Interview with Karl Mueke

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Interview with Karl Mueke

EDITOR's NOTE: This is a first draft of an Interview conducted by Ray Kuehne. It still needs to be reviewed and corrected by Karl. But he thought it might be useful to post it for the benefit of anyone who would like to compare it to the earlier interviews with Otto, Erwin, and Willy Frank.

Interview with Karl Mueke (Uncle Kaully) (February 1999)

Ray: A good place to start would be when you first met Elsa.

Karl: I was in the "labor force" for six months. You had to do that before you go to college or in the army.

Ray: It was a mandatory work assignment? How old were you then?

Karl: Yes. Six months. I was about seventeen.

Ray: You were just out of school?

Karl: No, that’s different. I left school when I was fourteen. And then you could go to trade tech or a gymnasium. You went for eight years to school. They called it "Volksschule."

Elsa was a little younger, a couple of years. When I was baptized in the church I was ten years old. Your grandmother [Grete] was the Stake Relief Society President. Every time they had a gathering, for some reason, I went too. Lots of young people went to the Relief Society gatherings. Sometimes they had a lesson and so on, and then they had a snack bar and dances. When I came home from the labor force, there was a little girl, very sad, all alone, and Elsa ...... became her friend and I became HER friend. [Clarify!]

When I was nineteen, I was called in the army, but by that time we were engaged to be married. And I was probably a year in the army.

Ray: So you knew her for a year or so before you got engaged, and then you went in the army?

Karl: Well, I knew her before that year, but we were just friends. Before I went in the army, we got engaged. I was six or seven months in the army when we got closer to a date to be married. And then I had to go with the army to the northern part of France. We were fighting at that time with the French army. And I had to bring it to our Colonel, who was in charge of our company, that I wanted to get married. And he said that it doesn’t go that easily. You have to make an application, etc. And I said, okay, let’s start. I was in France at that time.

Ray: Let’s back up for a minute. When were you born?

Karl: 1919.

Ray: So, when you went in the army, it was about 1939? [Germany invaded France in 1940.]

Karl: Right. We had lots of opportunities in France to buy things and I bought her clothes and shoes and lots of other nice things and sent it to her. My sister got jealous of it. Willy Frank, his wife, got a little jealous because Willy was in the southeastern part [of Europe] in the army and he couldn’t send anything. They got jealous. And my future mother-in-law got jealous because everything I started, I made something out of it. And I planned to go on a mission. And I told them. I went to military school in between to become a technician and a teletype operator, and I had to go to courses and so forth in the army after they took me out of the northern part of France. Most of the time in France I was on the coast, looking over to England.

Ray: You were in the infantry?

Karl: No. Soldiers say no, because I was not a fighting company. I was involved with signal operation, telephones, teletypes, and so on. More like secret service. We reported to our headquarters what we heard and what was going on. We cut ourselves into the enemy’s wires. Actually, it was not permitted to do it, but we did it. I have to admit it.

And Elsa wrote letters almost daily, and I sent letters daily, with lots of love in it, and so on. And we became very close, even through letter writing. And one day I received from headquarters my marriage papers with the signature of the general from the army corp and I had to send it in to a headquarter in Hamburg. And they sent me a letter back, through the army, that everything was okay and that I should make an appointment with my Colonel to get vacation. Which I did. Of course, it was so funny. The train station was two days late from the northern part of France to Hamburg. Elsa arranged everything in Hamburg. Now, being two days late, they were ready to cancel it. You had to go to the court to get married. They didn’t accept it by the church. But they put the church on our paper, our marriage paper, that I was a Mormon. And I was in the line of a ........[?] officer, and when we came through the court, they asked, what religion. I told them. What is that?, they asked. They wouldn’t believe it. But finally I convinced them and they signed the paper and we got married.

Ray: And when was that?

Karl: 1940. [Actually, August 28, 1941.]

Ray: Were you ever close to any battles?

