P
Padre19
Guest
Like in the movies. A peasant family in Vrancea hid a German soldier in the house for 16 years, at the end of World War II.
An unheard of story took place in the heart of the Vrancea Mountains more than 60 years ago. Anton Rodewald, a German soldier who was separated from his army in the last part of the Second World War, was hidden in the house of Ion Stancu for 16 years.
The precise reasons for these unique happenings have been lost in time, just as all the heroes of the story have passed away. The only evidence of the events is the gratefulness of the former German soldier, still unwavering decades thereafter: having returned to his native country, Anton kept sending packages and letters to Ion year after year.
A single yellow letter has lasted until today and is written in Polish, as a final irony of life in a story with Germans, Romanian Communists, Nazis, in fact a story in which the borders between countries and languages melted away as if they were never there.
"Why did he kill Franz?"
Autumn of 1944, the Mountains of Vrancea. Romania had switched sides against the Germans and, helped by the Russians, drove the Germans westward. Seperated from their troops, some German soldiers were wandering through the woods, terrified at the possibility of being caught by the Russian forces descending on Bucharest. They knew that once the Russians caught up with them they would have little chances of survival. Revenge for the occupation of Russia was underwsay.
"There were five of them. Woe onto them... these people were innocent! And scared ... we built a hut for them here in the forest and gave them food" Costache Roata, now aged 84, recounts how the few soldiers took shelter near his little village hidden in the forests.
Hard to imagine, the Germans remained cut off from the world and terrified in the woods for nearly two years! Their tranquility however was broken when a forest guard, Babis, strolling through the woods, saw smoke coming from the hut.
He called the platoon at Focsani, which, following an ambush, killed one of the Germans. "Franz ... Why did he kill Franz? Curses on him!" frowned Nea Costache with Babis in mind, talking as if Franz was a relative of his.
Then it was heard that three other German soldiers likely ran away towards the Casin Monastery and they were never heard of again. Anton, the last of their group, had a different fate in store.
Fear of death
"One night, Anton came down from the hill in our courtyard and told my father-in-law: "Hide me for a day or two because otherwise they'll kill me! I didn't leave!'
Ion Stancu, a man in the prime of his life and about the same age as Anton, did not think for long and took him in his house. He remained there for 16 years. It's hard to say how that incredibly long period in which a foreigner remained hidden in the house of a sociable villager that took part in all of the village's natural events could have been reached.
There are little survivors from those years. Stancu died around 1988, his wife and children have died too, in fact it's a certain thing that died Anton died too since he would have to be about 110 years old today.
The only one who followed this story is the daughter-in-law of Ion Stancu, Floarea Stancu, who lives right in the house where Anton took shelter and who found in various drawers the envelopes of the letters that Anton had sent after returning home to Poland. Why there and not in Germany?
Because Anton Rodewald was an ethnic German from a land that was awarded to the Slavic state after the war. Of those letters only one remains, written in Polish, a letter no longer understood by anyone.
Bearded ghost
Floarea did no see Anton in the house as she married the son of Ion Stancu about a year after Anton's departure. "The family told me what he did here. Milling around the house, chopping some wood, but also painting and praying with the family. He told them that he had a family too and three children, one of which was yet to be born when he went to war. Back home he was a post-office master," says the woman, showing us an icon that the German had painted.
People say that after everything was revealed in hindsight they realized that's why Ion always kept the door closed. However Costache boasts that he knew about the German but he kept it to himself.
"Their garden borders mine and one night I saw a man with a beard and I realized it was him. I recognized him by the way he walked. He fled inside the house when he saw me" said the old man.
Borta under the bed
Nobody is able to say how the German soldier managed to remain hidden for so many years. But the village elders, who were very young back then, say there are a few explanations: while in the first years Anton feared for his life, later on he no longer ran away so as to avoid harming Stancu.
Those were the 50s, years of terror in which the Securitate was killing thousands of "enemies of the people". If the former soldier had been caught trying to flee from Romania, he would have harmed the family that had sheltered him.
