Yellow square is area of map below.

    In 997 AD, Adalbert, Bishop of Prague (Catholic Saint, 983 Archbishop of Prague, " Apostle of the
Prussia") tried to convert the tribes to Christianity. He was slaughtered by the people in 997 AD on the
Frische Haff (bay) in Samland. His successor Bruno Querfurt received the same fate in 1015 AD. In
1015 AD, the first King of Poland, Boleslaw I, ruthlessly invaded the country and by slaughtering
numberless peasants and others was trying to force Christianity on to the tribes. The German Knightly
Order invaded in 1227 AD. In 1230 AD, Hermann Balk, leader of the German Order with his force
of  knights settled the area that later became Thorn. It followed 53 years of heavy fighting between the
Prussians and the Germans. The Order was the victor. With cross, sword and ladle secured the Order
Christianity and German culture in the land.

    In 1309, the headquarters of the Order was moved from Venedig to Marienburg. As the Prussians
were conquered, the war with the Lithuanians went on. Grand Duke Jagello of Lithuania converted with
all of his subjects to Christianity and then united with Hedwig of Poland against the German Order.
Jagello became the victor in the battle of Tannenberg (15th July, 1410).
The Order lost much land holdings in the North-East during the first piece treaty of Thorn in 1411 AD.
Corruption within the Order let to the establishment of the Prussian Union of States. Thirteen years of
war followed (1454-1466) and led to the Second Thorn Peace Treaty. The Order lost all of West
Prussia and the Ermland to Poland and only kept East Prussia as a vassal of Poland.

    .East Prussia was given to Mar Grave Albert von Hohenzollern by Poland in 1511 AD. As the
reformation came to the land, Mar Grave Albert conformed with many of his subjects to the Lutheran
Church.

     In 1618 AD, Prussia came under the rule of the Brandenburg line of the House of Hohenzollern and
became in 1660 AD during the Treaty to Oliva sovereign under Prince Friedrich III. On the 18th.
January, 1701 Kurfuerst Friedrich III under the sceptre of the Hohenzollern became King over the
Kingdom of Prussia.

    Since 1413, Polish language and culture came into Prussia. The German sympathetic towns often were
in feud with Poland. Gradually the glory of the Polish kingdom faded and it was more and more divided
by its neighbours. The first division of Poland in 1772 lost West Prussia to Friedrich the Great but without
Danzig and Thorn. At the second division in 1793, Danzig and Thorn was also lost. In 1872, East
Prussia and West Prussia was divided from each other. After the Second Word War, East Prussia
and West Prussia again was given to Poland and part to Russia. The Prussian people, as much as they
survived with there lives, escaped to the West.

Deutschendorf, East Prussia now Wileczeta, Mazurskie, Poland (The home of the Liedtke family)

    To my children, may they see that there is a loving father in haven that influences your life and has a very strong interest in your well being.

 I was born on the 25th of April 1937, in an apartment on the forth floor of a typical Berlin Apartment building, which was constructed in about 1920. The address at that time was Tilsiter St. #77. The street is now called Richard Sorge St. in the Friedrichshain district of Berlin. The apartment had one living room, part of which doubled as a bedroom, an entrance hall with closet storage and a kitchen. The kitchen had a sink, only cold water, a gas cooker and a wood stove. The apartment was heated by a  Scandinavian tile fireplace in which you could burn wood or soft coal. Our bathroom consisted of a WC with a toilet, half a flight of stairs down. You had to bring a key to get in. After the war, when half of the apartment house got bombed and only part of the building was left, Dad broke through a brick wall to use a room of the next apartment that was only half there to build another bedroom. My grandma Jordan lived there with us for a while in her old age. Before we had grandma, my mother kept a couple of chickens in the room and sometimes one or two rabbits.

  The family thought grandpa August Liedtke was illegitimate, but he would tell everybody especially when he had a few beers, that his father was the Polish Count Tobinsky. We later found out for sure, that his father was indeed Martin Tobinsky and that somehow after August’s birth the parents separated and he was called after the Liedtke name, if his father was a Polish Count, we do not know. The Tobinsky’s or Tobaczynski as it was originally spelled, are indeed an old Polish Nobel family.

The Tobinski’s had their estate at Gut Liebrode or Lipowo as it is now named. The German word Gut means estate. The estate is located in a clearance of a forest about three miles west of Deutschendorf (see map above). The Tobinskis worked that farm for a very long time, we think all the way back to 1410 when they fought against the German knights with the Poles at the Battle of Tannenberg. The Pruss II Clan , of which the Tobaczynski where a part, became nobility after that battle. After 1600, Germans again claimed the area for themselves and all of the land around Deutschendorf officially belong to the German Count zu Dohna.  The Tobinski’s now ran the farms as managers for the zu Dohna.
My great grand father Martin Tobinsky was born on the farm and lived there with his dad Jacob Tobinsky. Some how, he met his wife Maria Liedtke which lived in Deutschendorf only a few kilometers trough a forest. The Tobinski’s attended the Lutheran Church in Deutschendorf.
We found that Martin Tobinsky later got married again to an Elisabeth Kretschmann in a Civil Court. They had two children and lived in Reichertswald about 10 miles south. I believe that one of their children immigrated to America.

