WEST GERMANY
In June 1946 Germany was a very undesirable place to live in. If you had to be in Germany it was advisable not be a German. Our situation, with or without official Displaced Person status was much better than if we would have been Germans, but it was still pretty difficult. There was a scarcity of food and even when we obtained our food ration cards, the food allocated for us was the same as for the local population and was completely insufficient. Although almost everything was rationed, there were some items which were available only on permit.
If you needed a pair of shoes, that need had to be proved and demonstrated to a bureaucrat, whose job was to issue shoe purchase permits. If you finally received a permit, you could then order the merchandise, wait 2 or 3 months and collect it from the shoe shop, when available. Having crossed the borders in my knee high riding boots and having carried one pair of shoes, which were soon in need of repair, I spent days in trying to get a permit to buy a new pair or at least get a permit for a new artificial leather sole.
There was a shortage of everything and you could buy absolutely nothing. Even the black market was hopeless, there being almost no production of consumer goods and if there was, it certainly did not find its way to the towns, where shops remained empty until 1948.
If being hungry would not have been enough, the winter of 1946/47 was the worst for decades. The freezing weather was not relieved by warmth either in homes or in public places. Some restaurants, schools and movies simply closed for the winter. On the streets people could be seen carting home pieces of timber they found in the bombed ruins of buildings and during the weekends families went into the countryside to forage for some branches off trees for their heater at home. Gas in the homes was rationed and your supply cut off if you used too much. There were regular pre-determined power cuts, dependent on the various districts of Munich, but ad hoc cuts also occurred without any warning.
Prices were controlled and they were the same as during or prewar. The average monthly wage of 150-180 Reichsmarks may have been sufficient to purchase all of the meagre food rations allocated, but was totally inadequate for survival, which had to be purchased on the alternative, i.e. black market. Here people sold their belongings to buy food and the resultant barter system caused the cigarette to become the de facto currency of Occupied Germany, with the providers of the cigarettes, the American Army personal to become the ruling and rich.
A pair of non-black-market shoes might cost only RM 15.00, - provided one had the necessary permits from the authorities to buy one, while the black market price of a cigarette was RM 5.00, thus three cigarettes bought a pair of shoes.
The same crazy values applied to restaurants and generally service industries. During our stay in Germany we could afford to eat in the best restaurants, albeit we had to have the required ration cards, which were presented to the waiter, who cut off little coupons for 50 grams of meat, 50 grams of bread, 5 grams of butter or fat etc. The menu showed exactly how many grams of what coupons were to be presented for the meal. The price was also shown, but was of no real importance, provided you had ways and means to obtain cigarettes.
Everybody was doing his or her best to get hold of cigarettes. There was an official ration of 15 or 20 German cigarettes and non-smokers sold them to German smokers. However, the armies occupying Germany provided most of the rest of the cigarettes, required for the functioning of the German economy of 1946-48. Every American soldier received 200 cigarettes per week free and he could buy further packets for 7 cents in the US Army PX store.
Equate the cost of 7 cents for 20 cigarettes available to the GI's to the German average monthly wage, which was the equivalent to 30-35 cigarettes and no explanation is needed to understand why women were waiting knee-high outside any US Army barracks or office. Many were the middle class Germans who asked their wives to do the right thing by their families and find themselves an "Ami" friend.
Suddenly, middle class morality changed in direct proportion to the needs of the family. The ideas of racial superiority expounded by the Nazis were also forgotten as it became obvious that the blacker the skin, the more generous its owner becomes to his blond fraulein.
Those who could not get cigarettes by other means sold their valuables. In this fashion priceless Leica cameras and jewellery were traded for cigarettes and craftsmen like silversmiths, wanted only silver coins to melt down and cigarettes for their labour in exchange for beautiful brooches and silver ornaments. Even cars, which were of little value due to the unavailability of petrol, found their way into the hands of US soldiers, who bought priceless Mercedes tourers, previously owned by high ranking Nazis, with a few weeks' cigarette rations.
