Childhood Remembrances of Germany, and after.

This will be a recollection of the events dealing with the Buza family in Latvia and also in Germany and in the early years in the United States. The events laid out will be the remembrances of Arnis Buza as he saw it for the period 1945 and up. Most of the memories between 1945 and 1950 are cloudy. There will be references to stories told by my mother Irma Buza and my father Herbert Buza.

My mother and father were both schoolteachers in Latvia in Smiltene. In 1937 they had their first child my brother Maris and I Arnis was born in 1939. World War II broke out in 1939. Latvia one of the Baltic states was caught in between the political influence of the USSR and Germany. In 1940 the Hitler Stalin Pact in effect ceded control of Latvia over to the USSR and starting in June of 1940 the Russian forces occupied Latvia and started the deportation of Latvians to Siberia. My mother and father continued to teach school during this period of time. In June 1941 Hitler declared war on Russia and on their way to Leningrad and Moscow, the German army drove the Russian army out of Latvia. The way my father explained it, they knew some Latvians who were members of the Latvian Communist Party who before pulling back to Russia, ahead of the German army, advised my father that if the Russians were to come back, my father and family had better not be there as their names were on a deportation list. Their names had been placed on the list because my father had supposedly spoken out against the Communist occupation. Another version of this story is that one of the servants at the school, whose husband was in the Latvian Communist party, warned my mother that they had better get out as their name was on a list.

In 1944 the German army was in full retreat throughout Latvia and my parents had to make the “Go” decision. My father had applied for passage to Germany where it was expected he would get employment as a civilian worker in the German War industry.

My grandparents on my mother’s side lived on a small family farm called “Purmikeli” which translates to Swamp Michaels. I don’t know who Michael was. My mothers mother had died in the earlier part of 1944 and as my mother related to us the leaving of her family was made easier by her mothers death. She said she was able to leave her father behind-he was quite old and could not have made the journey. She also said it would have been very hard for her to leave her mother behind. As it was my mother had one sister who stayed behind. My mother got a letter –many years later in the US that her sister had been killed on the farm by the Red Bull. She took that to be a suggestion that she had been killed by the Red Army. (Who really knows??)

Of the packing to leave my mother has related that she packed only warm clothes for the journey. She also related to me that she had buried some champagne on the farm to use for celebrating if they ever were able to come back. She said she had packed some money but later threw it all out as paper money was worthless in the wartime. They packed the belongings on a horse drawn wagon and set out for the port of Liepaja (Libau, in German). My mother and the children rode in the wagon while my father rode on his bicycle.

Recollections from my mother-

As they were traveling ahead of the advancing Russian army they sometimes were faced with Russian patrols. At one point they were staying on a farm house when the farm was overrun by a patrol. The woman on the farm was forced to cook for the troops and explained that my mother and father were servants. As for us kids she said that she very sternly told us to not say a word. When the soldiers had asked why we didn’t speak the woman had said that we were not too bright. My mother and father both spoke fluent Russian and did not want to let out that they were Latvian. Apparently the ruse worked.

Russian soldiers were superstitious about cemeteries. Whenever they could, they would spend the night in a cemetery because it was the safest place to be.

At one point a retreating Latvian soldier separated my father from his bicycle at gunpoint. The soldier needed it to flee. I guess my father didn’t have a gun to resist him.

At some point they had been forced to abandon the horse and wagon at a railway station-hoping to get their belongings and us on a train. They were then advised that there would be no more trains and that the Russian Army was only hours away. The German Army was in a disorganized way.

Somehow my father in desperation got to talk to a sergeant in the German army to explain our problem. The sergeant’s name was Winfried Kuennicke. He somehow took pity on our family and took us in with the German army. The sergeant was in charge of a field kitchen and for a period we moved back and forth with the army as the front moved. My mother had lied to the sergeant that she could cook. I guess she was forced to learn.

When the sergeant dropped us in Liepaja he gave my father the address of his wife Ilse in Lubeck. The sergeant later was captured and spent about 10 years in a Russian prisoner of war camp. His lot was made easier because as a civilian in Gemany he had been a watch repairman and his talents were put to use by the Russians in the camps.

The ship dropped us off in Danzig, now Gdansk in Poland. Between October 31 and November 16 my father was in a Grman hospital being treated for his shrapnel wounds. It is my understanding that during this time my mother, my brother and I were waiting for his return in an empty warehouse which had been set up to house refugees. Sleeping accommodations were straw piles on the floor. Of this time I have no vivid recollections at all. I can’t imagine what my mother went thru to keep us fed somehow. Not well fed but fed.

