Rudolf Franz Girschik (Part 1 of Story)
First name | Rudolf Franz |
---|---|
Last name | Girschik (Part 1 of Story) |
Country of Origin | Austria |
Date of Birth | 3/3/2010 |
Year of Arrival in Australia | 1941 |
Submitted by | Helga Griffin |
Story
Rudolf Franz Girschik was born in Vienna on 3 March 1910. Graduating in civil engineering during the Great Depression, he rode his bicycle from Vienna to Baghdad in search of work. He was advised to go to Turkey where huge projects were under way in the new capital. In Ankara Rudolf supervised the construction of the Swedish embassy. He married Elfriede Bittnar (born on 5 August 1910 in Germany\’s Silesia) before specializing as a railway engineer in Anatolia (where his daughter Helga Maria was born in 1935) and in Iran (1936-41) where he supervised the construction of the Tehran central railway station and significant portions of the Trans-Iranian railway and associated roads, buildings, bridges and tunnels. (His son, Peter Michael, was born in Tehran in 1938.) The Girschik family had not been stationed long in north-west Iran in the Kurdish village of Karind on a road that linked Baghdad with Tehran, when British and Russian military forces invaded Iran to secure the oil for its war against Germany. Since Germany\’s Anschluss with Austria in March 1938, the Austrian Girschik family were classified as ‘German\’ citizens.
The Girschiks were the first ‘foreigners\’ encountered by a contingent of the Tenth (Indian) Division of the British Army headed by (acting) Major-General William Slim (later governor-general of Australia) when it entered Iran in late August 1941 on the road from Baghdad where its headquarters were based. Exaggerated rumours spread by the British press that up to 3,000 secret agents of the German Reich were operating in Iran immediately made engineers particularly vulnerable, especially since the Iranian Shah was known for his pro-German sympathies. (An authoritative list had 70 secret agents listed, but not Rudolf Girschik.) Slim offered him the choice of spying for the British Army and secure his family\’s freedom or face internment in an unnamed country. Rudolf refused to work as a spy and said he lacked contacts with the relevant German authorities. Under bewildering circumstances Rudolf and his family were separated and driven to a detention camp at Basrah from which they were put on a British ship, the Rohna, to be taken to an internment camp, supposedly in India. 16 members of 5 families and over 400 bachelors were also transported from Iran.
At Bombay, however, a New Zealand troop ship, the Rangitiki, berthed beside the Rohna and the prisoners were transferred. The secret destination was only very late in the journey revealed as Australia. Accompanied by three battle ships the Rangitiki might well have been a target for German submarines or attack from the air. More prisoners were picked up at Singapore. Arriving in Adelaide on 19 November, those captives not intended for camps in South Australia were placed on the Overland express train to Melbourne where they were placed on buses and dispatched to internment camps in Tatura in northern Victoria. The families from Iran were placed into Camp 3, the family camp. The Girschiks remained there for five years.
Story continues in Part 2.