In 1947, one of my Father's acquaintances, who was the owner of a not insignificant agricultural machinery factory, suggested to me that maybe I would like to buy his company for 100 cartons of cigarettes. This would have cost an American soldier US$ 140 at the time, yet to the German it was equivalent to over US$ 1 million in 1985 terms. No wonder the Americans became somewhat mixed up and bewildered in a Europe they could not understand.
DP's had less access to cigarettes, yet we were not short of them. Most of us worked for the Military Government, UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Aid), Jewish organisations like HIAS or JOINT, Christian aid like CWS, etc., all of whom came to the realisation that paying out cigarettes was more cost effective than spending US Dollars.
Thus most DP's like me had ample cigarettes especially if they did not smoke. This allowed us to be somewhat better off than the locals, who had less opportunities and more commitments. In spite of the fact that we DP's made no secret of the fact that we considered ourselves a rung above the local population, they were surprisingly placid about this and allowed a lot of freedom to those they once conquered and regarded or at least were told to regard a sub-human species.
As far as the Allied powers were concerned, their main intent was to punish the Germans and not to re-educate them or help them in their economic plight. The de-nazification courts were sitting in all the main cities and everybody was supposed to have had a Nazi past unless it could be proven that he was not an active Nazi. Every German was classified and of those who were thought to be involved in the Party, thousands were locked up in camps waiting to be "de-nazified".
Germany was broken up into 4 Zones, the American, British, French and the Russian, with Berlin also being parceled up in spite of being within the Russian Zone. Additionally, each Zone was further divided into historical principalities, governed separately. The Allied allowed France to take back from Germany areas which they claimed belonged to them, restored Czechoslovakia and Poland and gave large chunks of Germany to these countries also. This applied especially to Poland, whose Eastern areas were appropriated by the USSR and who were given parts of Prussia in the West as a consolation price, thus virtually shifting Poland westward.
With the eastern areas of Germany being taken over by the Poles and Czechs and some areas becoming part of the USSR, millions of Germans were given just a few hours to take to the road towards Germany or else were entrained in cattle trucks to be sent there. History repeated itself, but these deportees were not gassed, but arrived in the Western Zones of Germany and given refugee status.
Most of them arrived penniless and started work almost the day of their arrival. Their will to succeed and their successful absorption into post-war Germany was one of the reasons for the so-called Economic Miracle which commenced in 1948. It was in this year that the tenuous friendship between the Western Democracies and the Communists went sour and the Western Powers decided to aid the Germans to rebuild their country and clean up the economic mess. They realised that Germany will be useful in containing the Russians, whose obvious goal was to make Europe into a Communist Empire and that the Germans will not become enthusiastic partners while they are being punished for their past sins by the Allied military for whose economic judgment they had no respect.
As a first step the Western Powers decided on a currency reform and in spite of Russian protests, issued minimal amounts of the new Deutsch Marks currency in exchange for the old Reichs Marks, which were becoming more and more valueless. In answer, the Russian Zone was closed off and a different currency was introduced in Eastern Germany. As Churchill said: "an Iron Curtain descended upon Europe".
Soon the roads between the Western Zones and Berlin were cut and to feed and fuel the inhabitants of the Western Zones of Berlin, the Berlin Airlift commenced.
In the Western Zones, as soon as the currency reform occurred, every thing became available once again and not against barter, but for money, which was a very scarce commodity. Irrespective of how much Reichs Marks you deposited, you could only receive a very limited amount of Deutsch Marks.
Cigarettes became what they once were and were used for the purpose of being lit and inhaled by those addicted to the habit. They became almost as useless as the old Reichs Mark. Manufacture of consumer goods commenced and efficient output of all products was aided by the fact that most if not all capital equipment having been destroyed in the war, the factories had new technologies and higher productivity. Additionally, German thoroughness and quality was now joined by the limitless energy and the will to work of the German worker, aided by American capital flowing into the country with the active encouragement of the US Government. The Marshall Aid scheme has further helped Europe and especially West Germany, sovereign once again and headed by Herr Adenauer, whose major concern was that the country be re-built and be prosperous.
This was the Germany I left in 1948 to go to England, a Germany which was well on the way to becoming the leading industrial power of Europe once again. However when we arrived in 1946 we could not imagine that defeated, humiliated, bombed out, starving, freezing Germany will ever again be prosperous and happy.