   Dad played the mandola, a large mandolin, and belonged to a band and singing group that played music for entertainment in the area and in a resort and GasthausVogelsang .  All of the Liedtke’s had beautiful voices. I was told, one evening mother heard dad sing and before she even saw him, fell in love with his voice. She said, “ Now there is the man that I am going to marry”. Well, dad didn’t not have a chance, they got married on the 28th of March 1923. Dad finished his apprenticeship as a boiler machinist at the steamship factory and then he lost his job. It was then they decided to move to Berlin to see if they could find a job there.

Their first child, a daughter who they named Ursula was born the 17th of December 1924 in Elbing. She died 10 days later on the 27th of December 1924. Ursula had a birth defect that is now known as Pyloric Stenosis. In that time there was nothing the medical system could do for it. On the 9th of January 1927 another daughter, Inge was born in Berlin. My parents came to Berlin in 1925 to find work.

Jobs were hard to find in Berlin too. Dad found a job as a butler and waiter in an inn, Mother found a job as a maid in the same inn. They had to be single to work there, so they pretended not to know each other and had to live in separate rooms in the inn. This of course gave place for many romantic nights when dad sneaked into mother’s room or vice versa.

Grandpa and grandma Jordan as well as mothers sisters, Marie and Frieda moved to Berlin also. Grandpa and grandma lived in a little cottage in a leased garden section of a suburban of Berlin. They had about a quarter acre of land in garden and fruit trees. Frieda and her husband Fritz lived in a very similar set-up in the same garden section. Grandpa and grandma Jordan, aunt Maria and aunt Anna joined the Mormon or LDS Church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) in Berlin after missionaries contacted them in 1930. Two years later my mother and aunt Frieda also joined.

Mother and my aunts would get together often, once a week at least. I cannot recall the any one of them ever questioned the truth of the Church, it was just a known fact to them. On these occasional visits, I listened to many interesting conversations about the old country and the things that happened to them in the earlier years when they all lived in East Prussia. My cousins Ingried and Helga and I would listen on the open door when we were supposed to be sleeping.

Mother told the following story about herself as a little girl. She was living with her folks in Spitzen. Her mother sent her to a neighboring village to get some lamp oil from the family there. She was playing with her cousins, to long and to late. As she realized that it had gotten very late, she left to get back to Spitzen. As she walked in the dark, the road took her up a steep hill to a place where there used to be a castle. As she was going up the hill, she heard a church bell ring out midnight, twelve gongs. At the last gong, she looked up and two very large dogs were coming down the hill at her. She said, the dogs eyes were just glowing. She was petrified. As the dogs were coming closer, she heard this mans voice speaking to her, “don’t be afraid of them, just look into their eyes” as as she looked into the dogs eyes, they just disappeared in front of her. She called out, “Mister, where are you?” There was no answer. Later in her life, she said that she had a dream in which the Savior came to her and spoke. She remembered what had happened to her as a child and remembered his voice being the same as the man that spoke to her that night on that hill.

Grandma Jordan told a similar story about her childhood. She lived in another part of East Prussia, called Carnayen in the Mohrungen District. It seems that she too as a young girl had to go to the neighboring village and it got very late before she left for home. Now, she knew that the trail would lead her past an old rock quarry and on top of a very steep cliff. As she approached the hill with the cliff she could not see the trail anymore. Suddenly a woman with a lantern was walking in front of her lighting the way. She was trying to ketch up with the woman but every time she was walking faster to catch up, the woman would also walk faster, until they had past the cliff and the rock quarry. All at once the lantern went out and the woman was gone. Grandma had no trouble finding the rest of the trail home.

My mother told me that when I was about 6 or 8 months old, mom and Inge and I had come home from some grocery shopping. Mom put me on the table with the groceries to change my diaper. She turned to one side for a second or two and when she turned back to me I had a recently purchased stick of Liverwurst in my mouth trying to make short work of it and I didn’t want to let mom have it back. I still like Liverwurst. My sister Inge used to tend me a lot as my mother liked to read books.

Reluctantly, my sister once toll me that she dropped me of the table while she was changing my diaper. It did not seam to have had any effect on me, so she did not tell my mother about it.

My earliest recollection as a child was when I was about two years old. Mother and I went to Schlesien on a vacation. The government had sent us to this farm in the country to escape the bombing in Berlin. We stayed with a couple on a farm. The woman’s name was Bieda. We were there for Christmas, and I had gotten a windmill for a present. I remember running the windmill on top of the snow. The snow was as high as I was. I also go a wooden garage for some trucks that I had, but my mother talked me into putting it out as a bird feeder because there was so much snow. I can remember that I did not like the idea. My sister Inge came to visit with us also for Christmas, I liked that. She took me sleigh riding.
 

