This is part II of a story that Charlestown's Gerry Radeckis told to Lake Macquarie historian Doug Saxon.
In his Probus Club role as editor of the club's Bulletin, Doug interviewed 94-year-old Gerry about his war experience.
In part I on Saturday, we learnt that Gerry was living in Lithuania. At age 16, he was forced into the German Air Force (Luftwaffe). In February 1945, he was captured by American soldiers as he made his way from Germany into Italy.
They shot his superior officer, a major, and fired two shots at him before yelling "Come out with your hands up!" and pointing machine guns at him.
He was taken with other prisoners 17 and under to Attichy POW camp - called the "Baby Cage" - in France.
I DIDN'T go back to Lithuania after the war and only visited in 1992. After the war I had to go back to Germany, then among the poorest countries in the world with 80 per cent of cities destroyed.
I lived in a telephone booth, the only place I could get out of the rain. It was a bit uncomfortable to sleep. Eventually I got evicted and then slept under bridges and in a railway waiting room. It was very uncomfortable because it was always overcrowded.
This lasted about two months until I met an elderly retired German couple. The man was an ex-captain of merchant ships. They took me in.
It was in Lubeck in northern Germany where I bumped into a friend from my youth. I asked him if he knew where my parents were. He didn't know, but his mother knew where my grandmother was. And so, I found my mother on a farm. My family had given the farmer their ration cards, so they had food.
My youngest brother went to school there and my other brother worked on the farm. As well as my family, the farmer had his cousin's family on the farm. The farmer told me he couldn't take any more people on the farm, so I stayed where I was.
At least my family had full bellies, which was important after the war. People traded jewellery and goods just to get a little bit of food.
I was classified as a displaced person. Russians and eastern Europeans who wanted to go home were put on trains, but these trains went straight to Siberia. I didn't go home because I knew the Russians had occupied Lithuania.
Down Under
I came to Australia in 1949. I came first and my mother and siblings three months later. Their ship broke down and stopped at Fremantle and all passengers disembarked. They wanted to come to Newcastle, but they had to do a two-year contract. They made friends, bought a house and stayed in Western Australia.
I arrived in Sydney, then went to Bathurst and then to Newcastle to work at BHP. I completed my contract and went to work for the railways. I was a porter on Central Station in Sydney and became the number one porter.
It was too expensive in Sydney. I worked in the bush for a while and other places and finished up going back to BHP. I thought it would be for a short time until I found something better. I didn't find anything better and worked my way up and stayed for the rest of my working life, retiring when I was 62. I married an Australian girl, Margaret Lott, and we had two children - a boy and a girl. Margaret passed away when she was 77 in 2007. I have lived at Charlestown for more than 30 years, prior to that at Adamstown. I'm now 94. I became an Australian citizen in 1956.