In 1946 we went to Germany not to live there or even to enjoy it, but only as a very temporary measure prior to emigrating to the West. Soon we realised that our next move may take months to organise and we had better find permanent living quarters. Having missed out on official Funk Kaserne status, we obtained visitors passes on a daily basis so that we may return to the well guarded Displaced Persons Camp in the evening to obtain a meal. Late at night we found ourselves an unoccupied bed in a dormitory or an empty palliasse in a washroom and in the morning joined a queue for breakfast.
Obviously this was not the best of arrangements. As luck would have it I got to know a Hungarian guy, who was on the next transport to go to Bremenhaven, the port from where lucky migrants left for the USA. He offered to me his room in the third floor flat of Mrs. Aumuller, widow of a doctor and their 32 years old daughter. The flat was in one of the few houses which escaped almost unscathed the destruction of Munich and with a friend I was to have the use of one room for our bedroom, shared kitchen, bathroom and the sitting room and we were told that the lease also included the use of a typewriter and the daughter.
Robert and I moved in the day after the room was vacated and indeed the arrangement with the flat was first class, with the exception of Hildegard who thought that having two tenants will be twice the pleasure and as soon as we went to bed on our first evening, arrived in our room and sat at the foot of either one bed or another telling risque stories to us and hoping to be invited under the covers. Being unsuccessful in her endeavours she came to the conclusion that we must be shy while together and so presented herself at times when we were on our own. When Robert and I became inseparable, she used to walk in on us while either of us was having a bath, until we found a key which fitted the bathroom door.
At that point it dawned on her that Robert and I must be homosexuals and when she did indicate her sympathies for our tendencies, we decided to encourage her beliefs. However, she became completely confused when we were visited by girls who were obviously our girl friends. Poor old Hildegard, she never really forgave us, yet she looked after both her mother and us to the best of her capabilities.
With some of our original eight, who crossed the Hungarian border now living in Augsburg, the four people left in München kept together while we were in Germany, except Peter Kardos, who got homesick and returned to Hungary. This left George Shillinger, who decided to stay in the Funk Kaserne as an ambulance driver, Robert Tabori and myself, busy resisting the charms of Hildegard.
We made some friends in the Funk Kaserne, who were as much a mixed lot as "we" were. I also had a lot of relations in Munich and being early arrivals they had quite a comfortable and influential existence in the Funk Kaserne. There was Dr Frank Györi and Agnes, my father's cousin's daughter. Another family was Paul Kellner and Clare, the first UNRRA Officer amongst us, with their 5 years old son George. Another one of my relations was Andrew Pór, who had a lovely Serbian girlfriend Vera. She shared a room with her sister Raca, her 4 years old nephew Dankmar and two other girls from Poland, one of whom was a countess. They adopted us and we and many other camp dwellers could always rely on a cup of coffee visiting them.
Raca was 28 and was married early to a young lawyer in Belgrad, who after the war became Yugoslav ambassador in Brazil. In 1940 she left her husband for a Yugoslav of German extraction and they lived together in Belgrad until in 1941 when the Germans defeated Yugoslavia and her boyfriend turned out to be a German Major, who has been working for the Abwehr. She herself received some death threats because the man she lived with started to wear his German uniform, once the German war machine conquered the Yugoslavs and although she was a proud Serbian, she realised that sooner or later she will have to pay for her love to a "traitor". Her boyfriend was transfered to Berlin and Raca and the child went with him. Soon she got herself a job in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she became a senior Private Secretary in the Yugoslav section.
When her flat was bombed, she needed accommodation and with the help of Foreign Minister Ribbentrop she was allocated two rooms in the Adlon Hotel, which was then the best hotel in Berlin. While she was living in relative luxury, her mother and two sisters were slaughtered in Croatia. The description is quite fitting because they had their throats cut while sheltering in an Orthodox (Serbian) church. Luckily, the youngest sister, Vera was away from their home in Croatia and thus survived. Eventually, Raca arranged a work permit for her to come to Berlin as her maid.
