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
Aug.
17, 2007, Inara writes: Most of the photos were taken by my father, Arvids
Buss (1909-1999). I am grateful that he was an avid photographer. He
had kept many rolls of negatives from our DP years and most of the images
are scanned from these. I cling
to my childhood memories of roaming the beautiful surrounding countryside,
gathering flowers and wild berries.
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.
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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 |
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My mother at one of the dormer
windows. 1949 |
![wild 204]](Wild204.jpg) |
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Inara at the entrance porch. Winter 1949/50. |
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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 |
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The house we lived in during 1949/50, photographed
during a visit to Wildflecken in 1970. |
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Outside the porch. My father on the right with friends
who were work colleagues. 1949 |
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Schnee, Feldmanis and my father stepping out. |
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Anita, my mother, my maternal aunt and I setting off down
our street. 1950 |
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At the entrance to one of the other houseson our street. |
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The view from our use in Wildflecken. 1949 |
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Our house at the end of the row photographed from the opposite
hills. |
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Wildflecken township on
the right. 1949 |
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My mother embroidering, sitting on the bed which came with
us from Bamberg Baltic camp. Wildflecken1949 |
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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. |
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My father (seated) at his workplace. Wildflecken 1949 |
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Wildflecken Food Service administration office. |
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Wildflecken 1949. The poster on the
right advertises Australia. |
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My father on the left with Kitchen Supervisor and Head
Chef Schnee. |
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My father on left with some of the food service staff. |
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Assembly line, preparing
food for ? number of people |
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Administrative staff party
in 1949. My father and mother in back row, 2nd and 3rd from
the left. |
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IRO colleagues in Wurtzburg. 1949 |
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Visitors on the road from the main camp. |
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Mother and I walking along the railway
line which ran along the hill opposite our house. |
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Mother and I, Winter 1949/50 |
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My mother and I with our
row of hourses behind us and the main camp buildings barely
distinguishable at the top of the hill. |
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My mother, my sister, my
visiting maternal aunt and I, with Wildflecken township behind
us. Summer 1950. |
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A soccer match inWildflecken.
Winter 1949. |
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Click to enlarge |
Termination papers. Food Supervisor is
leaving for Australia. Click to enlarge |
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Immigration identification
papers for the Buss family. |
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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. |
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Wildflecken departure photo with friends
28.6.1950. |
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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.'
June 25, 2008
My name is Adam Seipp. I am an Assistant Professor of History at Texas
A&M
University, specializing in modern German history.
Currently, I am working on book, provisionally titled "Strangers
in the Wild
Place: Americans, Refugees, and Germans, 1945-55," that deals with
the town,
community, and camp at Wildflecken as a way of understanding broader trends in
Central European and international history. I have recently returned
from a
visit to the area, and had the pleasure of a tour of the base with Heinz
Leitsch. Heinz was kind enough to pass on your contact information
as an
authority on the camp and the network of former Wildflecken residents in the
United States.
I have done research in archives in Germany (in Wuerzburg and Wildflecken) and
the United States (chiefly the UN archives in New York and the National Archives
in Maryland). This fall, I will travel to Minnesota to use the
extensive Polish
immigration archives in St. Paul.
I would be very interested in discussing with you any thoughts you might have
on
materials, resources, and potential interview subjects in the U.S. and
Europe.
If you need references or any other material, I would be happy to provide those
as well.
Best wishes, and I look forward to being in touch in the future.
Adam Seipp
--
Adam R. Seipp, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of History
Texas A&M University
(979) 845-1737
Wildflecken Links

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