A wise man's country is the world.
Astippus

Chapter 21

LAST STAGE BEFORE EXIT

After the hustle and bustle of packing our meager belongings and having them picked up by a trucking company, we were off on the express train to Frankfurt/Main, not Frankfurt/Oder. From the main railway station in Frankfurt, I called Mr. Boeller, and his secretary gave me the address of a family in a suburb of Frankfurt who put business travelers up in their house.

This rooming business was widespread in Frankfurt, a city which had numerous business conventions and exhibitions, called “Messen” (trade shows). These shows often bring tens of thousands of visitors to the city, far in excess of the hotel room capacity. Residents set up a room or rooms in their apartments or houses to accommodate these guests, and make extra money. Martha and I got one of these rooms, and Martha went out hunting for a permanent place, since I had to start working right away.

Even six years after the end of the war it was difficult in Frankfurt, or any other German City to find a room or apartment. Rebuilding was progressing slowly due to a shortage of capital and material. In Frankfurt about 50 percent of all buildings were still rubble. The situation was aggravated by the occupational forces, who had confiscated many of the inhabitable buildings for their own purposes.

Being a city person, Martha felt right at home in Frankfurt, and found us a large room in a ten room apartment. Mrs. Zureck, the apartment owner, had thirteen family members and relatives living in the huge flat, but still rented two rooms to outsiders. Occasionally there were problems as far as kitchen and bathroom use was concerned. Everybody was used to these high density accommodations in the postwar period and tried to make them as frictionless as possible. Mrs. Zureck’s husband, an art dealer, had died during the war, and had left her with three kids and no income. She had done remarkably well by renting part of her flat, and selling off some of her valuable art objects. The place was right on Fürstenberger Strasse, a couple of blocks from the huge I. G. Farben Hochhaus, the headquarters of the U.S. military government in Germany.

Boeller & Co. was family owned, which I didn’t know when I agreed to join the company. Shortages caused by the war and the destruction of many manufacturing plants, as well as the complete dismantling of the ophthalmic industry in the Russian occupation zone, created a booming market for optical goods.

Boeller & Co. produced frames for eye glasses. It was a fairly small manufacturer with about 150 employees, and was not a top quality company. Technically their manufacturing techniques were “medieval” compared to the company I had left in Stuttgart, but that was Mr. Boeller’s reason for hiring me. I was to update the company’s manufacturing processes. It was a job I loved to do, and was good at.
I had to win support within the company for my improvements. My salary was good, so I was able to stomach the work climate for a while.

Valuable help and support came from a Hungarian woman by the name of Elizabeth, who was a skilled draftsperson. My prime job was to design new lens frames and set up the manufacturing processes for them, and she was exceedingly helpful at the documentation end of that task. She also had an uncanny way of handling some of the difficult human relations problems for me.

She knew that at times I bit off more than I could chew, and gave me advice and support. Another colleague, a fellow optician, and a mechanical engineer, also gave support and help.

It was just a matter of time for the good working relationship with Elizabeth to blossom into an extramarital love affair. Elizabeth was not married, and was more than willing to lure me away from Martha. She knew that Martha could not have children, because we had talked about her female problems. Elizabeth showed that she was exceedingly good in handling children when we surveyed a kindergarten to determine what kind and size of lens frames fit small children. This was needed information for me as a frame designer. I was surprised how gently, but firmly she handled these rambunctious children, and thought to myself, “Now, here is a woman I could have a family with.” However, “Where there is much light, there is also much shadow,” as an old Greek philosopher observed two thousand years ago.

Elizabeth’s parents, with whom she lived, were from Hungary. Her mother, a short, immensely energetic person was a nurse at a local hospital. She was called the “Short Force” because she wasn’t more than 5'-1" tall. Elizabeth’s father was an “artist”, a painter of church art and a typical Bohemian character. Since both his wife and daughter worked, Mr. Loewe didn’t expend much effort to do likewise. He behaved like an oriental potentate. The only hobby he had was growing peppers (paprika) and he claimed he could determine how hot a particular pepper was just by looking at it. In my opinion that was not a cash producing business skill, because there wasn’t that much of a demand for paprika. Elizabeth’s parents liked me, but I just could not see supporting the “artist” for the rest of his life. The Loewes had already applied for emigration to Brazil, with their church organization footing the bill.

