“Our Marie” – A memoir of Irma Stenger – Life during World War II
Twenty-five Years ago. Ma set foot in the desert. Ridgecrest where she is a hometown grandma to so many who she has “had her effect on” ..as she so matter of factly stated after one of her Pflaumen Kuchen “Ridgecrest Family” gatherings. Never has she remained in one place so long as in Ridgecrest. Mojave isolation no better way to bond with family and perfect strangers who are all in the same boat, who celebrate the highs get through the tragedies that life brings. Ma, a World War II survivor. Now for over 70 years, she carries a story that she is compelled to paint in memory of her departed sister Marie, the inspiration Marie, the Marie who revealed the final days and weeks and deaths to Ma one night after the ordeal had ended. In the memory of the 6 year-old girl who endured the destruction, the rape, the death, the despair, and how Marie was able to maintain her sanity, how she was able to overcome the many tragedies in her life. Tragedies that one would have never have suspected happened to positive and jovial Marie. Why are some able to overcome dark and radiate the positive despite the horrific. An inspiration to all – “Our Marie”
Marie’s story is partly revealed as it intertwines with Ma’s memory of Marie’s torrent of an all night-long outpouring of the horrific details. To the survival mode, the submersion of the unimaginable, that never was murmured among sisters again, they forged their new life, two in America and two in Germany. Much will remain a mystery as Marie’s life ended prematurely in 2002 before she had the need to reveal her own story in a level of reflective consciousness that Ma has reached as she reached 90. With encouragement from those of us who have heard the bits and pieces, Ma has gone through the pain of repainting the details. The summing it up…getting the faded memories down, in a form and with the expression that reveals the story, in honor of her sister Marie.
1939 marked the commencement of World War II as England and France officially declared war on Germany which would eventually unite powers against the Nazis. At this time in East Prussia (an eastern Germanic city-state now located in Poland), the Rockel family resided in a town called Guttstadt working their farm together. Irmgard(Ma) was one of 5 daughters. Marie and Hildchen younger than her; Cecilia (Cilli) and Ulla a few years her senior. The Ursula(Ulla) oldest sister, would attend a LandwirtschaftSchule (Agricultural School to learn the farming trade)
Residing on a farm miles from town center, it could be presumed that her parents did not know to what extent the Nazis had already begun to change world history forever. From a young teen’s perspective at this time, life on the farm was not too much different than before the war. Farming was farming and it was hard work with the Rockel girls always envying the town’s children who didn’t need to toil away in the fields. After Germany invaded Poland, prisoners were disbursed among the outlying East Prussian farms to work, and the Rockel farm would take on its allotment throughout the time of war. Prisoners would work alongside the family and eat alongside the family. Momma always treated them well, and not like the title of prisoner would conjure. Additionally the Rockel family would always take in a mother and children who would come to take refuge from the city where new fronts were being drawn and the destruction the greatest. These were the first realities from Ma’s perspective that wartime was in full swing.
Then there was evolving of the Hilter’s anti-Semitism. The synagogues in town were burned and the yellow stars evident. A Jewish farmer’s wife asked Papa not to press charges for the cost of a debt that was owed; her husband was gone and her family was struggling; she had stayed behind to care for her handicapped son. Instead the Rockel girls would inconspicuously set butter on their window sill on a regular basis, as to go unnoticed by Nazi that was suspected to be in the town. This became truth, as mama had been threatened with prison if she continued to do this. The Jewish trader who bought the farms livestock bi-annually stopped coming to do business with Papa was never seen again.
Ma was 12 years old when England declared War, and like most children her age, the truth and expression of anti-Nazi attitudes were kept from them to protect family members from threats and imprisonment. Some accounts did make their way to school age children; however, two different fellow classmates whispered about how their parents had been imprisoned because they had said that they didn’t think Germany could win the war. Threats, fear and uncertainty lay surpressed in this East Prussian Farm Community as the Hilter power machine was taking over countries to the east and west. The early days of Hitler were marked with him leading a great economic recovery to the devastating recession and World War I consequences. For this, he had gained respect and support among the German people.
As the war entered the early forties, life had not changed too much from the perspective of a young teenage East Prussian farm girl. There was still food, no bombings, you went to school, worked in the fields, fought with your siblings and went to Church at least once on Sunday. This time marked no more Catholic out-door processions as there had been prior to war – whether it was forbidden, Catholics were laying low in fear they may be next, or just people were to sad – they must all be considered. Cilli finished school in about 1942 and would go onto her Arbeitsdienst (Government Service). This was obligatory year of service for all young women who wanted to enter the Univesitat, and Cilli aspired to become a dentist, beginning her studies at University in Konigsburg afterward.
