Marias Story

Maria's parent immigrated to Australia, after 60 years she found out about some family in Poland.

I was born in DP camp Hohenfels in 1946. From early 1943 to the end of the war my father was an inmate in concentration camps, in Poland, Germany and France. In the period after the war (1945 - 1949) my father joined the Labour Service under the American Occupation as a guard and policeman, he spent time in Beuron, Sigmaringen and Hessen in Germany. In 1949 returned to Hohenfels to my mother and me. My mother spent the entire war as a forced labourer on a German farm, doing manual farm work as well as housekeeping and taking care of the invalid wife of the farmer. She said the work was extremely hard. She was 19, was taken away from her family, from her child and her homeland everything she held near and dear, she didn't know the language and was scared. After the war she met my father who was still in his concentration camp stripes. Nothing but skin and bone. They decided to make a life together. They stayed at various DP camps, from 1945-1946 they were in DP camp Incikofen then in January 1946 were married in Beuron. Mum told me once that she had no money to buy a dress for her wedding, no ring, no shoes etc., so they borrowed everything and some women on the camp fixed her hair and put a little net on her head and that was it, nothing fancy, they married in a Polish monk's monastery somewhere nearby by a Polish Monk or Brother, the closest thing to a priest, and they were given a barrel of alcohol by the monks to celebrate the wedding. My mother then stayed at DP Camp Hohenfels with me till 1949 when we were transferred together with my father to the IRO Resettlement Centre at Wildflecken where we stayed till we immigrated to Australia in May 1950. During our stay in Hohenfels I was medically treated at Bad Reichenhall 22 times, In the records I received from the Red Cross this is all documented but doesn't say what I was treated for. I know that whilst in Germany I got all the childhood diseases that were going around. I really don't know if you can use any of this, I am sorry I have no more information, no photos no nothing and my father is not forthcoming with any information either. He just said I want to forget....... What a pity.

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© Heinz Leitsch

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