"Why did I survive when thousands of others died?"

By Nancy Schertzing | Photography by Jim Luning

www.faithmag.com/faithmag/column2.asp?ArticleID=1180

“Once I was old enough, my father taught me to play the accordion too, and when my mother sang along, people loved listening to us!” Hely smiles. “My grandparents, aunts and uncles all lived in Nakovo. The Catholic Church was at the center of our town and of our community life.”

“As a child, my father and his parents briefly lived in the U.S. Dad and his cousin, Frank Freimann, had been like brothers in Chicago. But my grandparents had farmland in Banat, the breadbasket of the Balkans. The farmland and the simpler way of life drew my father and Grandmother Susie home.”

“My father married my mother, and they planned to raise their children in the love of their families and faith. They were going to name me Helene after my godmother,” Hely recalls, “but my father thought it was too long a name for a little girl.”

Generations before, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had controlled Hely’s village in modern-day Serbia on the Romanian border. The emperor had awarded land to German pioneers who settled in the Donau Valley. Though life was difficult for the earliest pioneers, later generations of these Donauschwaben became prosperous farmers who maintained their German language and traditions, distinct from their Serbian and Romanian neighbors. To 6-year-old Hely, however, these distinctions weren’t important. “The Serbians in our neighboring villages were our friends, never our enemies,” she says simply.

In 1942, everything changed when Hitler declared that all Donauschwaben must serve the Fatherland. He sent forces to draft young Donauschwaben men. Nik was forced to leave his beloved family and farm.

Hely remembers, “Mother and I stayed with our family around us. My mother’s father was convinced no one would harm us, since we had never harmed anyone else. But many Donauschwaben began leaving Nakovo because of growing persecution and the threat of invasion. On Oct.5, 1944, a caravan of 150 horse-drawn wagons departed, leaving their beloved farms and pastoral lifestyle behind. My father had just come home that September and told us to hold on because he would be home again soon. That was the last time I saw my father. I was 8 years old.”

Anna and Hely waited for Nik and the unborn baby Anna now carried. On November 6, Communist forces led by Marshal Tito invaded Nakovo. They imprisoned Hely’s grandfather when he dumped his wine stocks rather than let them get drunk and run wild through the town. That day, he and others were taken away never to return. Any able-bodied Donauschwabe who hadn’t fled were deported to Soviet-backed labor camps in Siberia, sold as slaves to Serbian families or exterminated.

“By the time the soldiers came for us, the only ones left were the weak and sick. Since my mother was pregnant with my baby brother, they didn’t ship us out right away, but moved us with others into a section of town they called a retention camp.
“The soldiers stole and destroyed everyone’s belongings. We had almost nothing left. They even took our religion away by closing our beloved church and beating anyone who made the sign of the cross or genuflected as they passed by. My brother was born in the retention camp on May 5 – my mother’s birthday.

“In the winter of 1945, the soldiers forced us from Nakovo into cattle car trains bound for concentration camps. We were so crammed in that we couldn’t sit down. I remember my Grandmother Susie fought back when they took my mother, brother and me. Two soldiers beat her and locked her in a cellar as others herded us into the cars.

“We emerged from the train at a concentration camp in Rudolfsgnad, another Donauschwaben village that had now become the most brutal of the Donauschwaben concentration camps. Like Nakovo, all the houses had been emptied, except for some straw and horse blankets thrown on the floor. We never knew what happened to the families that had lived there.

“My mother, brother and I were put in a room with a great-uncle and what family he had left. They were essential to us, helping get extra food and fuel for an occasional fire. My mother was nursing my brother, Franzi, and needed more food than our daily rations. But even with their help, she was wasting away.

“The next spring, we were joined by my Oma (my mother’s mother) who was caring for my cousin Nik. His mother, Lisa, had been sold as a slave to a Serbian family. I was 9 by now, and Nik and I tried to help too. In the attic, we found grains of wheat and other scraps between the floor boards. Just as in our village, the Rudolfsgnad farm families had stored their harvest above their living space. It wasn’t much, but the few kernels of wheat or corn helped supplement a bit.

“One day, a Serbian soldier came into our camp – and my mother and I recognized him as one of the villagers who had helped my father with our harvest. He looked shocked when he saw us. That night, he came to our house, bringing food and words of thanks for how well my father had treated him in Nakovo. After that night, I never saw him again.

“But no matter how hard we worked to get food, my mother kept wasting away. Typhoid fever and tuberculosis were ravaging her body as she kept trying to nurse Franzi. Eventually, she had to go to the house for the dying. On May 23, my oma called me to my mother’s bedside.