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Our family liked to vacation at the Baltic Sea, in a resort called Kahlberg and sometimes we stayed all summer. We had to go by boat from Elbing and cross a Friesche bay to get to the resort that was located on a narrow peninsula. Some of my mother’s family, lived there during the summer and worked there. There were two cousins of mine, identical twins, that worked at a Bed and Breakfast. Sometimes these girls would date one guy, each at different times during the same evening and the guy would not know that there were two girls.
On one vacation in Kahlberg, about 1942, I was about 5 years old, we would go into the woods and dad would teach me how to pick mushrooms and Blue Berries. He showed me how to tell the differences between good mushrooms and the poison ones in that particular area. We used to walk on the beach and many times we would find precious stones of Amber.

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The year after Schlesien, we went to the country again, only this time to East Prussia to a little village called Herzogsau. We took a train from Berlin to a train station near Herzogsau. The man, a farmer who we were to stay with picked us up with a sleigh and a brace of horses. There was deep snow and we had blankets to keep us warm till we got to the village and farm. It took about 45 minutes to get to the farm. There was a main street in the village with the farms on each side of the street. Each farm was fenced by a high brick wall in the shape of a horseshoe around their property. The houses were made of bricks about 2 feet thick. The roofs were covered with straw about 2 feet deep with supporting beams.

The farmer or his wife used to hang hams and ducks up in the attic and smoke them with the smoke from the cooking fire. Their water came from a deep well outside. It was large enough that once while we were there a cow fell in the well and a boom had to be rigged to lift her out. She was balling all the while. The front of one of the barns had an apartment in it. A Polish couple living there that was working at the farm. In the winter all the stock was put in the barn to keep them from freezing to death. The horses were kept in the front area behind the workers apartment followed by the cattle. In the back of the barn near a lake were two huge stacks of hay and I and my friend the farmers son used to burrow tunnels in between the stacks. The farmer didn’t like it when we did that but we covered them up so they weren’t easily seen. On the other side of the U shaped wall was another barn for the pigs, chickens, goats and or sheep and geese. In the summer all the animals were outside. There were cats to keep the mice and rats down. There were also a couple of dogs one pleasant one and the other not. In the summer you could see moose and elk across the lake, which was about a half mile to the other side.

I loved it when the farmer cooked potatoes in a 50 Gallon barrel to feed the pigs. Us kids would eat potatoes out of the barrel all day. Us boys would play a lot along the lake and also go swimming. There was a place where a creek came into the lake. Every time we go in the water in that area, bloodsucker leeches attached them self’s to our legs. Mother and I would take long walks thru the forest on the other side of the lake.

At Christmas time on the other side of the lake is where the Christmas tree came from. We brought the tree across the frozen lake.
 

I must have been 6 years old as that’s where I first started school in the village’s one room schoolhouse. That would have been 1943. I remember the boys in the village always teasing me and trying to beat me up because I was the city kid. One time in school some kid made a paper wad and flipped it at the teacher. When the teacher asked who had did it all the boys pointed at me. The teacher whipped my fingers with a stick. The schoolhouse was a one-room brick building with 2 outhouses and a potbelly stove used for heating.

That winter my friend, the farmers son, and I were always doing pranks. One day we went out on the lake. The men of the village had a trail out onto the icy lake that they frequented to fish out of a hole they would make in the ice. We decided to cut a hole in the trail so someone would fall into it. We played on the lake until it got dark and then I ran back on the trail to get home. I fell into the hole we had made and into the icy water. Luckily I had enough brains to run all the way home before I froze to death. By morning the whole was frozen again and luckily no one else but me fell into it.

I was out playing in the fields away from the village late one day when on my way home the village kids saw me and came after me, blocking the road back to the village. They wanted to beat me up. I took off across a field, after having said a quick prayer. The field was near the woods and there I saw a deer running next to me by the woods and in the same direction. I took that for a sign I would be ok. The deer kept up the same pace as I and the boys never caught up with me.

I had 6 months of school while at the village and then the family returned home to Berlin.
The school in Berlin was much different than in the village. It was more political and in the morning the teacher had us stand and sing the German national anthem and then signal the Hail Hitler sign at the end of the singing.

The family didn’t stay but a month in Berlin as summer vacation started and mom and I went to Elbing and Kahlberg by the Baltic See for the summer and were there four   months. We lived in a cottage and I had to start school again in September.  My mom had a visit from a playful SPIRIT. At night, it would take her pillow out from under her head and into another part of the room. Things had changed in Kahlberg. You could no longer walk on the beach as the army had laid mines and barbed wire in preparation for war. During this time at the resort town, mom and I went to a commercial fisherman and bought a 5-gallon bucket of eels to take home and prepare to eat. The eels wouldn’t stay in the bucket when we took the plastic off the container. I grabbed a towel as eels are slippery and I couldn’t keep hold of them. Mom finally put some salt in the bucket and covered it and then we left for a while. When we returned the eels were dead and mom prepared them to eat. I don’t remember ever eating any of those eels, then or ever again. They reminded me of snakes. My dad came to pick us up that late summer and he ate most of the eels.

