While in Sassnitz, the Red Cross gave Milda the most necessary basic items of clothing so she and her baby could continue their journey. Milda wanted to get to Ochtersum, where she had once lived for a month with Fernande (Nanni) Pape. Nanni and Milda had lived together for quite some time in Gotenhafen and the two became good friends. Naturally, Nanni told her friends and acquaintances about the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff and how Milda and Inge had survived.
“A few days after our arrival, the doorbell rang and at the door were two boys from the Hitler Youth. They threatened us with dire consequences should we insist on spreading rumors about the W.G. As things were at that time, we decided on the path of caution,” Milda wrote. “The only document to prove that this was not just a bad dream is the enclosed certificate of the local group leader in Sassnitz.”
The Russians didn’t release Inge’s father, Franz Bendrich, from the Siberian prison camp until 1951. Her mother gave up on ever seeing him again sometime between 1949 and 1950. “She talked about him as if he wasn’t coming home,” Inge Roedecker said. “Then we got a telegram saying he was coming home.” She remembered him as a naturally stout man, “but he came home totally emaciated.”17
Inge remembers lying awake in bed at night and hearing her parents talk. In the morning she’d ask them what they’d been talking about. Her father told his only child stories about what they used to eat—very little, and sometimes the occasional cat. He told Inge about how the guards in the Siberian prison camp subjected them to a type of torture in which they were put in a room for hours and could only stand. The guards shone bright lights into the eyes of the men, and when they got out of the room, they couldn’t see. Inge remembers her father telling her “it was very white, like snow had fallen.”
Finally, their visas arrived. Milda, Franz, and Inge left Germany aboard the Skaubryn from Bremerhaven in the last week of June 1954. The family arrived in Melbourne, Australia in the first week of August. From Melbourne the Bendrichs took a train to Bonegilla in northern Victoria. They lived in a former Australian army barracks with other newly arrived immigrants.
Recently Inge and her partner, Ian Fieggen, visited Bonegilla, which has been turned into a museum. They met other visitors who had also stayed there as immigrants. “It was quite emotional. Being an eleven-year-old child then, I loved Bonegilla, as everything was so different from Germany. The birdlife, wallabies, and kangaroos were fascinating. I remember having a lot of friends, some that I had already met on the Skaubryn,” Inge said. She recalls that some adults who had been there for six months to a year said that they hated the place. Her father was offered a position as mechanic on King Island, an island in Bass Strait, where they moved with two other families about five weeks after they had arrived in Bonegilla. The people in King Island were lovely, Inge recalled.
“What hurt me about it the most was everybody would talk about the Titanic,” Inge Bendrich Roedecker said, remembering her mother’s experience. “My mother said, ‘I was on a boat that sank.’ And people snickered. I feel the ridicule in the room to this day.”
Captain Paul Vollrath fled Germany in 1948 aboard a yacht and ended up in Waterford, Ireland.18 “Fleeing from the frightful conditions prevailing in Germany, and the fear of another world war, nine German refugees, seeking permanent homes in a quiet land far away from war-ravaged Europe, arrived by accident at the little village of Checkpoint, seven miles from Waterford City, on Friday night or early on Saturday morning. Natives of Hamburg, the intrepid adventurers have figured in one of the greatest dramas of the turbulent Atlantic Ocean when their 32-foot yacht was tossed about on the angry waves in one of the fiercest gales they have ever known,” read an article in the Waterford News.
According to the story, after Vollrath and the rest of his party left Germany, they spent 25 days floundering about in the North Sea.19 Apparently engine trouble plagued the yacht. That was followed by a broken diesel engine. The groups had no tools to fix either engine. In desperation they hoisted the one small sail on board, which carried the craft over 900 miles of sea around the English coast and to Checkpoint. Moreover, the boat’s cooking stove broke and the party was “forced to eat cold tinned food, which had run out by the time they reached the Irish coast.”20
In Ireland Captain Vollrath met 18-year-old Vera. She was volunteering in a seaman’s center. The two feel in love with the force of a thunderclap and had three children, Gerard, Anna, and Paul. Vollrath died in 1996. Vera had a stroke in December 2011 and suffered from Alzheimer’s. Her son, Gerard, was charged with the unlawful killing of his 83-year-old mother at Killure Bridge Nursing Home in Waterford in January 2012.21
In Essen, now a city of rubble and wreckage, Walter Salk’s mother Hedwig “clung to a thread of hope” that perhaps the Red Army had captured her second son and middle child. She prayed he lived, be it in a Russian prison camp or in hiding. To lose another son would be more than she could bear.
