Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:10:36 EST
From: GDiers9488@aol.com
Subject: Re: [OL] Olderburg during the Wars
To: oldenburg-l@genealogy.net
Message-ID: <c40.2952d2ab.34c799ac@aol.com>
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Gerold Diers writes:
Hello,
I'm quite impressed by your discussion on this subject.I'm still living in Oldenburg and was born in 1935.
As far as I know except for the town of Friesoythe, there was no major military ground -
combat in the duchy of Oldenburg
As we all know most of the towns and villages in Land Oldenburg have
printed local histories and also describe the events during and after
the war. Germans have not been shy about analyzing and recording these
events so that may be available to their children and grandchildren.
Experiencing war first hand is different from reading about it in
history books but people at least try to warn their offspring to never
again engage in this most inhuman of all human events. The average
citizen knew long before the end of the war that it was over and that
people were dying for no reason, yet the leadership continued the
slaughter and anyone against it faced summary execution. The only
topic that has been somewhat taboo are the stories of German deserters
who did not wish to die for their country but were tried and executed
anyway. These soldiers were considered (and maybe still are) traitors
and number in the 10s of thousands. The lawyers who condemned them
claim to have simply followed the law. German obsessiveness with
following orders is not a favorite topic to this day. That story still
needs to be written.
-british and US planes dropped a lot of bombs on Wilhelmshaven - one of the
major sea-ports of the 'Reich'.
-some bombs were dropped on Delmenhorst and Oldenburg.
Gerold Diers is secretary of the Oldenburg Genealogical Society and
surely knows of the many bombings and strafings on lonely farmhouses
and of farmers in their fields by allied airplanes. Many villages can
report the loss of entire families due to the dropping of excess bombs
which were not dropped on some designated target but were not to be
taken home either. Farm houses made excellent practice targets. War
makes no sense but it does pursue the killing of people by other
people just because they speak another language or practice another
religion. It is the innocents who always pay the price. The cemetery
in Essen has a large memorial to one such extended family totally
wiped out by such a bomb. My wife knew those children. In the cities
hardly any family did not lose some members to the incessant killing
of the civilian population from the air. In the end these bombings do
nothing to end a war as we found out in VietNam were 3 million people
lost their lives for nothing. Killing from the air seems somehow more
acceptable than doing it face to face. It is a holocaust either way to
the victims.
As mentioned by others already, there was a small jewish population, which
suffered enormously. But it is not true, that the only remaining jewish
graveyard of Germany is to be found in Wittmund . There are other ones, one
of them being in Wildeshausen.
There weren't that many Jewish cemeteries in the first place in
Oldenburg. Again, in the history books we find only individual acts of
heroism against an oppressive regime. One such story involves a farmer
who simply kept dealing with the Jewish buyer of farm animals despite
increasing harrassment by the authorities. It is a long story of tit
for tat but it shows that not everyone was buying the propaganda
efforts of the party. In the early days the regime tried to remove a
livelyhood from the Jews by banning their commercial activities except
among themselves. Dr. Joachim Kuropka, (Professor am Institut für
Geschichte und historische Landesforschung der Hochschule Vechta),
tells us about both the resistance of ordinary Catholics and their
bravery in following their faith against a regime they wanted no part
of. Each in his part tried to resist without destroying his own family
in the process. Many followed the path preached by the propaganda of
the government in order to increase their own financial or social
status in life, many others did not. Kuropka has written many books
but none that I know of have been translated into English. We, who
have ancestry in Oldenburg, should know that the people of Oldenburg
were more resistant to Nazi pressure to conform than any other German
area. At least my readings of history have not discovered any other
similarity. I suppose it is somehow genetic in that the northern
German tribes, especially the Frisians, were always a bunch of
stubborn folks who resisted strong central authority. Their government
was always local and of the land. They basically wished to be left
alone to tend to their farms and animals. It is not for nothing that
Oldenburg stayed an independent duchy among much larger forces
surrounding it until the end of WWI.
It might not be obvious to Americans, that the population of Oldenburg
(town
and duchy) grew by approx. 50 % within one year after world war II, because
of all the people either fleeing or being expulsed from the eastern
provinces
of Germany. This also caused a significant mixup in religion. Up to the end
of 1945, southern Oldenburg was almost 98 percent catholic, the northern
Oldenburg 98 percent lutheran. The 'Fluechtlinge' as we called them, reduced
this predominance of one religion in either part significantly.
Very true. Outsiders from either faith were not considered locals no
matter how long they stayed in areas were they were a distinct
minority. Society was traditional and kept to the ways of old. When my
mother arrived in Essen after the war as one of those refugees she
could not stand being ostracized even though her in-laws were locals.
She took us back to Berlin were we had less to eat but at least had
some standing above scum of the earth. After my father returned from
POW camp in 1949, we then went back to Essen under his protection and
my mom became a Catholic to fit in better. It was very, very tough.
The harassment I got in school finally ended when I exploded by
beating a bunch of classmates over their heads with my wooden shoes. I
had forgotten who they were but on a visit back, I found out - they
had not. It was a joke now and they confessed to running home with
bloodied heads. The only friends I had back then were fellow refugees.
To get a grip on what Gerold is saying imagine moving the population
of New York state almost overnight in the most bitter cold of
Minnesota to Ohio if you were walking or Louisiana if you could catch
a ride somehow. There you stand with nothing and the locals are
supposed to take you in. Katrina was a cake walk in comparison.
.
By the way, my father died in Berlin, May 3, 1945.
You don't tell us how?
Fred