dislike of the group. And my mother was at an age where she was too old for a youth group. Sister Herta was also apolitical and plain not interested. Fortunately for them their location and rural life spared them the political pressures faced by city populations.

Ruth’s duties included going to the camp, for some purpose, which turned out to be quite lucrative for her and the family. She received chocolates and gifts that soldiers got in Red Cross packages. The rations for the Germans were already meager; the country was fighting a war on two fronts. Any food items from these packages were a great treat for her family.  My mother says the soldiers did it out of generosity, feeling sorry for this little kid (she was a bit scrawny and cross eyed). Ruth herself says she doesn’t remember anything from those war years. I wonder if they got the goods from the packages another way; maybe they were opened and the contents ransacked by the Germans before the soldiers ever even got them.  But that would have been kept by the officers and not given away to locals.

Once back in the states I searched for more information on this camp.  It was Stalag Luft 6 housing both American and British pilots shot down and captured in mainland Germany.  Since the camp only contained pilots, they got somewhat better treatment than other POWs. Written accounts from former prisoners talk about the very long train ride from the heartland of Germany to the frontier area of Memelland.  Much is written about numerous escape attempts, some successful.    My own interest lies in finding any reference to the area and the residents and maybe even Ruth, but there isn’t any. The prisoners thought the food was terrible, and after 1943 they were on par or maybe even a bit better than the local populace faced with severe wartime food shortages. This is where the Red Cross packages came in real handy, for all of them.

Again I read through the prisoner’s stories searching for a reference to local children who came to the camp.  Were the stories I was told true accounts, did these little girls in their neat uniforms make any impression on these prisoners?  I wanted verification of the existence of the Redetzkis, that someone knew of them.  In a way it is a validation of life if someone remembers, maybe only in a passing reference.  Ah, but to exist on the internet is to live for eternity, is it not?

Ruth was sometimes accompanied to the camp by older sister, Herta. This was their first exposure to Americans of whom they surely had no concept in any cultural or geographic sense. Herta and Ruth were both young girls, more likely attracted by the promise of food than getting to know Amis or Brits. They were so far removed from the western front, where Allied Forces fought the Germans, and never had any direct experience or propaganda information about the Allies. Herta’s interest in soldiers increased some two years later, but that was later with German soldiers. They did learn about America in school, where my mother learned that the capital of the country was New York City, something we often joked about as evidence of her backward education whenever she tried to convince us she was right about something. 

We walk along the camp fence down the lane to a small cemetery. Was this a village cemetery, I wonder?  Gravemarkers looked different so we walk in to read the inscriptions.  These are graves of Americans and British who died while interned at the camp.  Set at the back of the cemetery are more gravestones with Lithuanian names. No Lithuanians were housed with the Allied pilots; the dates clearly show these people died after the war. Guess what - they died at the hands of their liberators, the Russians.  Once Lithuanians were freed from their wretched Nazi oppressors, they then could experience death at the hands of the Russians as they were being unenslaved!  The liberators moved in and made use of the camp to house Lithuanian prisoners; no sense wasting prison space or shipping them off to furthest Russia. The pilots were evacuated by the Germans in advance of the Russian invasion.

History relates a burden on the poor Lithuanians. First, shared borders with Germany, reminding me of the old adage about sleeping next to an elephant.  (No wait, if Germany was like an elephant, what would it be like living next to the Soviets?)  Before the Germans the country seemed overrun with foreign troops every 100 years or so.  In the 1400’s the Lithuanian King married a Polish Queen and declared the country Christian in the hope that they wouldn’t then be invaded in a poorly disguised effort to convert them to Christianity. The ploy didn’t work. He married the queen and still got invaded. History books don’t indicate if they lived happily ever after as Christians.  So, the country ends up being converted, well, somewhat but not wholeheartedly.  Then the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is dissolved in 1795 by the Russian Czar.  Then ongoing skirmishes with Germany about who owns what, even French occupation troops for a time.  After the Germans, World War II and before they could even breathe a sigh of relief, in come the Russians and 50 years of Communist occupation. Could it be that finally, in the 21^st century, they are their own people with their own country?  Can they finally exhale?

Ch 5-2 People of Matzicken

The only other guests at the B&B are a German couple, my mother’s age, who lived near Ruß (Rusne) in the Memel River delta.  Russ is just the other side of the big bridge from Heydekrug. Their name is Schwamberg, a family my mother actually knew!  Her neighbors in Groß Grabuppen were also named Schwamberg.  They’re actually related. How absolutely bizarre! All these years later and there they are.  Oma Redetzki had a big fight with neighbor Schwamberg, but then she had fights with everybody. Old Schwamberg was a mean and nasty neighbor, Mom tells me. An historic feud like the Hatfields and McCoys?  Brumpreisch – Schwamberg doesn’t quite have the same melodic ring to it.

