A journey through Finland, Poland and Austria in WW2

Recounting the family story was an emotional experience for John as you will hear from the recording.

John has written a 399 page book on his family and is here to talk about their journey across Finland, Poland and Austria during WW2.

John's Grandfather's home town in Austria was Bruck-An-De Mur (about 150kms SW of Vienna).

John's mother eventually said that most of the information about that time was in his Oma's (German for Grandmother) handbag that was in her wardrobe somewhere. In it he found their Finish and German travel documents and passes, his grandfather's Hungarian birth certificate, his grand-mother's heritage document going back to the 1800s. This was to prove their Arian heritage (that they weren't Jewish).

John's Grandfather worked at a Paper Mill in Austria. The Company were building a new Mill in Finland and he was asked to go work there. It was here he met and married John's Grand-mother in Varkaus (320kms NE of Helsinki).

When WW2 broke out John's Grandfather was called up and had to return to Germany, ending up in a barracks in Berlin. In 1940 he was sent to Stahlhammer (now called Kalety) in Poland to work at a Paper Mill.

In recognition of his linguistic skills, he was sent to Finland and Norway to work as an interpreter. He could speak Hungarian, German, Finish and Serbo-Croat. He was there in 1943/4.

In October 1944 he was sent to France where, following D-day he was captured by the Americans. Prisoners were going to be sent to Canada but he ended up in a POW camp at Scapa Flow in Orkney. He was then moved to a POW camp at Sawtry near Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire. On release he was re-patriated to Austria. In a censored letter to his brother-in-law in Finland he writes of not knowing where his family were.

John's mother, her sister and grand-mother had moved about with John's grand-father as far as Poland, but had not gone to France. As the Russians advanced from the East, they escaped from Poland, heading towards Dresden near where a friend of John's grand-mother had relatives.

They were scheduled to travel through Dresden by train between 13 and 15 February 1945.This coincided with the fire-bombing of Dresden on those dates.

John's mother remembers getting on a train out of Dresden and just getting into the woods as a bombing raid began. She remembers looking back as the bombing started. They continued on through Germany in cattle trucks. They reached the family friends where they stayed until the end of the war. They considered themselves lucky that this area was liberated by the Americans.

The Red Cross helped to sort out some irregularities with John's Grandmother's papers allowing them to travel across the borders to Austria.

John's Grand-parents and Aunt were reunited back in Bruck An De Mur in late 1945. John's grand-father was given the job he had when going to Finland 20+ years before.