Stefan Hollenthoner

Enthusiasm – Rude Awakening – Remembrance

As I wrote in my prologue: I wanted to make sure that not only my children knew about it (about WWII). I thought I might perhaps reach (the) generations who often pass ill-considered or arrogant judgement on a time that they didn't experience themselves and which they have studied too little. It is these prejudices – to put it in proper German – that I wanted to fight, maybe I will succeed. But I can see with my own children that it isn't easy... to convey such a message. They always say: "I wouldn't have done that and I wouldn't have done that." My life would also have been completely different If I could have decided then on the basis of the knowledge I have now. But unfortunately, the time and circumstance were such that things turned out they way they are now. I have to say that I am very grateful that I survived that time. Only four of my classmates survived. Most of our classes were consumed by the war. That's the problem and that is why I volunteered for this project (Note: "Memoriali XX Secolo"-Austria).

My parents were actually emigrants who returned from America. My father had been in America since 1913, and my mother went in 1914. My sister was born there in 1915 and they returned to Austrian after receiving a letter from my grandmother informing them of the death of my father's brother.

My father had seen better times before the war and didn't know what things looked like at home after WWI. He became very active politically and later became a Provincial Councilman from 1927 to 1934. Then he distanced himself from the political scene in Austria when he saw how it was developing. He wasn't involved in politics practically anymore, for different reasons. Most of all, he objected to the way the cooperative state was established.

Flight School HJ

And then Germany marched in. There was the HJ, the Hitler Youth and it had sub-departments. One of them was the Flight School HJ, which was founded in Eisenstadt. What could have been more exciting for boy my age than building aeroplanes?!

Of course there was also camping, with a camp fire. We camped overnight and played games as all of us were slowly prepared for military service. And I was thrilled...

In 1939, I dropped out of (secondary) school after four grades in order to become a aircraft engine mechanic. There was an engineering school in Germany, in Mittweida, Saxony. They offered a program in which you gathered practical experience as a carpenter, locksmith or mechanic for two years and then attended school for five years (corrects himself) semesters. Then you were an engineer when you came out afterwards.

The war had already been on for two years at that point. And the special reports kept the spirits of parts of the population high.

I would like to insert the following: When the Germans marched into Austria my father, who was a Christian-Socialist MP said (to me), "Pay attention boy, I don't want to be the one to blame if your life goes wrong somehow. You know that I can't go along with what is going on (now). I am your father and you are still my son if you go along with this, but politics will not be discussed at home." And we kept to that with iron resolve.

Due to that, there was practically no rift between him and I. After all, I was a HJ leader at home between the ages of 16 and 18. I can still remember our enthiusiasm for the resurrection procession in 1938; how we marched along in uniform under the torch-lined sky. You can't imagine all those things today.

And as I said, I wrote, "I am 18 now and have already gathered my two years' experience," in my admission test for Mittweida. Then they wrote back saying I should complete my two years of Wehrmacht service. I would have been taken out of school otherwise, whether I had completed one or two semesters or not if my class was called up later. Since I was afraid of missing part of the war, I volunteered to serve as a Kradschütz, a motorcycle messenger. Thank God I wasn't accepted as a messenger, instead I was assigned to the Navy.

We arrived at Kiel-Wick Naval Academy after six weeks of infantry training at Beverloo, Belgium. 900 of the 1.800 men were sent to Kiel-Wick and 900 were sent to Wilhelmshaven to complete a three month training program covering all the motor types that were in use at the time. We had them as models and in fully operational specifications and naturally we had to take them apart and assemble them again. We used the Hapag steamer "New York" as our dormitory. That was the first steamer I ever saw. We arrived at 2:00 a.m. and it was a colossus weighing 22,000 tons. You can imagine how we gaped up at it as we boarded. That was our dormitory.

We were sent to Wenduine, the Belgian resort area across the channel (from Dover) for a short while afterwards. Shortly thereafter, in January 1942, we were sent to a guard company in Brest, France.

After nine months of training in that guard company, which was based in a former abbey, we were assigned to Swinemünde. That was the first time I boarded the boat that became my home for almost two years. It was a landing barge, a marine assault craft. The official designation was "Marine Fährprahm, Bootsnummer F211". They were deployed in Norway, from Sicily to Africa and in the Black Sea. They were used for freight and supplies and were employed for the retreats that became necessary later . At that time nobody had thought of that yet (that it would come to that...).

All of a sudden they told us we were being assigned to the Black Sea, and that was on the 13th - a date dreaded in the Navy. We left for Kiel on Friday, 13 November (1942).

Barge F211 crossed the Kaiser Wilhelm Channel (now the North Sea Channel) and sailed to Hamburg, where superstructures and motors were unloaded and sent to Linz via train. The next stops were: Dresden via the Elbe, Ingolstadt and then Linz from there. The landing barge was then assembled in Linz. The trip continued on to Vienna after waiting for the ice packs to melt in the spring of 1943. In Vienna, groups of five barges were collected and then sent on to Bulgaria.