Karl: I was right behind the infantry in France. When the infantry went out, we went in and set up our telephone system and our teletypes. When the worst part in France was over. You know, we just rolled in. We had no really fighting. When that was over, they sent me back to Hamburg to establish a department just for teletypes and telephone. That was good for a month. When I was finished with it, they sent me to Koenigsberg, East Prussia, and got a new company, and I was involved with management. And one day, a mother came to me and she said, this is my last boy. The army killed two of them. Promise me that he comes back. I said, dear lady, I couldn’t promise that. You never know what happens. You could be dead before he is dead.

Ray: You went to Koenigsberg after you got married?

Karl: Yes. And of course we sent letters back and forth. And one time I did not receive any letters for six or seven months from Elsa. And I was worried, because we had news that the English and American airplanes destroyed part of Hamburg, which I did. I found out later on that the American airplanes threw pamphlets down in which it was written to leave the town because we’re coming to destroy the town. And that was the truth. And they actually followed through with it. And of course, I was scared. I was a pretty good member of the church and I fasted. But we didn’t have much to eat anyhow. But I fasted and prayed. One day, I went on the outside. We had underground bunkers in Russia and the sky was dark, but there were no clouds. It was very very cold. I prayed to get any information about my family. At that time, we had a little boy, Chuck, and very short time I saw the sky opened up and I saw Elsa and our little boy walking over the bridge on the Alster. And that was my answer.

Ray: You, of course, weren’t there when Claus was born?

Karl: No, I wasn’t there.

Ray: How old was he before you saw him?

Karl: A little over a year. And then we went behind the infantry and the panzers, and before we went into Moscow, it was a very rainy day and then all our cars and trucks stopped. We couldn’t use them anymore. But we ....... one big truck for our teletypes and telephones, and we operated out of there. But then the snow came, about four feet deep one night. We were standing there and didn’t move and then they came and told us that the Russian army got weapons and automobiles and warm clothes from the United States. I got notice to go to headquarters because they had some problem with their machinery, teletypes. And when I came there, one of the officers came to me and said, we can’t use you’re here anymore, go to your company again. By that time, I was in a Volkswagen. I couldn’t drive the Volkswagen. I had a chauffeur.

Ray: Where was the headquarters?

Karl: About fifteen miles away. We were close to Moscow. When I went there and told my officer what happened, he said, don’t talk to anybody about it. We have a meeting tomorrow and they will retreat. I said, there is no time. We have to do it immediately, even when it is dark. Immediately. He didn’t do it. He didn’t listen. I was just a little man. The next morning, we were standing ready to go out westward [Winter of 1941-42.] And the next stop was .....? several hundred miles away. And the Russian army came with their tanks, just rolled along. They chased us away and my company was 450 men. 435 froze to death. Fifteen were alive, and I was one of them. And I didn’t know the Word of Wisdom, and I was living it and the other fourteen were living it without knowing it. And they were struck by this young fellow from sixteen to twenty-one. And we made it. We were the only ones out of the whole army who made it going westwards. But we didn’t get any mail from home, and we were hungry. For twenty-one days we had nothing to eat. Just eating snow so we had enough liquid in our bodies to stay alive. And when we came to .......... , that’s in the middle of .............. I got the first note that everything was okay. They were all alive, even after the Americans air force warned to leave Hamburg, and all Mormons said it is a warning and we go. But thousands of other people stayed and got killed. They counted later 350,000 people were killed. We came to G........., a little town close to G..........., in White Russia, and I had to go in the hospital because my legs were frozen up to the knees. When we came to the hospital, they wanted to cut both my legs off. The next morning, the army moved out and the Russians came in. They took, in the hospital, my shoes away and my clothes and we were laying in warm beds and we were comfortable, but I said to myself, you have to get out of here. I wanted to see my family. I started walking. I walked probably one city block. And the pain was so tremendous that I passed out. Was laying in the street.

Ray: You said the Russians had taken over the area?

