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Close Station
Then there came the problems of repatriation. The war had forced a lot of people
to move from their homes, often to places far away. Some had been moved at bayonet
point, others had houses destroyed by bombs or artillery, or had moved voluntarily to
places they thought had more food or lodging available. Many of them were German,
others were foreigners.
For the first few weeks the main roads were thronged with people trying to get
home, or at least to somewhere else. Most of them were afoot, carrying as much of their
property as they could. The railroads and autobahns had been badly damaged, and it
would be some time before they were back in use, but there was a sort of informal bus
service between Schwandorf and Burglengenfeld, consisting of a truck towing two or
three flat-bed wagons jammed with people and their household goods.
But there were other people who were from afar off and needed help to get back
home. Landkreis Burglengenfeld contained a lot of foreign displaced persons (DPs). We
got a daily roster of their number from the office of the Landrat. There were Lithuanians,
Latvians, and Estonians. There were Poles, Czechs, and Yugoslavs. There were a lot of
Russians, and one Hungarian. Some of them were living in the community, some were in
DP camps.
The two biggest camps were for Poles and for Jews. The Jews were mostly
German, but they were being treated as DPs, which was at least better than being sent to a
concentration camp. These DP camps were not prisons, but they were the places that
rations were issued, so few tried to escape. As a matter of fact, we were trying to get
everybody back to where they came from - at least everyone who wanted to go, or who
had a place to go to.
There was a problem with the displaced Balts - Estonians, Latvians, and
Lithuanians - for although their homes might still be there, their nations were not, having
been absorbed by the USSR. The Poles had a similar problem, because no one knew
where their national boundaries would be when the treaty was complete, and they hated
the Russians as much as they did the Germans. The thought of living under either
appalled them. Furthermore, anyone who had lived in Germany during the war would be
viewed with suspicion by Soviet authorities.
Nevertheless, a majority of the DPs wanted to go home, and arrangements were
made as soon as transport was available. A few railroads were patched up, and we were
notified when we could truck groups of the appropriate nationalities to the railheads. As
soon as we got the word, we would notify the local mayors when and where to have their
DPs of any particular group assembled and ready to be picked up.
I have said that we repatriated those who wanted to go. There was an exception:
At the Potsdam Conference it had been agreed that all Russian DPs would be returned to
Russia. So when the time came for us to ship out the Russians, we notified the mayors of
the villages where they lived to have them all ready at 8:00
a.m. The trucks arrived at the
rendezvous, but there were no Russians.
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