And so we came to Sulina. We caught the first ship towards Odessa there and then we made our way up. We crossed the Crimean to Sevastapol and that is were the supply lines to Kuban began.

We brought a lot of supplies (food, ammunition) from Kerch to Taman and then from Genitschesk in the Sea of Azov to Temrjuk, where the Kuban bridgehead was. In mid-August (1943) I discovered the first signs of sabotage... (We risked our lives transporting pressed grain for horses and carbonation for mineral water that had been purchased from Italian marketeers to Temrjuk under the continuous attacks of Russian planes. Meanwhile, valuable ammunition was lying in Genitschesk. There was a constant bang from the bottles among the 100 tons of Co2 we were carrying in that heat. And the Landsers almost beat us when we arrived (because we brought them Co2 instead of ammunition. (But) we knew there wasn't anything we could do. We had risked our lives to bring the Co2, but the ammunition was in Genitschesk due to sabotage...

They wanted to send me to a junior officer training course at that time, but I refused. They asked me if I had no military ambition. (But) I had lost that a long time ago at that point, ther was nothing left... I had a comrade on board who had studied with Horst Wessel. of course there was a lot of political talk, but that didn't interest him much anymore either. He had already seen too much...

Stefan Hollenthoner´s barge was used in dissolving the Kuban bridgehead in the autumn of 1943.

We just practically sailed between Sevastopol and Kerch until the Russians established a bridgehead in "Gamischbarum" - that's what it was called. Of course there were Russian scouting ships that also sailed in the area. This was cause for occasional light engagements. I can remember one occasion, the war got worse from then on. We came alongside a Russian boat we had commanded to heave to, it was one of the scouting ships and they had hoisted the white flag. Then, when one of our boats was sent over with a prize crew, they jumped out of the hatch and massacred our men with machine guns. It sounds hard when I say this, but there wasn't much left of the Russian boat afterwards either... You can't imagine: your own comrades! We had to watch them die. All the boats were withdrawn from Kertsch and stationed further down in Sevastapol after that (between 9.10. to 10.10. 1943).

Sevastapol was our base in 1944. And things became terrible there in the Spring (1944) since the order came: "By order of the Führer: "Evacuate the Crimean." So we transported materiel, relatives of Wehrmacht personnel and the wounded down to Odessa. Then - "by order of the Führer": "Defend the Crimean" until the final order came: "Evacuate the Crimean". But it was already pretty late. In the meantime, Sevasatopol is bottled up in a valley somehow. So the Russians did what we had done when we took it in 1942: They emptied every round of everything they had on us down in the valley from above. And so we had to evacuate the Crimean from Varna. You couldn't drive back to Odessa, because everything was gone already. First we vacated Cherson, Varna and then came Sevastopol.

I only want to say that we had 70 dead on board on one of those trips. Six of them were crew members. You have to imagine: The temperature was 30¡C, it was hot. It was impossible to transport the dead to Varna for two days. We had no choice, as hard as it may sound, we simply had to throw them in the water. There was no other possibility... . Aside from that, we made it to the shipyard in Varna. Our boat had 156 bullet holes when we got there, I counted them.

The Russians kept getting closer and closer. They took Romania in August and were already patrolling the area close to Varna... Suddenly we were told: "Since we can't break through over the Danube, you might eventually want to go to internment through Turkey or blow everything up".

And on 28 August 1944 the Black Sea Fleet was blown up in the three-mile zone before Varna. It consisted of over 200 different units ranging from speedboats, torpedo boats, ferries everything we had that could sail. I was on one of the demolition teams myself. The Bulgarians had promised we could dismantle and take anything along that we wanted with the railroad cars we had been given when we returned from destroying the fleet. In return, we had to hand over one boat or one ship from each unit to the Bulgarians. Then we would be allowed to leave. Naturally we packed very heavily (as much as Possible). We packed food supplies and layered mattresses over them and we also packed weapons. When we returned from blowing up the boats I noticed we were surrounded by Bulgarian troops and the order was: "Make a pile with all the sidearms you still have and off to the prison camp!" After three days - there were continuous diplomatic negotiations - we were suddenly told 1,000 men who could prove they had been in Varna for at least three months were allowed to leave.

After three days in the prisoner of war (POW) camp, they were told that 1000 men who could prove they had been in Varna for at least three months were allowed to leave. The soldiers were loaded on to a freight train and then brought to the Bulgarian-Yugoslavian border.

They made it Belgrad then after an adventurous trip by train, by foot and by truck through partisan territory.

And then I wanted to steal away with a friend and we were caught by the "Soldatenklau" (Soldier Claw). The field or military police collected errant soldiers all over and created new units before "promoting" them to the front. So the two of us looked for our people and found out that they had been ferried over to Banat and would continue from there by train. Well, the two of us said, its smarter to go home with them instead of making our way back alone... They already had us (the "Soldier Claw" men) we were marching last and saw the ferry cast off. And then I said. "Run now (jump over) and we (jumped) made it over (landed on the ferry).