Relocation to Poland

When the Red Army began their thrust westward, it was only a matter of time before they reached the German heartland. German refugees in eastern Europe loaded up whatever possessions they could take and began a desperate march westward. To be captured by the Russians would mean relocation to Siberia, years of hard labor, or even execution. The Russians regarded all Germans, wherever they were living, as the enemy. 

The village of Rohrbach was evacuated on March 11, 1944, just as the Red Army was closing in. They were evacuated eastward into Romania, then turned north through Hungary and Austria, until they arrived in western Poland, known as the Wärthegau, or Wartheland region, where the former inhabitants had been forced out early in the war through horrific acts of ethnic cleansing. The hope was that the Eastern European Germans would become the foundation for an ever-expanding German homeland, the first step of Hitler's promise of more "lebensraum".

Upon arrival in the Wärthegau, the ethnic Germans were processed and screened as to their ability to qualify to become German citizens, since none of them were born in Germany, having lived for generations in other countries of Eastern Europe. To qualify for German citizenship, one had to prove  suitable German ancestry and loyalty to the German state. The German agency that was tasked with this process was the Einwandererzentralstelle, or EWZ. 

After I made my presentation for my book Orchards on the Steppes to the North Texas Chapter of Germans from Russia, one of the village coordinators mentioned to me that there was a Family Search Center, run by the LDS church, in my city, and they have access to the EWZ records. I knew of the existence of the EWZ records because my cousin Alex had sent me a few of them which he had obtained from the German archives, and I had referenced them in my book. Up until then, I had assumed that they were available only in the German archives. As it turns out, the records of the EWZ can be found not only in the German archives, but also in the national archives of the United States, located in College Park, Maryland and in the archives of the Church of Latter Day Saints - an indispensable go-to for any genealogical research. 

I decided to visit the Family Search Center to have a look for myself. What I found in their system are digitized microfilm images of the personal records of all of the refugees processed in the Polish refugee camps. They cannot be accessed through a smart search, but fortunately they are alphabetized. After scanning through thousands of images, I found hundreds of Ridingers and Riedingers, many of them even from Rohrbach. I now have records for nearly all of dad's relatives that were evacuated from Rohrbach. A few are still missing. In particular, I cannot find the "Lebenslauf", essentially an autobiography written in the refugee's own handwriting, one of which Alex had sent me for dad's Uncle Wilhelm. The original microfilms - those so far not digitized - are believed to reside in the headquarters of the Family Search Center in Salt Lake City. I'm going to visit my daughter in Grand Junction, Colorado in a few weeks. After that, I'll plan a trip to Salt Lake City to see if I can find the missing records.