Displaced Persons Camp

Hochfeld DP Camp, Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany was one of the hundreds of refugee camps set up by UNRRA, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration after the Second World War to provide shelter and other basic necessities for the thousands of refugees who fled the Soviets and the Nazis. People from all three Baltic countries, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were at Hochfeld.

Coming up with ideas for my blog can be a challenge. Too often, I start a post and for some reason, my will to work on it falters and comes to a halt. Occasionally, I come up with ideas when I’m not even looking for them, something sparks, and I take off, not even noticing how many hours I’ve been pounding the keyboard and searching for illustrations. I was going through old photos when I came up with these from my family’s collection taken during our time at Hochfeld.

I was very small when we left Germany so I don’t remember much. We had a two-room apartment because two of my uncles, my mother’s older brother, and my father’s younger brother were with us. They had the multi-functional main room and my parents and I had the second room. Not every family was as fortunate.

Here’s what Mr. Dankers said about their DP living quarters: “Mom making dinner in our exquisite single room suite containing kitchen, living, dining, bed, rec & bath-room in Displaced Persons Camp Augsburg/Hochfeld in Germany, March 1951. Thank you, dear parents, for eventually taking my sister & me to the Land of Opportunity in America.”

Mr. Ohaks was the building supervisor. I don’t know why he’s in the photo with us. Maybe he’s the one who set up the photo session. I also don’t know where the ball came from. Maybe it was in a CARE package from America. Founded in 1945 CARE (Cooperative for Assitance and Relief Everywhere, originally Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe) is one of the largest and oldest humanitarian aid organizations. I’ve known about CARE practically forever but only now looked up the meaning of the acronym. It’s still in existence.

Alfons never mentioned this lady. The only information I have about her came from my mother. He and this woman had a romance. She was married but escaped Latvia without her husband. Perhaps he was a soldier who had been reported killed in action. In Germany, she learned that her husband was still alive and returned to him in Latvia. When she got there, she learned that he’d divorced her and married someone else. The Soviets would not allow her to return to Germany. I don’t know if this sad experience was the reason my uncle never married.

I borrowed parts of this tragic romance for one of the characters in my novel, A Home for an Exile’s Heart.

I believe this is a street scene in Augsburg with Hochfeld DP camp in the background. Folks, if you have photos with no information written on them please do so for the sake of those who come after you.

Nikolaijs is in the middle. He lost part of his leg in the war.

I’m sad because Nikolaijs, my favorite uncle, was about to leave for the United States where he’d found sponsors in Pennsylvania. He wasn’t as afraid to change the diapers of a baby girl as my father and my other uncle. Koļa (Kolya) would read to me at bedtime. After a while, when he didn’t return to the main room, my mother came in to check on us. Koļa had read himself to sleep while I was all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I’m still a night owl.

All refugees departing for their new homes had tags on their clothes as if they were packages that might get lost in transit. I guess it makes sense since they didn’t speak English well or at all. Except that this was Germany and the Baltic refugees could speak German.

Alfons’ first home in America was on a farm in South Dakota.

Life for kids in a DP camp could be fun and almost normal. Determined that their culture and language not be lost refugees set up schools for their children. They also put on plays and concerts.

My mother once took me to a Latvian preschool. A teacher and my mother accompanied me to the classroom. When we entered the room, the children surged to their feet, as Latvian children do to show respect for the teacher, I was terrified. I was probably three and had never seen anything like that in my life. It must have seemed as if the other kids were about to attack me. I ducked under my mother’s arm and ran to the workshop where my father was learning goldsmithing. My mother never said, and I never asked, whether she ever took me back or gave up on that portion of my education.

This is another incident that I used in my novel assigned to my heroine’s daughter Dzintra, who was also at Hochfeld. Except that Dzintra has two grandmothers to run to.

My mother probably knit that little sweater for me. I’m wearing a sun brooch that my father made for me. I still have it and still wear it.

The sun in Latvian mythology is a mother goddess. Her symbol represents protection, harmony, perpetual motion, and the power of life.

Good-bye Germany. Hello, America!

A Home for an Exile’s Heart is about the life of a Latvian refugee, Līvija Galiņa after they find a new home in Seattle, Washington in a neighborhood where one of my mother’s cousins, her mother, and son also lived communally with another Latvian family. Only the living arrangements are the same in my story as in real life.

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