Ma would begin her Arbeitsdienst in 1944, as the war torn Germany was starting to experience defeat by the Allied forces. There was great need of domestic and farm help as so many men had been drafted. Ma’s group lived in camp and was dispersed to work on farms during the day. Already experience in farm work and a strong women, ma excelled and was selected and told she was to become a leader. This was the first time she personally became angered with the regime as they wanted her to stay longer and she wanted to go on to school after completing this obligatory service. In the attic, secluded from the ears of leaders, Ma unloaded this anger to another girl, Krista Zupka, who had also been selected to become a leader. It was here that Krista told her own secret. She revealed that her father, a German army officer, was accused of taking part in the attempted assassination of Hitler and was facing death because of it. She learned he later was killed.
In response to the constant westward push by the allied forces, the relocation of the camp at the end of 1944 was inevitable. Christmas brought a brief moment of reprieve from the hypocrisy as all of the girls went into the woods to pick a Christmas tree. Trees blanketed in snow, and the surroundings deep silence rendered a cold peaceful tranquility that helped comfort them as they commenced the Christmas ritual of each lighting a real candle, saying a prayer as it was placed upon a tree branch and finally cutting it down to take back to the camp for Christmas dinner.
In January of 1945, they were told that they might have to move quickly in the night. Belongings were packed into pillowcases, and they would ready to leave at a moment’s notice. One morning at 4 am, this was ordered. As they walked to the train, some girls stopped to say last goodbyes to the farmers for whom they had worked. For the first time, the horrific affects of war was seen in the faces of people they worked alongside . The fear of what would become of the farms, the people- would they flee, or face the Russians.
The group of teenage girls traveled from Danzig to Pommern, and joined up with another camp. Ma had sent a card to her sister, Ulla who had been studying in Landwirtshaftschule. They were only at this new camp for a few weeks when again they were told they need to move in the night. Ulla’s card arrived just before they left – her School was being closed, and with no option to return home, she was going to a friend’s farm in Cappeln Village in Oldenberg. This was when they heard the news that East Prussia had been cut-off by the Russians. There was much crying and despair as East Prussian girls feared they would never see their families again. The leaders were tight lipped and gave no comfort or knowledge of what was happening.
The group dissolved in Pommern. Forty girls went to work in factories in Berlin, and the handpicked leaders were assigned to a Mecklenburg to work on the large farms. Their clothes were all taken when they arrived at the farm. They had to sew their own jackets. Ma was sent to pick brussel sprouts, and worked in a very large soup kitchen. There was a shortage of salt and the food tasted terrible. One day a group of fleeing farmers from East Prussia arrived at this farm. The girls were all hopeful to see their parents among them. Instead they were told of a terrible fate of many fleeing farmers behind them. This group had just made it out, but behind them the bombs falling from the English and Americans broke the ice and many refugees fell to their death in the freezing water of the Frischehafe if they were not burning from the phosphorus bombs. An outpouring of grief and anger as they were afraid that their parents had perished. They sat on their beds and sang at the top of their lungs protest songs, just as they had heard the Negro spirituals protesting in Cuba. They kept working the large farms, remaining there for a few months.
Just before Easter in 1945, Schlesig-Holstein had already taken by the English. Germany’s demise would only be a matter of time now. Ma’s psoriasis was flaring up and the leaders let her see a doctor. Ma was medically discharged from further duty. With no place else to go, she decided to go to Cappeln Village to find Ulla. She left by train.
The travel was long and tiring and Ma experienced her first enemy fire as she traveled to find her sister. While on the train through Hamburg, they had to get out because of the bombing. They hid in the already bombed out ruins of an oil refinery. On the way to Bremen they had to get out of the train again because the bridge was bombed. They walked all night long to get to Bremen. From Bremen, she took a train to Oldenburg. In Oldenburg, she was told that a train wouldn’t be there until night, so she asked for the road to Cloppenburg. She started to walk with her bundle in hand and was picked up by a truck of German soldiers. She sat in the truck bed with the French prisoners. They were all very friendly. She had to get out when she reached Ahorn base. She continued her walk to Coppeln. A German officer picked her up in a Volkswagen bug. Suddenly he they were being attacked; and he drove very fast as they ducked from the gun fire, and somehow got them through. They arrived in Coppeln , not knowing if Ulla would still be there, not knowing if where exactly to go. She asked a man on a bike if he knew of a farm which was tended by a group of girls. He said yes there was such a farm and pointed her to that direction. She will never forget looking up and seeing Ulla, coming toward her. There were lots of girls. Ma was exhausted and hungry and the farmer’s wife prayed for a long while they waited for dinner. Ulla put Ma in her room with a beautiful feather bed and she slept for two days.