It took the family more than a year to unravel the story of the young seaman’s fate.
Two days after the sinking, on February 1, 1945, his mother and father sent a letter to their son from Essen-Altenessen: “My dear Walter! I want to send my greetings to you. A lot has changed in the East recently. I am writing to let you know that Aunt Martha left on January 16th. We didn’t hear from her until January 25th. She was in East Prussia and may not be able to get out. She was going to try and visit you. Maybe we’ll hear more from her soon. Your father is feeling a little better, and Inge will be having her 17th birthday on the 9th of February. Send me your new address as soon as you know it. You are my good boy. Heartfelt greetings and kisses from your Mother and Father.”
Hedwig and Willi Salk wrote the poignant letter after Walter had already died.
On March 8, 1945, Walter’s parents did receive a letter, but not from their beloved son. This letter, written on thin graph paper, from Flensburg, was from a young woman named Christa Hausen:
Dear Mrs. Salk! You will be surprised to get a letter from someone you have never met. My dear Mrs. Salk, I would be very grateful if you could give me some news. I know your son very well; I was Canteen Helper on the T.S. Murwik. Walter and I became good friends. Now, I have not received any mail from Walter since the 21st of January. Since he was living on the Wilhelm Gustloff, and it was torpedoed, I am dreading that Walter was on board. Perhaps, Mrs. Salk, you can tell me if Walter still lives? Walter told me shortly before he was repositioned from Flensburg, “If you don’t hear from me, you will know I am dead.” One of his friends gave me your address, and so I beg you dear Mrs. Salk, give me some information if you have gotten any news of him, and I would be eternally grateful. With kind regards, Christa Hausen.22
It wasn’t until December 18, 1945 that an official missing-in-action notice arrived, informing Hedwig and Willi that their 22-year-old son, Mech. Maat Walter Salk, had indeed been on the Wilhelm Gustloff when it sank near Stolpe Bank in the Baltic Sea.
Hedwig and Willi clung to hope, as did Inge, Walter’s younger sister. Finally, news came on September 28, 1946, from the Naval Documentation Center, British Naval Headquarters. The letter mentioned Rudolph Dommash, Walter’s uncle, who had been making frequent inquiries regarding the fate of his nephew, the last being on March 7, 1946. It confirmed that Walter had been stationed on the Gustloff and that it had been sunk: “Your son was not one of the survivors to be rescued, so you must reconcile yourself that he is no longer among the living. The possibility that he could be in a Russian prison camp is extremely unlikely. Russian ships were not in the area at the time of the rescue operation. Should you not have heard from your son by now, we officiate that he is legally declared dead and recorded as such in Hamburg. . . . German Controller Naval Document Center.” Hedwig and Willi Salk received official notice from the German authorities on September 28, 1946. The brief missive concluded that Walter had indeed died in the torpedo attack; it said it was virtually impossible that Salk could have been captured since no Russian ships were in
the area around the time of the sinking to pick up survivors. Salk was thus pronounced dead one year after being listed as missing for over one year.23
The Salks’ letter exchange with German authorities is just one of thousands of such letters from families searching for their relatives. Millions of men were now dead, millions of men were listed as missing, and millions were languishing in prison-of-war camps near the Arctic Circle. Letters like the Salks’ show the painstaking search of survivors to find their relatives.
For years, Nellie Minkevics imagined her father had survived the shipwreck as an amnesiac. She imagined he lived somewhere in Sweden or Norway, unaware of his previous life. Daily she asked the Red Cross if they had any information on Voldemars Minkevics. She never heard a word, and slowly she came to terms with the fact that her father had perished on the Wilhelm Gustloff. Her mother remained in Latvia, now firmly under Soviet rule. Nellie ended up moving to England, where she met Peter Zobs in Scotland. She came to Nebraska in 1958 and became a nurse. Minkevics didn’t communicate with her mother until the 1980s, when Mikhail Gorbachev came into office with a new policy of perestroika.24 Minkevics and her mother suffered separation because of the postwar redrawing of maps. Leonilla Minkevics Zobs died on March 16, 2011, at the age of 89 in Lincoln, Nebraska.25
After spending several uneasy days with her mother in Halle (Saale) after the Gustloff sank, Eva Dorn decided to travel to Hamburg. More than 40,000 of the city’s residents had died from Allied bombings alone. Countless more had died in concentration camps and on the front lines. The city was destroyed.