Martha had found herself a job at a food chain store near our apartment. She smoked heavily and never had any desire for any physical activities. Biking was a good and fast way of getting around in Frankfurt, a large city, in flat country and much of the city had bike lanes on the sidewalks. Automobile traffic was still minimal in the early fifties. To own a car was financially out of the question for us.

After much discussion I finally convinced Martha that we should buy two bikes, and since she never had a bike in her childhood, I was going to teach her how to ride it. It was another case of underestimating the difficulty of a task. I finally succeeded in teaching her how to ride, but it was a long struggle. Painful for her, and frustrating for me.

After weeks of practice on Martha’s part, we went on bike tours throughout the beautiful parks and countryside around Frankfurt, and Martha began to enjoy the bike rides. I often went on more strenuous tours on my own, especially since Martha had to work on Saturdays.

Now 1952, we enjoyed the improvements that showed up in Frankfurt, a new store that opened, or a concert, or merchandise that reappeared on the market. Martha had been able to get us two tickets for a performance by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, two of our favorites. The concert was a smash hit in more than one way because big Ella fell off the stage and crashed into the orchestra pit.
Swing, bebop and classical jazz were reappearing everywhere, and the presence of GIs and civilian Americans made these events possible. In those days they called Frankfurt the Chicago of Germany.

On one of our bike outings we went to see an old friend, Max Scholz, from Landsberg, whom I had found through other refugees in the Frankfurt area. Max and I had been in the rowing club together. Max had gotten married and had established a successful Ma and Pa type store in a small town east of Frankfurt. We had exchanged information about former Landsberg friends and their fates and whereabouts.
Starting for home, Martha did not pay attention to her biking, and raced down the cobblestone street from Max’s house. She went way too fast to turn the corner, ran right into the curb and crashed onto the sidewalk. It happened so fast I couldn’t even open my mouth to tell her to brake and slow down. She had painful bruises on her lower leg and thigh and was crying. Max’s wife had observed the whole accident, and she brought Martha a big glass of brandy and applied cold compresses to her leg. Then we biked slowly to the nearest streetcar stop and I helped her to get on.

I biked home leading her bike by the handlebar, since we couldn’t take it on the streetcar. Fortunately we had a doctor living in the same building and she was willing to have a look at Martha’s leg. Nothing was broken, but Martha had real nasty bruises and was ordered to stay home and preferably in bed for a few days. During the next days the color of her leg went through the rainbow spectrum, but no lasting damage was done.

Hot Hungarian paprika

Elizabeth had shown me a picture of a small girl, and asked if I thought that this child was adorable. I told her that the girl was cute. She hadn’t told anyone in the office who the child was, or what her name was.
Weeks later she told me that she would love to go to bed with me, but didn’t know where this would be possible. She absolutely insisted that it had to be in a bed. We couldn’t do it at her place, since her father was always home. I had overheard a fellow renter telling of a woman who rented rooms by the hour. The man told me that I could give his name as a reference. Of course this was strictly confidential information, he said, since the police didn’t look kindly at that kind of business. He mentioned that he himself had used her place, and that it was clean and safe.

When I mentioned it to Elizabeth, she was apprehensive, but willing to try it. We met at the house, and walked up to the third floor. When I rang the doorbell, an older, prissy looking woman opened the door. When I told her who had recommended her, she let us in and mentioned a stiff hourly price. She showed us a small, clean room with a bed, a wash basin and a door to an adjacent toilet. The bed linen was spotlessly laundered.

We undressed and Elizabeth snuggled up to me and we made love. When you have sex with somebody for the first time it is exciting, and as long as it feels good for both partners, size doesn’t matter. I was young and horny all the time. With all that abstinence during the war years, I had a large sexual backlog. After the euphoria wore off, we got dressed and parted in a joyous mood.

