Fond Recollections of Captivity: An Austrian POW in Wales by Horst Jarka

Abstract

Reviewed by: Fond Recollections of Captivity: An Austrian POW in Wales by Horst Jarka Günter Bischof Horst Jarka, Fond Recollections of Captivity: An Austrian POW in Wales. Studies in Austrian Literature, Culture, and Language. Riverside: Ariadne Press & Missoula: University of Montana Press, 2017. 206 pp. It is rare that an autobiographical account of one's years as a German prisoner of war (POW) after World War II would feature "fond" in the title. POW memoirs usually reflect on the extremity of the human condition, say wasting one's life away for years in a Soviet POW camp (the last POWs returned [End Page 128] from the Soviet Union in 1956!), working as a slave laborer in dangerous mines and being fed minimal diets, suffering from various diseases. It differed a lot where and when a German soldier fell into captivity during World War II. Given the nature of Nazi warfare in the East, not surprisingly being a POW in Soviet or Yugoslav camps happened to be the worst fate that could befall a Wehrmacht soldier; knowing that the Russians were not abiding by the Geneva Convention, they dreaded the prospect of falling into "Russian hands" (10). Chances for surviving captivity in the West were much better. To be a POW in American camps in the United States was every German soldier's dream (my father was a POW for one year in Camp Carson, Colorado, and also had some fond memories of "America"). Treatment was fair in Canada and England. POWs in France and Belgium were exploited as a form of "slave labor" reparation; some were kept until 1948. So what was Jarka so "fond of" as a POW in Great Britain? Drafted in the fall of 1943 after graduation from Gymnasium and trained in the "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia," he was lucky to be sent to the Western front. He saw his first action and experienced the chaos of war in Northern France. Taken prisoner by the British in the Aachen area in October 1944 ("Vee Vant to Surrender," 16), he was transferred through Belgian holding camps to England in November 1944. His first encounter with the English was positive—a good meal, a warm bath, disinfection, and interrogation (25). Shipped through English camps in Sheffield and Denham Park, he ended up with a cushy job in Wales at Ruperra Castle in a mobile field bakery in July 1945, serving as an interpreter and clerk. Supervision was loose as he went out on walks enjoying nature and meeting local people. He chanced into meeting "Fiona," who became a quasi-girlfriend. Then he met the Rees ("Uncle William" and his sister and his niece Vivian). The Rees took him "to their hearts" (83) and showed him warm hospitality at their house during regular visits. Reading literature (Faust, Eichendorff) and poetry (Hölderlin) constituted Jarka's mental survival strategy (reading poetry "give[s] me strength," 30). He discussed poetry with the Reeses, who introduced Jarka to poets from Wales—he ended up writing a dissertation on Alun Lewis as a student of English and German at the University of Vienna after his return. Transferred to a series of other English POW camps in the summer of 1946 in Stratford-on-Avon, Sudbury, Colchester, and Aylsham, Jarka experienced the ennui of prisoner "behind barbed wire." What kept him going were letters to and from his mother and former [End Page 129] girlfriend in Austria and a lively correspondence with the Reeses (Uncle William addressed him as "Our Dear John," 163), a correspondence that continued after Jarka's return to Austria late in 1946. "Uncle William" had written letters to local authorities and MPs, asking them why the German POWs were not being repatriated. English public opinion was divided on quick repatriation. Some felt the POWs' only "crime was being loyal to their own country" (116). What was Jarka's "own country"? He does take a lively interest in following the news from Austria—the liberation of Vienna, and the formation of the Provisional Renner Government (34). Forced to watch a film on Nazi KZs "with piles of skeletons, corpses," he does not believe it: "German soldiers don't do that...