Back in Berlin as the war became more intense we had bombing raids almost every night.  Sometimes dad was there and other times he was not as he had to work. His job was in a truck factory where diesel trucks for the war effort were made and worked on. One of the bomb raids that I remembered started at noon one day. By two in the afternoon, Berlin was burning so bad that it was completely dark from the smoke, just as if it were midnight.

On one occasion there was a raid and we went to the shelter in a basement near our apartment. As we were sitting there we heard the scream of a bomb coming. It hit outside directly behind the 3 feet wall we were sitting in front of. We heard it grinding it’s way all the way down into the ground and then it exploded knocking us all the way across the room to the other wall. Most of the apartment house came down on top of our basement shelter. We were all shaken but not hurt. The other people there were crying, screaming and praying their Catholic Rosaries. There was dust and dirt all over us. Dad told the people making the noise to shut up so we could hear when someone came to help us out from under the rubble. We heard them in about a half hour and in about another half hour we were able to crawl out of a small opening. We were so glad to see daylight and we later saw the damage to the apartment. A large part of the apartment house was blown away. The part that was left was the top of the roof right over our apartment but the roof of the next apartment to our apartment was gone and the apartment house angled off and downward from there.

The apartment directly across the street was not so lucky. The bomb that hit there had phosphorus in it and when it exploded the phosphorus caught fire and leaked down into the basement shelter and it burned everyone, adults and children a like, until all that was left was charcoaled bodies the size of small children. That day there were bodies stacked in piles on the street corners covered with lye to keep down the smell and germs.

The next night a woman came to my mom in her sleep in a dream. She had on a black lace dress. Her long hair had curls in it. She told mom “You must leave Berlin now”. Mom said she saw herself in her dream sitting on a train, the sun was coming up and she was heading north. The next day mom went to the Gestapo office to get travel permits. The man told her no one travels except the military. She had her wallet open and in it a card she had earned doing first aid. It had a big red cross on it. The officer saw it and said, ”you didn’t say you were a nurse, are you a nurse? Thinking fast Mom said “ yes, I’m going to a military hospital on the Baltic Sea”. The man said, “Who is traveling with you?” Oma answered, “My son and daughter”. At this time Inge was married already, but mom didn’t tell him this. Inge married Valdemar Albert just a few months earlier. The officer gave her three traveling passes; it was a miracle.

Inge was already at our place, her husband was fighting at the Russian front. We left that same day and went to the train depot. No trains came until late that night and the train that did come let wounded solders off and was setting there empty after that. Some soldiers got on the train and mom took us on the train too because of the lady in her dream showing her a train. As the train pulled out of the station the sun was coming up and we were going north, just as in the dream. Mom felt as if the lady in her dream was some family member possibly mom’s grandmother that had crossed over.

The train was going to a city named Sassnitz on the Baltic Sea. Sassnitz has a hospital and a harbor. My cousin Lotte or Lottchen lived here, in a villa high on a hill. Mom wanted to see if we could stay with her for a while. Her villa over looked the harbor and ocean. Lottchen was glad to see us and said we could stay. As we were going to unpack our suitcases, mom got a funny feeling and said we should wait till morning. That night the same lady in the black dress and curly long hair came to mom again in her dreams. She said as she was standing in front of the closet, “do not unpack”! The next morning we looked down to the harbor and there was a ship out in the harbor unloading refugees and putting them on a train near the harbor. Mom said “ I feel like we need to get on that train” and so we left a note for Lottchen, got our suit cases and went to the train. The train was still in  the station with us on it when a air raid siren started to sound, it was a terrible feeling. The train pulled out of the station as bombs leveled the town and the villa behind us. Some of the windows were shot out at the back of the train. The refugees on
the train had frozen hands, feet, ears and noses. Sometime later these all had to be amputated. The train took us into Denmark to a town called Appenrade that was occupied by the German army.

The government assigned us to a family witch were Danish, but of German descent to live with; it was out in the country on a small farm. Inge was assigned to work in a Field Hospital as a dentist assistant; it was on the job training. We stayed with this family till the German army surrendered to the British and then we were ordered to a POW camp by the British. The camp was a converted school complex with high brick walls and barbed wire surrounding it. There were armed guards at the two gates. The German POW soldiers were running all the operations of the camp. We were assigned to a room with straw on the floor to sleep on. There were about thirty people to a room. Typhoid fever broke out soon and people were dieing every day. Mother had a dream when we first got there. She had seen this German POW soldier with a white coat on in her dream. The next day they had us all standing in the courtyard and they were assigning camp jobs to people. Mother saw this guy with a white coat waiting to have workers assigned to him. Because of her dream mom told Inge to try to be assigned to the man in the white coat. It turned out to be the camp cook who was looking for kitchen help. Inge was assigned to him and because of her duties there she was able to boil our clothes in the left over dishwater, which helped to prevent us from getting the Typhoid fever. We got a little extra food too. The Danish government gave us a series of 30 to 40 shots for the Typhoid fever but all it seemed to do was make us sick and sore. They would start across the chest and then down the arms and then in a day or so start all over again. It was really painful.
 