Karl: Yes, but they didn’t do nothing to me. I was laying there probably a couple of hours. And it was close to Christmas. And I was thinking about my family. And when I was laying there, I thought I’m .........[?] I heard some voices, Russian, and I couldn’t speak any Russian, and they couldn’t speak any German. But we motioned with our hands and eyes and I found out they wanted to take me to the next hospital. They put me on their sleigh, and they had a Russian horse, and they gave me a blanket and so on, and gunny sacks around my feet. And then we went up to the next German hospital. And there they said the same rule, we have to cut your legs. They were dark blue, the skin. I said, well, I don’t want to have it cut off. I’m such and such a person and I promised my Father in Heaven that I would go on a mission. What is a mission, they said? I had to explain and they left me alone.

But at the next hospital, close to the Polish border, they cut a couple inches from my right foot. They were so hard they couldn’t save it. And from that point I went into Germany and stayed in a hospital for eight months in the little city of ........... In the middle part of Germany. And Elsa came and visited me there a couple times and then I heard they attacked Hamburg again. And I heard no news from her. I went into the headquarters and said, I have a family in Hamburg and I heard they destroyed Hamburg, and I would like to go there. And he said, okay, we send you on vacation, but you have to promise us to heal twenty-five soldiers because they had stiff bones. And I was trained before as a, well similar between a nurse and a doctor, and I massaged them and got them all going in one week.

And then I went on vacation and at a city before Hamburg the train stopped, and they said they weren’t going any further because they attacked Hamburg again. I went out of the train, and I found a truck that wanted to go to Hamburg. And I drove with him, but around fifteen miles before Hamburg, he said he couldn’t do that anymore. I’m stopping here. Wait until the whole thing is over. But I walked on crutches. That was hard to walk, but I made it. And I came to the house of my family and Oma Frank was living there, too. I came to the house. I was so happy because the whole house was up. It was four stories high. But when I opened the door, I saw that I could see right to the sky. The whole inside was gone. I could walk up the stairs, but they were half gone and half okay, so I could reach the third floor. But, of course, the family was gone. The house was empty.

We had one room there, Elsa and I, in that home. It was a big home. And Oma Frank, they were living there. But when they threw the papers from the airplane to leave Hamburg, they left already. Nobody was harmed.

Ray: Oma wrote that she went to Bavaria, where she stayed for a while, but didn’t like it and came back.

Karl: Well, it was not really Bavaria. First, there was a member in our branch who was a member, and they all went over to that farmer for a couple of months. And then they went down to Bavaria. And they spent there a couple years. And then when everything was almost over, they went back to Hamburg. But there was no way they could have a branch again. Everything was gone.

Ray: So when you came home, and found the apartment, was that after Oma had come back from Bavaria?

Karl: No, before. I was still a soldier.

Ray: How did you find them?

Karl: That’s a miracle, too. I found neighbors in the basement, and they said they went to a little city by Lueneburg, south of Hamburg where the farmer was living. And when I came there, they were gone. They went down to Bavaria. The whole group.

I got to the commander of Hamburg and asked him three times for leave, almost for four weeks, just traveling around. Just traveling around. Finally after ten days I found them. The day after I arrived there, Elsa became very ill. She had to go to the hospital. She almost died. I stayed another week, and then I had to go back to the army.

Ray: So it was after that they went to Bavaria?

Karl: Yes. Elsa had a cold and her lungs got full of water. But I had to go back to the army. Then of course, the mail didn’t work and nothing worked, and we didn’t know anything from friends, neighbors, and friends. Finally I got a letter from Elsa where she said we are now in Hamburg, or in a city before Hamburg, on the south side of the Elbe River, called Neugraben. There they had a little house.

Ray: When Elsa and Oma went to the Lueneburg area, was Opa with them, because he was in the Volksarmee.

Karl: He was with them. He was one of the first ones who went back. But I had to go back, and I was in Holland then. We established a new line, new communication between our army and the civilian people in Holland. Holland is a beautiful, clean nation. Then I was sent back to Hamburg, and then to Schleswig-Holstein on the Danish border. But before all this, I was sent to a military college in Flensburg. And I went there before, as a soldier, just to recover and to get established in some other equipment. From Flensburg, they had little branches and I went there at the time as a soldier and visited the branches and that was later on very helpful.

