My Father, Righteousness and the American Flag

My mother, stricken and ravaged by a stroke, looked helplessly on as I stared at my father’s almost lifeless body just a few feet away on the nursing home bed. They shared a room together during the last ten years of their life. She, helpless and physically incapacitated, and he a mere shell of the man he once was, coexisted in the dreary setting of an American nursing home.  What has become of my loving mother and father, after their struggles for freedom and a better life in the country of their dreams?  I knew the end was near for both of them.

     I noticed that my father’s gown had slipped down, revealing his bony chest, sunken neck and wasted shoulders, once robust and well developed from years of pushing the wooden planes and saws he used during his years as a carpenter and cabinetmaker.  As I reached down to pull his gown up, I was struck by the faded remnants of a tattoo on his right shoulder.  As a child growing up, I remember seeing the same tattoo of an American flag on his sweaty and hairy shoulder while he toiled away in his cabinet shop during the late 1940’s and early 1950’s to earn a meager living for me and my mother.  He was always eager to tell me the meaning behind his tattoo, which he had proudly worn since 1928.

     “Oh Tata, the name we all affectionately called him , if I could only hear you  once more and tell me of the dreams you told me so many years ago and about your struggles to come to America”.  My mind raced with fading memories of those stories and the circumstances of our family’s survival during World War II in the former Yugoslavia. I realized that my life and very existence, as well as that of my children, was the direct result of this man, my dying father’s principled and righteous life, during the hellish years of that war, so long ago.  That flag represented his dream for a better life in a land that was free of persecution, hatred and prejudice, so prevalent during most of his life back home.

     We are descendents of the Donauschwaben, or Danube-Schwabians, German colonists who had been settled by the Hapsburg Monarchy some two centuries before in the area that lay between the Danube, Tisza, Drava, Sava and Morash Rivers in the former Yugoslavia, after the expulsion of the Turks who left an unpopulated wilderness and wasteland behind them. Many of the settlers never saw the fruits of their labors because of famine and plague that swept through their ranks. The pioneer spirit prevailed, however, and they not only re-established a civilization but in the span of 200 years made this area one of the most fruitful in Southeastern Europe. It was even referred to as the "Breadbasket of Europe".That was our home.


     During the Second World War Yugoslavia was occupied by the German Army and their allies.   As the German Army and their allies began to retreat in the face of the Russian invasion, a portion of the German speaking population evacuated along with them.  But about one half of the German population,  who had nothing whatsoever to do with the German occupation and who had lived in peace and friendship with their various Slavic neighbors for almost two centuries, were not prepared to abandon what for them was their homeland. They remained behind despite the inherent risks and atrocities that were to befall them at the hands of Tito’s communists and their Russian allies, solely because of their German heritage.  I, along with my father and mother, were among these unfortunate remaining ethnic Germans.



     During the German occupation of Yugoslavia, my father and a group of his  close multi-ethnic neighbors and friends had fervently and steadfastly resisted recruiting efforts by the Germans, claiming pacifism as their reason and the cause  in which they believed. Their refusal to join the German army was met with harsh criticism and ridicule by their more zealous neighbors and supporters of the occupation and it's malevolent causes.  My father recalled being ostracized and shunned by some of his former alleged “friends and neighbors”. Life for them during the German occupation of Yugoslavia was one of social and economic isolation.  Once-loyal customers and friends suddenly became uninterested in using my father’s services as a cabinet-maker and carpenter.  Membership in local cultural clubs and social gatherings was met with excuses and regrets.  It was during those formidable years that my parents befriended and developed relationships with our Hungarian and Serbian neighbors of all religious persuasions that have remained true for many years to come. In hindsight, these relationships and acquaintances ultimately may have saved our life.
      As the Allies and Russian forces invaded the land, it was time for indiscriminate revenge against all ethnic Germans, somewhat akin to the internment camps established in the United States for ethnic Japanese American citizens following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
 
     During the years that followed, approximately 250, 000 Danube Swabians perished in the concentration camps of Tito.  Furthermore, 100, 000 of our people from Rumania and Hungary were abducted to Russia and Rumania for forced labor, where many more perished.
 

 
     My father’s accounts of those years of genocide in the concentration camps was much more horrific and frightening. Those experiences had given him nightmares for many of his adult years.  He was kept confined in a stark environment with meager rations along with hundreds of other adult men.  There were daily executions by the camp guards.  It was the arbitrary and indiscriminate nature of these executions that was most frightening.  While some men, who were known sympathizers during the German occupation were deserving of their punishment, others like my father were not.


     As fate would have it, there arose a desperate need for skilled labor in post-war Yugoslavia by Tito's Communist government. They were eager to re-build the country's destroyed infrastructure, in particular electric power plants requiring the manufacture of detailed wooden templates from which new electric turbines were to be made.  This effort demanded the assembling of all available skilled draftsmen and craftsmen in the region.  Among these craftsmen, were good friends and  colleagues of my father who were very aware of my father's skills.  When recruited by the Communist government, these men professed their lack of specific wood-working expertise, but also admitted to knowing an individual, my father, who did possess these specialized skills.  Unfortunately, Julius and his family were interred in the nearby German concentration camp and thereby unavailable to assist in the re-building effort.
    Desperate for skilled workers with wood-working expertise,  the Communist authorities decided to closely scrutinize my father's whereabouts and activities during the German occupation of Yugoslavia.  With the sworn and documented testimonies of our Hungarian and Serbian friends ,  my father's proven innocence pacifism and loyalty towards his neighbors regardless of their ethnicity or religious beliefs during the German occupation,  our family was freed from the concentration camp.  During these interrogations and proceedings, my father's admiration for Americans (and their allies) as vividly demonstrated by the tattoo of the U.S. flag on his right shoulder, may have been the deciding factor in our survival as a family.
     Almost fifty years later, I stood motionless in the nursing home, as I watched my father's lifeless and wasted  body being placed on the gurney to be transported to the funeral home.  My dear mother, with tears in her eyes, sat still in her wheelchair as she observed the sad scene unfold in front of her.  I could not help but think what went through her mind at that time.  Did she choose to remember the happy days they spent together before the war?  Did she remember the near-death experiences in our old homeland during the war? Or, did she choose only to remember the life of freedom and joy of our past 40 years in our new country and the grandchildren, fathered by her only son whose life she saved and nurtured for all those years, and now standing beside her?  I will never know.  She too is now just a pleasant memory.
     As I recently stood in the cemetery, staring at the tombstone of my parents with my own son Richard and his wife Farm at my side,  I was overcome with emotion, as is often the case when I visit the grave-site.  Will my children every know the sacrifices of their parents and grandparents?  Will they ever appreciate the meaning of the freedoms they enjoy as Americans?  Will they inherit the humility and righteousness of their grandparents?  Will they know the right thing to do, like Tata and Omy when lives are at stake?  Oh well, I can only hope so.