That winter, 1945 Inge’s husband Valdermar showed up at the camp looking for Inge. The war was over and Inge had sent a letter to her address in Berlin letting her husband know where she was. He road a freight train all the way to Denmark and snuck into our camp. The same night he got there he snuck Inge out over the wall and they caught a freight train back to Berlin. Two months later the Danish government and the British decided to send every body in the camp back to Germany. We were loaded on to empty freight cars, the temperature was minus 30 degrees, it was extremely cold. Mom had her down feather blanket with her and that kept us from freezing. We arrived at the first town across the border about noon. We were dropped off into a refugee camp, a converted school. From this point on we were on our own without means or a place to stay. The cook that Inge had worked for in the Danish camp had given us a piece of salami about an arm’s length, we lived on it for a while.

Mother had to find a place for us to stay. She told me to sit down on top of our suitcase and not to move till she came back. She said the Lord would watch over me as long as I didn’t move. She didn’t return until late that evening. She had wandered all through the town looking for some Mormon Church members. As she was walking down one street a woman passed her on the other side of the street. A voice told mom to run after the woman and ask her about the church. At first the woman couldn’t help her but mother mentioned America and that the church was head quartered there. “Oh yes” the woman said, “I remember two American missionaries before the war and they lived at this address”. As mother got to the address she could read a brass sign at the side of the door that said, The Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints, Flensburg Branch.
 The branch president lived in an apartment in the front of the chapel and we were invited to live in a small apartment at the back of the chapel. The building was an old converted industrial warehouse. This was a fun time because Sunday School classes were held in our living room and in my bedroom on Sunday. Our living room had a large trap door in the middle of the room. As you lifted the door it exposed a wide stair well going down to the next level and an exterior door with glass in the panels. We would always leave our apartment by that door. One day my mother was not home. I left by that door and locked it behind me. When I came home I entered through the Branch President’s apartment and walked through the chapel to our apartment in the rear. Nobody was home at the time but me. I had left the trap door open. As I entered our living room and looked down the stairwell, two young men in suits were standing at the bottom of the stairwell looking up at me. One had red hair and they both had books in their hands. They smiled at me. Then I realized that I had locked all the doors when I had left and nobody could have entered. I got frightened and turned around and went back to the chapel and sat there until my mother came home. The Branch President’s wife told us that there were a couple of missionaries who had been killed in the first part of the war.

About four months later, we found out my dad was still alive. We did not know if he made it through the last days of the war. The Nazis were drafting everyone. When dad was outside he kept from getting drafted by pushing a wheelbarrow full of tools wherever he went. He had shovels, rakes, chisel and hammers and other tools. He kept busy looking like he was on a work detail in the streets when the Nazis passed. We left Flensburg by train and went back to East Berlin to our old partially bombed out apartment. It was a very bad time in Berlin, very little to eat.

Dad and I went into the ruins in a bombed out industrial place and got some corrugated steel to cover the roof of our Apartment to keep the weather out. We actually put the steel on the floor of the apartment that had been above our roof, as that apartment had no roof.
About a year after the war, there was still very little food to eat. Dad worked for the Russian Army repairing their tanks. He was a shift leader or Forman. The Russian cook with the military unit would save the potato peelings for dad and a loaf of bread now and then. Sometimes he would give dad 2 or 3 loaves of bread but there were so many people starving in Berlin that dad would give away 2 loaves and come home with one.

  I started school and it was a communist theme because our apartment was in the Russian Sector of Berlin. When food became very hard to get, my mom and sister would go out into the country and trade goods for food, which the government determined to be illegal. A lot of times you would trade for food and along the way at a communist checkpoint they would take the food. One time they had traded for 10 lbs of pears and as they came to the train station mom and her sister came to one of these checkpoints. Before they checked in, they sat down and ate all the pears so many that they got sick from them. Dad found a large 1 lb. can full of antique silver coins in the ruins of a building. He traded with a Russian soldier, 20 lbs. of silver for 100 lbs. of potatoes. You can’t eat silver.

One day, dad brought home some oil and forgot to tell mother about it. She found the oil in the cupboard and she had just traded for 10 lbs of flower and so she decided to bake a cake. As dad came home we ate the cake and got diarrhea very bad. Come to find out the oil was motor oil. There was still one cake left so mother took it to the black market and sold it one small piece at a time so no one would get sick from it.

