Getting ready for the Pier Festival 25 January at Princess Pier - A celebration for all migrants who arrived at Station Pier in Melbourne. We are going to be part of it: hear some funny, sad and illuminating stories of embarking at Bremerhaven, Naples or Rotterdam, the journey and the arrival at our Australian-German Welfare Society stall and enjoy our collection of photographs and memories. Stories like Inaras: “My mother is called Regina Licitis. She and my father, Valfrids, were refugees from Latvia. They arrived in Dresden, Germany in 1944. I was born in Schwandorf (in the region of Oberpllaz, in northeastern Bavaria) . From Schwandorf we went to Amberg, a DP (Displaced Persons) camp and then on to Weiden. The photo shows my mother and I in Naples, waiting to embark the General Stuart Heitzelman. Then we are aboard the ship on our way to Australia. We were taken to Bonegilla first, but didn’t stay long. We managed to rent a furnished room in Carlton. The photo shows us in front of the house – my mother and I and a friend with her children. Our first private ‘home’ in Melbourne! But the car does not belong to us!” Schwandorf, Amberg and Weiden in the 1940s: Many refugees and displaced persons had sought safety in Schwandorf in 1945, when a bombing raid by the Allied forces damaged more than five hundred houses and completely destroyed more than six hundred, 1250 people lost their lives. Amberg (60km east of Nuremberg) had been home to a small Jewish population during the time of the “Nationalsozialismus”. The predominantly catholic citizens viewed the Nazis with distrust but could not prevent the persecution and deportation of their Jewish neighbours. In 2012, fifteen “Stolpersteine”(memorial plaques) were placed in Amberg to commemorate them. The “Zuchthaus Amberg” – the prison – held many political opponents of the Nazi regime, 46 died there. The “Katharinenfriedhof” (the cemetery) bears a memorial for 23 of these victims, another remembers the 300 Soviet POWs plus 293 other victims who died at the hands of the Nazis. Weiden is a township 35km from the border to the Czech Republic. During WWII, the POW camp Stalag XIIIB was housed near Weiden. The French and Soviet POWs and forced labourers, who lost their lives there between 1940 and 1945, found a final resting place in the “Stadtfriedhof” (the city cemetery) on the Gabelsbergerstraße. During 1945 and 1955, more than 40,000 refugees and displaced persons settled in Weiden.(ed.)
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 01:58:30 +0000
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