05:33

Ruth Deutschmann

Benjamin Epp

Innsbruck

2008-06-17

Sylvia Manning - Baumgartner

Nicole D´Incecco

1943

Stateless ? God bless the pigs I met my husband then down in South Tyrol. It was during the war - 1944, no 1943. He was with the Hoch- and Deutschmeistern music band. That's where I met him, because I sang in the choir and they played for the choir, the church choir. And we married a year later. And right away he had to go to the front, away from South Tyrol to the front. I hadn’t heard anything from him for three years, and after three years in South Tyrol I found out that he was living in Vienna and that he was helping his family to move from Nikolsburg to Vienna. His mother was very ill and he moved his sister over first. He wasn’t allowed to cross the border of the zone to Tyrol; He wasn’t allowed. No one was allowed back then. The Russians and the English allowed him ? no, they had always permitted it, but the English said: no, no, no. After a lot of back and forth he managed to come to Tyrol. And so he came to South Tyrol. He was allowed to stay for a bit, but then had to leave, because he was stateless. Then he waited here in Innsbruck, hoping that I could come to Innsbruck. And then I did; it would take far too long to explain how, you can read it up here if you like. Then we were in Innsbruck ? spent 3 days looking for a flat and of course didn’t find anything. It was hopeless. Then somewhere I saw: South Tyrolean office ? and I went there. We were admitted to the South Tyrolean camp in Eichat near Hall. And spent five years there. Before my husband went to the front ? I had had my first child and in the camp I had the second one. That was a really terrible time. Had we not gotten along so well, it probably wouldn’t have worked out the way it did. My husband had no work. I, well - - - We suffered a lot from hunger, because we had to live from this camp kitchen and the camp leader - as we found out later ? was stealing and re-selling meat and fat so that we had to live on watery soup more or less. Then I got lung disease, and spent a long time in hospital. That's when the pilfering started. The settlement had been planned for 40 people by Bishop Rusch with the Caritas (charity). You could apply there but my husband always used to say: "No, we won’t apply, we wouldn’t get anything anyway." Then, when I was in hospital - ? for two months ? I begged him for so long, that he finally did apply. Then it was discovered, who had received the flats. May I have a glass of water? We weren’t among them. And my husband said: "See, I told you, we wouldn't get anything. We won’t have any luck." After a while I got a call from the Caritas, to come to see them. So I went to a certain woman, Dr. Fischer, a very nice person, who said: "Possibly you can have a house, since the man who was to get the house declined it, because he wasn’t allowed to take his pigs along." God bless the pigs. And so we got a house. For me - I can't tell you what that was like for me! Because life in the camp ? not only was the life there sad ? but the way people looked down at us: "these camp people, these camp people." The farmers from there from Absam, they were very?