Two of her brother-in-laws and one of her brothers died fighting as partisans against the Germans and when her only remaining brother was arrested and kept as a hostage in Belgrad, to be shot whenever the next anti-German action was demanding revenge, Raca was given a letter from SS-Chief Himmler, flew in Ribbentrop's plane to Belgrad and brought her brother from certain death to the Adlon Hotel. Within a few weeks she heard that her estranged husband was in a German POW camp and she obtained permission to get him to Berlin, where she found a flat for him and her brother to live in. The two men returned to Belgrad a few months before Yugoslavia was liberated and distinguished themselves fighting with Tito's Partisans.
Raca's boyfriend in the mean time became a prisoner of the Russians, but he escaped and masquerading as a Yugoslav, hid in Poland. After the hostilities he made it back to Berlin, only to find that Raca and Vera became refugees before the Red Army conquered Berlin. Somehow he travelled into the Western Zone of Germany and found Raca living in a Bavarian village. They lived together for a while when he decided to return to Berlin. He did not know for years that he left her pregnant and that she gave birth to a second son. This child, still a baby in 1946, was fostered in a village near Munich.
One of the Polish ladies, the Countess of Baranowska was a very quiet (and quaint) little person. Like all the others in the room, she was a chain smoker, like the others she rolled her own and like the others she would have killed for a tin of Nescafe, which was then a rarity and regarded to be much more upmarket than ground coffee beans. She was very private and her departure to one of the South American countries was hardly noticed.
The other Polish woman used to be a well known acrobatic dancer and came from a theatrical family. Her brother was a famous adagio dancer who danced a snake dance with his wife in the nightclubs of New York. He sent lots of parcels and finally a ticket for his sister, who made it to the USA in late 1946.
It was at their room that I met Erika, an UNRRA officer of Estonian origin and looks, (blond, big and busty) and her uniform and constant laughter impressed me. She was pretty and a well known big shot in the Funk Kaserne and I was frightened to approach her, especially as she was married. However, one day she suggested that I may like to come horse riding with her and some other UNRRA officers. I tried to be excused, saying that I will be busy and I even said that I cannot ride, but she declared that to be unlikely as I was a Hungarian and was wearing riding boots. She left me no choice when she told me that her driver will pick me up at the appointed hour in her jeep.
This was a first class set back to my dreams of paying court to her. I did not know one end of a horse from the other and undoubtedly I would be found out if I ventured to sit on a horse in her presence.
There was nothing else but having a condensed riding course and next day I set out to find a riding school. I paid my few Marks and got a book of 10 tickets. The instructor asked me if I have ever been riding and on being given my truthful answer he allocated to me a docile white horse.
After the first hour of instruction I did not dismount, but handed over my second ticket and carried on. After I finished my third uninterrupted lesson, the riding instructor suggested that I may like to take a breather, but I insisted on carrying on. I should have known better, after all my Father often told me about the agonies he suffered while being a Hussar!
I could hardly get on the tram to get home. I just peeled the underwear off my raw behind and wished for death to come swiftly. Next morning I had a fever and it was impossible for me to move about, so I sent a message to Erika cancelling the arrangements about being picked up next Sunday for riding in Munich's famous English Park with her and her officer friends.
As soon as I could, I resumed my riding lessons and in the event became a reasonable rider of docile horses. I was ready for the invitation to go riding in the Park to be repeated and I did not need to wait too long, at our next accidental meeting in Funk Kaserne, she told me that I will be picked up next Sunday morning.
On the appointed day it was raining, but the jeep and the Russian driver arrived. He spoke no German and conversation was impossible especially as we were busy keeping ourselves dry in a canvas covered jeep driven by a maniac in a downpour. I realised that we will not be riding in the Park, but I did not expect to be driven through the gates of my Riding School. There was nothing I could do, but was hoping to quickly explain to the instructor that he should act as if he would not know me.
I first saw her sitting astride my usual docile white horse. Beside her was standing my instructor, who seeing me called out:
"Guten Tag Herr Kalman, if only I knew you are coming, I would have reserved for you the horse you learned riding on."
Erika burst out laughing at my discomfiture. The fact that she continued seeing me shows that she had a good sense of humour in spite of the fact that once I got to know her, I realised that she did not have an easy life.
