大象传媒

Heinz Zabel

He was born in December 1922 in Arnoldsdorf, Germany along the West Prussian border (a.k.a. The Polish Corridor that was German territory awarded to newly independent Poland by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919). Due to the instability of Europe鈥檚 political situation, his family moved westward near the coast of the Baltic Sea in 1927. Heinz recalls no running water and beautiful stallions running around as they resided in this 鈥榯emporary village鈥� before moving to a proper house. In 1928 they moved to a more comfortable home and Heinz started school. His teacher was very stern and proper, 鈥渨ith a well-trimmed goatee, cane and hat.鈥� In 1932, at age 10, Heinz recalls getting a more effective and approachable teacher, 鈥溾� new breed of teacher for which I thank him for everything I know.鈥�

The Zabel family found themselves well rooted and settled by this time. Heinz鈥檚 father had a furniture shop where he and his brother assisted with woodworking and carpentry. Another older brother became a blacksmith and made things such as horseshoes and wagon wheels in the country outside town.

But in 1933, Hitler arrived on the scene. At 18 years of age, Heinz joined the German Air Force in 1941. He was part of the Gdansk/Danzig Langfuhr Regiment and was sent to Russia for boot-camp, or as Heinz says, 鈥渢o get minced-up.鈥� Heinz joined the paratrooper division of the German Air Force. He was stationed along Russia鈥檚 Lovat River in 1942.

In 1943, Heinz was wounded twice. 鈥� I was told I was extremely lucky with both wounds,鈥� Heinz recalls, 鈥淚 was lucky with the first, in that, had the location of the wound been a centimetre from where it was, I would鈥檝e been a vegetable or dead.鈥� He was lucky with the second wound in that he was discharged from his military duties and sent home on recuperation leave. 鈥淭his was worth more than 拢10,000 to me,鈥� says Heinz. In December 1943, he was released from the hospital and sent home. His father died in 1944 and Heinz joined the German Air Force Reserve Unit in France. He was sent to train in Nancy, France. He was stationed along the beaches of Brittany and was invaded on D-Day, June 6, 1944. They resisted for weeks while the British, Canadians and Americans invaded. They walked through the night and hid in the bushes during the day. By August 22, 1944, Britain and Canada battled from the North while US General Patton鈥檚 troops battled from the South, creating what is known as Falaise Pocket. Heinz and his German Regiment were captured at this point. Heinz recalls saying, 鈥淭his is it. It is pointless. The war was finished.鈥� Heinz and four other soldiers said, 鈥淲e will capitulate to you if you will treat us like Prisoners of War.鈥� He and his fellow officers were extremely disheartened. Paratroopers like them had such a clean reputation and were devoted to fight for their country and now it was over鈥hey were forced to surrender and their futures are in question.

They (Heinz and the rest of the POWs) were transported to the Belgian village of Binche. A Belgian soldier brought them into the village to buy some cheese and they slept in a schoolhouse. The next morning they heard a 鈥渉ullabaloo鈥� outside the schoolhouse from the locals and the US troops. Heinz states, 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 speak one word of English. They called us names, but I didn鈥檛 know what any of it meant.鈥� The US troops came in forcefully and loudly and took Heinz and his group away to a big church in Chartres (southeast of Paris) and onto a camp there that was originally where the French kept Germans during WWI. This became their POW camp from September 1944 to April 1945. There were about 2,000 POWs in this camp. Heinz remembers that some of the prisoners secretly built a tunnel from the inside of the camp to the outside fence surrounded by shrubs. One day a farm cart passed along the fault line of the tunnel and the cart鈥檚 wheel broke through the ground into the trench. Guards quickly investigated the trench that the farmer鈥檚 cart was stuck in and two US officers lifted the cart up and out with six foot long poles. The trench was immediately closed up.

In early April 1945, Heinz and his group were loaded onto lorries (inclement weather kept them from being flown) and transported to the port of Le Havre. They were loaded onto 鈥淜aiser ships鈥� (10,000 ton capacity ships). Heinz was put in the bow of the ship and was allowed to go up on deck 10 or 20 minutes at a time for fresh air. The voyage lasted for about six days. They docked in New York City on April 12, 1945. Heinz recalls this a day also being the day Franklin D. Roosevelt died. By this time, Heinz was feeling seriously dejected and didn鈥檛 see any future in his life. He remembered thinking as he was forcefully shipped off to a camp in Chartres, 鈥淲hat the hell am I doing here? How did I get here?鈥� Now he is in entering a completely foreign land against his will and when he saw the Statue of Liberty, he remembers thinking 鈥淏ut no liberty for us.鈥� After disembarking from the ship, they were all stripped down in the chilly April climate and deloused. Delousing entailed covering their naked bodies with white DDT powder and harshly scrubbed and showered. This was the first bath he had in six months other than a dip in a river in France. Their uniforms and leather were steamed and returned shrivelled.

They were put on a train to Texas after this uncomfortable cleansing. He recalls it not being a very smooth trip due to the Ohio River overflowing. 鈥淎ll you could see was rooftops and treetops. So, we couldn鈥檛 pass.鈥� Eventually they reached Huntsville, Texas. When they got off the train to enter the camp, the first thing Heinz remembers seeing was the image of a cowboy with a hat and lasso on a horse nearby. The cowboy looked very tired and oppressed by the heat as he sat on his horse with his head down not moving. Heinz connected with the image of this foreigner as he entered the camp. He too felt tired and oppressed.