Floarea said that Ion Stancu had dug under the bed located in the main room a hole big enough for a man to fit in. If he would've heard something on the village road Anton would immediately have jumped into it.
Daughter just had a wedding
In the summer of 1960 history began to brighten across Eastern Europe. A driver from Gura Valley, well traveled and knowing that Rodewald was hiding there, came to Uncle Stancu and said: "Enough! Any offense is erased after 16 years and, therefore, Anton can come out of hiding".
He took him to Bucharest at the Polish Embassy which sent him back in Gura Valley so as to have time to do some checks. "He came back one night, alone. He stopped a man and asked him where the church is. The church was his landmark because he didn't know his way to Stancu's house. He had stayed hidden for 16 years and did not know the village!", Costache says.
After that, Anton came out into the world relaxed. "I invited him at my place. He said he was fasting. He was religious. He allowed his beard to grow in order to avoid being recognized, but also because we were of old religious rite and he wanted to pass off as one of us. He was a very calm man, a good storyteller. He told me how he fought in Russia," Costache recounts.
After returning home, in his letters the German wrote how they tested him at the embassy. They showed him several photos of women and asked him which one is his wife. He recognized her immediately. And they told him that she had waited for him all those years, bringing tears to his eyes. And he also wrote in the letters that he returned to his village exactly when one of his children was preparing her wedding, so the joy in the Rodewald family had never been so great.
The last letter in 1988
The police took statements from Stancu too but did not do anything. The years passed and the German stopped in the village from time to time when he came with his family at the Black Sea resorts. Other than that, he kept sending Ion letters and packages containing all sorts of things, as Florica recounts.
The last letter came in 1988, a sign that Anton Rodewald must have died afterwards. He was then almost 90 years old. Stancu and Anton must have met in Heaven, and most surely are good companions.
They probably look back at the house in Gura Valley where they lived a good part of their lives and they probably recount shared memories or what they did after they parted ways. When angry, Mister Commander takes a short look at them and his anger passes.
An unheard of story took place in the heart of the Vrancea Mountains more than 60 years ago. Anton Rodewald, a German soldier who was separated from his army in the last part of the Second World War, was hidden in the house of Ion Stancu for 16 years.
The precise reasons for these unique happenings have been lost in time, just as all the heroes of the story have passed away. The only evidence of the events is the gratefulness of the former German soldier, still unwavering decades thereafter: having returned to his native country, Anton kept sending packages and letters to Ion year after year.
A single yellow letter has lasted until today and is written in Polish, as a final irony of life in a story with Germans, Romanian Communists, Nazis, in fact a story in which the borders between countries and languages melted away as if they were never there.
"Why did he kill Franz?"
Autumn of 1944, the Mountains of Vrancea. Romania had switched sides against the Germans and, helped by the Russians, drove the Germans westward. Seperated from their troops, some German soldiers were wandering through the woods, terrified at the possibility of being caught by the Russian forces descending on Bucharest. They knew that once the Russians caught up with them they would have little chances of survival. Revenge for the occupation of Russia was underwsay.
"There were five of them. Woe onto them... these people were innocent! And scared ... we built a hut for them here in the forest and gave them food" Costache Roata, now aged 84, recounts how the few soldiers took shelter near his little village hidden in the forests.
Hard to imagine, the Germans remained cut off from the world and terrified in the woods for nearly two years! Their tranquility however was broken when a forest guard, Babis, strolling through the woods, saw smoke coming from the hut.
He called the platoon at Focsani, which, following an ambush, killed one of the Germans. "Franz ... Why did he kill Franz? Curses on him!" frowned Nea Costache with Babis in mind, talking as if Franz was a relative of his.
Then it was heard that three other German soldiers likely ran away towards the Casin Monastery and they were never heard of again. Anton, the last of their group, had a different fate in store.