“I went to her and she looked up and said simply, ‘Hely, that is all I have.’ She reached up weakly and hugged me saying, ‘Please take care of your brother so that when your father comes home he can see his son.’ In a few hours, she was dead.

“I went back to my baby brother, who was 1 by then. Franzi was smiling up at me. As I bent down to hug him, he reached up and grasped my braids in his frail little hands, trying to climb up. I whispered to him that I would take care of him as our dear mother had asked. I didn’t know it was a promise I could never keep.

“In less than a month, the soldiers took me away to an orphanage. I last saw Franzi in my oma’s arms. By October, he had joined my mother, starved to death in the Rudolfsgnad concentration camp.

"Years later, I learned that my father had been captured with his regiment of German soldiers in Slovenia. As they were marching across the landscape, his captors announced that the war was over. They instructed my father and others to take their POW clothes off and put on new civilian clothes they would provide. My father and others were delighted and stripped right away. As soon as they had removed their clothing, the Serbian soldiers mowed them down with machine gun fire. My uncle escaped. My father died in the massacre that day.

“As I boarded the train for an orphanage in Zagreb, I was utterly alone. I think when you live constantly with death, fright becomes part of your daily life. You don’t have a choice, so you just function with it. You sort of get this courage within you that says ‘I am going to survive.’ And somehow you do.

“I was 10 and spoke only German, surrounded by Serbians and Croatians. As the only Donauschwaben child in the state-run orphanage in Zagreb, I quickly learned to speak Serbo-Croatian. I went through the first through fourth grades in one year, and became very good at chess. I even began playing the accordion again.

“We were housed in the mansion next to Tito’s Zagreb residence. As time went on, I became more identified with my fellow Young Communists. My German language, Catholic faith and Donauschwaben heritage were fading from my memory. Tito visited us sometimes, and occasionally I was invited to perform for him as an example of the gifted Young Communists of his new regime.
“In a couple of years, I moved to an orphanage for older children in a section of Zagreb called the Upper City. I attended high school classes and learned Russian as my second language. Serbo-Croatian was my primary language.

"I was 12 the Christmas of 1948 when Paula, a friend of my Grandmother Susie, appeared at my orphanage. She told me Grandmother Susie had escaped from our village and made her way to Austria, reuniting with her daughter, Jolan.

“Paula had found me with my grandmother’s help, and had come to take me to Christmas Mass. Though I hadn’t attended Mass in years, I went with her gladly, delighted to see someone who had known my family.

“Sitting there in church beside Paula – even now I get chills remembering! It was like I was reborn there. The words and music of the Mass swept me back home to my early life in our lovely Nakovo. I returned to my orphanage that night, knowing my life could never be the same again.

“In the new year, my Aunt Lisa came to take me from the orphanage and reunite me with my surviving family. Oma and Nik survived Rudolfsgnad and had moved to a farm labor camp to join Aunt Lisa after she had been freed from enslavement to a Serbian family. My mother’s other sister, Susie, had been exiled to a Siberian labor camp, but her daughter, Annie, joined us in the farm labor camp. Together, we worked the fields and lived in one room of the old farm house.

“Within six months, we moved into the nearby town of Gakovo, where Aunt Lisa found a job. Each day, Nik, Annie and I rode the train to attend high school in the nearby town of Sombor – another former Donauschwaben town. Each night we returned home to our family and a meal Aunt Lisa provided through her work at the government-run food kitchen.

“As time went on, our lives changed thanks to the wonderful work of the Red Cross. I cannot say enough about how the Red Cross helped us and other families across Europe, reuniting loved ones and letting families know what had happened to those who were missing!

“Aunt Susie was released from the Siberian labor camp and moved to Germany, reuniting with her husband, who had been a Scottish POW. Annie soon joined them. In 1949, my Grandmother Susie, Aunt Jolan and her family emigrated to Chicago – the place Grandmother Susie had left so many years earlier when my father was young.

“Grandmother Susie’s nephew, Frank Friemann, had been like a brother to my father in Chicago. Now Chairman of Magnavox Corporation, Uncle Frank had been using his resources to find and rescue family members who had survived. Eventually, he brought 14 of us to the U.S. Though I didn’t know it, Uncle Frank had been working with the Red Cross and the Croatian Embassy throughout my entire ordeal, trying to get me out of Europe.

“In 1953, I got passage on a Red Cross Children’s Transport train from Gakovo to Germany, where Aunt Susie picked me up. Uncle Frank had determined that I should establish German citizenship so I could emigrate to the U.S. in two years. Soon, Oma, Aunt Lisa and Nik joined me in a two-room apartment where Nik slept in the kitchen and Oma, Aunt Lisa and I slept in the bedroom. We shared an outhouse with the entire building. Aunt Lisa and Oma were very frugal so we had enough to eat although we were very poor.

