Name : Emil Kikinger

Birth Date : 12. Juli 1928

Place of birth/Country : Herzogenburg/Lower Austria

Profession : Toolmaker

Emil Kikinger: "My name is Emil Kikinger. I was born on 12 July 1928 in Herzogenburg as the illegitimate son of Maria Kikinger. My father Emil Novy lived in St. Pölten at the time. I grew up with my grandparents. My Grandfather’s social democratic beliefs in the thirties had such an influence on me that I had difficulties with the Nazis later because of them.

Emil Kikinger was an enthusiastic ahtlete and started and coached the Herzogenburg youth football team between 1957 and 1965. The Grandfather of two stays fit mainly by cycling regularly.

Autobiographies/Publications

"A look back – A period of time of smacks"

Handwritten notes from 1928 to 1946.

They thought little of us anyway since we were known as Schlurfs.

Actually, I grew up with my grandparents. I was a so-called "love child", as they say in Austria. My mother was unmarried when she had me and I then lived with my grandparents on the farm, in an old farmhouse in Herzogenburg. 24 people lived there. The people had absolutely divergent political views there, there were Communists in there, but mainly Socialists and ÖVP followers, one would say today. They belonged to the Heimwehr. I spent my childhood there. Most of the people there were unemployed and I heard a lot there while sitting around, about the Spanish Civil War, for example.

Alois Mayer, he might have been twenty years old. He volunteered to serve in Spain. When he came back after 1938, he hadn’t even been home for two days and two Gestapo men came and arrested him. He was taken to a concentration camp.

That was in 1934. We looked up at the tower (church spire) in Herzogenburg, it was 72 metres high. On Sunday at mass, at around 9 o’clock my grandfather said, "Look outside, there’s a Swastika flag." The Nazis had put a flag up there, on the tower, and they had done so at exactly the time when the most people were gathered in front of church. That’s when they unrolled the Swastika flag. It was at least 15 metres long, I guess, it was rather large!

There is a gallery on the tower in Herzogenburg¼ In addition, the Nazis cut off the ladder, and so it was impossible to remove the flag. I can still remember that exactly.

Then the Nazis tied screw nuts together, nuts this large, with string and threw them over the electrical lines, they hung there and caused a short circuit. That was in 1937 already. And everything interested me, so I knew a lot of what was going on.

My grandfather was a Socialist and my uncle was already a member of the SA, an illegal one. So I often heard the fights. But only within the family. Naturally, it was said later that one should denounce, report one’s own parents. But naturally my uncle didn’t do that.

My encounter with Hitler was like this: It was announced via loudspeaker that he was coming, the "dearly beloved Führer" as they said.

That was in 1938 and we saw how the German Wehrmacht marched in. Cars with loudspeakers drove around urging the people to come to the square in front of the town hall. And so we climbed on to one of those large, open trucks and drove to Kapelln on country road no. 1.

There wasn’t a highway then… thousands of people were already standing there yelling "Heil Hitler". They kept on announcing where the Führer was and that he was getting closer through the loudspeakers. Then he came. His hand was already hurting from having to stand like this (shows the Hitler salute). His guards were standing on the running board, SS men. I think there were four or six.

The people closed in on him, many were screaming. Occasionally, someone touched his hand as he drove past us. They were happy if they managed to touch the car. They had real tears in their eyes. As I said, the people were unemployed and hoped Hitler would perform miracles.

I don’t think dust could settle on the car since the people touched it so often. Yes, the people believed that the man who would give them jobs had come.

1938, that’s when the Nazis came and the young people had to go to the Hitler Youth (HJ) right away. They were called "Pimpf" until the age of ten and HJ, Hitler Youth from 10 to 14.

I was 10 years old in 1938. So I had to go to the Pimpfs because people were looked at as if they were part of the "resistance" if their parents tried to avoid letting them join the Pimpfs or the Hitler Youth. They were seen as enemies.

So I Joined the Pimpfs and I have to say that I like it quite well in the beginning. Because no one had paid attention to young people before 1938. There were sports events and flag games, they were called...

My father had joined up in Poland and injured himself with his own gun. Because he couldn’t…he said, "Why should I shoot at people I don’t even know?" He shot through his arm, through a loaf of bread and into his shoulder. Then he reported that partisans had wounded him and he came back. Its like a movie, one doesn’t really believe it.

There was our neighbour, her husband had joined up and he and a friend of his from his company were in Poland, participated in the Polish campaign, He came back (home).

