Tendring
Topics…..on line
A Personal Story
Those who
regularly read this blog hoping to find a solution to the World’s problems, the problems of the United Kingdom,
or even those just of Clacton-on-Sea, will do
so today in vain. This week’s blog is a
personal story that began in Germany
during the closing months of World War II. Last Saturday, 17th
May, the Bowling
Green pub/restaurant
a few miles outside Clacton-on-Sea saw the latest, perhaps its final, chapter.
I
spent the last eighteen months of the war in a ‘working camp’ (Arbeitskommando)
of British other-rank PoWs in the small German town of Zittau.
It has about 30,000 inhabitants and is now the Federal Republic of
Germany’s most easterly town, just on the German side of the point at which the
frontiers of Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic coincide. There were only thirty of us PoWs. Our accommodation (a dormitory and barrack
room within what was left of the town theatre that had been badly damaged by
fire) was luxurious by PoW standards.
These rooms were on the first floor and the guards lived immediately
below us on the ground floor. The
guards were neither the sadistic bullies nor mindless morons of popular
fiction. They were, in fact, remarkably
like us. Most had seen active service on
the Eastern Front and had been wounded and/or badly frost bitten. Their sole ambition was to keep their heads
down and survive the war. Ours was the
same! Our rations were better than they had been in the concentration camp in which we had been incarcerated in Italy.
The Red Cross food parcels arrived regularly – and we were often working with
food, in railway trucks, warehouses and wholesalers’ premises. We rarely went hungry. I have spoken to many other ex-PoWs about
their experiences and ours were far better than most!
Our
work, which was heavy, for up to ten hours a day and with only one ‘rest day’
in three weeks nearly killed us at first after idleness, boredom and
semi-starvation in Italy. We soon got used to it though – and it did make the
time pass quickly. The work was mostly loading and unloading trucks on railway
sidings in and around Zittau. We also
did any other manual work that was needed – digging graves in the cemetery,
sweeping the streets, moving furniture, delivering coal, potatoes and other
vegetables from wholesaler to retailer and so on. We worked in parties of two to six, sometimes
with a guard but often with an unarmed civilian with an arm band denoting that
he was in charge. We quickly picked up
enough basic and very ungrammatical German to make it possible for us to chat
with German civilians and other POWs and forced-workers mostly from Russia and Ukraine, who worked with us. We really had an astonishing amount of
freedom while we were working. It would have been easy to escape – but where
to? Take a look at a map of central Europe!
One
day in mid February 1945 a few days after the fire-bombing of Dresden
by the RAF and US
airforce on 13th and 14th of that month (in my opinion a
war crime if there ever was one) we were sent with a guard to Zittau civic museum. I remember that the incessant thunder of
gunfire from the east was getting louder every day as the eastern front moved
inexorably nearer and nearer to Zittau.
It was obvious to our guards, the local civilians and foreign workers
and to us that the Third Reich was collapsing and that within a few months –
perhaps weeks – the war would be over.
Our job was to load large and heavy cases onto a lorry, climb onto the
lorry and unload them at our destination.
This proved to be some ancient ruins near the summit of a
mountain (Mount Oybin) a few miles from Zittau. It was, in fact, a ruined monastery and we
unloaded the lorry and put the cases in the crypt. We were told that they contained ‘treasure’
from the museum and they were taken there for safety from the kind of air raids
that had devastated Dresden
– only some sixty miles away. It was
‘just another job'. It was sixty years before I gave it another thought!
The
war in Europe ended on 8th May. A
free man again, I walked through the front door of my home in Ipswich
on 18th May (by a happy coincidence my 24th birthday!). How,
in the turmoil at the end of World War II, I managed to get home from the Soviet occupied, most
easterly part of Germany,
in just ten days, is another story.
Sixty
years, almost a lifetime later, my wife and I had two adult sons and we were
beginning to think about our diamond wedding celebration. I was a freelance writer and had an article
about some of my experiences as a POW published in The Friend, a Quaker weekly journal. In the article I wrote positively of the time
I spent in Zittau, although I thought it unlikely that any reader of ‘The Friend would have heard of the town.
I was wrong. The family of Jasper Kay, a Quaker and Friend reader living at Cottenham near Cambridge, had originated
in Zittau. He was in regular
correspondence with a Zittau family and would be paying his first visit to the
town in a few weeks time. Was there
anything I would like brought back from there?
The Kulke family in 2008 Left to right – Ingrid, Maja (born 2006),
Frau Ingrid Kulke, Kornelia (Konni), Andreas.
Tomas was not yet born but was imminently expected!
I replied, telling him where I
had lived and where I had worked while I was a PoW there. I would very much appreciate post cards or
photos of the town. Thus began my
friendship with the remarkable Kulke family.