Back at work on Monday she asked me how I liked it, and I said that I enjoyed it, but that I was surprised about her size. She asked if that really mattered and I said, didn’t you know the old German saying “no joy without friction”, and she broke down laughing. She reminded me that both men and women came in different sizes, and that was just the size she was.

Later that week she told me that she and her family had just received a formal notification that their immigration visa to Brazil had been approved. She told me I should make up my mind whether I wanted to go to Brazil too, and that it would be fun to start a new life over there.
Four weeks later she told me that she was pregnant. I was surprised, because I was still under the impression that during a woman’s period conception wasn’t possible. It showed that I was woefully misinformed. Thinking back it started to dawn on me that she might have deliberately misled me about her period when we made love.

Martha had gotten wind of my affair and had managed to confront Elizabeth somewhere in downtown Frankfurt. Elizabeth had coldly told her that she was carrying my child and that she was not going to give me up. When Martha talked to me about it, I began to realize that the whole thing had been a set up by Elizabeth, and I told Martha so. I told her if she wanted a divorce, she should see a lawyer.

I talked to Elizabeth and said that in my opinion it would not be a good idea to emigrate to Brazil being pregnant. We discussed the reasons and I thought she agreed with me. I asked her what I could do to help her in that situation. She stated that she didn’t know of any physician who would perform an abortion. I promised to talk to my physician and did so immediately. I mentioned to him that Elizabeth was going to Brazil and she didn’t want to arrive there pregnant. He agreed to perform the procedure, if she was less than eight weeks pregnant. Elizabeth promised to see him and I checked with her to see how it went. She mentioned that the doctor had asked her whose fault it was that she was pregnant, and she had told him it was her boyfriend’s fault. No names were mentioned in the discussion.

Later I wondered whether she really had been pregnant, and whether she actually had an abortion. Elizabeth and her parents left for Brazil a few weeks later, and when she came to say good-bye at Boeller & Co. she said to me, “Remember, I am going to wait for you over there.”
Later I often thought about our affair, and regretted that despite it all we didn’t get married. We could have stayed in Germany and have a nice family. I also wondered of course, if there might be a child of mine living in Brazil with grandchildren etc.

Two months later I got a letter from Sao Paulo, Brazil, telling me that they had arrived, and that Peter had been there to greet them. I didn’t know who this Peter was. She wrote that she had gotten a job, but that the work climate for women was not the best.

Another great escape

In the meantime I was busy with my own emigration plans. We were writing the year 1953 and I still had not heard from the Canadian Immigration Department in Karlsruhe, despite several letters and a trip to their office. I was getting annoyed at these Canadians for not turning their hearing aids on and giving me an answer.

In the meantime I heard from the Brazilian Consulate that there was no problem letting me immigrate into their country. However in light of Elizabeth telling me about Peter, whom I suspected of being her former lover and possibly the father of the little girl in the picture, I abandoned the idea of following her.

I was increasingly uncomfortable in my job, particularly since Elizabeth was gone. She had been a great help in the design work. The new girl who took her job was a dud in her work, as well as in her character. I had secretly contacted the Rhodenstock company in München. Their product line showed that they had a more modern attitude in frame design, and I would have liked to work for them. They asked me for references, and a resume. Mr. Boeller must have smelled a rat, and made me sign a three year employment contract.

Then, on February 28, I got a letter and questionnaire from the Canadian Immigration Department, the first positive sign in two years! Yippee, that just came at the right moment. I filled it out and returned it immediately. I also started to think that this might be the only way out of my contract. I immediately send off a note to Dieter in Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada, asking him to send me a letter of “intend to employ” no matter how fictitious.

In March of 1953 the International Automobile Exhibition took place in Frankfurt. This was a big event, and Martha and I had to go and see it. Since there were not many German cars available, we were particularly interested in the U.S. display. One of the most popular cars to me was a Buick “Skylark” convertible, which was of impressive size and luxury.