When I was sent to Hamburg, I had to establish communications between the army and the telephone companies in Germany. When Hamburg was attacked, the big cables with three and four thousand wires had to be fixed. That was one of my training, too. Then we didn’t stay long there, and I went up to Flensburg and I had two big trucks and twenty-five men with me. At that time, the German army was destroyed to 99%. And Eisenhower was the head man between the German generals and the American generals, and he established peace talks. Hitler by that time was killed. That is what the newspaper and the radio said, but I didn’t believe it. Because I got news, we cut our self an army cable from the American army over to Denmark and Sweden and we heard there that somebody said they saw him in a special airplane flying south. That was the end of it.

In Flensburg, I called Hitler for my General. His name was Gen. Halsie ? And we never heard anything, but I know he was called, at headquarters close to Berlin. Then I made plans to put our weapons down. We turned our machinery to the mayor of Flensburg. Then I went to the branch president, and said, we need some help. I sent some of my men home, but we still have twelve men. He said, well, I really can’t help you much, but it is all in the hands of our Relief Society President. And she has ways to help you. And she was the greatest member of the church living in Flensburg. I went to her and she was very sweet. She said, how many people do you have. I said, twelve. I’m the thirteenth one. I said, it would be real for us if we had bicycles. You’ll have them tomorrow morning, she said. Thirteen bicycles. And she had private clothes for some of us. I made an appointment for thirteen men to leave Flensburg. I gave them the time and place to meet. They were so scared, they wouldn’t do it. I was the only one that left. I knew I had connections in Rendsburg, another little town, but a little more south. I visited there the branch president and he gave me a complete outfit of clothes. I left my uniform in his home. I filled the basket on my bicycle with food. There was a little canal from the Elbe River over to Schleswig-Holstein and there was a bridge. Some people were standing around.

One said to me, you don’t make it over that bridge. There is a Polish Army, directed by the English Army, and they are very mean. You are not going through there. But I went back to my branch president. He said, I have a man who knows how to do it. You go back there and I’ll tell what clothes he wears and how he looks. And I found him and talked with him. He said, well, in a half an hour several big trucks of German officers will be there. When they come, they will be interviewed and some they will put in jail and some they will let go. When they come, you go as fast as you can on your bicycle over the bridge. And I made it all the way to Hamburg, with my bike.

About twenty mile north of Hamburg, there were train overpasses and I saw nothing. Everything was clear. No people. I thought everybody is asleep. I went underneath the overpass, and that was my trouble. A couple dozen of Polish soldiers came, grabbed my bike away, got my basket of food, and they started pounding on me, and I said, what’s the matter here. Well, you have to go in the streetcar depot, where they have all the electric streetcars. I said, well I’m home here in Hamburg. I want to go to my family. No such a thing, they said. They spoke pretty good German. Well, I saw I couldn’t do nothing else. I went through the gate where they have the streetcars and got acquainted with some people there. They said, we’ve been here for days or weeks and you’ll never make it out of here. I said, don’t blame me to try. And I tried.

I was fifteen minutes. I got my bicycle back. And there were big oak trees there on the street. And one man, an engineer for the streetcars said, I’ll help you. I’m not a prisoner here. I’ll go to the gate and when everything is peaceful, I’ll give you a sign and then you come out and go between the big trees, and you can make it. And I did. I made it.