The reality of the end of the war came relatively slowly to the farmhands and was largely evident by groups of soldiers that came through with reports of what they had seen. The farm dwindled down to five girls, as many left to try and find surviving family members in the devastated Germany. The farmer’s wife was kind and taught and guided the girls through these troubled times. Ma remembers dusting. Once a group of German soldiers came through. They stayed and talked and shared their despair. The head soldier was a professor at The University of Breslow. He was so sad because he thought he would never see his daughter again. On the morning they left, one German soldier deserted and hid with the girls.
A few weeks later, English troops came through and said they were going to occupy the farm. The farmer’s wife and two children had to leave and go to a neighbor’s farm. Only the farmers stayed to run the occupied farm, along with two girls to cook and clean. Ma and her sister had to go to another farm to sleep, but would return in the morning to work. The officers got to stay in the nice rooms at the farm. In particular, Ma remembers one of the English soldiers named Robert who had red hair and blue eyes. He held her wool while she knitted and Ma practiced her English with him. Ma called on Robert to handle a situation that was getting out of hand on a neighboring farm. Seems that a drunken English soldier was carelessly playing with his rifle around children. Ma went to tell Robert that they were fearful of this inebriated soldier and his careless gun handling. Immediately Robert and his friends went to get the soldier. They brought him back, and dumped cold water on his head. The English soldiers eventually left, and Robert asked especially for Ma to say goodbye.
Everything was bombed in Cloppenberg, even the slaughterhouse. Ulla’s friend Anita found out that her uncle Bertardholt’s farm in Sevelten needed help. Again with no place to go, and farmwork meant food and a place to lay your head so off they went. It was here that they were taken in by Frau Marie Rolfmeyer, the other inspirational Marie in her life. This was Neidersachsenbauernhof, where under one roof, animals were bedded, and cooking was done, the living area was a big sitting room (Diehl). Ma and Ulla chose to spread manure, rather than do kitchen work. They did other normal farm work like feeding chickens and milking cows too. Finally the war was officially ended, and their farm was occupied by 4 Polish soldiers.
In the winter, Ma went to work at a Hospital in Cloppenberg; this was part of the requirement for . On Christmas, Ma decided to walk to the Rolfmeyers to be with Ulla. It was very sad time, they had no news of the rest of their family. During the recovery period, Herr Schultz had been assigned to work on Frau Rolfmeyer’s farm.
Finally, there was a man that would do the heavy farm work that Ma and Ulla had done for many months. The harvest went extraordinarily well. When they would take a rest from working in the fields. Ma thinks Cilli got to the farm in the spring. Ma planned to go back to Home Economics School (Fruenfachschule).
Ma got a Praktikum in a big hospital kitchen in Oldenberg; there were lots cockroaches. This is where she met Hannah Radde who also worked in the kitchen. She was a soldier’s child and had no idea of her father. They would become good friends.
One day a note from Tante Josef arrived which said her mother had died. Ma was very upset went to find a priest as Momma was a very religious Catholic and it seemed the right thing to do. She waited while the priest talked to a couple for a very long time. Ma decided to leave and walked the street. She went back to work and prayed a lot. She hitchhiked back to Frau Rolf Meyer’s farm on many weekends. The Praktikum was over in half a year.
Finally Marie had made contact with them through Uncle Herman in Wiesbaden. She and Hildenchen were taken to the Russian zone after the war. Marie, 17 years old, and Hildchen, 3 years younger, tried to return over the border, but Hildchen collapsed and they had to go back. While Hildchen was in the Russian hospital, Marie worked in the kitchen of the Ursline Cloister where a refuge woman took care of her. Ma decided that she would cross the border to see them. This of course was not legal, and you had to find a way. She had heard that Goettingen was a good place, and found a man in a bar who took her as well as a group of others. She made it to the Russian zone and found the cloister. Ma was re-united the very under nourished Marie; she looked like a 12 year-old.
Luckily it was the weekend and all the regular pupils were gone from the cloister and ma could stay there with Marie inconspicuously. It was here that Marie talked all night telling Ma all the horrific experiences that she had endured and the fate of her parents and relatives who stayed with their farms. The Russian soldiers arrived and shot about 15 men. The men in the neighboring farms were shot and the women were taken to Siberia. Maria and Hildchen were hidden in the barn, but the Russians found them. The Polish prisoner intervened on behalf of Momma who had treated them so well and Papa was spared. They were allowed to go, and Tante Eda and Tante Hedwig took them in. It was here that the occupying Russians shot Tante Eda. Maria was hidden because a soldier would come to rape her. He wanted to know where the young Maria was, and Momma told him she didn’t know. He struck Momma and when Tante Eda cried out, he shot her.
There had been little to eat after the war ended, and soon Momma became very sick. Marie worked in an orphanage and picked up milk and supplies.. Maria said that Momma’s mother then over 80 years old, walked 15 miles all the way from Armsdorf to be with Momma in her last days. Marie said their Momma died peacefully. Papa was still alive and they applied to go to the west. They left and got to the camp Erfurt. A soldier had taken Papa’s coat, and he died soon after from exposure. He was buried in a mass grave. The two girls were starving and decided to beg for food at a farm, and the dogs were let loose to scare them away. The camp was a Russian occupied camp for German refugees. Hildchen and Maria tried to illegally cross the border into the another zone where they thought there would be more food, but Hildchen collapsed. They girls were taken to the cloister in Russia.
The three youngest sisters were relieved to be re-united. Blue-eyed, Hildschen had typhoid fever and had lost all curly strawberry blond hair. She had a big hole in her lung because she had had tuberculosis as well. Hildchen was positive and had the will to live although she had a large tube running into her body. The Doctor said she was very sick, but that she was young and in good spirits so she could possibly recover. Ma had promised to come get them when Hildchen was a little stronger.
Ma had to return back over the border to Goettingen, and as luck would have it was asked by a man riding a bike if she needed to cross. She had to trust this man and hopped on the front of his bike and they rode down a great hill. Then he told her to wait in a clearing and he would come for her when the time was right. While sitting there, Ma counted the church bells ring 9pm 10pm 11 pm 12 pm 1 pm.. She wondered if he would ever return, and decided she to wait until the morning to find another way. Suddenly he appeared and the two crossed as the Russian guards were sleeping. He told her they were free and that they should go a little further and rest until dawn when they could get to the train station. He had crossed this border many times as he went back and forth visiting his mother to the University of Goettingen.
Ma continued work with her women’s hospital practicum because was require for Frauen Fachschule. This is where she met Hannah Radde. Meanwhile Cilli found Ulla and Ma through Uncle Herman, a banker in Weisbaden. He lived West so he was spared. Uncle Herman’s wife was the cousin of Ma’s father. Cilli had been taken prisoner by the English and was released at the end of the war. Cilli also worked on the Rolfmeyer farm. As Cilly had studied at the University she was allowed to be a teacher; the school master lived across the street. Ma made plans to study home economics at the Frauenfach Schule in Oldenberg.
A few months later, Marie wrote that Hildchen had died. Ma set off immediately to go get Marie. Frau Rolfmeyer had agreed to take in Marie, and got the permission to do so from the Bergermeister. Ma had heard there was possibility to cross much closer at coal mine town that was much closer than where she had crossed the first time in Goettingen. She hitchhiked all to a small mining town where she found out where to wait; not comfortable going into bars and up to strangers to ask about the place, but there was no being shy. People never said their real names you just needed to trust. Two German prisoners who were released from Norway were among the small group that waited. She called them Saint Gabriel and Saint Michael. Again waiting and waiting, so long that Ma and Saint Michael went to ask a miner if they had forgotten them. He said they would come when the time was right and they returned to wait some more. Finally they were taken into a lorry which transports topsoil into the Russian sector. They had left empty space so people could be loaded and covered with the soil and secretly cross into the Russian Zone. As they she uncovered the earth and got out, Saint Michael gave her an abrupt shove and Ma toppled out of the lorry. Later he told her that she had almost touched the high voltage wire; if it weren’t for Saint Michael would have be electrocuted.
Ma tried to arrange with the miner for the crossing back with Marie knowing they would return in a few days. Marie would be weak and the trip would be difficult. The miner told Ma to go to his house and wait there. He would then take them across. She had a plan.
She found Marie, they went to Hildchen’s grave and then went to say good-bye to Tanta Hedwig who was living in a retirement home. They found the house, again they waited, and finally the miner came home. After it got dark they left. This time they walked across the railroad bridge. The miner took Marie’s hand as she shook uncontrollably as they crossed. Ma was in the rear. This memory was engrained in her mind for so many years. Somehow they made it to safety, and the miner told them to follow the light, at then at the end of the passage through the woods. That would be the train station and their way home. Walking across the another bridge in Bremen, they would soon be back to the farm where Frau Rolfmeyer would nurse Marie back to health. Marie had gotten tuberculosis and stayed in the hospital for 6 weeks.