Coming home from work on Monday the 13th (!), while crossing in front of an approaching streetcar, I had a head on collision with another biker, who had tried to do the same in the opposite direction. Even though I instinctively turned my right shoulder forward to cushion the crash, the impact was considerable. I had terrible pains in my right shoulder, and could hardly move my right arm. The other guy had a good sized lump on his forehead, but was otherwise OK. The bikes had survived with minimal damage.

Martha got hold of the female physician on the first floor, who examined my shoulder and thought it was dislocated. She said that she wasn’t strong enough to reset it herself, but gave me a painkiller and a transfer to an emergency hospital, at the other end of town.
We rode the streetcar to the emergency station located in an old underground bomb shelter. The waiting room was filled with at least 20 people, all waiting to get first aid. After two hours it was my turn. An X-ray showed that my shoulder was not dislocated, but that I had torn the ligaments that connect the outer end of the clavicle with the shoulder blade. The doctor said there was nothing that could be done and that it would eventually heal. He put a huge wire brace under my right arm and bandaged everything up. It looked like the wing of a “Stuka,” the notorious German dive bomber, and was actually called that. He gave me a referral to an orthopedic specialist.

The injury was the least welcome thing at this time, and could possibly spoil my chances of getting out of Germany. We went home, and I had a couple of good shots of cognac, to numb both the physical and psychological pain. At midnight I finally went to bed, only to find that sleeping was not easy with this “Stuka”. I was extreamly depressed.
A few days later the “Stuka” brace was taken off, and an orthopedic surgeon put a stiff bandage around the shoulder and put my right arm in a sling. He told me that there were several ways to surgically reattach the clavicle to the shoulder blade, but in his experience that was not satisfactory and would cause additional problems later on. “Why me, Lord?”, I thought to myself. First the childhood injury to my right leg which was an ever present impediment and now another permanent problem with my right shoulder. I was a physical wreck at an early age. But as Nietsche said, and as I was told many times in the Hitler Youth and the military, “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.” Fine piece of bullshit that was. Only a masochistic German philosopher could have come up with that.

On Saturday, April 18, I received another letter from the Immigration Authority, requesting that I get the enclosed long list of documents together and have them in my possession when I came to Karlsruhe on June 12, for my medical screening. Bang! That was me “fainting.” I had been waiting for over two years to be called for this screening, and when did it happen? Right after an accident. I didn’t know about Murphy’s Laws then, but old Murphy was looking over my shoulder already.

I had to bring my passport, a chest x-ray, proof of immunization, a document from the police department that I had never been convicted of a crime, nor that I was a parolee, a bum, a Nazi, a prostitute, or any other undesirable element of society. I had to get a release from the German equivalent of the IRS, saying that I had paid all my taxes and didn’t owe anybody any money. Furthermore, I had to have at least five sworn statements by prominent citizens, such as lawyers, bankers, professors or physicians, that I was a law-abiding human being, of solid moral foundation, and that I polished my halo daily, was wearing it above the right head, and similar demands.

They apparently wanted saints, not hard workers, in Canada. For a refugee who hadn’t lived longer then five years anywhere in Germany, getting all these papers together within six weeks, while working for a living, going to physical therapy, and getting the money together to book a passage to Canada, was a superhuman task. But I really wanted to go, so it had to be done. They made it tough to leave ye olde Fatherland, and the next six weeks were like episodes of the Keystone Cops chasing after all these documents.

Good-bye Fatherland

I first checked my passport, and discovered that it expired within the next 60 days. That meant I had to get it extended immediately. Then I wrote letters to five prominent citizens, in order to get my character whitewashed, and I made appointments with my dentist to get all my teeth in top condition so I could bite the immigration officials in Karlsruhe, in case they wouldn’t let me go to the “promised land”. I made an appointment with a physical therapist to get my shoulder into shape.