And Gertrude Menssen, they had a little house there in a farmer community. I went to her. I said, I have to go over the Elbe River to go to Elsa and my children. By that time we had another little baby, a girl, Marian. I said to Gertrude, I have a little doubt that I will make it over the Elbe River because I did a little checking and they have soldiers on both sides. Then I had an idea. I went to Hamburg to the big train station. That was the first time that I stole something. I went in an office and stole a hammer, a big wrench, and a red hat from the people who worked there. I went on the train tracks, over the Elbe River. Half over the bridge, probably almost a half a mile, some American or English soldiers came and said, what do you want here. I said, I’m working and checking the tracks here. They spoke very good German. They said, well, we can’t let you go. You have to come with us. We have to report it. I said, okay, when you take the responsibility. Tomorrow morning early, army trucks and soldiers by the hundreds on the train will pass here, and when there is something wrong, you take the responsibility. It is not mine responsibility anymore. I was lying. Finally, I convinced them to let me go. And I went all the way down to the train station in ........... and I left it and went over to the little city, Neugraben, and visited Oma and Opa Frank and Elsa and our two children. But I had to be very careful.

Ray: This was in the summer of 1944?

Karl: Yes, but I had to be very careful. Soldiers, American, English, Polish, were all over around the houses there. I knocked on the door. A voice said, who is there. They were scared, too. I said, this is Karl. The light went on. I said, turn the light off. Nobody should know who I am. I went in. That was a big reunion. I was home.

Ray: On the way in, you stopped at the Menssen’s place? They had a garden home? Was anybody staying with them at that time? Karl: Yes, several people. They had room probably for a family of five or six. At that time there were living over thirty people in that home. They had everybody who was a member in the church. They just took them in, whoever came along.

Ray: Was Walter there?

Karl: Yes. Willy was not there. Willy was still in the army camp [in Yugoslavia].

Ray: Was Erwin there?

Karl: No. Erwin was in somewhere in Italy. He hadn’t come back yet.

In the process of schooling and my training for telephone cables and so on, I was nine months in Hamburg, and I had a little group there of specialists who helped me to repair the cables.

Ray: During or after the war?

[Not sure I have this straight. It sounds like this took place after Karl’s return to Neugraben.]

Karl: During the war. And I didn’t have any automobile Nothing. I couldn’t go on the train in the day time. They came and picked me up and brought me into Hamburg. Then I called my men and we repaired the cables. Sometimes we worked for the telephone company, which was a part of the government and our army people repaired the cables. And when I was living for a couple of days with my family, the police came and said, we can’t do it anymore. We protected so far, but you have to go report yourself. Where to go. I had to go into Luebeck. There was an English headquarters and I had to turn myself in. That was hard. So close to your family. You saw your family. I was living for a few days with Elsa and the children, but I had to do it. I went there. I prayed and prayed that everything would be fine. And you know what happened? They interviewed me and I was a Lieutenant at that time and he was a Doctor and a Captain. And he said, Germany is gone. He spoke very good German. What in the world would you do with yourself? First, he said, you are SS. Nobody is so brave as you to run through all this. I said, no, I’m too short for the SS. And I have a strong will to see my family. Did you?, he asked. Yes. Well, where are they? Just fifteen-twenty miles from here in the city of Neugraben. Oh, he said, you are so close to home. What would you do in your future, if we let you go? I said, well, I plan to go to the United States. What do you want to do there? I said I belong to the LDS church. You belong to the LDS church? Yes. He said, I know the Mormons and I know Salt Lake City, the headquarters of the Mormon church. He left me for a short time and when he came back, he gave me for three months my wages as an officer and he gave me my paper and said, go home so fast as you can. You never talked to me. Just leave.

I was a free man. Never a prisoner. And my people in Flensburg, who didn’t want to come with me, they probably would have given me some trouble, too. Because when you have so many people together, you couldn’t do what you can do alone. I heard later on that they were in prison camp for two years.

Ray: I wonder what that person knew about the church.

Karl: I don’t know, but he didn’t say anything. But I believe he knew something, but I didn’t know if he was a member. I told that I planned on going before the war, when I was just a young fellow.

