Displaced Persons: an Immigrant Journey to America

By Richard E. Fuerch

After growing up and hearing many stories about his parents experiences in Europe before, during and after World War II, Richard E. Fuerch decided that he had to preserve these stories for his family. He took on the task of interviewing his parents, taking elaborate notes and weaving a narrative from what he had assembled. The initial product was a forty page binder comprising a brief retelling of the stories that were told to him. After many years, he decided to put it all together in the form of a book.

"This is the story of my parents; their family history in Poland and Czechoslovakia; their survival of World War II; their refugee experience in the wake of the devastation of the war, and their eventual immigration from war torn Europe, to the United States of America."

"I wrote this book because I wanted to document their incredible story for my siblings, my children and my niece and nephew. While their's was an oft repeated, commonly experienced voyage through life, it is one that is rarely told, especially within the context of the horrible tragedy that was World War II."

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491870495

Richard E. Fuerch

Richard E, Fuerch is an immigrant to the United States of America. He was born of refugee parents in the Bavarian village of Zwiesel, in what was then West Germany. His mother was born in 1929 in the Polish capital of Warsaw. His father was born in 1926 in the newly created country of Czechoslovakia, in the region that was known as the Sudetenland. As displaced persons, they wound up in Zwiesel after the Second World War. It was there that Richard was born, and from there that they eventually made their way to the United States. Richard has a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the Cooper Union in NYC, but devoted a 38 year career to the FDNY. He rose to the rank of Deputy Chief in the FDNY; He worked in all five boroughs of NYC, but spent much of his career in Lower Manhattan as a Battalion Chief and Deputy Chief. He was intimately involved in the response to and recovery from 9/11. Richard has written numerous articles for Fire Service publications, and, as an adjunct professor, taught a course in Building Construction for the Fire Service at CUNY’s John Jay College in Manhattan. Richard is presently retired from the FDNY and spends his time in various pursuits, including writing and volunteering as a docent and tour guide for the 9/11 Tribute Center and World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. He is married, has two daughters and currently lives on Long Island, New York with his wife Joan...

Book preview

DISPLACED PERSONS:

AN IMMIGRANT

JOURNEY TO AMERICA

Richard E. Fuerch

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© 2014 Richard E. Fuerch. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 03/05/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4918-7046-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-6941-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-7049-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014904131

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Introduction

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Part Two

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Part Three

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Epilogue

Afterword

Notes

Introduction

I am a US immigrant, born in West Germany in December 1951, just over six years after the end of World War II. Growing up in the United States, I always thought of myself as a German. But as this story will illustrate, it is much more complicated than that. Although I was born in West Germany, neither of my parents were born or raised in Germany.

My father’s family was Sudeten-Deutsch, having lived in a region known as the Sudetenland. The Sudetenland was their ancestral home. Their name was German, and their native language was German. For hundreds of years, the Sudetenland was within the Kingdom of Bohemia. Bohemia, over the course of several centuries, was under the rule of the Holy Roman Empire, then the Austrian Empire, and until the end of World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As a result of the treaty ending World War I in 1918, the Sudetenland was incorporated into the newly invented country of Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia had never existed before 1918. Czech was established as the national language. Several coexisting ethnic groups lived within the borders of this newly formed country, including the Czechs, the Slovaks, and the Germans. In fact, the Czechs and the Germans were the largest ethnic groups, and the country could have more accurately been called Czechogermania. Other countries, including Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and others were also formed.

My mother’s family had a German last name, and they were ethnic Germans, but their native language was Polish. They had lived in and around the Polish capital of Warsaw for several generations. Before World War II, with few exceptions, no member of my mother’s family spoke any German.

The history of Poland provides a small illustration of the political turmoil involving Europe over the last several hundred years. Poland, for a period of 123 years before the end of World War I, had not existed as a geopolitical entity. During this time, the region, mostly populated by the Polish people, was incorporated into Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Germany. At the end of World War I, Poland was reestablished as a nation, incorporating regions that contained various ethnic groups, including many Germans. Of course, as one of the vanquished nations of the Great War, as World War I was known at the time, Germany had to cede much of its territory to Poland.

In fact, Germany itself did not exist as a political entity before its unification in 1871. After the Franco-Prussian War, the princes of the German states, such as the Kingdom of Prussia, the Kingdom of Bavaria, and others, proclaimed Wilhelm of Prussia the kaiser of the new German Empire. The German Empire, designated in 1871, is what Adolf Hitler would later refer to as the Second Reich. The First Reich was the Holy Roman Empire, which the French philosopher Voltaire famously described as neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. It was actually a loose confederation of German kingdoms, principalities, and free cities.