Inge’s husband was trading on the black market regularly. He would trade photographic film, paper and jewelry for anything of value. I was with him one time and had the contraband in pockets inside my long coat. When the police raided the Black Market they would tell me to go home as I was 10 years old and they didn’t even search me.
 

   My dad and I got baptized into the LDS Church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Ladder Day Saints) on the same day, when I was nine years old. The church branch was a very friendly place that I enjoyed very much attending.

   During that time the L.D.S. Church delivered welfare items to our branch president. We were told one Sunday to come to his apartment during the next week. We received a whole large gunnysack full of food cans. Dad put the bag on my red wagon. As we were pulling it home the wagon hit a bump and turned over. Cans were rolling down the street with us in hot pursuit. People hadn’t seen canned food for so long they didn’t realize what it was. We quickly gathered up the cans of tomatoes, corn, and some meat and left.

The government finally delivered some meat to Berlin and we received some other rations as well. We had to stand in lines for a very long time. By the time we got the meat it was crawling with maggots. We washed it and cooked it good and ate it. Nothing else was to be done. From that time on the government gave out ration cards.

From the church welfare I picked up a U.S. Army overcoat and a Wave cap, this became my trademark at my school. My father and I were baptized May 5th in a public swimming pool. I was the only Mormon boy in my school. Since the Mormon’s had something to do with America the coat and cap became an idol in and of themselves. The boys wanted to hang out with me and I had my little click. I always wore a white shirt and tie at school.

In the summer of 1947 we decided to spend the summer at the Baltic Sea again. Mother had saved some money. We couldn’t go back to the old resort we used to as it belonged to Poland. We went to an island called Ruegen, which had several resort villages. One was Baabe and the other was Goehren.
We stayed in a Bed and Breakfast cottages the first year. Mom and I always went to the resort early in the summer. Later dad would get 2 weeks off from work at the Russian military place and he would come to see us and we all could go home together. The third year, we heard about a camping beach and so we bought a used tent and dad made a cooking stove. That summer we went to a camp, which was located between the resorts Goehren and Baabe on the beach. We set up our tent in the woods along with some other campers. The next morning after taking care of our camping needs we decided to go to the beach and take a swim. We ran through the high dunes and onto the beach and then got a real shock. It was a nudist beach and we didn’t know that when we made our plans to go there. There was only one thing to do and that was to become nudists too. We spent the whole summer at that beach. Dad had 4 weeks vacation that summer. He had a gas cooking stove wich blew up and burned his arm. If it was not for the large pan on the stove it would have been worse. He couldn’t go into the water the whole 4 weeks. The doctor released him on our last day and he spent all most all day in the water.

When the people who were at the beach wanted to go into town or somewhere, where everyone wore clothes they put a feather in their hair. All who knew of this beach knew where the feather wearers spent their time. Late in the summer we went back to Berlin so I could start school.

The East Berlin Branch met in a Public School. Every week, the Branch President had to obtain a permit from the Communist Authorities in order to have meetings on Sunday.
Back in Berlin, Inges husband Waldi worked for a West Berlin film maker UFA as a director. He would line us up with Movie Extras jobs. I got to play in several movies and so did Inge, her daughter Rose and my mother

Early in the summer of 1951, dad, mom and I took a vacation on the river Spree. The Spree had a delta at one place with forest and hay fields between the many water channels. We rented a kayak and spent the entire week on the river. It was a fun time, except for a couple of day when it rained. We slept in a haystack most of the time.
Our family, aunts, uncles and cousin would get together every New Years Eve for a party. That was always a fun time.

In the spring of 1952 we left East Germany and dad asked for political asylum in the free part of Berlin. The reason we left was because there was a fire at dad’s work place. It burnt up some Russian tanks. The Communists were always trying to blame it on sabotage. Dad had ties to America because of the L.D.S. church and they were trying to blame him for the accident with the tanks. A good friend of dad’s that had ties to the KGB warned him that they were planning on arresting him. Dad came home and we left within a short time. In that short time mother actually sold their bedroom set to a neighbor for 300 marks. She told them she was buying a new set. As we left the apartment and was walking down the street mother said she saw the police come with their vehicle to the front of the apartment house behind us.

We went to some out of the way check point by the border to get through before any news of dad’s pending arrest was given. We declared we were going to visit my sister in West Berlin. We got searched in our belongings for things that would show intensions to leave East Germany permanently. We were given visitors passes. When we were in the free part, of Berlin, which was like an island in the Communist East Germany, dad asked for political asylum at a police station.

The government had a camp set up for refugees. There were others who left as well. Men and women were in separated halls with lots of bunk beds. During this time dad had to report to the American CIA for debriefing because he had a lot of information about the Russian military equipment. He would take the subway and report to a certain villa every morning. About the 4th day some man showed up at the camp and told dad to report to a different address the next morning. Dad took the address of the new meeting place to the CIA, as he didn’t feel good about the change in plans. The guys at the CIA were upset and told dad the new address was a secret KGB head quarters. Immediately the CIA flew us out of Berlin over the then called Berlin Wall to West Germany in the free part.
We wound up in another refugee camp. The camp was located in an old military academy behind a castle in a place called Heidenheim. There were 20 people living with us in the same room. We slept in double bunk beds. This was in the summer of 1952.

