My longest Railway Journey, ever

 

In January 1945, seventy-five years ago, I was on my longest railway journey, ever. It was not a journey to a holiday destination or in any way meant to be pleasurable. I was, along with many other boys, a refugee on the run from the fast-approaching Red Army.

We all knew the Second World War was reaching its conclusion.

All throughout 1944, I was in a boy’s home in the small town of Friedland in Upper-Silesia (now Korfantów), Towards the end of 1944, we knew that the front was coming closer and closer. Shortly after Christmas, we noticed that something was going to happen.

Just after Christmas, columns of prisoners were shuffling, rather than walking, on the country road that passed the home. We rushed outside to see who they were. They were people in striped uniforms. We were told by the staff that they were criminals. But by the look of it, they were not. Criminals were tough looking people, so we thought. Those here in front of us were poor people who could hardly walk. We had no idea who they really were. Those columns walked past us for hours. It was a terrible sight. That was when I heard the word Concentration Camp for the first time.

A few days after that we, boys of the ages eight to fourteen were told one evening to get ready for a long walk to a village nearby. Still today I have no idea what its purpose was. It was bitter cold and dark. Had it anything to do with the war? As we walked for many kilometres we could see what seemed to be the flickering lights of an electrical storm. In winter? There was a constant rumbling in the air and we realised that was no thunder either. One of the staff told us in response to our questioning,

‘This is the artillery in a big battle and the Russians are not far away.”

The purpose of being in the home was so we would be away from the air raids in the cities. We were supposed to be safe, but now the war was coming to us. Soon came the instruction to return to the home, which we did. The whole episode remains a mystery to me even today. Our days in Friedland, the name of the small town, meaning Land of Peace, came to a sudden end.

Only a couple of days into January, one late afternoon, we were told to get ready to go back to Berlin. The Berliner children would go back home and the children from Silesia would go to Moravia. On a neighbouring blog of land near our home, there was also a girl’s home. Sometimes we had outings together with them or they performed a play for us. The girls were older than we boys and they seemed almost adults to us.

In no time a couple of buses arrived to take us to a railway junction at Neisse(Nysa now). We Berliner children got into one and the others into another. Some of the staff would follow in a car. We had no time to think. We clutched our few belongings to our bodies.

The Silesian boys were so different from us Berliners but we had become all friends with a common destiny. It was a sad moment in our lives.

As the bus rumbled through the dark country site the bigger girls started to sing, mostly hiking songs and the mood in the bus turned and we were all happy till they started to sing Lehar’s song from the brave soldier who kept watch on the River Volga for his fatherland. It was ironic because he was Russian and we, the Germans, had invaded Russia in this war. I loved this haunting song as I knew it from home because my mother loved it too and the girls of the home had sung it in one of their concerts. It is the ultimate anti-war song of the lonely soldier who asked God to send him an angel to save him.

Suddenly, the bus turned off the country road and we were in front of the railway station where a Red Cross train under full steam was waiting for us kids.

‘Out, out – quick, quick!’ came the order from the sister in charge. The girls got off first and I never saw them again.

‘Schnell, Schnell – hop on. We have no time to waste,’ someone said.
We climbed quickly onto the train. Inside the carriage, it was dark but for some dim blue light. Red Cross nurses were rushing about. I heard babies crying but could see nothing. On both sides of the carriage were triple story bunk beds and we were told to get one each.

I climbed on a top bunk and tried to catch my breath. Slowly my sight adjusted to the darkness in the carriage. On the other side were the babies. Four across to each bunk. Forty-eight babies in all and some of them were crying all the time. The nurses had all their hands full and demanded from us absolute obedience or we would be thrown off the train. No running around in the carriage, only the walk to the toilet would be allowed. Unknown to us this would be our world for the next three weeks.

And what a world it was. During the day we could not see throw the frosted windowpanes. During the night only a dim, bluish light made recognising anything barely possible.

The radio was on almost all the time. Every hour we heard the news from the army. The bulletin always started with, “The Supreme Command of the Army announces (Das Oberkomando der Wehrmacht gibt bekannt!)“. WE knew we were in Silesia but not much else. On the way to the toilette, we saw that there was snow everywhere. The train moved for a couple of hours and then stopped for a while. We heard other trains going past, probably taken supplies to the front. But where was the front? According to the news bulletins, we were going parallel to the front. The Red Army was not only chasing us up from the South-East but they also came from the East. Breslau (now Wroclaw) was declared a fortress and was to be defended at all costs.