Six decades later, sitting on her terrace in Switzerland, Eva remembered sitting on a pile of rubble, the ruins of a restaurant. She wondered what she would do now. Then she remembered that she once knew someone in Hamburg and searched him out. He gave her an address of a small bed and breakfast. Bombs had considerably damaged the building. Where there should have been a staircase, a ladder leaned. Eva climbed to the second floor. There was a room and a sofa, and the woman told her she could stay. In exchange for helping repair the inn, Eva could have shelter, sleep, and food. Eva worked for the woman for a few months; she later fell ill with tuberculosis and spent six months in the hospital.
Eva married soon after the war; it lasted less than a week. She married again and had two daughters; that marriage lasted just over four years. Then she found true love. She married a Jewish man—Rothschild. Their marriage lasted 44 years; he died a few years ago. They lived in Chile and then in New York City. About twelve years ago Eva traveled to the Isle of Ruegen with her daughter, Constantine. Though the pier is no longer there, Eva and Constantine found the place where the T-36 docked on January 31.
Today a model of the T-36, which the Soviets later sank in May 1945, occupies the mantel above Eva’s fireplace. The long gray boat, built to scale, was a gift from its captain, Robert Hering. It shows a sailor pulling Eva up on the seaman’s seat. Every day Eva walks by this model to see herself rescued.
In 1995 Irene Tschinkur East rested on a hammock in Tecumseh, Ontario. She was admiring the sun-dappled leaves when she seemed suddenly jerked back in time 50 years, when she also lay on a hammock watching condensation on the ceiling of her rescue ship. It was the first time she’d really thought about what happened to her all those years ago.
There is a certain agony in surviving. These are memories one can’t forget. Irene can’t get over what has happened, but she has had to live with it so she could have a life for herself and for her children. She succeeded; she emerged in one piece from the nightmare. In the end, Irene, Horst, and all the survivors learned to cope with their lives. They learned to survive, because they just had to.
APPENDIX
According to Heinz Schön, who had served aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff, the survivor tally was as follows:
Torpedo boat T 36, Kapitänleutnant Robert Hering, picked up 564 survivors; the T Löwe, Kapitänleutnant Paul Prüfe, picked up 472; minesweeper M 375/TS 8, Oberleutnant d.R. Karl Brinkmann, picked up 98; minesweeper M 375/TS 8, Oberleutnant d.R. Walter Weichel picked up 43; the steamer Göttingnen, Handelsschiffskapit Friedrich Segelken, picked up 28; the steamer Gotenland, Handelsschiffskapit Heinz Vollmers, picked up 2; torpedofangboot TF 19, Oberleutnant Walter Schick, picked up 7; and the Vorpostenboot Vp 1703, Kapitänleutnant Helmut Hanefeld picked up 1 person.
Throughout the book German place names have been used instead of their Polish or Russian counterparts. Their names today are:
Gumbinnen—Gusev
Gotenhafen—Gdynia
Elbing—Elblag
Danzig—Gdansk
Königsberg—Kaliningrad
Insterburg—Chernyakhovsk
Thorn—Turin
Breslau—Wroclaw
Stutthof—Sztutowo
NOTES
CHAPTER ONE: “YOU HAVE TO GO ON THIS SHIP”
1.Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam: The Anglo-Americans and the Expulsion of the Germans (London, Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977), 61.
2.Edward A. Westermann, Hitler’s Police Battalions: Enforcing War in the East (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas), 191.
3.Michael H. Kater, Hitler Youth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), 191.
4.“Nazis Fight for Time and Political Miracle,” New York Times, February 11, 1945, final ed.
5.Victor Shiff, “‘Last Fortress’ of the Nazis—in the Alps East of Switzerland Hitler’s Henchmen Are Expected to Make a Final Stand.” New York Times, February 11, 1945, final ed.