I started work as an electrician’s apprentice and dad got work with the utilities digging ditches. When I left for work I had to leave through the castle and then down a long hill and through town to the train station. I rode the train for about a half hour till I got to the business that was located in a small town called Gingen. There I learned the electricians trade and I got my certificate. Going to work was easy but coming home, I would have to walk up the steep hill to the castle, it was real work. I used this electrical training and more, all the rest of my life.

We stayed in Heidenheim that summer. We decided while there to emigrate to the United States. To get to the USA we needed a Sponsor and someone who would pay our way and we could pay the person back. That fall, we got moved to another little village. We got our own room in that camp. We stayed in the village for a couple of months and it was late fall when they moved us again to a little village called Fleinheim. We stayed in Fleiheim with a widow in her farm house.
 Mom and dad went to the Lutheran church services in the village church, and convinced the pastor to let them tell about the Book of Mormon. Lots of people in the town heard about the book from them. When we left for America, the pastor had collected 300 Mark for us to help to get to “Zion”. He probably was glad to have us leave before we converted the entire village to Mormonism.

All this time we were waiting for our visas to arrive from the American Consulate, so we could go to America. My uncle Kurt in Saint Louis found us a sponsor. The visas finally came in the spring. We took the train to Bremerhaven and we left for America on the ship Gribsholm. Our ship landed in New York Harbor in April 1954 and we saw the Statue of Liberty as we came into the harbor.

Our Sponsor Howard Hebebrand had a man pick us up from the ship and this man took us out to dinner, he then put us on a train to St Louis. Our destination was a suburb called Berkley City. Mr. Hebebrand was next to a Grand Master in the Brotherhood of Free Masons. We found this out sometime after we lived and worked there. Mother was the cook, Dad was the gardener, I was a handy man. Hebebrand had 2 companies. One was St. Louis Milling and the other, Bates Sales Company, his wife Dorothy ran that one. I started working for Dorothy Hebebrand in shipping and receiving.

We had not been to a L.D.S. church meeting for over a year, because of the German Government sending us from one place to another. As we came to St Louis, we asked the Hebebrands if there was a Mormon church in town, they would not tell us. One Saturday night, I got on my knees and asked the Lord to help me the next day to find the church. Now, you have to understand that I did not speak any English at that time. The next morning I got dressed in my Sunday best and took off looking for the church. It was a beautiful morning and I walked for about 30 minutes and came to a highway. A black woman was sitting on a bench by the road, so I figured out that she must be waiting for a bus. I waited with her and soon a city bus showed up. As I got on the bus, I had to hold out a hand full of change because I couldn’t understand the fare sign. I stayed on the bus until I got a prompting to get off. I transferred onto another bus and again got off when I got a prompting. Now I was standing in an industrial area by a railroad yard with no one in site. As I looked over the rail cars, I noticed a pedestrian bridge across all the tracks, so that is where I went. As I got on the other side of the bridge, I found myself on the outskirts of a subdivision and as I looked down one street I noticed a church. Well, it was a Mormon Chapel. As I walked in, they were playing the opening hymn. This was the only L.D.S. chapel in St Louis at that time. The Branch President had been on a mission in Germany so he spoke pretty good German. He introduced me to the Cox family and they took me home after the meeting. The Cox also picked us up every Sunday there after for church. We became good friends.

Howard Hebebrand, being a Mason did not want us to go to the Mormon Church. One Sunday morning as the Cox family came to pick us up, Howard came out and forbade them to enter his property to pick us up. This is the reason mom decided to leave the Hebebrands. We lived with the Hebebrands until we paid off all that the Hebebrands had given us on ship and train tickets etc. at least what we thought to be the amount. I think that they did not agree with us because they wanted us to stay with them. We worked for them without wages during this time, except for room and board.

We lived with the Hebebrands for about a year. After we left the them, my sister, her husband Waldi and their daughter Rose emigrated also and lived with us. We had rented a house on Kings Highway, later we moved closer to town. Waldi left and went back to Germany. My sister later got a divorce from him, because he did not want to come back for her and her daughter Rose. We used to go to lots of movies at that time. The movie houses were air-conditioned and it is here where I learned most of my English.
During this time Inge, my dad and I worked for Arrow Envelope Company. I worked as a cutter and Inge was running a machine. Dad was the janitor in the building as that was all he could do at that time. While walking home from work one day, Dad got hit by a car.
The car drove off the highway and on to the pedestrian walk, hit him and then drove off along the highway. Some paint scraped off on his metal eyeglass case. We recognized the color as to belonging to a car of one of Hebebrand’s special workers. We turned all this information into the police. One day one of the officers came to our house and told us to drop the case, there was to much political power on the other side.

