Paths of the Evacuation of East Prussia

It took me 52 years to come here, even though since 1989 it would have been logistically an easy trip. I followed the track from my mother's birth place along the paths of the refugees, seeing it all - also the German Concentration Camp Stutthof. I spare you the cruelty, violence and the stories of the collapse of humanity. I deeply regret them, but it would not help to add more "awareness porn" to the online world. We all know our responsibility. And if you feel in doubt, just visit a war cemetary. Here you will meet moments of deep silence and then wonderful people living here cheering you up. And in the end they were the main victims of German invasion and tyranny, before the Nazi agression bounced back. Not even to talk about Russia, and the holocaust. And another thing to remember, when standing where they crossed the ice under heavy civilian losses in 1945: protecting refugees from today's war zones is not charity, but it's our duty.

Balic Sea West of Gdansk

Watchtower at Stutthof Concentration Camp

The "Death Gate"

The place where many refugees crossing the ice on "Frisches Haff" came to land.

Voigtsdorf / Wójtowo (N54°00.532, E020°56.863)

Wójtowo (Voigtsdorf) is located between Lutry (Lautern) and Reszel (Rösel) in the Polish part of former East Prussia (Ostpreussen). A few plots of land in this small agricultural settlement was enough to be relatively wealthy. And it was not too much to be executed on the spot as land owner when the Red Army moved in, back in 1945. Who knows the truth after all these years only captured by oral history? I was there today for the first time, to see my mother's birthplace. I took many photos that may trigger her memories: the buildings, school, garden and just the fields across the road. She never came back. I also talked to people.  There are stories of violence, betrayal, and death, but also those of bravery and humanity. I decided not to write in public about what I heard. It's too easily misunderstood in the rough world of social media and there are radical views on this chapter of history. And honestly, I can't even talk about it without loosing my voice.

All that counts for me today is that I am happy to see my mother's birthplace. Now a wonderful Polish family is living in the house. It is still as a farm. I even saw some Trakehner horses. They maintain it by the means they can earn from the land. That's not easy. It never was.

The exit of Wójtowo (formerly Voigtsdorf)

This view remined me of Andrew Wyeth' painting "Christina's World"

Poppy flowers everywhere

Farm house near Lautern

I was always wondering why my grandfather liked these cherries called "Schattenmorelle". In his garden in West Germany he had many trees of these and they are not really common in the Rhine area.

Formerly the farm of Anton Siegmund, my grandfather

The smith's workshop beside Maria Gebriel's former home, my grandmother

The former school of Voigtsdorf / Wójtowo

Still some horse breeding

Corn flowers in the field

Center of Voigtsdorf / Wójtowo

The mill on the way to Reszel (Rösel)

Nameless graves on the cemetary in Lutry / Lautern

The past is three different countries

In the late winter of 1945, the ice on the "Frisches Haff" at the Baltic Sea was not thick enough anymore to carry all carriages and horses. My mother and her family left Eastern Prussia under the pressure of the incoming Russian Army. What happened then, was a story that shaped us for generations. Some went on land Westward, others crossed the thin ice. Too slow to make it off there before sunrise, they became easy targets for the Russian Air Force pilots. Nowhere to hide, they pretended to be dead, lying still on the ice until sunset, watching their neighbours sink and die randomly. They were running from an Army which was seeking to defeat the country which invaded it brutally and merciless before. For those who survived then came hunger, typhoid, the search for their relatives and children, homeless years, hope and despair - and for some the madness never left them. Some families were reunited in the 50s with the return of surviving prisoners of war from Siberia. Others in 1989 when the German wall fell. Many did never see each other again.

Tomorrow I still have a project presentation, and then I am on my way to Gdańsk (Danzig), with an old bilingual map, a field GPS and the few photos, articles, and extracts from birth registers. From there, I will head South-East to a village which has was called Voigtsdorf, close to Rösel. I am looking for the place abandoned by Anton Siegmund and Maria née Gabriel and their children in that late winter of 1945, in Poland and their favorite Café and chocolate maker in Königsberg / Kaliningrad (Russia). 

The long shadow of Anton Siegmund

Anton rarely talked much. But when he spoke to me, his words were brutal and secretive. He stood above the law, did not respect concepts like governments, and if you wanted to come closer than 3 meters, you needed a visa. He was a one man country, in which he tolerated his family and close allies only. All he was up to, was to defend this country - whatever it takes - absolutely, whatever it takes. He lead his family on the refugee track from Eastern Prussia, to the Soviet Occupied Zone of Germany, then further to West Germany. He wanted to continue to Canada, but then aborted the idea. He lost three children, and fought on the Eastern front. Anton Siegmund was my grandfather. And I believe, he was not what we like to think he was. I think he was worse.

Anton Siegmund with his Trakehner horses

Recently, I made the suggestion to bring my mother to her birth place in Voigsdorf, close to Rösel (now Poland), not far from Kaliningrad (back then Königsberg, now Russia). I received stiff opposition from all my mother's family to my idea, not because of my mother's weak health, but I was told: "It is not what it was". Of course, I respect that and vented the idea that I go myself and take a photo of my mother's birth house. And the response echoed: "It is not, what it was". This made me think, that it may have never been what "it was" in their minds. It is not uncommon for refugees to exaggerate their origin, and not uncommon for Germans to blur their Nazi past.

Anton had gaps, when talking about what he did in Russia. Sometimes, he was making jokes about dead Russian soldiers, and was mocking the wives and loved ones on the photos he found in their rucksacks, when he was searching them for food. He told about loosing his horse, but just being able to grab his rifle from the animal, and that nothing else matters than a gun, ammunition, water and food. And of course, for me as a teenager back then, he was a hero, and independent mind, who knew what is important in life, a rebel and all what the perceived "looser generation" of our parents were not. As a matter of fact, my parent's generation rebuilt this county after my grandparent's generation destroyed it. Then of course, all my aunts echoed the stories of Anton deliberately missing women and children with his gunfire, and being rescued by his Polish workers from the Russian military tribunal because he treated his workers so well. Well, maybe not. I remember that once in a delusion, he asked me to put his household helper in chains, as a punishment for a bad haircut. Anton was handicapend by a bullet wound in the right shoulder. But he was an exceptionally strong man. His stubborness  was sometimes interpreted as some kind of wisdom. I think it was dementia which brought him closer to the truth. He told me, that I have to be a good boy, otherwise he will have to stay in hell for the rest of eternity. He made me promise, to get him out of there by being a good person. I promised. Of course I did. I love my grandpa. Anton kept being the undisputed patriarch of the family until his last breath and beyond. 

I decided to go this summer in June to the house my mother was born, and try to close the circle of a long story. Anton Siegmund, had a long shadow over two generations. It was a cold shadow, with sharp edges. And it may have rescued his family. But it blocked the sunshine for far too many years.