What I just described is a simplified overview of the European geopolitical history that my mom and dad were born into in the first half of the twentieth century. As this briefly illustrates, the history of Europe is very complicated, and the common people, the working-class people, people like my parents, were victims of centuries of wars and political struggles for power by the ruling classes.

When, as immigrants, they arrived in the United States, they left that geopolitical mess behind. They had arrived in a free and stable nation, with boundless opportunity—a nation of immigrants. They had left the old world behind for what they hoped would be a better life in the new world.

In the United States, my parents found a wonderful new home. My dad found a good job as a tool and die maker, and my mom and dad made friends in the immigrant neighborhood of what is now known as the East Village of New York, where they first settled. There was reason for optimism, and life was generally very good. But we also dealt with some backlash because we were from Germany. An aunt and uncle and my three cousins arrived a couple of years later as the second wave of our immigrant family. Although I didn’t experience it directly, my cousins, who were of school age when they arrived, had to deal with unfriendly classmates. They spoke no English when they arrived. They were different and got into fights with their fellow students as a result.

After living in the East Village for three years, my family moved to Flatbush, Brooklyn, just before I was ready to start kindergarten. In Flatbush, I attended kindergarten and first and second grade. I cannot remember one instance of being singled out as a German, even though it was a predominantly Jewish neighborhood. I had many Jewish friends. One of them taught me to ride a two-wheel bicycle. Of course, my parents didn’t make me wear lederhosen, as many German immigrant parents did. I didn’t stick out. We wanted to assimilate as Americans.

Although I never actually experienced any ethnically related harassment while growing up in Flatbush, I did experience it when our family moved to Ridgewood, Queens, when I was in the second grade. Ridgewood was a mixed ethnic neighborhood with a significant German presence.

When we moved to Ridgewood, I entered the second grade at PS 93 several months into the school year. Even though there was a large German presence in Ridgewood, I was sometimes called a Nazi by some ignorant kids who thought all Germans were Nazis. This continued and intensified a year later, when another family of my cousins, the third wave of my family’s immigration, came to Ridgewood. They lived in the same apartment house that my family lived in, and they too had to learn English after they got here.

Being singled out as a German was an occasional occurrence in my Ridgewood grammar school. On the first day of fifth grade, for some reason, my teacher insensitively asked anyone who was not born in the United States to raise their hands. Of course, I raised my hand and volunteered the fact that I was born in Germany. That was the first time that I can recall being called a Nazi in school by my fellow students. During the course of that year, two new students also joined our class. They were newly arrived German immigrants who spoke very little English. I was assigned as their mentor, and soon we were all being called Nazis. Although I pretty much let this roll off my back, it did bother me, and I felt bad for my fellow immigrants.

At this time, I also became aware of the Holocaust. In particular, I remember watching the trial of Adolf Eichmann on black-and-white television. Eichmann was a Nazi SS officer with major involvement in the administration of the extermination camps. He was able to escape to Argentina after the end of World War II. In 1961, he was captured and put on trial in Israel as a war criminal. He was convicted and hanged for his crimes against humanity.

Because of my awareness of this history, I sometimes felt ashamed of being German when I was a kid. It wasn’t until I grew up that I became interested in my German heritage and came to appreciate the rich and varied history of the German people.

As a college student, I visited Germany and met many of my father’s relatives who lived in various cities, including Stuttgart, Augsburg, and Munich. They had been scattered around West Germany as a result of being displaced persons after the war. I visited the town of Zwiesel, where I was born. It was this experience that piqued my curiosity about my family history.

I began to find out about my father’s experiences over the dinner table. Soon, I started asking questions to satisfy my curiosity. Over the years, I learned more and more about both my mother’s and my father’s family history. My dad was eager to tell me his story; eventually my mom also cooperated. Ultimately, I interviewed my parents and started taking notes. It is from those notes of their personal recollections, some historical research, and my own personal experiences that this story evolved.

Over time, as I heard more and more of their fascinating story, I felt the need to make a more permanent record of the experiences of my parents’ immigration journey and the struggles they encountered. Initially, I simply wrote a brief report, summarizing their experiences. Eventually, I realized that I could tell their story in