Then I heard the news that Litzmannstadt (now Lodz) had fallen. My father was stationed there for a few years before he was transferred to Italy. Now the Red Army has pushed past it.

We boys were not sure whether our train could be attacked by ground attack planes or were we safe because we were a hospital train and clearly marked so.

Sometimes the train went backwards for long times. While the front seemed to collapse everywhere the nurses on our train were busy looking after the babies. We had no idea why they were on the train. The mothers did not seem to be on the train as the babies were not taken out of the carriage.

Funnily, I can not remember what we had for our meals. Did we have warm meals or not? I can only remember getting slices of bread with jam. What I did not eat I put under the cushion with the result that I had soiled my cushion with jam. Horrible!

For entertainment, we climbed into the other boy’s bunks and played cards or just talked, about the war and the Russians and we were speculating about the babies on the train. We lost track of time and dates. We had no changes of clothes eighter. When would the train ride end? Hopefully in Berlin.

Then, one day, late afternoon, the train stopped at a large station. Again we heard, “Schnell, Schnell!” We ran across the platform to another waiting train. It was a passenger train consisting of very old fashion carriages. I had time to read the station name on a large sign. It said, “Görlitz“.

Someone said it was the 30th of January an important date in the Nazi calendar. It was the 12th anniversary of the day the Nazis came to power. We had no time to think about it. We rushed over to the train and took whatever seat we could find. The carriage was full of soldiers and their luggage. Those soldiers were exhausted and they were manly asleep for the rest of the rail journey to Berlin.

So far, we had been on the hospital train for more than three weeks not across Europe or even Germany, but for a journey of about just 300 km. A trip that should have taken not more than three hours. We did not know that could happen, but we were looking forward to seeing Berlin and our families again. What would happen next?

Soon after the train set in motion, it became dark and the train hurtled during the darkness to our destination. We went right through a blizzard with snowflakes as large as butterflies. I wished every snowflake would turn into a German soldier to hold back the onslaught of the Red Army.

There was a short halt a Spremberg and on we went. It did not take long and I recognised our train going through Königswusterhausen, not far South-East from Berlin. We were heading for Berlin. What a relief.

When the train finally stopped I found myself at the same railway station I set off from in January 1944 on my very first railway journey, Görlitzer Bahnhof.

If I hoped to see my mother I would have been disappointed. We could not even leave the station as Berlin had a preliminary air raid alarm. But this is another story.

What Children Worry About Most

Quote: “It is well known that parents spend a lot of time worrying about their children’s future, but do they know their children are worrying too?”

Watching the Midday News today an item caught my attention. They were talking about a survey done of 10 to 13 years old.

43% worry about their future and 37% about family. In the news item, they were mostly talking about the latter.

It made me think about the time when I was 10 to 13 years old.  That was 1945 to 1948 and it was a particularly bad time to grow up in Berlin after WW II.

Luckily we weren’t bombed out and still lived in our now windowless apartment. My mother worked as a Trümmerfrau during the cold winter months and beyond. 

My father, unknown to us at that stage, was in an American PoW camp. Did I worry about my future? Not one bit it only could get better, I thought. But it did not for a long while.

For me, it was more worries about the family.

Dad returned in May 1946 and brought my two sisters along whom he had picked up on the way from Bavaria. We were a family again for the first time since 1939.  On that beautiful Spring day, the future gave us a glimmer of hope.

It was not to be. Dad had lost a lot of weight and his old job as a taxi driver was not available. No cars, no petrol! After a few months of unemployment, he landed a job with a road construction company and had to work with a jackhammer. That was heavy work for his emaciated body. The food was rationed and meals were never enough for him.

Sometimes during the night he got up and ate food that was for us kids for the next day. That was when the trouble started. My mother accused him of stealing food from his children. Dad started to sell things from the household to buy extra food on the Black Market. Anything could be bought there if one only had the money. Some of the money he took to the racecourse do “double it” as he said. He never had a big win.

