The German side of my family originated from a village called Schloenwitz in Pomerania. Nowadays it is part of the north western corner of Poland. But up until the cards fell against them at the Postdam Conference, it was their home, the home of the Garmatz family. Today, seventy years ago, they were given thirty minutes to leave their village by the advancing Russians or face almost certain extinction. This is a tale of choices.
It happened that the Russians had begun to advance on German territory since the Christmas of '44 or thereabouts and news had already spread of the manner of the Russians' approach. They were, in the words of Sheriff Bart in Blazing Saddles, 'open for business'. Where they didn't loot, pillage, burn or rape is where they didn't happen to be. In propaganda pieces they spoke of massacres, of Nemmersdorf; the ensuing panic and the many thousands - millions they would become - who would go on the Treks to safety, if at all possible.
At this stage, March 1945, the Russians were engaged in ferocious battles with the remainder of the retreating German military. Ten kilometres from my grandfather's village was Schievelbein, birthplace of Rudolf Virchow, 19th century pioneer of modern surgery. About the size of Carlow, it was gobbled up in a pincer movement by Marshall Zhukov's troops, on their irresistible march towards the west, Berlin and the Elbe river.
At this stage, March 1945, the Russians were engaged in ferocious battles with the remainder of the retreating German military. Ten kilometres from my grandfather's village was Schievelbein, birthplace of Rudolf Virchow, 19th century pioneer of modern surgery. About the size of Carlow, it was gobbled up in a pincer movement by Marshall Zhukov's troops, on their irresistible march towards the west, Berlin and the Elbe river.
The pastor of Schloenwitz would take his life, as would his wife and daughter. Amid the chaos, the villagers were given orders to leave. There is a family legend about today, seventy years ago. The villagers had packed their carts with what belongings they could, the family Garmatz included. Once they had, my great grandmother, a small woman, Elisabeth, nee Popp, insisted she wanted to go back inside and sleep off the stress, but surely to God, there was no time. Meanwhile, her husband, Willy, a respected elder of the village, came to confront the local Nazi official who had outlined the escape route he wished the villagers to take. The route would have taken them directly into the arms of the advancing Russian forces. Willy knew this and argued for an alternative. Even at this late hour, the Nazis were not amenable to reason. Yours was not to reason why, be it this route or any other edict. Willy nevertheless stood his ground. I suspect if he was anything like his son Rudolf, at this stage a guest of the Americans in France, he would have been dryly derisive of the local Nazi, budged not an inch and rolled his 'R's like a good Lutheran Pomeranian farmer might. In the end, they split, and the Garmatzes, another family, their horses and two French prisoners of war, sent to work on their farm, set out to dodge a human and military tsunami. They ventured away from the Russians, moved north-west, towards Cammin and the Baltic coast. They advanced, as my grandfather Rudolf relaid to me, 'unter schwerem Beschuss', under heavy fire, towards the west, Schleswig Holstein, and a village called Kaltenkirchen, an hour north of Hamburg.
They survived despite the bombardment, the misery and fear. The family legend goes on: those who followed the Nazi didn't, engulfed by that red sea from the east.
Two things arose from this day, seventy years ago. The first was that my family would never live, love, die or farm the land that had been theirs since before the end of the Thirty Years War. Willy would become a frustrated man, living in his small house in Kaltenkrichen, replete with plans for a farm never to be seen again. Two people from that day survive: my mother's cousins, both infants at the time, their father already killed, their childhood to be shaped by this and all other calamitous events of that time.
The second thing to happen included an encounter with another family, the Nawrots, who had been housed in the same refugee camp. Their home in inner city Hamburg was destroyed by the allied bomber squadrons, in the firestorms of Operation Gomorrah. Having run from a ball of fire, 20 year old Ingeborg would run into the arms of Rudolf Garmatz, freed, and having found his way from France to this refugee camp and, by chance, to her. He wrote once that he didn't want to live in her dreams but live in her life. She wrote that he should return some overdue library books, and some other, unpublishable stuff. He obeyed, and they lived, very much in love, in each other's lives for 44 years, until her death in 1992. He even wore a top hat for her on their wedding day in 1948. That's how my grandparents met - Not a bad way to end a war.
The second thing to happen included an encounter with another family, the Nawrots, who had been housed in the same refugee camp. Their home in inner city Hamburg was destroyed by the allied bomber squadrons, in the firestorms of Operation Gomorrah. Having run from a ball of fire, 20 year old Ingeborg would run into the arms of Rudolf Garmatz, freed, and having found his way from France to this refugee camp and, by chance, to her. He wrote once that he didn't want to live in her dreams but live in her life. She wrote that he should return some overdue library books, and some other, unpublishable stuff. He obeyed, and they lived, very much in love, in each other's lives for 44 years, until her death in 1992. He even wore a top hat for her on their wedding day in 1948. That's how my grandparents met - Not a bad way to end a war.
We are in our family, my mother, uncle, brother, cousins are all the products of this day, March 6th 1945.
