Refugee in search of a homeland

I went back to Emersleben, where an invitation to a wedding awaited my arrival. The reading circle I had been part of, had continued and had blossomed into a romance. Mally and Heinz Wenske had become engaged, and they wanted to get married on 3 September 1949. I made it in good time and the wedding turned out to be a most enjoyable occasion. Everyone from our family had been invited, Frau Grube came from Berlin, and there were lots of people from the Wenske family.

Oma was frailer again but she was still very interested in all my affairs. She was concerned about my future and so had written to her cousin, Albert Kreglinger in Antwerp, who was the president of a prosperous wool trading firm Kreglinger & Co, to see if I could start somewhere in the wool trade. Vater had written to Tante Emma in Boston, Oma's sister, whose son John had married a Kreglinger and owned the agency of the Kreglinger firm for the USA, and Mutter had contacted Onkel Wilhelm Forstmann, a cousin of hers, who was the buyer of Hardt Pocorny & Co., a worsted spinning mill producing knitting wool. He had some contacts in Bremen. The combined efforts resulted in my getting an apprenticeship in a wool firm in Bremen.

Oma wrote in her memoirs that Albert Kreglinger, whose mother died in May 1884 at the birth of her daughter, was brought up by her mother. "My mother had promised (my aunt) on her death bed, to take the orphaned children and their father into her home." He was like a brother to her, and so he promised to pay a scholarship for me for the duration of my apprenticeship. Opa's father had been a wool merchant in Antwerp, before his firm went broke. On Mutter's side too were several cousins who owned spinning mills in the Rhineland. It seemed therefore the best thing for me to continue in that tradition and start a new career in the wool trade, but I had no idea of what was involved in commerce and I would have to learn from scratch.

At the end of September I had to leave my family again. I was going into a new adventure, into a town where I knew not a soul. But I was glad that Onkel Wilhelm had agreed to take me under his wings for a little while, so it didn't feel too threatening.

I had to cross the border again, filled with trepidation and fear, but as there was no other way I simply had to risk it. I was lucky, no one saw me, and I arrived on the other side greatly relieved, for I didn't want to be late for my appointment with Onkel Wilhelm on 1 October 1949 in Bremen.

The train journey was a nightmare. A totally overcrowded train, standing in the corridor squashed into a corner, unable to move, but also unable to fall. No food of course throughout the journey, so when I arrived in Bremen in the early morning hours of Saturday, 1 October 1949, I was very tired and very hungry.

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