Previously: The Polzer family was facing persecution as Germans by descent but living in Yugoslavia during and after World War II. They had just recently escaped prison camp in Knicanin and were travelling to Germany, but were recaptured before they could leave the country and were sent to prison camp in Sombor.
The camp in Sombor was terrible—wooden barracks with leaky roofs, wet straw on the floor for a bed, no blankets to sleep on or cover up with. We got our meals from the community kitchen three times a day, but we did not have bowls, plates, spoons, or forks. We had to wait until some kind people would let us have their dishes so that we could get our meal. It was often a challenge to get food that we as vegetarians could eat. Every morning, we had to get up at daybreak and go out for roll call to see whether everyone was still there. About a week later they called us all out into the yard and some official gave us a speech that we will get our freedom. They would give us our rights back. We would get a new ID, get work, earn money, buy things, and have the right to see a doctor and dentist. They kept talking like that every day for four weeks, but no one believed them, because it had been three years since everything was taken away from us and we became government property.
It took three years to gain our freedom again: 1945 to 1948.
Finally, around mid-March, the big trucks came and loaded us all up to take us to the railroad station. We were put in boxcars and taken to a government-owned property which used to be large German farms. Now, it was all one farm and they had built a big brick building with windows. About eight bricks off the floor were some boards with clean straw and new pillows and blankets. It was clean and dry—no bedbugs or lice in the beds. The kitchen had big pots, no black iron kettles like the camp. We had our first meal as soon as we got there—a lot of white bread and thick cabbage soup with potatoes. We were all very happy for that meal. Mother got the food for us. Franziska kissed the white bread! Every day she would say, “I want white bread,” and it broke Mother’s heart. Franziska was five years old at that time.
They let us rest for a few days and then the children had to go to school. Theresa was 11 years old. They gave her a test and put her in grade 4. Barbara and Franziska started grade 1. Josef was only two years old. Mother and Father went to work with the bricklayers. Since we were a big family, we were given an empty German house. The previous occupants were probably also somewhere in the camp or had fled the country during the German occupation. So, we got out of the barracks and lived in a house. It was pretty good compared to the previous three years, but our parents had to work for two years here before we could move somewhere else. They got paid for their work and so we were eating our own food and could buy some necessary things.
After some time, we found Brother Milan Kasabasic and his wife Sister Andja. They lived not too far on the other side of the Danube River, and there were other believers too. About one year after we had been brought here, one of the brothers who had a cow that had a female calf asked our Father whether he would like to have the calf. The government did not let anyone have two cows. So they brought her in a rowboat at night over the Danube River. We also had some goats by that time with babies. The calf did not know how to graze, so we had to teach her. She was so nice and we loved her so much. Her name was Schecky (Shecky).
She thought the goat was her Mama and ran after her all the time—this was in 1949. Now our Mother was expecting a baby. Father did not want to stay in Backa (Bachka) on the government run farm Labudnjaca, (Labudnjacha), north-west of Belgrade, so he planned to move to Banat, where he used to have his home, but there the houses and land were all occupied by people from the Macedonian mountains.
Since Mother’s baby was going to be born soon, she left by train to go to Jabuka—her birthplace. On October 31, 1949, Anton (Tony), our little brother, was born. Mother stayed at Sister Kristina Tinus’ house. She was a Seventh-day Adventist church member. Father packed us up—four kids, calf and dog—and we walked to the train station to pay for a boxcar and travel to Banat. On the way to the station we all got very thirsty and when we came to a well in a field Father let the bucket down to pull some water up. Schecky was so thirsty too. She ran to the bucket and stuck her nose in, but would not drink the water. We all drank, and within 10 minutes were sick with stomach cramps. Everyone was sick, but our calf. At the station, we had to wait for a freight train to come hook our car up to take us to our destination. Our journey took several days since we travelled on a freight train.
We travelled by train to Jabuka in the boxcar—our Father, we children, our calf and dog. When we arrived in Jabuka, Father rented a very nice German house which the government had given to an officer, but his wife did not like living in the village, so they moved to the city and rented the house out. Before we got that house, we lived in a one-room summer kitchen on a big German farm. But now a large Macedonian family lived in it. They let us have the summer kitchen across the yard for that first winter. Father got a job working for the company that took care of the levies beside the River Tamis. Mother also worked with him. Theresa was 12 years old and took care of our baby brother Tony, Josef who was three years old, Franziska six years old, and Barbara nine years old that summer of 1950.
Toma Buneta was Father’s boss. He was the same man that Father gave Peter Cosic’s documents to years before. Toma Buneta and his family lived in a house close to the levy which kept the water from flooding the government-owned farmland every spring when the River Tamis would overflow its banks. Toma was employed by the government. Every 12 km or so was a house where a watchman and his family lived. His job was to keep an eye on the levy for several kilometers, and in case a problem should arise, he would look after matters. Toma gave us a small piece of land, a little distance away from his house; it was at the one end of a little forest with young trees. Toma said, “Josef, build yourself a house and bring the family over the River Tamis to the country.”
We all helped build our little house out of sticks and mud, but the inside was nicely white-washed; only the outside looked very rough, made of wood from trees in the area. On the interior the wood was just smeared (plastered) with mud. The house was one bedroom and a kitchen. The bedroom had a double bed on each side of the room. In the front was a window, and at the end of one bed was a single bed and on the other side was a baby bed for Tony. Father made all the beds. Mother made our mattresses filled with straw. Mother and Father slept in one bed, Barbara and Theresa in the other, Josef and Franziska in the third. Sometimes we traded beds; only Tony was the lucky one to have his own bed! There was no electricity, no running water, and only a dirt floor. We had a woodstove in the kitchen and our light was an oil lamp.