So arguments arose often for any reason, or so I thought. Dad became abusive and family life became a nightmare for us all. Finally, my mother could not stand it anymore and she left him. She took us children with her.  On the day before, when I realised we would move out and the family would break up, I started to cry. My mother mistook my weeping and offered me to stay with dad. That was not what I wanted. I wanted the family to stay together.

Dad was especially nice on the night before and he told us about his wartime experiences, especially in Italy. He was a motor lorry driver taking supplies to the front line. The convoys were constantly under attack by American warplanes.  As the convoy proceeded on the high mountain roads along the Apennines  Mountains the planes were actually flying below them and they attacked the German lorries sideways. There must have been carnage.

It took me about fifty years to realise that Dad actually suffered from PTSD. In those days I did not know anything about it. And if he had said anything to Mum she would probably have said to him, “Pull yourself together!”

Through all this time when my parents had marriage problems, Berlin was blockaded by the Soviet Union and it was the time of the Airlift. We had even less than after the war. One hour of electric power a day and that during the night when industries worked less.

We all worried about the family. How would we cope? As it turned out, badly. After Mum had left Dad things became quieter for us. No more fights. I became the go-between who had to see Dad every month and collect the maintenance money for us kids. My mother had no trust in him but he always paid what had been agreed on.

They were divorced in early 1949 but remarried twenty-five years later so Mum would be able to receive a widows pension after he died from lung cancer. So he looked after us even after he passed away. Mum shared half of his pension with us children.

Coming back to the survey mentioned above I can understand that children at that age worry about the family as they themselves try to find and understand their place in the world. Their childhood comes to an end and they become aware that their parents are not perfect and struggle with life’s challenges. So they question themselves, what will become of us?

Especially now with Climate Change giving us all a big scare. Children formed a new Crusade with their Friday for the Future movement. In my time our problems were more immediate and we had not much to lose. But now, the children realise that the future looks pretty grim if nothing is being done.

I worry with them and for them.

 

“Child Labour” in the “Land of Peace”

From time to time, during my stay in “Friedland“, we children were given jobs to do. Be reminded that I was eight when I arrived there. I don’t mean to complain about the work performed. I was used to helping my mother or my greataunt when I was still at home. Here in the boy’s home,  we all thought it alright that we were asked to perform some tasks. We accepted, that adults could boss us children about and give us chores to do. This was the order of things.

During school holidays the staff must have thought we are getting bored. One day a week was cleaning day anyway. All the windows were opened and the fresh air was let in. In winter, the air was not only fresh but freezing cold and I hated it when I did not get warm. Then, some of us were given a bucket of soapy water, a hard brush to scrub the floor with and a floor rag to soak up the excess water. The floor was made from white (!) timber and it had to be scrubbed white.

It was hard work. My little hands could hardly hold the brush as I tried to scrub the grime off the floorboards. The knees hurt. We soaked up the water with a cloth (Ger. Scheuerlappen – floor cloth) and wrung it into the bucket.

Another job I had to do was shovelling rotten beets. After the harvest, they were stored in a warehouse up to about 50cm high. But in winter they froze and after thawing they were giving off a horrifying smell akin to faeces or rotten corpses. That was not nice work at all. I have no idea why they got us, the children, to do the job. I suppose, there was a shortage of labour due to the war.

But this was not the worst job I had to perform. Every few months we had to empty the sewer pit. We only had the use of one outdoor toilet. One for about thirty boys. Right in the beginning, I was warned by the other boys not to sit for too long on the toilet as there were water rats that liked to nibble the little boys’ genitals. That really put the fear into me.

When the day came to empty the pit we each got a bucket.  One of the bigger boys had a scoop on a long handle and scooped the effluent up and poured it into a 10 ltr bucket. The buckets were heavy to carry. The content spilt all over our legs as we walked across the road and up a slight hill to the veggie garden where it was poured onto the garden beds as fertiliser.

But there was a rather pleasant job too. Every Thursday evening we all walked to the local bakery to collect our weekly supply of bread for the home. Each one of us had to carry a large, round loaf of bread, about 2 kilos heavy, back to the home. Usually, it was already dark and under the cover of darkness, I dug a hole in the side of the bread. First I broke off a piece of the yummy crust and then with the finger I was able to extricate some of the still warm dough. I have no idea whether any other of the boys did this. It was not talked about.