“In 1955, my immigration papers came through. I boarded a PanAm flight to take me to a new life Uncle Frank had arranged. I would stay with my Grandmother Susie, Aunt Jolan and family in Chicago and then attend school through St. Mary’s of Notre Dame.

"I will never forget my first days in Chicago! The first time I visited a grocery store, I almost couldn’t take it. So much to absorb! I had never seen such abundance of fruits and breads! It was frightening really, almost utopian and overwhelming.

“In January 1956, Uncle Frank arranged for me to meet his friend, Father Ted Hesburgh, the new president of the University of Notre Dame. Uncle Frank had asked Father Ted to be my guardian. He accepted, and enrolled me in St. Mary’s Academy in South Bend, Indiana.

“Aunt Jolan took me to the Palmer House in Chicago to meet Father Ted. I wore my best pink suit and carried a dictionary since I spoke German, Serbo-Croatian and Russian at that time – but no English. Father Ted spoke some German, but with the help of the dictionary we did fine. At the end of our meeting, I boarded a train to South Bend with Father Ted.

“At St. Mary’s Academy, Father Ted introduced me to Mrs. Olga Mestrovic, who would take me shopping for new clothes. He asked Mrs. Mestrovic to help me because of our shared language and experiences. Her husband, Ivan Mestrovic, was a world-famous sculptor who had last lived in The Upper City of Zagreb before the war. He had been imprisoned by the Communists, but was released from a Croatian prison through the intervention of the Vatican. After his release, he brought his family to the U.S. Mr. and Mrs. Mestrovic practically adopted me when I was at St. Mary’s Academy, then St. Mary’s College at Notre Dame.

“But my guardian was always Father Ted. What can I say about the role he has played in my life? I cannot overstate it. He has been my guardian for more than 50 years. When I am facing a challenge, I call him. He always makes time for me and my family to visit. And even though he hasn’t ever been a spouse or “official” parent, he always has the right answers.

“My life has been shaped by these wonderful people, along with all the ones who went before and everyone since. I have so many components; everyone has had a hand in me!” Hely laughs.

“My children – Michael, Nik, Peter, Ted, Thad, Matthew and Anna Schork – they are my best friends and, really, they are why I am here today. When their father, Tony, and I divorced after 24 years of marriage, they were there for me and came through it all so powerfully! I consider myself the proudest mom I could be of them and of my 14 grandchildren and two great grandchildren!
“I constantly asked God, ‘Why me?’ During my divorce, single-parenting or my husband Bruce’s stroke, I would even get angry and ask, ‘Don’t you think I’ve been through enough already?’

“But I know I have a guardian angel watching over me, and a sense of purpose guiding me. There’s not a day I don’t think about my mother and her example of taking care of others. She instilled in me a sense of responsibility I have always tried to honor. When I look at my children and grandchildren, I see my baby brother. I hope I have done my very best and in some way kept my promise to my mother.

“For years after I came to the U.S., I wondered ‘Why are people around me so normal?’ In Europe, I was not much different from the other survivors. But from my first days in America, I’ve known I was different from the people around me. I never wanted my children to feel their mother wasn’t just like everyone else, so I didn’t tell them about my childhood. I told myself I would not dwell on the past.”

“But now, at 73, when I sometimes ask God, ‘Why me?’ I believe the answer lies in telling others the story of my life. I cannot change the atrocities I witnessed that were inflicted on my people. I can’t regret, nor will I forget, any part of it. Regretting makes you dwell on the negative and makes you unhappy. Instead, I hope my story can honor the thousands of Donauschwaben who died with my family and those who survived with me.”

“I have a great heritage! Now it is time our story to be known. I feel the Lord has guided me to this goal.”

Hely Merle-Benner lives in Ann Arbor with her husband Bruce. She is an International Travel Agent with the Conlin Travel Agency. In 1999, Father Ted Hesburgh and Hely traveled to Kosovo as part of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees team to witness the relocation of refugees during the Kosovo War. In 2005, Hely, her son Peter and daughter Anna, traveled to her beloved Nakovo for her first visit since 1945. In 2008, she and her son Ted traveled to Germany to attend her first reunion of Nakovo survivors of the Donauschwaben genocide.

Nancy Schertzing Writer - Faith Magazine
	Jim Luning Photographer - Faith Magazine

       Many thanks to our Nick Glasz for his many contributions. Nick resides in the St louis Hills area with his wife Gerda.

      They have a married daughter, Annerose, two grand children, and a great granddaughter.