I believe at this time it was obvious that there would be no employment in Germany. It was now a race away from the Russians with the objective to get to the US/Brittish lines.

My father was also a good carpenter and was working for any wages he could get. Mostly likely for subsistence from farms. Of this time until the spring of 1945 I only have three solid memories.

The winter of 1944/1945 was harsh. I don’t know where we were but we had to make a move to get further to the west somewhere in Prussia. My father made up two wooden sleds and packed the two kids and the belongings at night and pulled us to a railroad station through the snow. It was a bright moonlit night and I remember being placed in a freight car with our things. This is a memory I will not forget. The picture of the moon on the snow is burned in my mind.

The caravan we were traveling on refugee choked roads was attacked by strafing planes. I remember the bursts of the shots and also being thrown into the ditch/field at the side of the road. We all came out unscathed out of that one.

On our way west we were staying in the city of Rostock-Germany. This was not a pleasant place to be in 1945. There were frequent air-raids from the British and Americans and also false alarms. I remember bawling after being woken up and then hurriedly dressed to get down to the shelter. Then returning to the living quarters after the all clear. Sirens to this day make me antsy.

My mother told me of a farm they were staying at where the only food they could get was turnips. The farmer would not make any provisions for us to get out when it was time for him to flee. He did not want to be in Russian occupied Germany either. We somehow got away.

I do not have any recollection of meeting up with the allied troops. I don’t have any written or verbal references from my parents either. I do know that my parents made it to Lubeck where they were put up in a Lutheran School building. They also looked up Ilse Kuennicke. How peoples paths cross.

As my mother taught English in Latvia and was also a schoolteacher, she was employed by the British under the auspices of UNRRA(United Nations Refugee Relief Act). The luck that had helped us all the way across Latvia and Prussia and East Germany held up.

We were not sent to the huge refugee camps in Germany. My mother and father secured employment working for the agency in charge of orphans from the Baltic nations. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

At first the orphanage was in the resort town of Travemunde on the Baltic coast. Tfhe Orphanage occupied a resort hotel. I remember that out in the water there was a bombed out German ship and once in the fall a body floated in off the boat into the beach. Being kids we had to have a look. After a period of time, the orphanage was moved to Klingenberg in the Plon Lakes region. The main building of the orphanage occupied an old Hitler Youth Camp. There were two additional houses one of which was appropriated from a nudist colony. Each of the buildings was occupied by one of the nationalities. My father did not teach but was the orphanage handyman and carpenter. My mother taught the Latvian orphans. As the population of a nationality grew or shrank (due to adoption) the use of the buildings was switched among the nationalities. I remember being housed in each of the buildings. The distance between the buildings stretched to about a mile.

For a kid with a parent this was an easy existence. Three solid meals a day and the care and protection of your mother and father. We went to school with the orphans. I don’t recall any names but I do recall many tearful separations as one of your friends would be leaving for America, England, Australia, Canada or somewhere else for adoption. As an adult I realize these should be happy times but as a kid no.

During the summers there were trips back to Travemunde to the beach. I got badly sunburned one time and also suffered heat stroke. That did not feel too good. I remember one time an organized trip to go to the Zoo in Hamburg. We went by train. I recall that the zoo was beautiful but that Hamburg was in shambles. The city was virtually destroyed due to the bombing. On the train-nothing but rubble for mile after mile.

One Christmas, I spent in the hospital with my brother in quarantine because we had contracted measles. Being in an orphanage they had to insure that the whole camp didn’t come down at once. In Germany at that time it was customary to put candles on a Christmas tree and our room had a tree with lit candles. My brother and I had acquired sparklers, which we lit on the candles and were throwing around the room. One of the sparklers wound up in my brothers bed. I wonder who threw it. After a while the smoldering quilt filled the room with smoke. We did have the presence of mind to douse it in a sink but could not escape the wrath of the nurses for the smoke.

We also went fishing with my father in the lakes and for all practical purposes for a kid- life was good. My father did have some problems with drinking during 1946 and for several months he had to spend in a rehabilitation in Germany. I just remember being told that father was ill and away in the hospital. After a few months he returned. Looking back I can easily understand how his experiences would have caused this.

I would have to guess that my mother put the fear of God into him to stop drinking after that. He would not drink anything stronger than beer or wine in her presence. I do know from personal experience that he would sneak a whiskey once in a while. I guess the adage “Love, war and hate may perish-but thirst is eternal” held true for him.

Although the camp had confiscated one of the nudist colony buildings, the nudist colony was in full operation. I remember as a kid climbing trees with the rest of the kids to get a peek at the volley ball games that were going on at the other side of the fence. When we got caught we paid for it.