Next my boss called and got all upset that I hadn’t come back to work. I had designed a new lens frame based on the Bausch & Lomb “Bal-Grip” principle, on which production was starting, and I was urgently needed to smooth things over. I had written the instructions for the dispensing opticians already, but the literature needed to be proofread. In other words, “Hans, get your ass back to work, we need you.” I told him, “The doctor has not released me yet.” Of course I couldn’t tell my boss that I had all these other “super important” things to do, and no time to come back to work.

I went to various travel bureaus to find out what ship passages were available, and that was when the shit hit the fan. It was the year of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, and a peak postwar tourist year. Half of America’s population was traveling to Europe and all ships and flights were booked solid. I ran from one travel bureau to the next until I finally latched onto a ticket for a dorm type accommodation on a converted Liberty ship by the name of “M. S. Fairsea.” It was leaving Bremerhaven on July 17, 1953, going to Quebec City, but I didn’t have the money to buy the ticket.

The following week I was at the Department of Public Health getting my immunization, and persuading the X-ray technician to move the film an inch to the left when taking my lung X-ray, so that the right hand shoulder blade would not show up on the film. My injury would have been too obvious, and I couldn’t take that chance. Finally on May seventh I went back to work even though the doctor had not released me.

On Saturday the 9th he got my X-ray film and it was “good,” I picked up my extended passport at the police station, and received a letter from Dieter in Grande Prairie with an attached “letter of intent” to employ me there. Wow, some obstacles out of the way.

During the next weeks I went to physical therapy every other evening after work. The female therapist was a very pleasant and good looking lady and obviously interested in me, but Lord, where could I find the time for another love affair? Damn!

The following week, we found a Mercedes parked in front of our apartment building. Nobody who lived there owned a car. Well surprise, surprise, Martha’s cousins from Chicago were on a trip through Europe, and came to visit us. We were delighted, even though it was the wrong time with all the other hectic things going on. The Chicagoans gave us moral support, took us out for dinner, and invited us to come celebrate with them down in Steinenbronn, their home town. One of cousin Gene’s trademarks was that he paid everything from a big roll of 50 dollar bills that he carried in his pocket.

The next weekend was Whitsuntide and that was an official long weekend in Germany. We hopped on the train and went to the big reunion in Steinenbronn, a little village near Stuttgart, where Gene and Gertrud had been born. Gene, playing the bigshot from America, rented one of the restaurants for the night and invited everybody in the village for dinner and drinks. It was one hell of a bash and the singing and drinking lasted until the wee hours of the morning.

When Swabian people celebrate there is a lot of singing of old sentimental folk songs and the softer hearts, women as well as men, start to cry. I was brought up in a Prussian world were crying in public was socially not acceptable, particularly for a man.

At this celebration Martha started to bawl too, because she realized that she would soon leave for America and would not be able to see all these relatives any more. Gertrud, her Chicago cousin, was puzzled and said, “Martha you aren’t even gone yet, and you are crying as if you were homesick, what is the matter with you?”

Another cousin we were staying with was a young and very sexy redhead who was going to get married the next weekend.
When we finally turned in at her house, the acidic Swabian wine and the emotional display of my wife made me sick. Since there were too many people for the available beds available, we slept wherever there was space.

After the holidays I went back to Frankfurt right away, because my immunization had to be checked and the recommendations had to be rounded up. I went to the police station to pick up my “conduct certificate”, to the dentist to have more work done and to therapy to admire the therapist. My shoulder was getting slowly better and the pain had started to subside. I had all my papers together and was double-checking everything, so nothing could go wrong, could go wrong, could go wrong. On Friday June 12, 1953, I took the train to Karlsruhe, about 125 km south of Frankfurt, and appeared at the Canadian Immigration office right on time. After an initial check of all my documents, the secretary commented on how wonderfully complete all my papers were. I then apprehensively went for the physical. The doctor was polite, made a run-of-the-mill type examination, and then looked at my chest X-ray.

He didn’t notice the shoulder anomaly but questioned me about the evidence of scar tissues in my lungs. I told him that I had come down with pleurisy while in a Russian POW camp. He seemed to be satisfied with my answer, but questioned me at length about conditions in that POW camp. We had a fairly long chat about that, and that concluded the physical.