One story I want to bring up. After I went to the Officers School and Electronics School in Flensburg, I was sent over to Latvia (Lettland), the town of Riga, and my training was to develop a new form of airplane instrument and in the morning the SS came, probably a couple dozen, and brought over 400 Jewish women who worked in the factory there. There were housewives, doctors, lawyers, some mothers who had sons in the army, but they were Jewish born people, and after a certain time, they found out that I was a little different. I spoke to them, gave them a little more food. They came in the morning in snow and ice with gunny sacks, no clothes on underneath, and I went to my commander and told him about it, and said, now if want to get some work out of the ladies.... They are not ladies, he said, they are Jewish people. So anyhow, I said, give them some clothes, and I promise you we will get some more work out of them. I got some food for them, I got some clothes for them, and I became friendly with some of them. They were so brave, they gave me little notes to send to their families or to their children. And I came to the commander’s attention. He sent me to a conference to Berlin and I spent two week there, with Elsa. I called her and she came up there and we had a wonderful time living in a nice hotel. But I knew there was something wrong. I had to go back on the train and the train had no heating, and my legs broke open again and painful. Real bad condition. When I came up to Riga, I had a note in my room to see my commander. I went to him and he said, you are in bad trouble. You sent information out from our prisoners, which you shouldn’t have done. You give me all your papers. We had officers books that were so long and wide and thick in which everything was written down, where, what, and how, and he want that. And he wanted my pistol. I said, you could have the pistol. I never used it anyhow. He said, well you have to report tomorrow in the morning. You know what that means. I was on trial to be killed.

Ray: What were they accusing you of?

Karl: Treason. Because of the notes I had sent. I said, Colonel, I need to go to a hospital. He said, no, I can’t let you go. Well, I talked and talked, and finally he let me go. And the hospital was not too far away from there. He said, I don’t think I will see you again.

I went to the hospital and nobody cared about me. They thought I was one of the officers of the hospital. And then a young doctor came. He was, I think he was a major. He said, what do you want. I said, I have frozen legs and I’d like to have the bandage off and get some medicine. Okay, he said, all people with frozen bones or frozen parts of the body they are going at twelve o’clock on the train back into Germany. And I was one of them. I was two weeks in Hamburg in the hospital, and I got a newspaper that the same night, hours later, the Russian army came in and took the ground over and our papers were destroyed. I was a free man.

I was free. I was in the hospital, and everything was destroyed. And once one of the nurses came to me and said, there is a lady here. She claims she is the wife of the commander who was the captain in your company. And she had heard anything about her husband for a couple years. I said, what’s your name? She gave me her name. It was my captain. He killed himself. He went on furlough and got married and when he came back, the big trouble started. We went backwards and we lost all the soldiers, frozen to death. In one night, he took his pistol in his mouth and shot and killed himself. Now, I couldn’t tell her that. I had to lie again. So she could go home peaceful.

Ray: Let me go back. You had your feet frozen at the time when you were in Russia and got pushed out of there.

Karl: Yes. 1942.

Ray: And then you got back and had your feet kind of fixed, and then you went back to the army?

Karl: Yes.

Ray: And then this story that happened when you went to Riga, was after that.

Karl: After that. Still in the war.

Ray: And that’s why you managed to get into the hospital because of your feet condition. And you went to get treatment, and then were sent back to Germany again.

Karl: Correct.

Genie: Did you feet ever totally heal? Do you still have trouble with your legs.

Karl: A little. See [pushing on the end of his shoe] it’s empty.

Genie: Did you have to learn to balance again.

Karl: In the beginning. Well, when I walked, now I don’t walk very much, but when I was good on my feet, when I walked maybe three or four miles, then my foot leaned over to the outside.

Ray: So you managed to get back to Hamburg. Where did you go after the two weeks you spent in the hospital in Hamburg.

Karl: After that, I went to Holland, and then up north to the Danish border. [See early discussion.] Now, you want to know about the potatoes? Well, later on we went all back to Hamburg, and were living in Neugraben a few months.

Ray: This is after the English officer gave you your release papers.