And it was customary then to say, if it was an Austrian you were talking to, "Visit my wife and give her this or send her my love," or whatever. That’s the way it was. And he came back and told us (struggles to find the words) - they had been forced to throw children from the balconies. At a school... (he cries) … I still get upset today. (Pause) He told us this, he also, he also cried. He said they (the SS) held a gun to his head and forced him to throw children from the balcony as well.

But then I got older and was against it simply because my grandfather had influenced me. I could feel that what was being done was not right. And due to the war, I also heard what happened.

I went to Grundmann, Toolmakers when I was 14, in 1942. It was my apprenticeship workshop and I learned toolmaking there. Other comrades came by there and the war was talked about often.

It was like this in the workshop: We had to form up; the "Boy on Duty" ordered the other 26 boys to form up. Then the master toolmaker came and his first question was, "How many tanks did we shoot down today?" One had to know that or, "How many gross registered tons were sunk?" "What, you don’t know?" Prack! And you got a Watsch´n, a smack.

One had to take part here and there. Then the Schlurf came together. One doesn’t hear the expression like that anymore today. They were fellows who took a slightly negative stance towards the regime (note: critical to rejecting).

At the HJ, your hair was only allowed to be as long as a match, at most. That came from Germany. You had to have your hair cut and if you didn’t it was considered the first sign of resistance. Then we said we wouldn’t cut our hair that short, we didn’t like it. So we let our hair grow really long. We measured it with the slide ruler often; they were 25, 26 centimetres long.

Oh well, that was our first resistance, they didn’t like it. Long hair, it was called "Schlurf" and then songs came out, I can remember exactly, I don’t know where they came from. From Vienna, most of them were from Vienna. The songs were resistance songs. I still know them today.

This (he looks through his files) is by the Schlurfs:

Emil Kikinger sings:

Everything shall pass, everything passes on

Don’t you know the song? It’s a hit –

(sings):

in der Papp´n (Mund) an Mordstrumm Tschick

Refrain:

It was strictly forbidden to sing something like that, what do you think!

The things people were beheaded for. I bought myself a book. This one here, I read it. The trivialities people were beheaded for. Then I thought to myself…I have murder… "murderous" luck. Because they could never say I was a friend of theirs. After all, I was always up to something they didn’t like. But maybe I was just on the border always. Or the right people didn’t find out. That could be, the right people (…and that is why nothing happened to me).

Then there’s something else, I was in the apprentice workshop until 1942 (note: until 1944) and then a letter came saying we had to go to the Ortsgruppenleiter (rank within the HJ). The Ortsgruppenleiter was a very high-ranking Nazi in the Herzogenburg area group. So we had to go to him and naturally he gave us a sound beating.

Something had happened in the meantime. We had regular Hitler Youth Dorm Nights once a week and we had to learn Nazi songs and learn everything about the war. Everything concerning the war was super and they really fired us up. But we didn’t go to the dorm night because we didn’t like the whole thing. We went to a coffee house and played billiards. There were Frenchmen who worked there. The Frenchmen were foreigners to us and that was something completely new for us.

People didn’t use to drive around with cars in those days. Foreigners only came to Herzogenburg sporadically. And the Frenchmen were good looking fellows, really, and we liked that. They had beautiful long hair while ours was shaved and cut off, very ugly. We played billiards with them and then went to the cinema. It was only we young people, together with the foreigners; we came out in a mixed group...

And the troop flag bearer was standing in front of the cinema, in full uniform – because it had been Dorm Night that evening but we had just let it pass. So he was standing there with his white cord (part of his uniform) and he had a notebook in his hand and wrote down everybody who had been in the cinema. So it was clear to us that we would be reported to some bigshot (note: Nazi)... We debated… we said so and so has this bad point (with the Nazis) and now another one. Then someone said, "Let’s run after him and take the notebook away. And we ran 400m on St. Pöltner Straße and caught him. Someone said, "Give us the notebook!"

He said he wouldn’t because he was going to report us. And I still remember this exactly: the smallest in our group – the flag bearer was 1.85 or 1.90m tall – climbed up and smacked him one. There wasn’t a worse crime than letting your hand slip with a Nazi...

And so we started arguing. Vallini, a Belgian, heard us. Albert Vallini was in the welding shop at Grundmann and he could speak pretty good German already. It was after the cinema, ten o’clock or so… and he came out on the street and said, I still remember exactly, "What’s happening? What’s happening?" he said brokenly.

We said, "Nothing Albert, we just want to take his notebook away since he wrote us up because we were at the cinema and not at Dorm Night." And Albert, saw that an HJ member was standing there and decided not to get involved. He went back inside and we drifted apart. That’s the way it was.