 Coxes taught me how to drive a car after a fashion and they gave us an old 1941 Pontiac that didn’t run. Dad fixed it so we had a car. I would drive us to work every day. In the spring of 1955 we loaded everything into the old car and headed for Utah and Zion. Mum and Dad wanted to go through the temple. Inge stayed behind a few more months and shipped all the rest of our furniture to Salt Lake by truck. She and Rose then came to Salt Lake them selves.

When we finally got to the Salt Lake Valley, dad stopped the car and looked down into the valley and with his humor said “This is the right place”, the same words that the Mormon leader Brigham Young used as the Pioneers came into the valley so many years ago.

In Salt Lake City some German friends, the Fishers, helped us to get a house rented. The house was church property located about 5th North and 1st West. The whole area is now a Bishop’s Warehouse.

There were lots of German people in Salt Lake City. Most of them we knew from the church branch in Berlin, they all came to the United States and Utah because of the church. Dad and I sang in a German Choir during that time. We would sing in the old Temple Square Assembly Hall and in the Tabernacle occasionally.

On my 18th birthday in 1956, I joined the Army. That was the best thing that I could have done at that time. I took basic training in Fort Ord, California and got sent overseas to Germany.

When I got back from overseas, I had a 30day leave before I had to report to Fort Benning, Georgia. Dad had built a camp trailer and Mom and dad decided to go with me to Georgia pulling the camp trailer behind our Buick. She loaded it so heavy that I had to cut out the wheel wells so the tires wouldn’t rub. They dropped me off in Georgia and then they went on to Florida. They liked St. Petersburg, Florida and settled there. When I received my discharge from the service I went home to Florida.

 I build a house for my folks there. Well, it was a project that mother and I got into while dad worked. I had drawn all the plans on a week vacation in Bosten while I was still in the military. I stayed at the Bosten YMCA during this week. A neighbor Charley Allen that had a house down the street from us, helped us with all the heavy lifting and loaned us tools if we needed them. I was collecting unemployment from the State during that time.

One time during construction, I was getting the trench for the foundation of the house ready, I was leveling the sand and backing up. As I looked between my legs, I could see a big poisonous Copperhead snake sitting behind me ready to bite me in the bud. Of course, I got myself out of the trench very quickly.

I lived with my folks until 1961 when I had to give up my job in a plating shop because of health reasons, I got poisoned by potassium cyanide. I met and dated a girl named Ann that worked in the office of the plating shop. After I quit the plating job, I worked as a surveyor for a pile driving company. I surveyed the foundation piles for a large apartment building. Every time I visit Florida I drive by the place to see if it has collapsed yet, ha, ha. The surveyor job ended and I went back to Utah to see if I could find a job there. I had bought a new Chevrolet Corvette and pulled dad’s camp trailer behind the Corvette.

First I took a detour to California, no jobs there. Stayed at the St.Clemente State Park on the beach. A week later I decided to go to Utah because we had some German friends there. As I entered St. George it started to snow real hard. I decided to stay in a trailer park over night. It was very cold when I left St. George so I was going to turn on the car heater and found out the car didn’t have a heater. I had never needed a heater in South were I bought the car. I bought some windshield de-icier and put on lots of clothes and headed for Salt Lake City. I met with our friends the Fishers and stayed at a trailer park on 9th South and State Street.

I couldn’t find a job and it was still cold. Soon I ran out of money and so I called mom to have her send me enough money to come home.  I just wanted to get out of the cold. The money came at 9AM the following day and I was heading south at 9:30AM. When I got back to Florida I stared to date Ann again.

About a month later mother suggested we drive back to Salt Lake and visit friends and see if I could find a job. Dad stayed home and worked and we drove to Salt Lake. As I got back to Salt Lake the church employment office found me a job with Laher Spring and Electric Car Co. I found a little apartment in the avenues. Corresponding with Ann we decided to get married. I took mother back home and got married while I was there that week. After the wedding Ann and I drove back to Salt Lake.

We got us a better apartment with our friend Baker Schmidt. Ann had a job also and was working late sometimes. She got to friendly with one of the guys who worked there. Our marriage broke up, a year after we got married. When I was by myself, I found a smaller apartment on 155 Heather St.

A friend of mine from work (Wayne) talked me into going out on the town with him. One night, I went to the Terrace Ball Room with him. It was right after Christmas in 1962. That night I met Dorla at this Terrace dance. As I looked down at the crowd from a balcony, I noticed a girl standing there and recognized her from some place but could not recall where, so I went to ask her to dance. Come to find out, we had never met, at least not in this life. We pretty much stayed together from then on. We got married later that year in August.
 

My Dorla has kept a journal of most of our years together and the rest of our lives are written there in her journal and history.
 

    We now have three sons and a daughter , than six grandsons and one granddaughter so far.