We had to do our own beds too and once in a while we had to change the sheets and the covers too. It is rather difficult for an eight-year-old to manage to get a huge, heavy feather quilt into the cover. But we learnt to do it. It set me up for life and I’m still doing it nowadays.

Today’s children don’t seem to do chores. They are sitting forever on their backsides and are staring at their phones or tablets. It is said they are smarter nowadays. Smarter in what, I wonder?

Even from an early age on I always had to help out at home. Running errands for my Mum was done without any questioning. I, for my part, was proud helping my mother and I wanted to please her.

In the home each boy got a little veggie patch to look after. There was no compulsion and I can’t remember that I was very diligent looking after it. Except for a few carrots, I did not harvest anything else.

There was a report the other day which stated that children who are encouraged to do chores are later, as adults, more successful. But how do you define “successful”? It is said they are able to cooperate with others. Perhaps this is what I have learnt. I’m certainly not angry that I was asked to do some work. I never had a choice.  but did not resent it either.

Perhaps I am successful in the sense that I’m not complaining about my lot. I take life as it comes and I go on with it.

 

 

 

“Russia House” and the “Dutch Cafe”

Last Monday we,  my wife Uta (also known as Aunty Uta) and I,  went to Bulli Beach for a cup of coffee. We had to kill some time as we waited for the doctor to start work. We were early.

Uta wanted to relax with a book she brought along. She loves books written by Andrew M. Greeley and this one, “The Bishop in the West Wing” seemed especially of interest to her.  Greeley is called ‘author and priest’ but I can tell you, he is not your common garden variety priest. His novels are always political, as seems to be right for a man with an Irish background. While Uta was delving into her book I decided on a little stroll as I can’t sit for long. Movement is the best for my ageing and aching legs.

The above picture does not show Bulli Beach (on the Illawarra Coast of NSW) but the neighbouring Sandon Point Beach. Along the shoreline runs Blackall Street. New, modern houses have sprung up there over the years and replaced many of the old houses that I remember from more than fifty years ago; many have disappeared or were altered beyond recognition.

During the sixties, I worked with another German from Berlin beautifying the old houses there. This kind of work brought us in contact with so many people of different walks of life.  For instance, migrants who still had to come to grips with the cultural shock they had suffered after coming to Australia. Australian men did not like us “New-Australians” but the women did.  Meeting us those women found out, that men actually were able to talk and converse with women as that. We often had great conversations with them during our lunch breaks. They always supplied us with cups of tea and ‘bikkies’ as is the Australian way.

Here at Sandon Point’s Blackall Street, we struck migrants who had made Australia their home after World War Two and all the destruction and replacement that went with it. Overlooking the Pacific Ocean surely must have been a kind of paradise for them.

First, we worked on a cottage that belonged to a Dutch family. They were older than we were and could have been our parents. They were from a region in the Netherlands that was close to the border to Germany and they were able to talk in German to us. They preferred that to speaking English.

We were able to establish an instant rapport with them, even though, we were on opposite sites during the war.  They were so friendly that they provided coffee and cake every afternoon. We were sitting and talking about the war and Australia. We dubbed the place “The Dutch Cafe”. We learned, during our conversations with them,  that the husband of the Dutch couple used to be a truck driver during the war and was on tour to Berlin on many occasions. He also worked for the Dutch resistance and had to spy and report on what he saw in Germany. It was a dangerous mission.

They put us in contact with another lady who lived down the road from them. We were able to do the same work on her house as well. The lady was from Russia but was of German descent. She was much older than the Dutch people but they had taken an interest in her and her wellbeing.

While working on her house she was telling us about her life in Russia and the Soviet Union. She had experienced the Russian Revolution and had no good word about it. Her German family were decried as capitalists as they were in the habit of painting their fences. The old lady cried a little as she told us her family history. On a table, I saw a photo of her husband, as a young man, standing in the Red Square of Moscow. The view of the Kremlin was in stark contrast to the view from her tiny upstairs window towards the ocean. We nicknamed her home “Russia House”.

 

This is the view from Russia House today

When we left her premises, she gave us a piece of advice, probably born out of her own bitter experience, never to trust a Russian. Some of my followers will know, from reading some of my previous posts, that I had to trust Russians to survive.