In the Fall of 1948, Marie and Ma arrive on a Saturday and Frauenfachschule began on Monday for Ma. Ma met Hannah after school. She had no place to live, and brokedown and cried to Hannah. The Hannah found Ma a place to live with Fraulein Weddig in exchange she did her laundry and household chores. Everynight she would bring ma a cup of chocolate milk; they became good friends. She was very kind.
With all the surviving sisters back in various places, what we call post traumatic stress disorder in the 21st century, began to surface. Ma was would be allowed to stand in the back of the movie theater since she had no money, but would just remained glazed over. She could not concentrate and did poorly in school. She became friends with Inge Plotzner. Her parents were also very kind and Ma went to them even when Inge had gone for her practicum. Finally, a teacher told her she needed to pull herself together and focus again or she would be asked to leave. Learning to focus again was the most difficult to thing Ma had to do, but she eventually improved and graduated from Frauenfachschule. During 1949 Ma work for a few years in Oldenburg doing parktimum and going back to Rolfmeyers farm where Marie and Ulla lived.
Cilly left the farm. She got opportunity with her friend, Julia, to become an elementary school teacher. Marie was left on the farm. Ulla didn’t have high school. Ulla had possibility to become an Agriculture teacher. Ma and her friend, Inge, wanted to get a domestic sience college after Frauenfachschule. There was a special concentrated make-up Abitur that could be completed in one year This was a special offering for older students who had not been able to attend the regular high school because of the war. Cilli already had a teaching job and paid the small tuition for this study. The make-shift school that was set-up in a barracks in Wilhelmshafen. They also lived in this barracks and each day Inge and Ma would take turns biking the 5 miles to the pick-up this food package from a Catholic Hospital. Ma passed the Abitur Examination. She then took the entrance exam for the college, but they only accepted 3 students and she would have had to wait one year.
While waiting for this year, Ma decided to go to England and work in a household and learn English. The family decided to move, but Ma did not want to do so she found a job in the London Times working as an aid in a Nursing Home in Eastborn. This is where she found that she loved to take care of patients. After a year she had to return to Germany since a year was up.
Once back in Oldenburg, she applied to a nursing school in London and was accepted. In 1951, She went to Saint Andrews hospital in East London to begin this training. These were good years and she studied hard. Most of the others were fun loving Irish girls. They played a lot of table tennis to reduce the stress of studying. During this time theater tickets were given to the nurses and this is where Ma developed her love of live theater. This was the Cockney region and the people were warm and friendly and singing at the pubs was a favorite weekend past-time. She received the English Nursing State board in 1955 and worked as a Staff nurse, and had applied to study midwifery. One morning as she was walking along the Thames, she was overcome with homesickness and wanted to see her sisters and her homeland. So she went back to Oldenberg.
Meanwhile Cilli fiancée, Willi, had gone to America. He wrote Cilli that he decided to stay in America and she should come there. Ma encouraged Cilli to go and decided to accompany her on this adventure. Ma thought that she could get a nursing job since she had the English State board. During the year it took to get the papers Ma worked in an English Military Hospital in Swischenahn while Cilli work as a teacher in Oldenburg. The embarked on the Berlin from Bremerhaven as Ulla and Marie waved goodbye. The journey took eleven days and they had a great time on the ship eating and playing ping-pong and swimming in the salt water pool. They arrived in October 1956.
Willi met them and he had rented Ma and Cilli an apartment in a railroad Flat where he and his sister also lived. She began doing private duty nursing through and agency, but she didn’t like traveling all over and working at night which most of these jobs entailed. She decided to apply at the Lenox Hill Hospital, but they would not accept the English stateboard and would only offer her a nurses aid position. Ma refused, and she was a nurse wanted a job work as a nurse. Finally they told her that she could work as a nurse if she could pass a high school equivalency test and pass a test in the area for pharmacy. During this time Ma met a fellow nursing student from her London training. They went dancing and this is where she met her husband. They began dating. She passed the high school equivalency test, but she had not completed the pharmacy test within the year, and the Lenox Hill hospital refused to let her continue working as a nurse. She then found a job working in the operating room nurse in the French hospital. After passing the pharmacy test she finally obtained the New York Stateboard in Nursing. She continued working as an operating room nurse in the Jamaica Hosiptal and leaving in Queens. In1958 she married my father in a civil ceremony. They bought a house in Levitown Long Island.
And so the transition to a more American Life begins…
Travels with Vinny VanGo 