Karl: Right. We organized a branch in Altenau. There were no opportunities in Hamburg. Later on, there were several others. Let’s see. Walter Menssen and myself, we became the first and second counselor to the branch president. His name was Barths. And we had a meeting one night and he said, I was inspired to tell you something. I was dreaming that lots of fruit comes from Holland over to Hamburg for our members. And months later it happened. But when it came, somebody was so happy about, probably was talking about it, to neighbors and they came, like a army. Wanted to break in our branch home. It was a nice big home. It belonged not to us, but to some other little organization. They let us store there, and people came and wanted to break in. And Opa Frank and myself, and I think Erwin Frank and others, we guarded it. We had bricks and steel pipes inside across the door. And the people on the outside wanted to break the door open. We were praying, but nothing happened. We were safe. But when we wouldn’t be there that evening, there would be no potatoes for nobody.

Ray: I thought I had heard a story years ago at some family gathering, and I might have mixed it up, because I told Erwin about it, and he told me what you told me about having the potatoes in the branch house. What I remembered was a story where potatoes had been stored in somebody’s apartment, where Opa lived. That potatoes had come once, and when they came you had to have papers to bring them in. So, potatoes came in once, and they came with papers. A second shipment came in and it did not papers with it for some reasons.

Karl: That was not potatoes.

Ray: That somebody came when the crowd was trying to get them, and that a policeman came in and asked for the papers.

Karl: That was in our home. Not potatoes. Just groceries in cans. Corn, peaches, beans, and milk.

Ray: From America?

Karl: Yes, over Switzerland. That was after the potatoes. We were called into the branch house and we were informed by our church members who came from Switzerland into Germany and told us about it. It was waiting there for us to bring it in. But we couldn’t. We didn’t have the authority to do it. But Eisenhower, Gen. Eisenhower, was the first one who okayed groceries from America into Germany. And Hamburg and Hannover and Munich were the places where they sent some train carloads full. At that time, I was the second counselor in the branch presidency and when that came in, they didn’t want to have it in the branch house. Our home was the biggest home, and it was stored in our home. Up to the ceiling. In the kitchen, in the hallway, in the bedroom. All over. That was Im Tale district. In Eppendorf. We wanted to take it out as soon as possible, but members were living too far away, and it took us several days until everybody had the time to pick it up. Everything was fine. We started to do it. And then some neighbors started to get concerned about it. And called the police. Everything however was fine. We had papers from Switzerland, from the Red Cross, to do it. But they came. We gave them the papers and everything was fine. They left.

The second shipment came. We had no papers, except the old one. And our house was full of groceries. Maybe six or seven months later. Again, people outside got concerned. They were hungry, too. We gave some of our own to other people. When you are hungry, you do that. Well, anyhow, the police came. And I said to Elsa, what in the world do we do. We have from the first shipment, the papers, now we have nothing. We kneeled down and prayed. The knock came on the door. Two policeman came in, and a big truck on the street. One said, well, we have to take everything away from you. We give it to other people who are hungrier than you. I said, well, you don’t nothing out of here. Well, he said, do you have papers. Yes, and I gave him the old paper. And he looked it over back and forth, and he said, well, it looks like everything is okay. He was actually blinded. And then they walked through the house, and we had a picture of Joseph Smith on the wall. He looked it over and said, who is this? We explained who it was and why we had it, etc. And the other policeman said, well, let’s get out here before they baptize you.

Ray: So that’s the story I remembered, but I got it mixed up with the potatoes.

Karl: No, that was later.

Genie: I remembered the story and the police and the truck and the picture of Joseph Smith. I thought it was such a wonderful story.

Ray: I’m glad I finally got that straight.

Karl: And the finest part. Later on, I had a wonderful job when I was a counselor to our stake presidency. I was involved with buying and selling electric globes. And he gave me a part of Hamburg where I could do it. They were very hard to get and people were crazy to get a globe for electricity. And I had plenty money. I got for every globe two pennies. And that amount to thousands of dollars. And I had to go on the train station to people, to members of our church all over the northern part and western part, and brought them groceries. And I had two suitcases and a big bag on my back full of groceries, and I had papers where to take it, and I was standing on a train station. A train came went out, back and forth, and I got really scared because lots of people had food. They gave gold and watches and rings to the farmers to get food. And the police came back and forth and were standing next to my suitcases, but they didn’t say nothing. I prayed. They never touched it. I brought it to the people and great joy. And I had to do that several times.