6.“Red Army Wins Elbing Port, Threatens Danzig Rail Line” New York Times, February 11, 1945, final ed.
7.Author email with Horst Woit, Kimberly, Ontario, July 25, 2007.
8.National Archives and Records Administration, http://www.archives.gov/central-plains/kansas-city/finding-aids/lincoln-naturalization.html, last accessed May 16, 2012.
9.Cindy-Lang Kubick, “Lincoln Woman Survived Refugee Boat Sinking,” Lincoln Journal Star, January 28, 2006, final ed.
10.Ibid.
11.Ibid.
12.Author interview with Eva Dorn Rothschild, Ascona, Switzerland, April 16, 2012.
13.Milda Bendrich letter to Inge Roedecker, June 9, 1981, courtesy of Inge Bendrich Roedecker.
14.Author telephone interview with Inge Roedecker, March 9, 2012.
15.Kater, Hitler Youth, 88.
16.Rose Rezas Petrus testimony included in July 10, 2007, letter to author as well as clipping of: Robert Dolgan, “30 Years Can’t Erase Vision of Ship Sinking,” Plain Dealer, Cleveland, OH.
17.Author telephone conversation with Peter Petrus, Sept. 8, 2011.
18.Author interview with Rita Rowand, Washington, DC, January 29, 2012.
19.Kater, Hitler Youth. 44-45.
20.Inge Salk diary entry, diary courtesy of Rita Rowand.
21.Letter from Walter Salk to parents January 14, 1945, courtesy of Rita Rowand.
22.Author interview with Irene Tschinkur East and Ellen Tschinkur Maybee, Tecumseh, Ontario, December 4, 2012.
23.Author email with Irene East, March 29, 2012.
24.Author interview with Irene East and Ellen Maybee, Tecumseh, Ontario, December 4, 2012.
25.Ibid.
26.Author interview with Helga Reuter Knickerbocker, Las Vegas, NV, November 6, 2012.
27.Max Egremont, Forgotten Land: Journeys Among the Ghosts of East Prussia (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011), 40.
28.Author interview with Helga Reuter Knickerbocker, Las Vegas, NV, November 6, 2012.
CHAPTER TWO: HITLER’S HOSTAGES: LIFE IN THE EASTERN TERRITORIES
1.Ursula Mahlendorf, The Shame of Survival: Working Through a Nazi Childhood (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), 75.
2.Author interview with Helga Reuter Knickerbocker, Las Vegas, NV, November 6, 2011.
3.Laurence Steinhardt to Cordell Hull, September 9, 1939. FRUS, 861.20/481, 779-780, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Washington, DC.
5.Cordell Hull to Joseph Kennedy, September 1, 1939, FRUS, 740.00116 European War 1939/19a, 541-542. NARA, Washington, DC.
6.Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History (New York: Hill & Wang, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000), 448-449.
7.“Baltic Germans Arrive in Danzig: More than 2,000 from Latvia and Estonia land over the weekend from 3 ships,” New York Times. October 31, 1939, final ed.
8.Michael H. Kater, Hitler Youth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 34-35.
9.Kater, Hitler Youth, 14.
10.Author interview with Helga Reuter Knickerbocker, Las Vegas, NV, November 6, 2011.
11.Gunther to Cordell Hull, conveying a telegram from Ambassador Anthony J. Dresel Biddle Jr., FRUS, 740.00116 European War 1939/61, 554-555, NARA, Washington, DC.
12.Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, Perseus Book Group, 2010), 126.
13.Ruth Weintraub, video testimony, RG 50.155 #03 US Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives, Washington, DC.
14.Michael Burleigh, Moral Combat: Good and Evil In World War Two (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), 145.
15.Snyder, Bloodlands, 131.
16.Stanislaw Jaskolski, Come with Me and Visit Hell, trans. Jakub Przedzienkowski, Kindle ed., http://www.amazon.com/Come-With-Visit-Hell-ebook/dp/B005CM1TZ6, last accessed April 17, 2012.
17.Marke Orski, Des Francais au camp de concentration de Stutthof, Gdansk: Muzeum Stutthof w Sztutowie: 1995. Note: Of the 13 Americans imprisoned in Stutthof, 5 were Jewish and 8 were US citizens of Polish origin.
18.Jaskolski, Come with Me.
19.Ibid.
Death in the Baltic Page 20