By about the end of 1948 the orphanage was scheduled for closure as most of the children had been adopted. It was time for my mother and father to think about what they were going to do with the rest of their lives. The best avenue for bettering oneself was emigration to another country. Germany was still recovering from the war and there was pressure to provide for movement of the DP’s (displaced persons) to other countries. We moved to a refugee camp that was providing housing for people applying for emigration out of Germany. The way my mother explained it they had to go to the immigration offices for the country they were applying to emigrate to and secure applications. Many of the countries had quotas and would limit the daily allotment of applications. My parents tried to apply for emigration to England, Argentina and Australia before they applied to the United States. My mother related that they had no luck with even getting an application with the other countries and then applied to the US as a last resort. My mother explained that getting into the US was beyond her dreams because they were both close to 50 years old and thought that their chances of getting into the US were slimmer than the other countries. However she did notice that the US never shut down its application lines early. The lines kept moving all day.

They applied for emigration to the US and started the process. My understanding from conversations with my parents was that first you had to secure a sponsor in the US. The Lutheran Church was providing sponsors and my parents started to make contact with the names provided. I do not know how many people they wrote to but in my parents correspondence I did find a letter from a church worker in Oklahoma that they had been approved for sponsorship. Obviously my father had read about the climate in Oklahoma and there is follow-up correspondence asking about the weather etc. The prospective sponsor was not happy by my fathers questioning. Somehow this hurdle was crossed and my father secured a sponsor in Laurelton, NJ, a Janis Carrol.

Sponsorship was only a part of the puzzle. You had to go thru medical examinations and pass interviews etc. My mother had a calcium deposit on her lung, which showed up on an x-ray and any condition like that could be taken for tuberculosis. The immigration doctors were reluctant to pass her but somehow she was able to convince them that the spot had been there in Latvia years before and she could show x-ray plates from Latvia that would show that the condition was not tuberculosis. The doctors were skeptical that x-ray film from Latvia could have survived all that she went thru and that perhaps the film had been doctored. I do not know if money crossed hands as I wasn’t there but from what I was later told when an adult there was a strong possibility that it did. We still have the film.

After about a year and a half of going thru the process at two different camps we were finally approved for entrance t the US and had to wait for transportation which was also provided for by refugee relief organizations. We came across in a troop transport ship and the crossing took 10 days. The men and women were separated on the ship and my brother and I were with our father. My mother was seasick the whole way across. We came within sight of the Statue of Liberty on May 7, 1950 and disembarked on May 8. It was an all day affair to get off the ship and in the evening we were taken to Pennsylvania Station with our luggage and put on the train for Pt. Pleasant, NJ. Each of us had a baggage tag attached to our coats which listed our names and destination. We still have the tags.

We stayed in Laurelton for only a short time. I believe it was less than a week. The sponsor was responsible for your welfare until employment was secured and he was anxious to get us out of his hair and we were anxious to learn about our new country. My father secured work on a farm in Middletown, NJ The farm had a large dairy and fruit tree operation and also sold farm machinery. The machinery business is still there but has probably switched to lawn care equipment. It is right by the Middletown exit to the Garden State Parkway and is still run by the Potter family as it was in 1950. We were given the use of a farmhouse, which had electricity, a wood stove and a path to the outhouse. My father worked on this farm until the late fall. My brother and I had started school in the Centerville school, which is still standing on Route 35. I don’t know if classes are still held in this small building.

In the fall of 1950 my father decided that farm work was not to his liking as it involved lifting heavy milk cans into the cooler. He did develop a hernia here, which he never took care of until the day he died in 1986. We then moved to Keyport, NJ and lived in a two room cabin with a chemical toilet on Route 36 right below the old Keyport auction. My father started to work in the boatbuilding factory run by CC Galbraith. My mother worked in a knitting mill in Keyport. My brother and I switched to the school system in Hazlet, NJ. In 1951 my father and mother bought a house in Keansburg , NJ at 9 Park Avenue.

My brother and I went thru the Keansburg school system and the Middletown Township High School. Both of us also graduated from Rutgers University. My brother went on to get a PhD in Chemistry from the University of New Hampshire in Durham.

In 1958 I graduated from High school and met my future wife – Rosemarie Jazwiecki from Elizabeth, NJ. In 1962 we were married right before I started my senior year at Rutgers and we lived in married student housing – army barracks. We moved around some between Butler, Pa, Pittsburgh, Pa, Canton, Oh and Plainfield, NJ. In 1968 we moved to High Bridge, NJ at which time we already had two boys and were expecting our third (another son) our last addition (another son) arrived in 1974. We are still there 40 years later in 2008.