At this Texas camp, they all wore their steam-treated, ill-fitting uniforms. They cut their trousers into shorts and some even cut their leather boots into a type of sandal. Heinz was delighted to finally have a proper shower at this camp and sufficient food. One tragic memory he has of this camp, however, is of a fellow-prisoner and miscommunication. This prisoner washed his clothes and received the permission from the surveillance officer to hang his wash out on the fence. After an hour or so, the prisoner went out to the fence to collect his wash and was shot by a different surveillance officer. He died unnecessarily.

Fort Bliss in El Paso requested for some prison workers and Heinz volunteered to work. As he and a group of volunteers were shipped to El Paso, he started having some dental problems. Dental problems were inevitable since the prisoners had no toothpaste and would use soap and some grit, at best, to scrub their teeth. He was brought to a dentist in El Paso and instead of repairing or treating the two painful teeth; the dentist extracted them and sent Heinz on his way.

Cotton fields surrounded Fort Bliss. He joined about 50 other workers at picking cotton in the fields and sleeping in the cotton warehouse. He recalls the fields being divided by huge irrigation ditches where 鈥渓ittle alligators would snap at your heels鈥� as you crossed. There were strong dusty winds as they hoed the fields. Captain Brown treated them all quite well. Heinz remembers the captain pulling a bald prisoner out of their line-up and advising the rest of them to get haircuts or their hats will make them bald like that. One day in June 1945, Captain Brown assembled all of the prisoners and showed them photos of the horror that occurred in the German concentration camps. Heinz at first didn鈥檛 believe it. He was appalled and saddened by what the German military had done while he was naively fighting for them. 鈥淚t affected me greatly,鈥� says Heinz.

One day the Major marched the prisoners out to small football field outside of camp and lined them up. Captain Brown approached them all with his wife and asked them all to sing to her. Heinz recalls, 鈥淪he was smiling ear to ear.鈥�

He was asked to do some more farm work, like hoeing more fields and trimming corn. From El Paso, the group of prisoners were moved to Illinois to work in a vegetable cannery for a few weeks during harvest. He recalls their supervisor being of Native American descent. They used to call him 鈥淪itting Bull鈥� as he supervised their work.

The prisoners were asked, 鈥淲ho knows how to use a scythe?鈥� Heinz knew how to use one from his childhood and he volunteered with a few other prisons for a job on a farm in Wisconsin. When they reached the farm where they would be harvesting hay, a little farmer appeared in cowboy boots, jeans, a short jacket and a hat. The farmer seemed troubled when he saw the prisoners in their black uniforms with POW armbands. The farmer went for his shotgun as if these workers were actually invading his homestead. The US officer loaded the group of prison workers back into the lorry and they left without working for the little farmer.

Heinz and his group was moved to another farm family which welcomed them and rewarded them after their hard work with a home-cooked dinner and a secret trip in the farmer鈥檚 Oldsmobile to the local tavern. The farmer bought them each a bottle of beer and a swig of bourbon. Heinz was happy to work twice at that farm.

In August 1945, Heinz saw a notice that two atom bombs exploded in Japan. He was shipped to work the fields in Montana near the Yellowstone River, but the ground was covered with snow. So, he was moved to a camp in Arizona and remembers crossing the steep ledge along the Coolidge Dam. The camp was situated on a high plateau where they were sent into the fields to pick cotton. They were each issued six-foot bags to fill with cotton and were told, 鈥淵ou must pick 60lbs. of cotton or you won鈥檛 eat tonight.鈥� This was an impossible task for each of them. They were averaging 15lbs. per bag and were not eating. They all started filling the bags with stones and sand along with the cotton in order to make their 60lb. goal. This was soon discovered and they were reprimanded and moved to a camp in New Mexico. This camp asked for joiners and Heinz, again, volunteered due to his childhood spent working in his father鈥檚 furniture shop. He was put to work sawing timber for wooden packing crates. He felt right at home using all of the woodworking machinery. Some girls asked the POW joiners to make them picture frames during their breaks from work. They paid for the frames with cartons of Lucky Strike and Camel cigarettes.

By April 1946, Heinz and his fellow prisoners were given the news that they were finally going home. He packed his accumulation of cigarettes, approximately 200 (10 packs), and was shipped back to Hudson Harbour in New York. Heinz and his fellow German prisoners were loaded onto a ship in early May. The ship arrived at a Liverpool port in England on May 12, 1946. All of the prisoners protested for not being shipped to mainland Europe. They were not taken home to Germany, but rather to Sheffield and then a camp in Derby. They were put to work in the British Celanese factory. He also worked in a steam house, on farms, rebuilt roads when the River Trent overflowed and mined silicone in a stone quarry.

Heinz was eventually released in 1948. The British government asked if he鈥檇 like to maintain a career in England, where he would be able to go home to Germany for three or four weeks and the British would pay for his trip back to England to work as a farm worker. In June 1948, Heinz signed on as a farm worker with England because he didn鈥檛 know where his family was located and felt it was the best decision at this point in his life. Later in 1948, a Swiss search bureau located the Zabel family in a village north of Hamburg. Heinz visited his family for a month or so, but returned to his new working-life in England. Heinz created a good career for himself, formed a family and has remained in England ever since.

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