 It didn’t take long for me to discover this current day Schwamberg to be pompous and arrogant, worse a German who belittles the Lithuanians. This guy is a retired truck driver who for years brought in transports of used, unwanted clothing discarded by Germans. We learn from locals he always made it very clear he did this as a favor since they were desperate, poor communist people.  And he certainly did flaunt his magnanimous nature.  The Petrvicienes were civil and friendly to him; after all, he and his wife are regular, paying guests.  But, as we learn, they despise him. Even with a language barrier his arrogance doesn’t go unnoticed. Worse the clothing he gifted them was garbage.

I found him and his politics so unbearable that one morning at breakfast I got very angry.  I simply couldn’t bear to listen to him spew forth complete and utter rubbish about everything! He almost put me off my delicious breakfast! I seriously made an attempt to be a courteous, amiable American, but just couldn’t endure his rudeness and right wing politics and told him off. And this type just can’t keep their views to themselves. What an ignorant old goat. 

After the breakfast episode we hardly see him or his wife. Good for us as it now allowed us a pleasant breakfast time and comfortable use of the house and garden. In the back yard is a greenhouse providing fresh tomatoes every day for breakfast.  We eat them in peaceful quiet.  It surely irked him to come home in the evenings and find us drinking and laughing with our hosts in the kitchen or living room. He, himself, had never been invited in to their private quarters for any reason.

Emilijia is a retired chemist who worked at the local distillery where they make schnapps.  Her husband is also retired.  Due to the collapse of the country’s economy their retirement incomes were reduced, so they opened a bed and breakfast. They catch quite a bit of the German tourist trade.

There are three bedrooms upstairs in the house for guests and they are remodeling the upstairs over the garage into an apartment to also rent to tourists, suited to families. In recent years the Baltic States became a choice holiday destination for Germans and other Europeans looking for inexpensive vacation spots. Western Europe is pricey and crowded. Sadly it is a long journey from America and you can’t fly direct, otherwise they might get more U.S. traffic.  The other problem is how many Americans even heard of the Baltic States – Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia? Of the three, Lithuania has the most immigrants to the U.S. coming right after World War II.  Are their children and grandchildren interested?  Probably not, typical of the children of immigrants. The current President of the country is a Lithuanian-American who returned to lead the country in the post-communist era. 

And who in their right mind wants to vacation where the sea is ice cold?  Not Americans who eye destinations like Cancun and Florida.  Too bad because exchange rates are great, local populations love Americans (except for that American President of Lithuania now in disfavor as the glow has worn off) and historic sites are virtually untouched for 60 years. Unfortunately this area doesn't have the glamour of a long line of movies and books. And no occupying American troops interacting with the locals. Really, who can you impress by saying “Oh we’re spending a week in Vilnius” or “I got my tan at the beach in Palanga”.

Kurische Nehrung

Among my mother’s photos are her and her cousins sitting on the beach on the windblown Baltic Sea and loving it. The guy is in a bathing suit but the women are in dresses, dark nylons and high heeled shoes!  My mother’s explanation is that they wanted to look good.  Must have been hardier back then than we are with central heating and air conditioning.  Another problem on these beaches is that Germans change on the beach, somewhat hidden by a large beach towel. I’d see German families this do at the beach owned by the German club in suburban Detroit when I was growing up. I was horrified! They were taking off their clothes in public!  You could see elbows and limbs poking into the towel in a struggle get clothes off and squeeze on a bathing suit.  After a day of water fun had to reverse the struggle and get out of a wet suit.

We soon meet a close friend of Emilje, Ellie, an ethnic German. Her family chose to stay in Heydekrug after the war; they managed to survive first the hardships of Red Army occupation, and life as a hated minority.  Life was very hard in the post war Soviet occupied zones, for all the residents, harder for these Germans.  They faced constant discrimination at school and jobs. But Ellie had a marvelous sense of humor and a great store of jokes. We enjoyed her company even having dinner at her apartment.   She married twice, the second time taking her to Chicago. With the death of her second husband in America she determined it was either a financial struggle in America or a comfortable life in Lithuania. She chose the later, but regularly visits her doctor son in Indiana.  The other son works for the Kaunas Chamber of Commerce in Lithuania. It was unclear why her doctor son couldn’t help her out financially so she could at least live near him.

Ellie took my mother to the local beauty parlor. Mom was delighted at how cheap a cut and style was.  And, of course, a great place to gossip endlessly with the locals, translation by Ellie.  Bits of Lithuanian were coming back to Mom, but not enough to converse.  I think Ellie also explained us to the local population.  We may have been their first Americans.