Fear of death
"One night, Anton came down from the hill in our courtyard and told my father-in-law: "Hide me for a day or two because otherwise they'll kill me! I didn't leave!'
Ion Stancu, a man in the prime of his life and about the same age as Anton, did not think for long and took him in his house. He remained there for 16 years. It's hard to say how that incredibly long period in which a foreigner remained hidden in the house of a sociable villager that took part in all of the village's natural events could have been reached.
There are little survivors from those years. Stancu died around 1988, his wife and children have died too, in fact it's a certain thing that died Anton died too since he would have to be about 110 years old today.
The only one who followed this story is the daughter-in-law of Ion Stancu, Floarea Stancu, who lives right in the house where Anton took shelter and who found in various drawers the envelopes of the letters that Anton had sent after returning home to Poland. Why there and not in Germany?
Because Anton Rodewald was an ethnic German from a land that was awarded to the Slavic state after the war. Of those letters only one remains, written in Polish, a letter no longer understood by anyone.
Bearded ghost
Floarea did no see Anton in the house as she married the son of Ion Stancu about a year after Anton's departure. "The family told me what he did here. Milling around the house, chopping some wood, but also painting and praying with the family. He told them that he had a family too and three children, one of which was yet to be born when he went to war. Back home he was a post-office master," says the woman, showing us an icon that the German had painted.
People say that after everything was revealed in hindsight they realized that's why Ion always kept the door closed. However Costache boasts that he knew about the German but he kept it to himself.
"Their garden borders mine and one night I saw a man with a beard and I realized it was him. I recognized him by the way he walked. He fled inside the house when he saw me" said the old man.
Borta under the bed
Nobody is able to say how the German soldier managed to remain hidden for so many years. But the village elders, who were very young back then, say there are a few explanations: while in the first years Anton feared for his life, later on he no longer ran away so as to avoid harming Stancu.
Those were the 50s, years of terror in which the Securitate was killing thousands of "enemies of the people". If the former soldier had been caught trying to flee from Romania, he would have harmed the family that had sheltered him.
Floarea said that Ion Stancu had dug under the bed located in the main room a hole big enough for a man to fit in. If he would've heard something on the village road Anton would immediately have jumped into it.
Daughter just had a wedding
In the summer of 1960 history began to brighten across Eastern Europe. A driver from Gura Valley, well traveled and knowing that Rodewald was hiding there, came to Uncle Stancu and said: "Enough! Any offense is erased after 16 years and, therefore, Anton can come out of hiding".
He took him to Bucharest at the Polish Embassy which sent him back in Gura Valley so as to have time to do some checks. "He came back one night, alone. He stopped a man and asked him where the church is. The church was his landmark because he didn't know his way to Stancu's house. He had stayed hidden for 16 years and did not know the village!", Costache says.
After that, Anton came out into the world relaxed. "I invited him at my place. He said he was fasting. He was religious. He allowed his beard to grow in order to avoid being recognized, but also because we were of old religious rite and he wanted to pass off as one of us. He was a very calm man, a good storyteller. He told me how he fought in Russia," Costache recounts.
After returning home, in his letters the German wrote how they tested him at the embassy. They showed him several photos of women and asked him which one is his wife. He recognized her immediately. And they told him that she had waited for him all those years, bringing tears to his eyes. And he also wrote in the letters that he returned to his village exactly when one of his children was preparing her wedding, so the joy in the Rodewald family had never been so great.
The last letter in 1988
The police took statements from Stancu too but did not do anything. The years passed and the German stopped in the village from time to time when he came with his family at the Black Sea resorts. Other than that, he kept sending Ion letters and packages containing all sorts of things, as Florica recounts.
The last letter came in 1988, a sign that Anton Rodewald must have died afterwards. He was then almost 90 years old. Stancu and Anton must have met in Heaven, and most surely are good companions.
They probably look back at the house in Gura Valley where they lived a good part of their lives and they probably recount shared memories or what they did after they parted ways. When angry, Mister Commander takes a short look at them and his anger passes.