Walking along Blackall Street I could not help noticing the changes and gentrification of the street. Where would the families of the former Dutch and Russian families be today? We all have moved on, some of us have gone back to eternity and we ourselves are waiting to move there.

But, I’m not in a hurry yet, despite dreaming last night that on a visit to my doctor he informed me, that he had bad news for me; the government would like to let me know that I would depart to the hereafter soon.

I still want to write a few more posts for this blog.

 

 

 

 

In Berlin on a Hot Day

On our trip to Berlin in June last year,  we had the opportunity to vote for the federal election at the Australian Embassy in the centre of Berlin.

In Berlin, you can find statues of the Berlin emblem, the Berlin Bear, everywhere in all different disguises. We even found one inside the embassy.

 

The Berlin Bear greets little Aussie Lucas at the Australian embassy.

But there was a kangaroo too. It looked a bit on the “dry” side in a Berlin court yard.

 

“Skippy” the Bush-Kangaroo hiding in a backyard in Berlin on a diplomatic mission

In the next picture, you see indeed some Aussies marking the ballot papers. The children thought we went there for a scribble session and Lucas wanted to have a pencil and a piece of paper too.  This is election Australian style. The voting papers are not marked in secret nor are there any cabins where you can hide what you are doing.

 

It was a very hot day in Berlin, actually 33°C. So we felt quite at home and what better idea than heading for the water. We did a river cruise.

 

 

One of the modern buildings replacing the infamous Wall.

Remnants of the Wall can be seen nearby.

 

Parts of the old Wall has been transformed into an outdoor gallery.

Not far away up-river is the beautiful Oberbaum Bridge. You can see another Berlin anomaly where the underground train is actually an elevated train.

 

A castle-like structure over which the, here elevated, yellow underground train traverses.

At the Technical Museum, the elevated train crosses the Landwehrkanal meeting a plane that used to be part of the air-bridge during the “Blockade” of 1948 / 49

 

The office of the Chancellery as seen from the River Spree. From here Frau Merkel runs the country.

The river cruise took us right through the centre of Berlin.

 

This is the Central Railway Station. Trains are pulling in from all directions of the compass. The East/West trains are above the ground and the North / South trains are under ground.

 

This is the Parliament building the centre of the German democracy.

 

The “Ganymed” Restaurant and the theatre of the world famous “Berlin Ensemble” to the right of it.

 

The “Ganymed” was once owned by a member of my wife’s family. Because of the closeness to the theatre, it attracted members of the cast and crews after the show.

 

The ‘Berlin Cathedral at the Pleasure Garden.

At the end of the 3-hour cruise, we were all exhausted and when we arrived at the train station we found this sign:

 

Train has been cancelled

It wasn’t as bad as it sounds because in Berlin the trains run every few minutes and every station is well stocked with food and drinks of all description. As we were parched we were able to buy some bottled water.

 

It was a memorable day

 

 

 

 

Memories of the Past and towards 2017

Time it was
And what a time it was, it was
A time of innocence
A time of confidences

Long ago it must be
I have a photograph
Preserve your memories
They’re all that’s left you.

These are the words of the refrain from the beautiful song “Bookends” by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. A song about two old friends sitting on a park bench – reminiscing.

 

 

If you have more time on your hand you can be listening to the full version here.

Last month,  Uta and I had our 60th Wedding anniversary. It was a moment to reflect on our past together.

Just before we got married this photo was taken of us two on the balcony of my mother’s apartment in Berlin. In the meantime, this building has been torn down and a more modern one has taken its place.

 In the picture, my future wife looks rather sceptical at me.  Or is it whimsical? We were innocent at the time. We believed in a better world and eleven years after WW 2 we had all reasons to believe in a bright future. Out of that belief grew our confidence to start a family.

In case you are wondering about the plate on the wall, it has been painted by Anselm  Feuerbach and is of his favourite model, Nanna, in a classical pose. This plate is still in the family and belongs to my son now.

From then to now it was a time of great changes in all our lives. We moved to Australia and raised a family. Of our four children, our eldest daughter passed away nearly five years ago.

2016 was an especially bad year all round. The election of Donald Trump to be the new President of the US makes for interesting times. Interesting, because he seems to be unpredictable. He loves conflict and will have a fight on his hand, among others, with the American secret services. The establishment believes the advice of the services are sacrosanct without considering that they might have their own agenda.