She was married at age 16 to the headmaster of her school, who was 26 years her senior. When the Russians were attacking the Germans in the Baltic States in 1944 she was 24 and by that time she was separated from her husband for some time. Just before the Russians annexed Estonia, her mother and Erika decided to escape to the West by boat and her husband joined them. In Germany Erika and her man gave their marriage another chance and as a result a girl was born. Within the next year they moved into the Funk Kaserne, Erika became an UNRRA Officer, the little girl died and their marriage broke up again. However, they and her mother, who was younger than the husband, continued to live in the small flat which they had due to Erika's exalted position in the camp as the Supply Officer.
In September 1946 I got myself accepted as a student at the Technical University, and in addition to my studies, assisted in the rebuilding of the Technische Hochschule (University of Engineering) in München. Some of the lecture rooms were devoid of walls, some had no roofs and professors and students alike worked hard as common labourers to rebuild the University to be weatherproof by the onset of winter.
Being left to my own devices instead of being assisted by my Father in the passing of exams, did not improve my scholastic capabilities and I soon found it very difficult to keep up with my studies, particularly because of having had to understand engineering terms in German. Even George Shillinger, who later became Professor in America found it almost impossible.
At the same time I also had to have a job and so I worked for UNRRA, which gave me sufficient food to live in a fairly comfortable way. Some of my friends became 2nd Class Officers and had certain privileges. Instead I had a paper which stated:
"Mr. Steve Kalman is employed by UNRRA in the capacity of
Assistant Personnel Officer and therefore he is entitled to
all the rights and privileges to which he is entitled."
Amazingly that piece of paper was accepted by all and sundry and did a great job in gaining me all the privileges to which I was entitled until such time that I too became a 2nd Class Officer.
Not that I ever became anything that was approaching the greatness of an Allied soldier. The pecking order in Germany was very clearly defined: there was the American Officer, then the G.I., then came the British, then the South Africans followed by nothing and then the US negro soldier. Allied soldiers, who had their country occupied during World War II, such as the French, the Dutch, came in somewhere, but there ere not many of them in West Germany. Next the Military Government and UNRRA Officers followed by a huge gap after which came, 2nd Class Officers, D.P.'s and miles later the Germans, who were being humiliated, insulted and broken by the conscious effort of the Occupying Powers, until the Berlin Airlift and the hostility between East and West commenced.
Forgetting about the nervous strain of not knowing when I will get out of Germany and shortages of food, fuel and clothing, I had little to complain about my life in Germany. I could have holidays in good hotels in Berchtesgaden, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bad Tölz and eat in good restaurants, although far from well. However, we could never relax, because all of our lives revolved around that elusive visa or that passport. It became a mania for us to get out of there and to do so we became capable of anything bar murder.
Almost all of us assumed false identities and made applications to the Americans for visa, using different names, with different assumed backgrounds in different towns. To live in this fashion required good nerves and a lot of time, because we had to live several lives all at once in different places.
Thus cousin Andrew and I had a room in Stuttgart, where we were registered and one of us always had to be there to ensure that we can be contacted. Even when we had a third and fourth person registered in the same flat in Stuttgart, the pressure was quite hectic, because we all lived in Munich and we also were registered for another application in Frankfurt. Those days these places were an overnight 3rd Class train trip away with the passenger feeling quite elated if he got a wooden bench to sit on.
One day Andrew was holding forth in Stuttgart while I was in Frankfurt. By the time I got back to Munich, Andrew's second telegram arrived, urging me to immediately return to Stuttgart, because "the police wants to interview you". I knew that this meant that my application for a visa was now in the hands of the American CIC and I will have to return to Stuttgart to be questioned by them about my political background.
However, before I could travel to Stuttgart I needed at least one night's rest in a bed and I decided to sleep in Munich in my own bed. At 4.30 a.m. I was wakened by Hildegard who was followed into the bedroom by two burly American Military Policemen decked out with sufficient armour to fight a small country. I was allowed to dress, before being handcuffed and taken by jeep to the Military Police HQ and locked up.