One evening we invited Emilija to dinner (her husband declined our invitation) to return her hospitality that went beyond that of innkeeper. It isn’t hard to be generous making grand gestures as everything is so inexpensive, and people are genuinely good natured.  Emilija makes arrangements for us to have a private room at a local restaurant owned by a good friend, everyone benefits. They were so pleased for our visit you might have thought we were dignitaries on tour.  I just regret that we were closed off from the regular patrons and couldn’t interact with locals. 

The meal is wonderful, but Emilija seems awkward about guests taking her out.  We’re Americans – we don’t stand on formalities, something she has little experience with.  We don’t have cultural baggage that drags ethnic groups into decades of conflict.

Ch 5-1 Matzicken - a B&B in the Country

For our stay in Heydekrug we're at a Bed & Breakfast just a short way west of the city in the village of Matzicken (Matcikai). My early internet search didn't show any B&B’s in the city and I didn’t want a hotel.  In Matzicken I found a couple but liked the farmstead the best. I did however have to write an actual letter to book rooms - no online booking. I wrote my letter in German figuring it was more likely someone will speak German over English. German tourism plays a big role in the Lithuanian economy, even before the collapse of communism, so locals learned the language to accommodate tourists. The reply I received was prompt and in German! Guess I’ll be able to talk with our host, I thought. The house looks very nice in the pictures (can I trust these photos?). It proved even better in person, lucky for us.  

On our arrival the reality was a modern, two-story house surrounded by a large, well kept garden.  All of this secured behind a solid looking iron fence. I stop the car just outside the front gate and we walk up the large staircase to the front door. It is the Emilija Petraviciene farmstead – but nothing about it resembled a farm!  I knock. The door opens and there stands our hostess, smiling and graciously shows us in.  Turns out she doesn’t speak much German at all!  But we make do as she shows us around the house.  Later during our stay I learned Emilija used the local historical museum staff to do translations and write the reply. It worked.

The inside décor is as lovely and nice as anything in Western Europe, and more contemporary than typically found in the U.S. This isn’t one of those antique furnished B&Bs typical in the States. No ruffles, no colonial décor, no faux antiques.  It is modern with lots of natural wood and very large, thriving houseplants. Amazing considering how far north we are. All the windows make it very airy and bright.

I made the reservation for two separate rooms to preserve my sanity and attempt to keep the peace.  It helped that prices are so cheap. Separate bedrooms should make traveling in close quarters, with round the clock proximity to each other, much easier to. I’m used to traveling and living alone. Mom talks constantly, incessantly. I need quiet time or at least a chance to talk also, if only with myself.

Emilija’s husband instructs me to open the gate and drive the car in where it is protected by the iron fence. We never understand his name so always referred to him as ‘Emilija’s husband’.  Additional protection to the property is provided by a large German Shepherd, let loose nights to patrol and keep watch. I’m not sure exactly what the dangers are but remember Aljirdas of the car rental cautioning us about parking the car securely. Seems everyone keeps their cars well secured here if they want to keep their cars at all.  And I thought the big European car theft problem was just stealing cars in the west and moving them east for sale.  Apparently in-country car theft is also problem, yet there are tons of nice shiny new Mercedes on the road – surely they’ll take that before this used GM Opal.

Emilija’s guests are mainly Germans, like my mother, persons displaced by the war who come back to revisit their former homeland. They are tied to these lands by generations who survived war, pestilence, hardship and forced expulsion. In contrast we in the U.S. are such a mobile population what do people consider their homeland?  Do people go back to the windswept plains that blew them away during the Depression?  Or others to the farms of their childhood in Ohio where a shopping mall has paved over the fertile fields of their memories?  What about going back to today’s Detroit inner city to try to find the old homestead where Irish parents raised the family or in my own childhood a neighborhood where alleys once were clean places to play and hollyhocks grew?  I think not.

These newly democratic countries face problems when former land owners come back to reclaim ownership of homes and farms owned before the war.  Not only did Germany lose the war, but lost land to foreign occupation and domination.  After WWII the eastern provinces, including East Germany, were under communist control with state ownership of land and resources.  Farms were realigned to form large collectives.  Now these returnees want to throw out the tenants of the last 50 years who call this home. They worked the property, put up with communist economics and years of deprivation; they feel it rightfully to be theirs. A lack of property laws in the former communist areas compounds the problems as there is no legal precedence for resolution.  A new set of laws governing property rights needs to be put in place as soon as possible.  Meanwhile there is tension as the economically comfortable prior inhabitants return to file their claims for properties. The worst part is these former owners have no intention of actually living here – they look to sell quickly and make money.