Daughter Ingrid had a knowledge of English. She had been Jasper’s correspondent and
became mine too. She translated my
original article and my letter into German for her family. Her mother, another Ingrid, and her brother
Andreas, cycled round Zittau and district taking photos of all the places I had
remembered. Frau Kulke also obtained for
me a facsimile of the local newspaper Der
Zittauer Nachrichten, for 18th May 1944 – my 23rd
birthday that I had spent in the town.
My wife and I felt that we had become members of the Kulke family. When Andreas married Kornelia (Konni) we were
told all about it – and I received an excited card when their first child, a
little girl whom they christened Maja, was born. During the course of my email correspondence
with Ingrid I mentioned that one of the more unusual jobs that I had done while
I was working in her home town had been to help transport those heavy boxes of
‘treasure’ from Zittau Museum to the crypt of the ruined monastery on Mount
Oybin. To my astonishment this caused great excitement. It seemed that I had, quite accidentally and
inadvertently, played a minor role in the 550 year history of the Zittau Great
Lenten Veil (or ‘Fastentuch’) an
enormous textile artefact that was, and is, the town’s pride and joy.
Zittau’s Great Lenten Veil on display
During the Middle Ages it had
been the practice to screen off the sanctuary and choir of churches with a
linen veil during the season of Lent – to impose a spiritual as well as a
material fast on the congregation.
Zittau’s Great Lenten Veil was unique in that it had 90 pictures, 45 of
scenes from the Old Testament and 45 from the New, painted upon it. When the war ended it was found to be missing
from its home in the Zittau
Museum. Months later it was discovered on Mount Oybin
where it had been found by Russian soldiers, cut into four pieces and used to
line the walls of an improvised sauna!
It was rescued and, after German reunification, lovingly restored and
returned to its home in Zittau. It is
now permanently on display in a controlled atmosphere and lighting in the
redundant church of the Holy Cross. Here
it attracts thousands of visitors every year.
No-one in post-war Zittau had known how or when the town’s famous
artefact had been transported from the town museum to Oybin – until I sent that
email to Ingrid!
Meanwhile my
wife had become increasingly reliant upon me and, for two years, I could think
of little except her care. Sadly, on 12th
July 2006, just three months after we had celebrated our Diamond (60 years)
Wedding Anniversary, her life came to an end.
It left a gaping and aching space in my life that even today, nearly
eight years later, has not wholly healed.
My interest in Zittau helped to fill that gap.
I managed, with the support of my family, to visit Zittau four times between
2006 and 2011. I met Frau Kulke and her family.
Little Maja acquired a young brother Tomas. They are my ‘honorary niece and nephew’ and I
try never to forget them at Christmas and on their birthdays! I met Dr Volker Dudeck who had been Direktor
of Zittau Town Museum. Now retired, he devoted his life to the care and
publicising of the Great Lenten Veil. I
visited Mount Oybin and saw the crypt to which I had
helped take those cases in 1945. My last
visit (and it will be my final visit I feel sure) was on the occasion of my 90th
birthday (18th May 2011) and I was accompanied by members of my
immediate family. There were nine of us
in all. We were given a champagne
welcome and reception in the Town Hall by Mayor Herr Voigt, there was a special
VIP showing of the famous Great Lenten Veil in its permanent home, and a
‘command performance’ by a local piano-accordion orchestra beginning with ‘When the saints come marching in’ as
they marched in, followed by the European Anthem Schiller's Ode to Joy, and other folk and light classical music, and
concluding with Happy Birthday to you’ performed
with great gusto and enthusiasm. On our
last evening in Zittau I hosted a dinner party for the members of my family and
all my German friends including Dr Dudeck and his wife and the Mayor of Zittau
and his. It was a birthday never to be
forgotten.
And
the event at the Bowling Green on 17th May this year?
Well, I had had a birthday
celebration lunch last year but I had left it rather late and several folk both
in England and in Germany who
would have liked to be present had prior
commitments. I could also feel that my
body and mind were wearing out (I can’t think of a better way of putting it!). It wasn’t being morbid or pessimistic, but
just realistic to feel that this year I might have my last opportunity to see
some of my friends, particularly those from Germany.
 |
| Left to right - Frau Julia Dudeck, Dr. Volker Dudeck, me, Maja Kulke |
 |
| Maja and Tom with their mum, Konni Kulke |
The lunch,
with friendly conversation, a delightful short speech by Jenny and Sebastian and a
brief display of folk dancing by Ingrid and her English partner Ray, lasted
till 4.30. Then I said farewell to my guests and was driven home for a
much-needed rest, while the younger of my guests made their way to the sea
front to sample the delights of Clacton’s
sandy beaches and lively pier. It was
the first time that Maja and Tom had seen the sea and I’m told that they really
enjoyed it.
That celebration lunch was, I think, my
swan-song. Even if I survive until this
time next year, I will certainly not be capable, physically or mentally, of
hosting another similar event. It was a wonderful way to celebrate my 93rd
birthday and I like to think that the friendship that has developed between
members of my family and people of Zittau has been a tiny step towards
Anglo-German friendship and thus towards world peace
.
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