About 9 a.m. office hours began and I was taken to an American officer who spoke perfect German. He asked me what vile crimes have I committed and to confess before he allows his men to have some fun beating the truth out of me. I was not quite clear which of my crimes I was to confess and asked him, why he believes that I committed any. He told me to stop lying and gave me a last chance of 3 minutes before the third degree was to start.
While I was counting the minutes, he received a phone call and he left the room, leaving a guard to watch me. I stood up as a mark of respect and while standing I saw on his desk the copy of the telegram in which Andrew was advising me that the police wishes to interview me. It was obvious that this was the reason why the Americans thought that I was being traced by the police for some crime.
When my officer returned I told him, that much as I would like to help him I cannot, because the biggest crime I have ever committed was my seducing the wife of a German police man and than leaving her to face her husband in Stuttgart. He listened in astonishment, found the telegram, read it, realised that I read it too and asked me who Andrew was. I told him. How does Andrew know that the police are after me? I suggested that maybe the stupid woman told her husband and now he wants to beat me up or kill me. I begged him not to send me back to Stuttgart for such a terrible fate, - after all he was a man himself.
He told me that he did not believe a word I was saying, but he will hand me over to the German police, who would get the truth out of me. He rang for a detective who walked with me across the street to the German police station and on hearing that I had nothing to eat, gave me half his lunch. He than checked if the police in Munich wished to interview me and kept me in his room all afternoon, while waiting for an answer. That day I learned more about crime and detective work than before or since as he was dealing with criminals as varied as wife beaters and bank robbers, not to mention people like me.
There was no answer from Police HQ when evening was approaching and he had to make a decision if he should send me to the German prison in the suburbs or send me home. He discussed the alternatives with me and I suggested to him that I was not a very dangerous criminal and giving me a pass to allow me exit from the Police Station, would be the preferred alternative. He agreed with me and I soon left for home never to hear from the police again.
We were disappointed to realise that nobody really wanted DP's for migrants. The Canadians were only taking expert lumber-jacks, New Zealand wanted telegraph and telephone pole men, Australia was looking for bootmakers. The Americans didn't really wanted anybody, and certainly nobody who was born in Hungary. According to the US immigration laws, promulgated before WW I, took no notice of the prospective migrants nationality or background and all what mattered was the country in which the person was born. Thus the annual number of Hungarian born, who could be approved to go to the States was 896. This was the total of all Hungarian born from whichever country they applied from. Since a lot of Hungarian born Hungarians were applying for a visa in Hungary, the quota for Hungarian born people resident in Germany was correspondingly reduced. The quota for people born in Germany was 28,000, from Yugoslavia 8,000.
So I wrote to my parents in Hungary and they arranged to obtain a birth certificate from Yugoslavia. Eventually the forged birth certificate arrived to me via England and I obtained background documents regarding my imaginary life in Germany since the war. For the purpose of applying for a US visa I assumed the name of Ivan Kalman, while for everyday purposes I continued to be Stefan Kalman. Unfortunately, some 10,000 others had the same idea and the Yugoslav quota was filled. Even some of my relations sailed to the USA sporting "made in Yugoslavia" birth certificates.
When we realised that even the Yugoslav quota was too small to ensure a speedy trip to the USA, most of us cast our eyes towards becoming eligible for the German quota of migrants. I searched for a German registry office that was destroyed during the war and I invented the person of Walter Kalmann from Hungary, who most fortuitously happened to have been born in Königsberg, a German Town with a burned down Registry Office and annexed by Russia. To create a plausible background I became an accomplished forger of interesting documents.
To create Walter, the first thing to do was to find a printer who still had gothic typesetting slugs and the next was to talk him into printing an obviously illegal birth certificate form. Neither jobs were easy, because the use of gothic letters ceased with the demise of the Nazi rule in Germany. However, with the help of cigarettes and a plausible story for the printer to believe that he has not been acting in a criminal fashion, we had the required form. The next problem was the stamp, which in accordance with practice during the war, had to show a swastika. Not even cigarettes were going to convince the makers of rubber stamps that they should manufacture stamps with the Nazi swastika, so we had to look towards our own craftsmanship.
When in Hungary I watched others making false papers for me, I saw how they made a sealing-wax cast off the Hungarian