Now I had to face the Immigration Officer but felt confident. I had the letter of intent to hire, and I was sure that would flatten the last hurdle.
The officer was a French Canadian and after looking at all of my paperwork, he asked me where I wanted to go to in Canada, and what kind of work I wanted to do. I told him I was set to go to Grande Prairie, Alberta, and had already a job there. The officer had a puzzled look on his face, and with that I handed him the letter of intent. He looked at it, smiled, and then told me that they get hundreds of these letters a week and that they didn’t mean anything.

He said he didn’t believe I wanted to go to Grande Prairie. I assured him that my best friend was already living there, and I felt he would be a great help in getting me started. The Officer was not convinced, but after I offered to write him a postcard from Grande Prairie as soon as I arrived there, he changed his mind.

He then outlined the conditions for my entrance visa. I had to go without my wife, and I had to enter Canada no later than July 31, 1953. If I couldn’t get there in time, he would not give me the visa. He continued, that after I was established over there, I would have to contact the local immigration office to obtain a permit for Martha to come and join me. Since Dieter had gone through the same formalities regarding the spouse, we knew about that. What floored me was the July 31st entry requirement.

I told the officer that in light of what I knew about ship’s passages, I would have a hard time meeting that deadline. The officer replied, “That’s your problem. The Canadian immigration rules do not allow any deviation from that date.” I was told to send my passport for the visa stamp, only if I could prove that I had a valid ticket that would get me to Canada before July 31. That was only six weeks away.

I was happy about the outcome, but worried about my ship ticket. The Keystone Cop chase was now replaced by a good size panic. Martha had to find another apartment, because she could not afford to keep the one we had, I had to sell my bike, get suitable overseas luggage and pack my belongings. I also gave some thought as to what additional skills I could acquire to help me make a living in Canada.
I didn’t have much hope that I would be able to continue in the ophthalmic field. The Canadians never told anybody what they were looking for. They wanted manual labor people, plus a few highly specialized professionals such as tool and die makers and welders. I was lucky enough to latch onto welding. I took a night class at the adult education system that taught arc-welding. The class met three times a week and ran four weeks. It was a good class with theoretical and extensive hands-on training.

After my return from the Immigration Office, I had to get confirmation of a berth on a ship and the rail ticket from Quebec City to Grande Prairie. Finally on June 16, 1953, I had the money and got confirmation on all my tickets.

On this very same day a most frightening political event took place in the DDR (East Germany). There was an uprising of the workers against the Communist Government’s action of trying to form the SED party and prohibiting all other political parties. Hitler had done exactly the same thing after he came to power. It verified my belief that a red flag was a red flag, no matter whether hammer and sickle or a swastika was on it.

The initial protests in Berlin and a few other localities developed into mass riots, and the Russian army stepped in with tanks to suppress it. Many people were killed. For a while it looked like the overture to World War III. I was scared shitless that I wouldn’t be able to get out of Europe before things blew up.

On June 17, I sent my passport and copies of my tickets to Karlsruhe, and eight days later on June 25, I had my validated passport with the desired immigration visa stamp in it. In three weeks I would go to Bremerhaven to board the MS Fairsea and sail into a new and different life. On June 30, after getting my paycheck, I finally had all the money to pay for my trip from Frankfurt to Grande Prairie.

There was only one more thing to do, and that was to get out of my employment. Since I had accrued vacation time, that wouldn’t be too difficult. I applied for my two weeks vacation, starting Monday July 13, and it was granted. Saturday was my last day of work. I casually went around the company and told certain key people that I would be back in two weeks, and to leave difficult problems until then. They had made life difficult for me there, so I had no qualms about giving them a snow job.

Following my “departure” from work, I went to the railway station, and checked the larger pieces of luggage through to Bremerhaven. On the way home I bought several bottles of good champagne, and hopped on the streetcar in the best of moods. We had one hell of a party with the Zureck family, and they assured me that they would keep their mouth shut about the whole affair.