Ray: What year did the potatoes come?

Karl: In the end of ‘45. Because they harvested it, did you know the story why?

Ray: You told me that somebody was inspired to plant the potatoes without knowing why?

Karl: Yes. And the stake president, or the mission president, somebody inspired the Dutch people to plant potatoes. And they were glad to do it. There is a church book, LDS People in the War, something like that. And they planted and harvested, and then they said, where we will take it? And the person who was inspired said, you won’t believe it, but we are sending it to Germany.

Ray: So that was in ‘45 when the potatoes came. And the groceries came later? Next year?

Karl: I’m not sure, but a short time later. But at that time they sent me on a mission. From ‘46 to ‘49. And there again, my father had passed away and nobody had money, and I was one who had thousands through that business. I gave money to each member of our branch. They needed so much money to turn it in for the exchange. All the German money was destroyed, and they could have so much they could exchange for the new money. I went on a mission. No money at that time because I couldn’t work. And we were so hungry. I had one suit. Pair of shoes with hole in them. One outfit for underneath clothes. From time to time we had conferences in a little city north of Frankfurt, Bad Neuheim, close to Fredricksdorf where the temple now is, and our mission president, Max Zimmer, a Swiss fellow, he called me to go to Hamburg. And there came a big shipment of clothes: hundreds of suits, shoes, dresses, blankets and all kinds of stuff. I went there and then they wanted to charge me as a counselor in the welfare plan over West Germany. But I was still on a mission. And I had to go back. But I arranged lots of things. The nice part was that the missionaries, we were just six, we got the first and the best suits. Shoes and so on.

Ray: And Else stayed behind at that time?

Karl: Yes, she worked and supported me.

Ray: Was she living with Oma and Opa?

Karl: No, we had a separate place in Eppendorf.. Yes, she worked and supported me, with two children. One time there was a brand new suit that came to me. The head man over the welfare, I was just a counselor, he said, I think this is just your size. It was a brown suit, brand new. I was the best dressed person in our mission. I had to travel from the Danish border down to Switzerland. And there was something in the suit pocket. It was an address from somebody here in Utah, from Park City. Well, we had no way to get in touch with them, but I said to Elsa, when we come over, we are going to visit them. Now I was always a little pushed back by Oma Frank because everything I started was good and I had successful. Her children didn’t go on a mission. I was the first one who went on a mission for a long time. And she said, you will be the last one we take over to the United States. And they left. And all the other ones left, except Willy. Willy came later because he was still in prison. He was the very last one.

Ray: So, when did you go over?

Karl: 1950. When we came over, Lisa’s husband, we asked him and he drove us, he had a Dodge, we went over to Park City and found out where the people were living. And you may not believe it. That was the first, poorest house I ever saw in the United States. He was unemployed for several years. The silver mine was closed down. There was no work in Park City. They had one room and a kitchen that had tiles or wood. All the other areas were just dirt floors. No drapes on the windows. The glass on some windows. They had a boy and a girl. The boy lives here in St. George. And I said to Elsa, we have to help them. We had nothing ourselves. That was the first months after we came over. I said, Elsa, that suit probably was the only suit he had and he sent it. Faithful, beautiful people. Well, we went several times and brought clothes every time. But over time, we didn’t visit anymore. Through something, we found out that his wife had cancer and died.

When I talk about it, I have to think about Elsa, too. She died of cancer, too. The doctor gave her eighteen months and she was gone in eighteen months. Well, anyhow, he left and went to Marysville, down here in southern Utah. It’s a terrible little dirty town. I went to the sheriff. And asked him where I could find him. He said, he’s not here anymore. You can’t find him anymore. That was so strange. He didn’t want to tell me. I went to other people, in a little store, and they said, six months ago he killed himself. He couldn’t take it. Unemployed. Lost his wife. Several years ago, we came down here to St. George and visited that one boy. I had one picture of his family, and gave it to him. He didn’t have anything else from his parents.