Angela Maranian's Story - Internment Camps in Germany and France - Part 1

Chapter 1
From her sons Michael and Peter Maranian

We are writing this on behalf of our mother Angela Maranian who is still alive at 90 years of age but is starting to forget some of the history of her life and is unable to independently record her story during World War II.

Our record of her incredible story is based upon her recounting it several times and also from tape recordings that we made of her some time ago when her memory was more vivid.

Our mother was born in near Anakara, Turkey in 1915 to an Armenian Catholic family. She survived the Armenian Genocide and subsequently lived in orphanages in Beirut, Lebanon and Alexandria, Egypt before arriving in Belgium when she was twelve years old (another story to be told).

After attending Catholic schools in Belgium, including a convent school in Liege, she then worked as a seamstress and subsequently married our father, Maurice Maranian, a British Armenian who had settled in Holland. The marriage took place in Brussels on August 29, 1939. They intended to spend their honeymoon in England planning to see Maurice’s brothers Edward and Steven and their wives. However, one week after they got married, war was declared. Mobilization started, so they had to return to our father’s home in The Hague, Holland. They took what was to be the last train from Brussels to Holland before the borders were closed due to the occupation of Belgium by the Germans. Our father had his carpet business in the Hague and he was doing reasonably well. They received a letter from the British Consulate to advise them to evacuate back to England. However, our father had still much business with payments due and they decided to stay. The Germans attacked Holland with much devastating bombing and the country was overcome in four days. During this time our parents went to the shelters. Angela recalls going to see Rotterdam flattened following the heavy bombing by the Germans.

In June 1940, Maurice got a notice from the Germans to go to the “ Komandature”. After doing some business errands he arrived there and soon realized that he was with other British nationals and that his freedom was over. Our mother received a call from a friend to say that Maurice had been arrested. She went to see our father and he asked for a pair of pajamas and cigarettes. The Germans told the relatives of the men to come back at 6.00 am the next morning. When our mother came the following morning, along with the other relatives, all the men had already gone. She found out two months later that our father and the other men had been sent to a place called Altmar where there were barracks. Relatives were then allowed to see the men for one hour every month and she managed to travel there on one occasion.

My mother was left on her own in The Hague with little knowledge of Dutch. For safety reasons she was told to leave The Hague since is was near the coast line. A friend, a Belgium Lady, told her to go to see a priest for help since our mother is Catholic. The priest gave her a letter to go to a convent in Amsterdam. So she packed up what she needed leaving the business and all their possessions back in The Hague with the landlord. The Nuns said that normally they could not keep married women but because of the war and her circumstances, she could stay. She stayed about two to three months in a building on her own. There was still some bombing going on and she spent many nights petrified. Our mother was also frightened of the German soldiers who did not have a good reputation. She was required to go to the “Kommandature” every week. Our mother supported herself from an allowance she received from the British once a month and from sewing that she did. She usually traveled by bike for her errands.

Angela was arranging with another French lady to find a flat to live together when she was notified on December 19,1940 to go for a special visit to the “ Kommandature”. She had been working doing some sewing and so that morning, as usual, she went on her bike to do her errands and then arrived at the “ Kommandature”. Soon, many others arrived such that eventually there were five hundred or so who also had British citizenship. Her time of freedom was now over. She also had to leave behind her bike which she loved. For our mother, loosing her freedom was ironic since she had not yet been to England and did not speak English. Although some British were discharged, the Germans maintained that she had to be arrested since she was legally a British subject married to a British Citizen.

With the other women internees, she was sent by coach to the barracks at Altmar where Maurice and the other men had been. The men had gone but the women did not know where the men had been sent to. The women subsequently found out that the men had been sent to Tost near Leipzig close to the Polish border and they were soon able to start corresponding with them. The women stayed in Altmar for about three months. At the barracks, life was hard with poor food and no proper toilets. They did have to do some work including being in the kitchen. Most of the other lady internees were Dutch speaking and so she began to learn Dutch earnestly. Angela met Mrs. Gibson, who had lived in Indonesia and who became a life long friend until Mrs. Gibson’s death over forty years ago.

Eventually the internees left Altmar and were sent by train to Germany. They were in a cattle wagon and it was very uncomfortable with most of them getting swollen legs. People were crying, and some were hysterical, particularly the British Jewesses, who thought that they were being sent to the gas chambers. The train stopped at Aachen where they were given salted pea soup. They changed trains at Cologne having an hour to stretch their legs. This time the train was much more comfortable. Eventually the train came to Ravensburg where the SS were waiting. The SS shouted their orders and they were then taken by coach to Libenhau which is in Southern Germany.

The buildings at Libenhau consisted of a castle (called the “Schloss”) and four big buildings. It was run by Nuns and was being used to attend to two to three thousand mental and disabled patients. Hitler gave the orders for six to seven hundred of the mental and disabled patients to be exterminated with needle injection to make way for the internees. There was already about three hundred British people from Poland. Others came from Greece, Czechoslovakia, Belgium and Germany as well as the five hundred or so from Holland. The buildings at Libenhau were large and there was a barbed wire fence around the grounds. The food was very bad, mostly “erzats” bread but the internees only had to do cleaning and work once a month in the kitchen. The nuns did much hard work including working in the fields and also got some help from the German mental patients that remained there as well as the internees.

The guards were mostly old German soldiers who were quite nice since they said that they were well treated by the British in World War I after being captured. After six to eight months, the internees received Red Cross Parcels from Switzerland comprising margarine, meat loaf, dry biscuit, tea and biscuits and money to buy things like toothpaste. Our mother was in room with seven other ladies ( Eileen Jarret, Rita Litenhoff, Anita Cohen, Mrs. Gibson, Mrs. Green, Barbara Cornfield and Sophie Newman). The room was comfortable with feathered quilts and feathered mattresses for their beds. By much coincidence, Angela met her school friend from Liege, Helen Eliot, whose English family had lived in Belgium before the war. Life was hard but there was a lot of spirit and camaraderie. They were able to go out for walks once a day within the grounds and they constantly played cards, usually Bridge. They also organized theatrical events once or twice a year including a production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Our mother was in charge of a sewing room to help to make clothes for the show and dressing gowns. She also said that the Germans in her area, who were mostly Catholic, did not want the war and wanted Germany to lose the war.
Internees in the men’s camp and the women’s camp petitioned for the husbands and wives to be together in the same location. They argued that the German husbands and wives, who were being interned by the British, were together on the Isle of Man. Eventually the Germans agreed and on January 22,1943 our mother, along with many other married ladies, were sent to a camp in Vittel in France. However none of the women from my mothers room in Libenhau went to Vittel since they were either unmarried or widowed.

(Continued in Chapter 2)

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