We gave up the apartment on the 15th of the month. Martha had already found a smaller and cheaper place to live, and we had moved her belongings to the new place. We celebrated good-bye with a bottle of champagne and we made love for the last time in Germany. Then we left for the main railway station, had a nice dinner at the station restaurant, we kissed good bye and at 20:15 hour sharp, the train to Bremen moved out of the Frankfurt main station. The “express train” trip took ten hours, and there were no sleeper cars. I had at least two weeks of travel ahead of me.

I started with the minimum amount of money for the trip, plus C$ 20.- for landing money. At 6:00 am the next morning I arrived in Bremen. I carried only a large brief case with all my papers, a toiletry kit, a set of fresh underwear and pajamas. The connecting train to Bremerhaven rolled into the station in the afternoon. I called my mother to say good bye, but the conversation was rather frosty. Mother did not approve of my emigration, but I didn’t let her put any guilt into my mind.

I met a lot of people who were leaving on the Fairsea, and the first friendships developed. We talked about the emigration and the situation in Canada. Naturally everybody had a different idea as to what it would be like. A few women, most with kids, had definite information from their husbands already in Canada. Since we could not board until the next day, we had to find a restaurant and bar that was open all night. We had something to eat, and drank lots of beer, talked and dozed off at times. Next morning we went on a train to the Columbus pier and were told that we could only board in the afternoon. First I had to go through the German customs check, and my passport and immigration visa were scrutinized by officials from the Canadian Immigration Department.

The MS Fairsea was an 18,000 tons Liberty ship built as a troop transport. It was now owned by the Greek Sitmar shipping line, ran under the Panamanian flag, was registered in Liberia, and had a German-Italian crew. How about that for internationalism?

The ship still had the dorm type accommodations of a typical troop transport, with some triple-deck bunk beds. There were separate dorms for men and women and also a few staterooms. The Greek owners hadn’t wasted any time or money on conversions of the ship. They had stepped right into the lucrative business of transporting millions of immigrants who were leaving Europe after World War II.

The “Fairsea” was booked out with 2600 immigrants for this crossing.
My dorm was on the third deck down, close to midship. The bunks were on a first come, first choice system. Since my dorm was close to the gravitational center of the ship, I figured roll and pitch in heavy seas would not be too bad, and selected an upper bunk in a corner of the dorm close to the exit. I reasoned that an upper bed was safer, because nobody could puke or pee on me. Nothing beats experience when it comes to making important decisions. What I didn’t know was that the ship’s water tanks were behind the wall next to my bed. The sloshing sounds that they made in heavy seas was something I had to get used to.

During the afternoon the ship slowly filled with passengers and luggage. Most of the people had never been on board a large ship and were extremely uncomfortable, especially sleeping in the same quarters with dozens of strangers. There were many young children along who were desperately clinging to their mothers, while others had no inhibitions and stuck their nose into everything. The women seemed to be especially apprehensive. In the late afternoon the last stragglers were finally on board, and the public address system called out directions to the dining areas and the eating shifts for the different decks .

The dinner arrangement was at long tables with 16 passengers per table. Stewards put large plates and bowls with the chow of the day on the table, and everybody had to help themselves. The food was reasonably good and plentiful, the cooks and stewards were Italian, so the menus were oriented in that direction.

At 20:00 hour the ship’s diesel engines came to life and two tugboats moved up on the port side. We were wondering who would be the last one aboard. As the gangway was just to be lifted off the pier a totally panicked family came running and screaming towards it and just got on 10 seconds before departure.

We all went up to the top deck to say good-bye to Germany, some tearful, some glad, including me. The lines were cast off and we slowly moved away from the Columbus Pier with the PA system playing “Arrivederci Roma” and “I wonder who is kissing her now”. The dumb DJ found the German “Nun ade du mein lieb Heimatland”. Fifteen minutes later when we slowly moved away from our Fatherland. There was a beautiful sunset as we saw the German coastline fade away.