German version ...

When the Repatriation Program started, many refugees decided to go back to their homelands. It was times like this that the station took on a spirit of hope and gaiety as those returning boarded the cattle cars and nailed up make-shift flags and decorated with flowers and branches gathered from nearby field. When chalk was available, sketches of their heros and slogans would appear on the cars as well as names of villages and hamlets in Poland. The trip would take five days and the UNRRA supplied food, blankets, candles and firewood. Friends and relatives would offer final bon voyage presents - bottles of home-brewed schnapps, or sausage. On the platform a DP band would play polkas, and as the train would pull out, the band would switch to the Polish National Anthem, and everyone would lift their voices in song. The crowds would wave till the last car had passed and the sound of the whistle blowing would fade away....... These scenes would be repeated over and over again. Well over 100,000 refugees coming in and going home, but eventually the doors of communism closed in around eastern Europe, and the refugees had to find homes in other countries......

Bill Schanbacher, then member of the US-Army, was stationed at Post Wildflecken in 1954. Here's his impression of the Wildflecken train-station, shortly after the "Displaced" had gone:

I landed at RheinMain Airbase in Frankfort in Nov. 1954. A week or so later I was transferred from the Rhine Ammunition Dump At Miesau Germany to Wilfdflecken. Knowing it was close to the Russian border didn't boost my confidence any. My unit was responsible for the operation of Ammunition Supply Point #3 (ASP#3). Since we issued Ammo to all the training troops in the area ,it got busy at times down at the Bahnhof as the ammunition was shipped by rail. I remember the station was small, but it seems there were a large number of sidings with platforms alongside of them, probably for unloading Vermacht troops when the post was first established around 1938. The German Railway would leave the boxcars on the sidings and we would have to unload the ammo and put it on Army trucks to be brought up the mountain past the post another 5 miles or so to the ammo storage area. When ammunition arrived everybody was a laborer regardless of our duty assignment. Having learned about the post being used as a camp for DPs, I don't doubt that many off them arrived there and stood right on those very platforms we were working on. I remember little children all ragged looking, would beg us for any leftover wood. The ammo was stored in the railcars and held in place with wooden planks--to prevent it from shifting around. They used it for fire wood as cutting down a tree was forbidden without permission. I can imagine those poor displaced souls standing there on the platforms looking around at those mountains thinking they were standing at the end of the world. It was a desolate place, especially in the winter. The temp. would go far below zero, and the wind at times was unreal. I could only guess at what those people had already gone through during the war, and to find themselves in Wildflecken ,even though they were free at last, had to be somewhat disheartening. But as the camp was discribed in the book, 'The Wild Place', they were 'Survivors'.

Source of pictures: Yale Collection of American Literature, Beineke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, all rights reserved.
English text by Janie Micchelli, USA; German text by Heinz Leitsch, Germany

© by Heinz Leitsch

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