Terrorism is an old game but since 9/11 it has become global, as so many things have since the end of the Cold War. We shake in our shoes as our governments think of more useless schemes to stop this menace. But all those measurements make the would-be terrorists more cranky.

On a personal level, my health is precarious. At least this is what my doctors tell me. Next week I will know more. At my age, anything can crop up in my body. When I was born my life expectancy was just sixty-four years. Fifteen years later I am still here to tell my stories.

A few years ago, I talked about this with one of my neighbours. We called it bonus time and laughed about it. This was on a Friday and the very next Monday his bonus time came to a sudden end. So, you never know.

In case you wonder what happened to the couple in the first photo. We changed into an old couple day by day without noticing it. And now, sixty years later, we look like this.

We have come a long way and I’m happy that last year we were able to visit Berlin, our hometown, once more. If we are lucky, we will be able to see Berlin again in two years time. Our health allowing, of course.

I nearly forgot. For the fifth time, we became great-grandparents. So the family is growing and we hope the politicians are not mucking up the great-grandchildren’s future.

For 2017 I wish all my followers all the best. Most of all stay healthy because without good health life can be a drag.

The Year 1978

In October, I wrote a blog  about our dear, late friend Ron Bates. He played a  pivotal role at that stage in our life and helped us overcome a family tragedy.

Towards the end of nineteen hundred and seventy-seven, we were looking forward to the arrival of a new member to our family. But fate had other ideas, and my wife Uta lost the baby.

Sure, it was a time of grief and disappointment but we promised ourselves to try again. Just then, Ron came up with the idea of a short vacation with some of his friends up at Numbacca Heads on the Mid-Northcoast of NSW. “That would do you the world of good,” he said.

We went up by train and on arrival were met by Ron at the station. He took us to the home of his friends, Snowy and Eve. What a lovely couple they were. They took good care of us despite not having met us before. The next few days they took us, and Ron, to show us the exceptionally wooded hinterland.

There  is a beautiful spot from where you could  view the mouth of the Numbacca River and  the landscape beyond.

picture by Johncatsoulis – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:NambuccaHeads.JPG

We had a picnic at a nature reserve with a stand of beautiful  tall Sydney Blue Gums.

Uta and Eve among the trees

Snowy prepared a barbeque lunch.

Snowy and Ron

 

Next day we really ‘went bush’, as they say in Australia.  We drove to  the village of  Tailors Arm.  To call this settlement  a village,  is probably a bit over the top. It is a location that has a pub. This pub became famous in the gestation of the  song, “The pub with no beer”.

Uta, Snowy and Ron posing on the veranda.

I can tell you, we enjoyed a beautiful, refreshing beer on that day. Should we have charged the pub with false advertising?

On the next day,  Ron wanted us to meet another friend of his, Mary Boulton. She was a local identity and  had established a Pioneer Cottage at Macksville.

The Pioneer Cottage in 1978. You find other pictures on the website.

Mary Boulton, Snowy and I masquerading as an explorer

Ron and I at the gate to the Pioneer Cottage

We had a great time on that short vacation. It was also memorable because only days before I took up running and ran along the  roads at Nambucca Heads. I wanted to lose weight as I was weighing 88 kg at the time. I’m still running now about three times a week.

Nine months later we had a baby girl. Our daughter, Caroline, just had her birthday a few days ago.

Caroline and her partner Matthew. What a great couple they are.

That year, 1978, had a sad beginning, but it ended well.  Life was kind to us and with the help of  friends and family we found our way back into a full life. Actually, we still live in the afterglow of that year.

Everything that is happening now is the result of what has happened in the past. Be mindful of what you are doing today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Bridge of Spies” – Glienicke Bridge

Today, 26 years ago ( on the morning of the 10 November, Australian time) the Berlin Wall was opened. Next day, Berlin Time, the old border between West-Berlin and the GDR (East-Germany) was opened at the border to between Berlin and Potsdam.

Sign on Glienike Bridge, today

The sign reads, “Here was Germany and Europe until the 10th of November 1989 at 1800 hour divided”.

