Illa Thompson.
Tomorrow, Sunday 13 April, is the 80th anniversary of one of the lesser-remembered incidents from the Second World War: The Isenschnibbe Barn Atrocity which took place in the small Eastern German town of Gardelegen in 1945.
This weekend in Gardelegen, the few remaining survivors and family members will gather to pay their respects.
This is of particular relevance to my sisters and I as it involved our maternal ancestors. Family stories make global history personal. My maternal Grandfather, Pastor Dr Friedrich Franz, was a Lutheran minister and respected town elder in Gardelegen whose beautiful old church had been bombed in an American air raid.
On April 13, 1945, an unspeakably violent event took place which subsequently defined the town, and our family. Known as the Isenschnibbe Barn Atrocity, it became the poster image for the Nazi death marches, concentration camp evacuation and end-phase crimes perpetrated in the last weeks of the war.
Gardelegen is not far from Stendal on the main Berlin to Hanover railway line. In the summer of 1944, faced with advancing Allied troops, the SS started plans to evacuate the concentration and labour camps. In the Altmark region, the train lines were so badly damaged, that evacuation of all inmates – possibly around 5000 men – continued on foot, towards Gardelegen, in a gruesome procession that lasted for days.
Four Dutch labour camp inmates managed to escape and took refuge with our grandfather and his family, hidden in the rectory shed. The oldest was 61-year Mathieu Lambert van Geen, previously a mayor of the Dutch city of Putten.
On the evening of April 13, two columns of exhausted prisoners, under heavy although haphazard Nazi guard, entered Gardelegen. They were taken to the Isenschibbe barn on the outskirts of the town. The doors were bolted, and the barn was torched. The handful who managed to bury their way out of the barn, were shot on sight. That night, 1016 men died.
On April 15, the Americans discovered the barn, apparently quite by chance, which was still smouldering with several hundred bodies still inside. They instructed the people of Gardelegen – including my grandparents, my then teenage mother and her siblings, to bury the dead, under armed guard.
Volatile and anxious days followed with the allies searching for perpetrators and looking for instigators to blame. There were fearful murmurs of retaliation.
Although factual information gets sketchy at this time, townsfolk publicly credit our grandfather who, together with Dutch Mayor Mathieu Lambert van Geen, pleaded with American officers to make sure that there would be no large-scale revenge attacks against the people of Gardelegen.
Like so many small towns, the end of the war did not automatically bring peace and stability. Entire families had been scooped up, never to return, Russian occupation followed, and life in East Germany continued to be dangerous, difficult and grim. Our family survived the war and escaped from Germany to continue a slightly easier life in the West.
Mum and Dad, my sisters and I ended up here in Durban – Dad, an automotive engineer in the UK, was head-hunted in the seventies to work for Toyota in Prospecton. Until Mum passed away just prior to Covid, in recent years, us sisters took turns to accompany her to class reunions and anniversary events in Gardelegen. Regularly accompanied by journalists and historians eager to record her recollections and memories.
We were all there when a beautiful new Johanniter care home facility was opened in the refurbished button factory in Gardelegen high street, in the name of our grandfather. We were all watching online over lockdown at the opening of the really impressive Gardelegen Holocaust Museum on the site of the barn atrocity.
And although we won’t be in Gardelegen this weekend, we will light a candle and remember those who perished, and those who survived, the Barn Atrocity 60 years ago.
Our family’s story could be yours too. I know people who have had experiences which echo and amplify our own. Brave men and women, whose selfless actions saved lives, I am reminded that heroes are among us. After all, they are just ordinary people, in extraordinary circumstances, quietly doing remarkable things. Just like our grandfather.
Illa Thompson is a Durban based publicist, running Publicity Matters with her sister Sophie. She works part time for the Denis Hurley Centre, facilitating their Street Lit homeless book project. Thompson gave a presentation about her family’s story at the Durban Holocaust and Genocide Centre last month. A video of the presentation can be viewed on youtube. Visit www.pubmat.co.za or Publicity Matters social media platforms for the link.