Wildflecken DP camp

Germany

Information about Polish emigrants that might have died or have been born in the "Displaced Persons Camp Wildlfecken" can be obtained at the City of Wildflecken, Germany mail address:

Gemeindeverwaltung Wildflecken
Rathausplatz 1
D-97772 Wildflecken
Germany

E-mail: info@wildflecken.de

http://www.camp-wildflecken.de/
official homepage of the "Marktgemeinde", the City of Wildflecken

Inara Bush of Australia has supplied us with these photos of Wildflecken. If you see your family in these photos, email her to receive higher 1200 dpi images: inite@live.com.au

Click to enlarge photos

My mother, Alise Buss (pronounced Bush), my elder sister, Anita, and I, Inara, were evacuated from Riga by ship in July 1944. The Soviet Army re-occupied Latvia in October 1944. My father, Arvids, a soldier in the Latvian Army, remained in Latvia. He tracked us down in the hamlet of Hermannsried some weeks after the war ended on May 8, 1945. We lived in DP camps in Windischbergerdorf, Bamberg, Wildflecken and Delmenhorst until we boarded an IRO ship at Bremerhaven in 1950, bound for Australia under its DPs Immigration Scheme.
We were assigned the upstairs part of this house with two rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. One room was my parents' bedroom by night and mainly kept for 'best' in case of visitors. Anita and I slept in the other, smaller room which becomes the living room during the day. 1949		My mother at one of the dormer windows. 1949
Inara at the entrance porch. Winter 1949/50.		My mother, Anita and I playing ball on the patio topping the garage at street level, while waiting for my father to come home. 1949
The house we lived in during 1949/50, photographed during a visit to Wildflecken in 1970.
Outside the porch. My father on the right with friends who were work colleagues. 1949		Schnee, Feldmanis and my father stepping out.
Anita, my mother, my maternal aunt and I setting off down our street. 1950		At the entrance to one of the other houseson our street.
The view from our use in Wildflecken. 1949		Our house at the end of the row photographed from the opposite hills.
Wildflecken township on the right. 1949
My mother embroidering, sitting on the bed which came with us from Bamberg Baltic camp. Wildflecken1949		Anita and I Christmas 1949. Wanting a Christmas tree for our room, I used my pocket knife to cut down the little tree from what I thought was the edge of the forest. It was actually in the grounds of the IRO administration building known as the White House. My mortified father went to apologise.
My father (seated) at his workplace. Wildflecken 1949
Wildflecken Food Service administration office.		Wildflecken 1949. The poster on the right advertises Australia.
My father on the left with Kitchen Supervisor and Head Chef Schnee.		My father on left with some of the food service staff.
Assembly line, preparing food for ? number of people
Administrative staff party in 1949. My father and mother in back row, 2nd and 3rd from the left.
IRO colleagues in Wurtzburg. 1949		Visitors on the road from the main camp.
Mother and I walking along the railway line which ran along the hill opposite our house.		Mother and I, Winter 1949/50
My mother and I with our row of hourses behind us and the main camp buildings barely distinguishable at the top of the hill.
My mother, my sister, my visiting maternal aunt and I, with Wildflecken township behind us. Summer 1950.
A soccer match inWildflecken. Winter 1949.
Click to enlarge
Termination papers. Food Supervisor is leaving for Australia. Click to enlarge
Immigration identification papers for the Buss family.
Wildflecken train station platform on 28.6.1950 as we waited for the train to take us to the transit camp in Delmenhorst to avait a ship for Australia. Our row of houses in the distance.		Wildflecken departure photo with friends 28.6.1950.
		Anita, Alise and Inara on the right with friends. The year in Wildflecken was the happiest of my childhood. Being taken away from there was a painful wrench. Apart from Latvian customs, nothing felt familiar again for many years.

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Premature and other early deaths of post-war DPs children:
 
Children's Cemetery Wildflecken
Following from John Guzlowski's blogspot 'Lightning and Ashes'
Submitted by: Alan Newark, May, 2008
  
'A lot of the babies in those DP camps were sickly and many of them died. My sister and I got sick and dehydrated and feverish, but we survived. Years later, my mother was telling me about this and she said, „I thought you were a goner.‰ It was like this all over, I guess. At one of the DP camps, the one at Wildflecken in Germany, there‚s a Polish cemetery where you can see the graves of 427 babies born right after the war. Kathryn Hulme was a UN administrator at this camp and wrote about her experiences in The Wild Place.'