"You’re in for a surprise"

But a letter arrived in the workshop two days later; we had to go to the Ortsgruppenleiter. And naturally our toolmaking master said, "What happened, what did you do again?!" He said, "You’re in for a surprise."

So we went to the Ortsgruppenleiter (Forstmeister Prügel). He had minutes of what had happened, two pages long. This is what the Nazi had reported: "assault on the flagbearer aided by a foreigner". That wasn’t even true, "aided by a foreigner". And so the Ortsgruppenleiter gave us a terrible beating and said, "Now you have to report to St. Pölten."

And he was there, his name was Franz Hörhann, I don’t know what he was there. He had a brown uniform on with a leather strap and a pistol. He was a big deal (a high-ranking Nazi).

"I’ll tell you one thing," threatened Hörhann, "If something happens one more time, you are off to a camp in Poland... By then we already knew what a camp was, they were the concentration camps. The people who say today that they didn’t know are lying. Most people lie. We received soap once at the workshop, a gray bar of soap. We apprentices called it "Jew soap", we knew that Jews were gassed and then soap was made of their bones. And we had it in our workshop. We knew what they had done with the Jews in 1942.

... And I didn’t like the whole thing at all so I volunteered for the RAD right then. But the labour service was military training – it was horrible. We had to jump down two or three metres, I didn’t mind, I could do all those things but others were very clumsy...

And you had to run up and jump down in full gear, for example. And there were two men standing there from the training staff. Whoever didn’t dare, whoever hadn’t done sports was overwhelmed by having to jump down with their rifle, steel helmet and ammunition belt. They got kicked (once) so that they would fall down. And you weren’t allowed to wait for the other man to get out of the way below. Everyone had to jump right away; it didn’t matter if he jumped on someone. That’s what labour service was like…it was military training.

SS men came when labour service was over. It was in Laa an der Thaya. SS men came on the second to last day and they ground whoever hadn’t volunteered for the Luftwaffe, the Navy or the SS until they volunteered for the SS. But I was lucky... I had my Navy application so I said, "I applied to the Navy." And they asked, "Indeed, and where is the proof?" And I responded "I have it in my locker," and ran out with my application form. They said, "Yes its in order, already volunteered for something." And they left me alone.

And I entered the Navy fourteen days later. I was lucky again because there was a corvette captain at the district military command who only had one hand and he said, "You volunteered, do you want to go to the North Sea or to the Baltic?" And… since I was interested in politics I thought, Baltic? The Russians are already coming…"No," I said, "I would prefer the North Sea."

I arrived on the North Sea, at Wilhelmshaven, but in 1944 no German ship could leave harbour any more, so I was sent to the marine infantry at the Emden Garrison. Well, training wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t difficult for me, because of sports, I have to say...

My aunt gave me twenty-five Zwetschkenknödel (plum dumplings) in a cardboard box to take along when I reported for duty. And the baker gave me two salted bread sticks.

There were a lot of Germans there already when I arrived at the Rüstersiel barracks, close to Wilhelmshaven: And they said, "Goodness, what do you have there?" I said, "Zwetschkenknödel." And they retorted, "What is that?"

The Germans wanted me to speak dialect when I tried to speak proper German, they liked that. I was the only Austrian in the company and I didn’t put up with any nonsense.

And by the way, the drillmasters! They already knew how to handle a young fellow. …All you ever heard was, "Sieg!", "Die Fahne ist mehr als der Tod"", ("Victory! The flag is greater than death!") That was repeated a hundred times in songs. There was a lot of singing in the German army. Everything was about victory and victory and victory and "wir werden weiter marschieren, wenn alles in Scherben fällt, denn heute gehört uns Deutschland und morgen die ganze Welt." "We will be victorious" and we "Will continue marching when everything lies shattered, because Germany is ours today and the whole world will be ours tomorrow." That’s what the songs were called. That really stirs you up. Maybe not an older fellow, but as a young man… War games never really interested me.

I can remember that once the order was to clean our rifles. We were supposed to guard a grain silo. There was dust everywhere from the grain. And that’s where we were supposed to clean our rifles. I thought to myself, "He can kiss my ass, I’m turning in again." I pulled down my cap and went on sleeping. The rest all cleaned their rifles.

I didn’t say anything to them. I stuffed a wad of paper down the barrel of my rifle. I was so stupid. And then we had to form up. We all had to hold our rifles like this (shows the stance) and he looked down the barrels. I had pulled the wad out and not conisdered that tons of dust had trckled inside. The barrel was gleaming, but you could see every spec of dust inside.