So it was astonishingly appropriate that we, my wife Uta and I, saw a film today that had that bridge as a dramatic backdrop. It was another story, from the time of the Cold War, that was told in the film “Bridge of Spies“.  Here is a trailer of the film.

As a former resident of Berlin, I’m not unfamiliar with the bridge. I visited her many times and the bridge was once before the background for a movie. “Under the Bridges” was the last German film made before the end of the war but only shown after the end of the war.

This particular construction of the Glienicke Bridge was only completed in 1907.

In 1986, three years before it re-opening we were visiting her.

View across the River Havel towards Potsdam (1986)

The bridge with border sign and guard’s hut (1986)

This really was the border of the Western world. Wherever you were in West-Berlin, you always faced the East. (1986)

Today, you should take a walk across the bridge and let the full impact grab you.  In the middle is a line marking the former border.

This marks the old East / West borderline.

This is the approach to the bridge from the Potsdam end of the border. Today the bridge is the border between the City of Berlin and the Federal State of Brandenburg.

And if you have made it to this spot, you are right in front of the beautiful cafe “Garage Du Pont”.

You can sit and ponder the history of the bridge while you indulge yourself.

Garage Du Pont

Here you can enjoy a coffee, an apple tart or a brandy  or all three of them.

Bon appetite!

The film is not only based on a true event, but it is also a stark portrayal of the American justice system. Justice is not always been done but depends often on people  like James B. Donovan  100 out of 100 for Tom Hanks too. The scenes at the border, in August 1961 when the wall went up, were just frightening to watch.

A few times I had to fight back tears as I saw how Berlin suffered.

Ron Bates

Two weeks ago would have been the 102nd birthday of our late friend Ronald (Ron) Hamilton Bates. We got to know him during the sixties when he gave speech lessons to our daughter Gaby while she was in the Prince Henry Hospital, Sydney, Little Bay. after contracting poliomyelitis.

Ron became a dear friend of our family and stayed many a weekend with us. We even got to know his mother and his sister Jean,  a well-known piano player, in Sydney.

I don’t want to write his biography  here but would like to mention, that he was the grandson Australia’s icon, Daisy Bates. He grew up in Goulburn and was able to tell us a lot about early Australia.

Why I’m writing about him. Well, today I looked at some photos from 1986 when he and his sister came to the airport in Sydney to see us off  for one off our trips to Germany.

You see the late Ron Bates in the centre besides my wife Uta.I’m sitting on the left and behind us is our son Martin with his baby son Tristan.

He gave us a self-made bon-voyage card and six post-card-sized drawings. I think they are all worth showing to the world.

This drawing is not bigger than a postage stamp. There  is a little cottage he was always dreaming about he could be owning one day.

The next drawing shows a minimalistic  landscape. It shows how with a few strokes he was able to create  a landscape in which the observer finds a lot to interpret.

The next drawing shows a jumble of items and I have the feeling he wanted to show the creation and life on Earth, culminating in the Dollar. It is not very optimistic but then, he was not very optimistic about mankind. But he understood people well and had a good attitude towards them.

Creation?

If people were the pinnacle of creation he shows us on his next drawing that he had his doubts. There is a pair of lovers, but they are outweighed by others arguing.

People being people, loving, arguing and discussing

In the next picture, we see an  elderly woman contemplating the world. She is not in the centre but at periphery looking at a white canvas, so to speak. She tries to understand but can’t see head or tail.

An elderly woman cannot see much!

In the next picture, I think, Ron gives us his own interpretation what he thought of the Dollar: he waves it ‘Good Bye’. I don’t think the person in the drawing wants to grab the Dollar, even so it is hovering like a Fata Morgana in the distance.

Good Bye, Dollar!

The last drawing is similar to the first one. It shows the cottage again, but this time surrounded by some trees. Perhaps he meant it for us to come back to, after  our trip.

The dream cottage in the bush

Ron became a good friend over the years. Growing up after WW 1 and during the great Depression he missed out on a good education, as so many of his generation did. We had many discussions on a wide range  of subjects with him. Australia needed people like him but could not care less. Australia was the real loser.

The next generation of intellectuals left Australia in droves for the home country, Mother England.  During  the Menzies years, Australia became a white canvas for people to stare at or seek other outlets for their imagination.

