The Sitzwohl Family

Story

Gottfried Sitzwohl, known to his family as Friedl, to his grandchildren as ‘Oppi’ and later to his Australian workmates as George, was born in Sarajevo on the 2nd of March, 1912. Rosalia Kancilijak, later to become Gottfried\’s wife, was known as Rosalie to her Australian friends and ‘Nanna’ to her grandchildren, was born on the 21st of March, 1916, also in Sarajevo. Gottfried and Rosalia had two daughters, Nella born in 1936 and Elsa in 1943.

Gottfried\’s grandparents originated in Graz, Austria, thus the German name which was to play such an important part in the family\’s later life, and moved to Sarajevo at a time when Bosnia-Herzegovina was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is reported that at the age of two Gottfried and his mother, Stephania, attended the military parade in Sarajevo in April, 1914 at which Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated.

As a young man, Gottfried worked as a joiner and French polisher for the State Railways and later for a furniture factory in Sarajevo. Following the German occupation of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Gottfried and his family were identified as ‘Folkdeutsche’ due to his German name and suffered significant persecution at the hands of anti-German activists. They were subsequently ‘repatriated’ to Germany where they were moved from refugee camp to refugee camp. Gottfried was initially sent to work in a munitions factory and in order to be eligible for re-imbursement of losses incurred in the hurried departure from Sarajevo ‘volunteered ‘ to join the German army.

Rosalia\’s second child, Elsa, was born in July 1943 and she and her two daughters were moved to Lohne into barracks, each of which accommodated seven families. Each family had two rooms but without kitchen or bathroom. Meals were served in a common dining room while washing and toilet needs were provided by communal facilities. As an important railway junction, Lohne was heavily bombed by the Allies in the later stages of WW11 during which Rosalia and her daughters huddled together in an underground air-raid shelter. In late 1944 Rosalia was advised that Friedl was ‘missing in action’. In the months that followed life for Rosalia and her children was hard indeed and survival was everything.

Fortunately, Friedl survived the war only to find himself unable to obtain work in Germany and no longer welcome in Yugoslavia. Friedl and his family decided to migrate to Australia and in 1949 boarded the General Langfitt bound for Melbourne. They disembarked at Station Pier on the 23rd of September, 1949.

From Station Pier, George and his family were taken by train to Bonegilla where once again they found themselves in a refugee camp where women and girls and men and boys were segregated. Elsa arrived in Bonegilla with a high fever and was immediately admitted to hospital. Her sister Nella contracted scarlet fever and soon followed her to hospital where she was admitted to an infectious ward. Some short while later, George was moved to Uranquinty in NSW some 12 kms south of Wagga Wagga and a long way by bicycle, his only means of transport, from Bonegilla and his family.

It was not long however before George found work in Albury as a carpenter and joiner and working weekends and after work built a modest house in Howlong Road a few kms from Albury. The family moved in and was at last reunited at the start of a new life in a new country. George was not satisfied with this house and immediately set to work to build a larger, more modern house for his family to grow in. This he did on a large block in Padman Drive, Albury not far from their first home.

George worked as a carpenter and joiner for the next 20 years until poor health forced him to retire at the age of 59. George and Rosalie lived in the same house in Padman Drive, Albury until George\’s death in 1992. Rosalie died on Christmas Eve 1996. They are survived by their two daughters, Nella and Elsa, five grandchildren and five great grand children.

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