And I noticed how his face went entirely red as I held the gun. I thought to myself, "What’s up with him?" And he started screaming! He asked me whether I had cleaned the rifle. I knew, from what he was asking me that something was up. I said, "Naaa." He retorted, "Why?" And I said, "I stuffed a wad of paper in and thought that was enough. He screamed: "I would have you shot if we were on the front now!"

The rifle was the "Braut des Soldaten" ("Soldier’s bride"). I didn’t understand why it was supposed to be the bride. Yes, he was a strict drillmaster. He said, "The devil laughs when I laugh. Nobody is supposed to join in!"

I gave him the hardest time.

There’s that Deutschlandlied, that anthem that is practically Austrian. It was written by Haydn. The Deutschlandlied was the Imperial Austrian anthem first. And then the Germans took it.

There they are, such a great nation and they don’t even have their own anthem. And we made fun of that. Excuse me for saying so.

(Emil Kikinger sings):

That melody is from an American hit. That was doubly, doubly forbidden, they (the Nazis) didn’t want to hear that at all (sings):

(Note: Loppersum bei Emden (Ostfriesland), two days after the war: Emil Kikinger and his comrades march into a large barracks camp in full gear and surrender. The group has to throw their gas masks, rifles and all sharp objects into a large ditch.)

Imprisonment was not interesting for me. Well, I have to say that being in prison was pure internment. The Ems-Jade Channel was guarded by the British. That is the area ranging from Emden to Wilhelmshaven. You could move freely there. But only over the channel, some who couldn’t stand it inside were shot there as well. Married men, with families. The spotlight was moved intermittently in one direction like this (shows the direction) and would then suddenly swoop back. So some thought the spotlight was on the other side anyway, and it often stayed on one side for a while, and would try to flee on the dark side. And then they would get caught under the full glare of the spotlight. Then they (the British) shot at him with their MG’s... They didn’t let anyone get over.

Yes, that’s where our quarters were (cow stalls). The cows were out on the pasture most of the time, as is the tradition in Ostfriesland so we could sleep in the boxes at the farmer’s, filled them to the top with apples or pears. But everything was still green. In anycase, they didn’t have any vegetables in Ostfriesland that year, because we were hungry.

They had a large box standing there where we slept. There was some concentrated feed for the pigs in it. We stole potatoes and peas and everything from the fields and always added a full scoop. That was really good. But when the farmer opened the box quite a bit was missing. Well, we didn’t take everything.

What are you supposed to do if you’re hungry? We added a scoop of the concentrated meal and it was good for us. Imprisonment wasn’t so bad for me.

The Canadian troops we had were friendly people whereas the British weren’t as well liked. They were out to get watches and Fleck, pieces of cloth. They wanted swastika Flecks, a flag. There was one among us, Hans, he was older.

I said to him, "Hans, a Canadian just asked me, he wants a swastika flag desperately as a souvenir, right?" He says, "Swastika flag?!" He was going out with a girl from Ostfriesland. "You know what? Her father was in the SA. They had an armband, a broad one with a swastika on it. Maybe he still has it." So, he drove to the girl´s and asked him. He really had hidden it. It probably bothered him to get rid of it. I said to him, "You know what? We’ll cut it in two and have her (Hans´s girlfriend) iron it. So I went to the Canadian – and he gave me a thousand cigarettes (!). For the "flag"! Well it was like a flag anyway, but it was only an armband like the one I have on in the photo. An armband this wide with a black swastika. Was he ever happy! We were also happy, a thousand cigarettes! I got something there!

We went home in May of 1946. I was the only Austrian in the company. 7000 men gathred on an airfield (note: in Wittmont, Ostfriesland, near Wilhelmshaven) and we sat in the hangar together, in the hay. There were farmers next door. And one fine day there was a medical transport train standing there.

We could say we were Austrians again, now that the war was over. We were just Ostmärker before.

I received a scrap of cloth from a farmer, I don’t know what it was, but it was red-white-red. And I hung it out the window of the transport train – I was lying in the upper level so I secured the "flag" with the window and hung it outside.

The entire city was bombed to the ground when we got to Göttingen. That’s where we stopped. I don’t know why. The track had to be repaired. That’s the way it always was, stopping again and again, one stop here, and one there. A Gendarme came up to us and said I had to remove the "flag" immediately. I said, "What? Flag? That’s only a rag, just a sack!" It was rough. But it was red-white-red. He said he would arrest me if I didn’t take down the "flag".

So I took the "flag" down. It wasn’t a flag anyway, but it did look like one. He saw we were all Austrian – and so I had to take it down…

We returned home in May 1946.

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Copyright © 2001 by Ruth Deutschmann, Vienna

Ruth Deutschmann

Vienna, 31 July 2001