The Crime of Poverty

The beautiful Hunter Valley NSW, Australia

We. my wife Uta and I, are members of the “Association for Good Government” and last Saturday they held a conference near Pokolbin in the Hunter Region  of NSW.

The association is propagating and teaching  the ideas and principles of the American economist and social philosopher Henry George.

The theme of the conference was  based on a speech Henry George gave on 1st of April 1885 at the  Opera House of Burlington. Iowa, USA.”The Crime of Poverty“.

Burlington Opera House in 1910

If you read the speech you will find it was no April fool’s joke. We learnt, that about four hundred people attended who each paid  a 50 cents entrance fee.

George suggests, it is not a crime to be poor but poverty is a social crime of which we, the whole society, are all guilty of. It is a curse and in the end we will all suffer from it, even the rich. The rich can not live really  in peace with poor people all around them.

The present financial crisis in Greece and the refugee problem the rich states of Europe have to grapple with are good examples. The “rich” are coming under pressure from the poor.

People all over the world produce goods and food in abundance, but all is not distributed equally. Sure, the world has changed a lot since 1885 but in principle George’s theories are still correct. Still, people are being exploited by other people. And it was ever so.

According to Henry George all has to do with the control of the land by the few. By land, he doesn’t only means the land under our feet, that can be worked, but also all the resources that can be found in the earth.

When we are born we are already designated slaves. At least we a have to work like slaves to satisfy the greed of the rent seekers. All land is already taken by generations who came before us. Henry George was of the opinion that “Land” is a natural right for living beings to share.

If you see a herd of animals or a flock of birds you don’t see a percentage of them starving or living in poverty. Why then can’t we share, with other people, the fruits of the land?

We also learnt at the conference that early, white settlers pushed the Aborigines off their land and even refused them access to the Hunter River for water and fishing. It is always control of the land which controls the people.

Fighting poverty in this environment is much easier.

The conference also touched on Tiberius Gracchus a popular Roman politician of the 2nd century BC. He was also a brave and popular military leader who found, that after he and his soldiers came back from the Third Punic War that many had lost their land in their absence. Their wives and children could not make a living from their land without the help of their men. They went bankrupt and the big landholders were buying the land cheaply. The increased holdings were then worked by slaves instead of by free men.  The now poverty stricken people streamed into Rome.

The Gracchus brothers, Tiberius and Gaius by Jean-Baptiste Claude Eugène Guillaume

Plutarch reports Tiberius Gracchus saying, “Wild animals who live in Italy have for each of them a place to rest or hiding place. But the men who fought and died for Italy have nothing more than the air and light; unsettled, without home nor house, they roam the land with their wives and children. The generals lie to them during battle, when they call on them to  defend the graves and holy shrines against their enemies. None of those poor Romans owns a grave or altar of their  ancestors. They are fighting  and dying for the wellbeing and the wealth of others. They are called the rulers of the world – but in truth they own not even one crumb of this Earth.”

Tiberius Gracchus then had the idea, that the returned soldiers should be given   plots of 30 iugera confiscated from the rich landholders. The landholders did not like the idea at all and organised a massacre in which he and four hundred of his followers were beaten to death and thrown into the River Tiber. This, according to the Roman historian Plutarch, was the first outbreak of civil strife in Rome.Theodor Mommsen, the German historian, called the year of the massacre, 133 BC, a defining year in the history of Rome.

Settling the land question with a bloody massacre is a defining moment?  It shows that the elite of Rome was just a bunch of land-hungry parasites.

Capitalism teaches us that it is an advantage to have a pool of  poor and unemployed people. That is where the injustice and the crime of poverty originate from. People who have no access to land and its resources live in poverty.

According to a  UNICEF report, 1 billion children worldwide are living in poverty. and 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. This happens because the human race is not able to  share.

On the way to the conference, we stopped for a short tea break at  Mooney  Mooney, at the banks of the Hawkesbury River.  It is a nice spot alright and not only people are attracted to the picnic area but also the wildlife. Brush Turkeys are coming out  of  the bush and try to find something edible we humans drop accidentally or otherwise. And what did we see? Among them was a feral hen who lives happily thinking she is a turkey too.

One hen and two Brush Turkeys.

What do I want to say here? That two species can live together and share the resources available to them and we humans, seemingly, can’t do the same.