#badwurzach | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

wurzach-blog1 · 10 years ago

Text

Life behind the barbed wire.

“Try to imagine it. Though it is impossible really to understand without having experienced it, what it means never to be alone, and never to know quiet. Not for a minute. And to continue for years... You will begin to wonder that there was no general outbreak of insanity.” (Barbed wire Syndrome, Lukas Vischer)

‘The family, WURZACH, 1945′ – my grandmother behind the barbed wire, in the place where she spent the majority of her teenage years.

From Biberach to Wurzach

On the 31st October, 1942, the German authorities decided to move 618 persons, who had only recently arrived in Biberach from Jersey, onto Wurzach.

The journey is depicted in another illustration by Joan Fenton; and is also described in Joan Coles' diary:

“Up at 6 o’clock to finish packing, on parade at10:15 a.m. Leave the camp at 11 o’clock walking down the hill with a ration of bread and sausage meat. Boarded a train and after a peaceful journey through pleasant countryside with forests, arrived at Wurzach at 3:30 p.m. We then walked to the Schloss and were paraded at the rear of the building awaiting allocation of the rooms.”

First Impressions

The ‘Schloss’ in Bad Wurzach – the place where my grandmother, her family, and 600 other internees inhabited for 3 years.

Michael Ginns recalls arriving at Biberach on a cold, misty morning. The Schloss, which had previously been inhabited by French Prisoners Of Wars was dirty, and far from suitable for its future occupants - civilian internees.

Joan Cole’s diary describes her first glimpse of the interior of the Schloss:

“Our hearts sank. Long stone corridors, flights of steep stairs, filthy damp rooms with plaster falling from the ceiling walls, terrible sanitation, damp beds and bedding. Everywhere was filthy so had to set to and clean things up”.

This was not any easy task as Joan Cole’s diary indicates:

“There was a terrible shortage of buckets, broom and other equipment to clean, so we had to scrub every surface with cold water, half a brick (for the floors) or cut glass (for all wooden surfaces). Floors were rotten with age, and there was no glass or wood to repair broken windows.”

The Architecture of the camp was contrasting to Biberach. The 18th century Schloss - a tripartite three storey building dominated the sleepy Wurttemburg country town. Originally it had been a residence of the Lords of Wurzach, until it was taken over by a Catholic Monastery and then by the German military during the war.

The Schloss was built of stone and was “cold, dark and damp. The whole building was antiquated except the cloisters and a modern wing which had just been added before the war but which remained incomplete.”

The Rooms

There were 120 families interned in Wurzach. Whilst the majority of these included family sizes of one or two children (50%), a further 30% included couples with three or more children. Some families were up to eight children.

Most of the internees were accommodated in dormitories, many of which held up to 40 persons in a single room (the average being 30 persons per room). This would have been a shock for the internees, most of whom, were used to having their own bedroom. It must have been especially shocking for the elderly who had to habituate themselves to living alongside much young persons.

My grandmother, Joan Fenton, and her brother, Freddie; sister, Marie, and mother, Irene, were in a room with 18 other persons. There was little space to put your things, and they slept on basic iron beds.

The larger family groups, more especially those exceeding 3 children or including young children, were accommodated in single household rooms. Otherwise, families were segregated by sex. Boys over the age of 14 but under the age of 16 slept with the older men on separate floors to the women and children.

These rooms or sleeping quarters were to become the chief focus of future family life in the camp. Families ate the majority of their meals in their rooms and idled away many hours of enforced boredom amongst their drying, laundered smalls and clothing.

Indeed “home” for the duration of the two years and nine months of internment effectively became “your bed and the immediate area which surrounded it.”

Overcrowding.

This crammed dormitory style of living resulted in overcrowding and difficult conditions. These were noted by International Committee of the Red Cross, in their September 1944 report:

“Rooms are overcrowded look uninviting, are littered with clothing, linen, trunks and furniture and this in addition to either single iron beds and/or two tier wooden bunks, occupied by 30 or more persons.”

One room, known as the ‘Rabbit Warren’ was oppressively small. 6 Mothers and 6 children occupied a room no bigger than a single bedroom, with tiny windows, and low ceilings. As Michael Ginns describes, this was a real fire hazard. Families of former internees, visiting now in 2015, were openly shocked and appalled when they saw it in the flesh.

0 notes