Shecky’s stall was on the other side of our kitchen wall. The outhouse was a little distance away from the house. We had to carry our water for drinking and cooking from the Bunetas who had a pump in their yard. When it was time to do laundry, the water was brought from the pump, heated on our woodstove in the kitchen and the laundry was washed by hand on a washboard in a metal tub which also served as our bathtub. In summer we sometimes walked over the levy to the River Tamis to get a good wash on Friday afternoon, getting ready for the Sabbath. Life in those days was very different.
The Lord was with us. We had a roof over our head, food to eat, and our parents were with us. We had our freedom and we felt blessed.
Toma Buneta had several cows and he was so kind to allow our Shecky to graze with his on Government land. Whenever we were not attending school we looked after the cows so they did not go into the area where government crops were growing or into the clover fields. In the summer when it got hot, they were often tempted to run over the levy and stand in the dugout areas full of water to cool off. These low areas were created when they took the earth for building the levy years before.
The Bunetas were very good people. Toma and Anna had four children, Johan (Yole), Slavica, Franjo and Zvonko. Anna’s mother, Hana also lived with them. They had everything, and the main thing was a lot of food! Anna always gave us milk, bread, cornmeal, and honey from their beehives when we first moved there. They had a large garden which their grandma Hana looked after. Toma gave us potatoes, corn, beans, cabbage, etc. while we were waiting for our garden to grow and supply us with our own vegetables.
Barbara and Franziska started school in Jabucki Rit, a large government farming settlement. The school was in a small village called Uprava, which was about 3 km from our little house. There was no bus or any kind of transportation in that area, no houses either—only farmland and a dirt road. At Uprava the government had large barns where they raised dairy cows and the farmland was mainly owned by the government. Barbara, Franziska and Josef, when he was old enough, walked to school every day, rain or shine. Our Father had a bicycle, and that was it. Barbara attended school in the mornings and Josef and Franziska in the afternoons. Those of us who went to school in Uprava remember as if it was yesterday how often we had cold and wet feet in the winter when arriving at school. The reason was that all we had to wear on our feet in the winter snow were rubber boots with our feet wrapped in old diapers or other rags to try and keep them warm on the 3 km walk. The winter could sometimes be very cold with tons of snow as well. Theresa was 13 and had to work with Mother and Father digging ditches and planting trees, sometimes in mud up to their ankles in rubber boots. She had cold feet and hands a lot in early spring and fall. In the summer, Theresa went to work on the government owned farmland in Jabucki Rit.
Life got a little better. We had a garden, and our little calf had grown up and had a calf, so we had our own milk and our Mother made cheese and also what we called sour milk. It was very similar to the yogurt we get today.
I (Franziska) remember one winter having a bad snowstorm with high winds during the night while living in our little house. This caused high snowdrifts. When we got up in the morning, Dad was unable to open our door to get out of the house. A snowdrift was right in front of the door. Dad had to work on it for quite a while, inch by inch to get the door open. When he got outside, he found a snowdrift against the back of the house as high as the wall. Our outhouse was buried beneath the snow, so Dad just dug out an area for us to use until the snow which covered the outhouse had melted.
While we lived in Jabucki Rit, near Toma Buneta, Nevenka Brajdic, now Nevenka Doemland who now lives with her husband Frank Doemland in Loveland, Colorado, USA moved to the Uprava with her mother Marina, her two aunts, Desa and Ivanka and her grandmother. The grown-ups worked in the vegetable fields owned by the Government. Nevenka was a toddler at that time. The family Bauman and Gebhard who were together with us in Knicanin and came to the truth there, lived in Padinska Skela about 20 km from us. I remember our family walking there one Friday to worship with them on the Sabbath. They immigrated to Germany in the early 50’s and settled there. While living there, we also were acquainted with the Baumung family, Fritz, Siegfried, Elizabeth and their mother. They also moved from Yugoslavia to Germany in the early 50’s.
In 1950, the government said all Germans who are not citizens can go to Germany. Mother and Father had taken their Yugoslavian citizenship because they thought if you did not take it, you are showing that you are an enemy of the State and would go back to the concentration camp. The government was asking 12,000 Dinars per person to give up the citizenship and be allowed to move to Germany. Both Father and Mother and Theresa had earned very little money, so there was not much. We applied to emigrate and finally received our documents in 1954. We sold our cow for 25,000 Dinars and paid 24,000 to release us from the citizenship. Theresa went over and over—first walking 3 km to the train station to catch a train to Belgrade and there go to the government office to check whether the documents were ready, and the answer was always “No” until one day it finally happened. During our waiting period, it was suggested by some that if we gave the officers some money, our documents would get done faster, but we did not have any money to give away.
So in the summer of 1954 all seven of us travelled to Germany. Theresia was 16, Barbara was 13, Franziska was 10, Josef 7, and Tony was 4 years old. It had rained and so we walked barefoot on the dirt road to the train station, carrying our sandals and socks with us. When we arrived in Uprava, where we used to attend school, we washed our feet in a puddle and put our sandals on, before getting on the train. We stayed with Brother Jova Ovuka in Belgrade over the weekend and then continued by train towards Germany.
Visa Photo taken in 1953 (Left to Right)
Back: Theresa, Mother, Father, Barbara. Front: Tony, Franziska, Josef
Compiled by Franziska Pedersen
To Be Continued