Ingrid Martinow

Story

I am Ingrid Maria Karin Martinow (nee Jacobi), born in Poserna near Weissenfels, Germany, on 28th July 1921.

After early childhood in Poland, I grew up in Berlin. Having finished high school, I completed the compulsory Pflichtjahr labour service year before starting a library course at the Prussian State Library. In the meantime, World War 2 had started and the first air attacks on Berlin occurred. I was rostered a few times for duty as warden during air raids. Subsequent to the final examinations, I was employed at the State Library until pregnancy forced me to leave for a less dangerous place.

I had known my first husband, Werner Weinert, since school days. As a member of the German Navy he had seen action on the heavy cruiser ‘Prince Eugen\’. We got married before he was to be transferred to Greece. It was only during his long service leave, after one and a half years, that he finally got to know his son. Shortly after that, and three weeks before the armistice, he was killed in an American air raid.

As a young widow with child I found employment as interpreter and secretary for a Canadian major, at the 50 and later 104 Displaced Persons Administration Centre (DPACS) of UNRRA, in the Goslar sector. It was there that I met my future husband, Percy Martinow. Both of us worked with the attached 124 Friends Relief Service of the Quaker Organisation.

We married in 1947 and applied for emigration to Australia, Canada and the USA. Like most refugees, we were anxious to leave devastated Europe and escape starvation. When the Australian government accepted us, we were transferred to the transit camp at Fallingbostel, the former army barracks. Due to my marriage to Percy Martinow, a Latvian citizen born in Riga, I lost my German citizenship which allowed me to emigrate with him.

With one suitcase each, we were transported by train to Genoa, where we embarked on the former 8,000t troop carrier ‘Wooster Victory\’ on 6th August 1948. My husband acted as assistant to the Norwegian UNRRA/IRO Officer accompanying the transport of about 5,000 displaced persons from the Baltic states. Single men and women were accommodated in separate dormitories. Five of us married women with children were assigned to a cabin, of six double bunks, which was next to the galley. We survived the heat of the Suez Canal and a heavy storm in the Indian Ocean, where all hell broke loose in the galley with pots and pans rushing back and forth.

We finally reached Sydney Harbour at the start of September 1948. The first night on Australian soil was spent at our final destination, the former army camp outside Bathurst. It offered only basic accommodation with unlined wooden walls, which was extremely cold in winter and caused painful chilblains for the first time. However, a pleasant experience was being woken on the first morning by a lovely bird chorus, which turned out to be a lone magpie. Gumtrees and magpies are still my great love.

A photograph had been taken of me in front of the Australian flag not long after our arrival at Bathurst. I found out later that this was used on a poster for the First Citizens Convention in 1949.

My husband and I worked in the office of the Federal Employment Service for 18 months. It was during this time that our second son, Allan, was born on 22nd March 1950 at Bathurst Hospital.

In 1950 we moved to Melbourne where Percy worked as a cost clerk, whilst I worked as a waitress and domestic help. During the fourth year, my mother Ruth Jacobi joined us, and I was able to take a full-time job as typist/clerk, and later secretary, with the OTC. I was then employed by the Education Department as a librarian, which became my profession for the next 24 years. At the same time, Percy became Personnel Manager at Bosch Australia, where he stayed for 25 years. After retiring, he worked as a volunteer for the Red Cross.

Our elder son became a metallurgist, and the younger son graduated in biochemistry and genetics.

In my retirement I have written and published ‘The Other Shore – Memories of a childhood and youth in Germany\’. The second part of the book contains my first husband\’s letters from Greece, written over one and a half years during the war. Currently, I am writing the story of our life in Australia for the benefit of my 6 grandchildren.

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