December 24, 2017. When we were at the commemoration events for Camp Ohio in Burgdorf earlier this year, we met Janne and AnnKristin Andersson of Sweden.
Daria and Pieter Valkenburg with Janne and AnnKristin Andersson in Burgdorf during the book launch. (Photo credit: Meinhard Janssen)
Janne’s mother, (Genowefa) Eugenia Marzuchowska, was a forced labourer in Burgdorf during WW II. He told us about the ring that had been stolen from her that had been returned to the family. Although his mother was never a resident of Camp Ohio, it was such an interesting and inspiring story that he was asked to write about it for the Camp Ohio blog, and he agreed to do so. Here is Janne’s story:
“My mother, (Genowefa) Eugenia Marzuchowska, was born March 22, 1925 in Poland in a small village called Dzierżązna, outside a town called Turek. She lived with her parents and five siblings. Her mother died when my mother was 9 years old and the father was left alone with the responsibility to provide for his family. When the war broke out in 1939, young people were offered the chance to go to Germany to work. Mother took this chance because her household was very poor.
What I know is that Mother lied about her age and changed her first name before she went to Germany. They were expecting hard labor in factories and farms. I have been able to follow her from 1944, but am pretty sure she was in Burgdorf from 1940/41 until April/May 1944. There, she worked in the cannery and asparagus farms.
An attempt to get bread coupons got her arrested by the Gestapo, along with two men. One of the men, Wladislaw Romian, born in Warsaw, was my mother’s boyfriend. He’d given her a ring with the initials WR, as an engagement ring or friendship ring. Wladislaw, and Stanislaw Wisniewski, the other man, were deported to the Neuengamme concentration camp.
The ring taken from Janne’s mother, with the initials WR engraved in it. (Photo courtesy of J. Andersson collection)
Wladislaw made it through the war, and his grave is in Stettin, Poland, as he died in 1997. Stanislaw died on the boat Cap Arcona May 3, 1945 in the port of Lübeck, among 7- 8000 prisoners who were on the boat when the RAF bombed it. Those who survived and tried to swim ashore were shot by the Germans. This happened a day before the Germans surrendered.
My mother was imprisoned in Celle and Lüneburg and sent to Ravensbrück, where she arrived on June 1, 1944. On August 31, after three months, she was deported to the Neuengamme Water Watenstedt / Leinde. On April 7, my mother and the other prisoners were transported or were marched to Ravensbrück, which took 7 days. In Ravensbrück she met “the white buses” and asked if she could come along. On April 26, 1945, she came to Malmö (in Sweden) and to freedom.
My mother met my father and they married in 1947. They had five children who are all still alive. Mother became a strong woman who could not stand injustice. She was never afraid to speak up, no matter who stood in front of her. She was always loving to us children even if the upbringing was strict. Mother did not tell me much about her experiences during the war, she repressed it, I think. She left the house when programs about Hitler came on TV, and she hated the German language.
My last memory of my mother is when my sister and I held her hand when she fell asleep forever. She died in 2010 from cancer at the age of 85 years old.
After mother’s death, I began researching her way through the war. I sent out lots of inquiries via email and received replies from several places, including from Neuengamme and Ravensbrück. Via a woman at Neuengamme, I found out that there was an organization called ITS (International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Germany) and from them learned that there was a gold ring that belonged to my mother. After some correspondence, in May 2016, I could finally go there and receive back the ring, as well as some documents that touched me very much. That was an amazing moment.”
Janne Andersson with the ring and photo of his mother at the ITS in Bad Arolsen. (Photo courtesy of J. Andersson collection)
A press release from ITS gave a bit more information about Janne’s story…. “The reason for the Gestapo incarcerating her in Celle in 1944 is not clear from the information in the documents. After a short imprisonment in the Landgerichtsgefängnis Lüneburg (Lüneburg state court prison), the then 19-year-old was first sent to Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, and then, 3 months later, to Neuengamme Concentration Camp. ‘Protective Custody’ is noted as the reason for the arrest. Based on the “Reichstagsbrandverordnung” (Reichstag-Fire Decree) from 1933, ‘protective custody’became an instrument of the Nazis allowing them to arrest and imprison people without judicial control. Upon arriving at Concentration Camp Neuengamme, Eugenia Genowefa Mazuchowska was forced to relinquish her ring.“
In his story, Janne mentioned that his mother came to Sweden on a white bus. As the ITS press release explained, this was one of several rescue buses from Sweden. “She was one of the some 20,000 people who, by way of the ‘Operation White Buses’ begun in March 1945 by the Swedish Red Cross, were rescued from the German concentration camps and who found a new home in Sweden.”
After his trip to Germany, Janne and his wife AnnKristin went to Poland to meet his mother’s sister and show her the ring. Thank you, Janne, for writing sharing this story about your mother, and how you received back the ring taken from her so many years ago.
For anyone interested in making inquiries of their own from ITS (International Tracing Service), here is the link to their website: https://www.its-arolsen.org/en/information/the-search-service-of-the-its/
Do you have any anecdotes to share about Camp Ohio? Comment on this blog or email to [email protected]. We need your help to build up the archive of information about Camp Ohio and its residents. Don’t forget to check out the photos on our website at http://www.dpcamps.org/burgdorf.html.
© Daria Valkenburg
Advertisements Share this:
