User:Halibutt/Erika of Rumia

This is a translation of an article Erika z Rumii by Piotr Szubarczyk and Piotr Semków from the Gdańsk office of the Institute of National Remembrance, published in the May issue of the "Biuletyn IPN". No copyright information was provided by the publisher and it is assumed that copyrights belong to the authors. Copyright for the harsh English translation - Halibutt

Also, please note that this is but a reference for those who take part in Talk:Erika Steinbach discussion and as such should not be merged with the article itself (what for?). The translation has many mistakes and grammatical errors, but correcting it would be a simple waste of time. This is not and is not supposed to be a separate Wikipedia article

ISSN 16419561

Erika of Rumia

The last act of WWII in Pomerania ended on May 10, 1945 when last German forces capitulated on Hel Peninsula. Erika Hermann, one and a half years old - known today as Erika Steinbach - and her half year old sister, together with their mother Erika Christa Hermann nee Grote, were already in Germany by then. They were not included in a plan prepared by the allies during the Potsdam conference regarding the transfer of German population. They left for the homeland of their father, Wilhelm Karl Hermann - to Hanau on the Main.

The town of Rumia was never their Heimat. Erika Grote came there from Berlin where she lived at Lessingstrasse 41 (born in Bremen, January 27, 1922) to join her fiancée Wilhelm Karl Hermann (born January 29 in Hanau). The latter since 1941 served as a NCO (feldwebel) of Wehrmacht at a helping unit (jednostka pomocnicza in Polish, no idea how to translate that - Halibutt) at Luftwaffe airport in Rumia, then renamed to Rahmel. They did not own anything there. They stayed with a family, most probably with local Kashubian Paulin family. They were not given a house of any Polish family expulsed from the "liberated" town. Such a privilege was granted only to the officers from the airport. Some of them lived in "Claassen Hotel", others in houses of expulsed Poles, who had been given a one-way ticket for a freight train. Direction - Częstochowa, Siedlce, Radom and other towns of the so-called General Government. Rahmel was then a part of Reich. For several dozen thousands of people from Gdynia, Rumia and other towns of the area it was a real tragedy. The builders of the "Polish California", real pioneers of the II Republic, linking their fate with the ever-growing city of Gdynia, were deprived of their all property in a matter of minutes. They were told that they could take not more than 25 kilos of luggage, that they must leave their homes cleansed and that the keys must be left in the doors. Their situation was yet better than those who were found a threat for the Reich: members of the Związek Zachodni (Western Union, a society promoting the development of Pomerania - Halibutt), Polish social organizations, teachers, priests and other members of intelligentsia. Those were simply killed over death pits near the village of Piaśnica, where 12,000 people were murdered. Among those killed was mayor of Rumia Hipolit Roszczynialski. His brother, priest Edmund Roszczynialski (currently being beatified) was murdered in a nearby village of Cewice. The inhabitants of Rumia were also sent to Stutthof concentration camp, where many of them died.

Here follows a part with a short history of Rumia. It is very similar to that of the Rumia article at Wikipedia, so I'll simply leave it out. If you really think you need it - just let me know.

To Biała Rzeka, a district of Rumia, feldwebel Wilhelm Karl Hermann was sent in 1941. There was a German military unit carrying out servicing duties at the airport stationed there. In Rumia there also were plane assembly works in which Polish, British and French POWs were working. Parts of the planes were also produced in a local labour camp where men and women of Polish, Italian, Russian and other nationalities were held. The planes assembled there were Focke-Wulf, Junkers and Heinkel. The Germans enlarged the airport significantly and attached it to the Gdynia-area airfields sector.

Wilhelm Hermann was stationed in Biała Rzeka, but he did not have many friends among the military men. He was seeking contacts in the town. He didn't have any relatives there, although it is said that the butcher named Hermann might've been his distant relative. However, the surname Hermann was quite frequent among the Pommeranian Germans. The most notable to bear that name was Fritz Hermann, SS-Brigadefuehrer, Head of the Civil Administration of Danzig (Regierungspräsident, Prezydent rejencji), sentenced to death after the war for crimes he committed in the 1940-1943 period.

Feldwebel Wilhelm Hermann became friends with the family of local water works (Wasserwerk), Paweł Obersieg. The Obersieg family was enlisted on the Reichsdeutsche list and since Paweł was a waterwork engineer, he was chosen as the manager of the works. However, after the war he did not want to leave for Germany. Thanks to help he provided for local Poles and Kashubians during the war he's been verified and stayed in Rumia until his death in the eighties. His wife was Kashubian. They spoke German and Kashubian at home and, like most Kashubian families, prayed only in Polish language. Because of that and because of accusations of listening to the BBC, Obersieg had serious problems during the war. However, he managed to get out of them. Perhaps because of the fact that he helped many people during the war and perhaps because of the fact that he's been the major... moonshine supplier for local population. He managed to keep the latter information secret and the local authorities did not know that until after the war. However, when in March 1945 the Soviets reached Rumia, they dug out all the secret tanks in Waterworks garden. By then Obersieg family managed to escape. A week before, Paweł Obersieg was ordered by local German authorities to blow up the Water works as soon as the Red Army reaches Rumia. He disobeyed the order and hid with his family. When on March 25 Feldgendarmerie entered their home to arrest the "traitor", he was already away. Thanks to Obersieg's deed the Water works were spared and the Germans had no time to destroy them. Contrary to the nearby radio station at Dębiogórska street which was blown up the very same day.

Since the very beginning of his service in Rumia, feldwebel was often visited by his fiancée from Berlin - Erika Grote. Soon, on January 18, 1943 Wilhelm and Erika got married. Their best men were two officers from the airport - Froeh and Ludwig. Six months later, on July 26, 1943, their first daughter Erika was born. It remains a secret why was she born in Obersieg's flat in the Water works. It's hard to find an answer now, after 60 years. Perhaps Erika saw Obersieg's flat as better equipped for a safe birth giving? Or perhaps, as local city legend has it, she came there looking after her husband who became a great fan of Obersieg's moonshine? For several weeks after the daughter was born Erika stayed with the Obersieg family.

Probably in January 1944 Wilhelm Karl Hermann was sent to the Eastern Front. Erika was pregnant with their second daughter by then (she was born in October). At that time there still was no panic among local Germans, nobody hanged true and supposed deserters on street lights in Gdansk, there was still no great wave of people fleeing the East Prussia to Tricity. However, Erika decided to come back to Germany earlier. Not waiting for the worst to come she packed her belongings and returned to Hanau in January 1945. The informations of her miraculous salvation from the Wilhelm Gustloff disaster are false. Erika did not want to obtain a ticket for Gustloff since she reached Germany two months before Gustloff started her first voyage on the Gdansk-Germany route. On the Institut für soziale Dreigliederung (http://www.dreigliederung.de/) page it is argued that Erika Steinbach does not find the 15 millions of German DPs from Eastern Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Southern Europe victims of Hitler. On the Wikipedia, die freie Enzyklopädie page it is said that frau Steinbach was born in a Luftwaffenoffizier family (I corrected that some time ago - Halibutt)... "Airforce officer family" - that sounds much better than the family of a feldwebel who had nothing to do with aeroplanes.

There is no airfield in Rumia any more. It was bombed to the ground by the RAF in early 1945. After the war concrete tablets were used for reconstruction of homes destroyed by the war. There is also no house of Erika Steinbach. She never had one there.

The authors used documents from the Gdansk division of the IPN and relations of inhabitants of Rumia who met Hermann family during the German occupation.