On the day after World War I began, my father, at 18, volunteered with enthusiasm to join the Bavarian Artillery. He survived the terrible Battle of the Somme, won two Iron Crosses and ended the war, defeated, in a military hospital in Alsace. Lieutenant Oestreicher (commissions were rare for Jews) was still well enough to walk. The medical officer shouted: “Lads, if you can, make a run for it, or the French will capture you.”
In 1918, he ran from the French. In 1938, with Jewish parents, he had to run from the Germans – all the way to New Zealand. My parents and I, now a refugee family, sailed on the SS Ormond.
The ship put in at Fremantle, our first sight of Australasia. We went window shopping in the main street, though not one shop was open. There was, however, a band and marching soldiers. My parents thought they had left all that behind. With little English, “Anzac Day” meant nothing to them. “Gallipoli” only added to their confusion. We had no inkling a second world war was only months away.
Three weeks later, aboard the Wanganella, we docked at Wellington’s overseas wharf, since turned into luxury apartments. It was May 1939. I was 7.
Nine years later, at King’s High School in Dunedin, I, like all the boys – except for an earlier Kings student, James K Baxter – had joined the army cadets. It was my school’s turn to provide a firing party at the cenotaph on Anzac Day. Sergeant Oestreicher was put in charge of the squad. We trained hard for the day.
Richards, our Latin master, had been an officer in the war. Two days before Anzac Day, he took me aside. “Sorry, Oestreicher, we have made a mistake. The rules are that only privates can make up a firing party. You will have to drop out. Rules are rules.”
I didn’t mind. However, one of the squad, Paterson, went down with flu. His parents rang; might I take his place? “Sorry,” I said, “I’m not allowed.”
But I then had second thoughts. I threw my uniform jacket to my mother and asked her to take off the stripes. I’d be a private again. Paterson’s father brought me the required rifle. Early on Anzac Day, I rode my bike to the cenotaph. Richards spotted me. “Oestreicher, didn’t I tell you …?”
“It’s all right sir. Paterson’s taken sick. I’m taking his place. I’ve taken my stripes off. I am a private again.”
He went red. “I’ll have to come clean. I promised the RSA you would not be there. I made up the story about having to be a private not to hurt you. They threatened if ‘that German boy’ turns up, the school would not be asked again. Sorry, we’ll have to be one boy short.” I could take it. I knew well enough what discrimination meant. I biked home, thinking my thoughts.
End of story? No way. At the next assembly, Dudley Chisholm, the rector, addressed the school. “One of our boys [he didn’t name me] has been excluded from our squad at the Anzac Day ceremony. That is an insult to us all. If I do not receive an apology, I will resign from the RSA and our school will no longer be sending a firing party.”
I knocked on Chisholm’s door. “Sir, I just want to thank …”
“Oestreicher, this is not about you. It’s about the honour of our school. Back to your class.” The school got its apology.
This was 1948. There were many who still believed the wartime myth that the only good German was a dead German. Hatred has a long life. No country is immune.
At 18, unlike my father, I had become a pacifist, like James K. The Baxters were family friends – James’ father, Archibald, had suffered virtual crucifixion for refusing to fight in the Great War and written the classic We Will Not Cease.
My master’s dissertation at Victoria University of Wellington was a history of New Zealand’s conscientious objectors in World War II. My supervisor was none other than the editor-in-chief of the official history of New Zealand in the war, Major-General Sir Howard Kippenberger.
His whānau were German early settlers. The general who had lost both feet on the Italian front and the young pacifist became good friends. Kippenberger wrote to my parents, praising my work.
An unlikely request
Anzac Day was deeply etched in my memory. It would provide an unexpected challenge, far away and very much later.
In 1960, I was ordained an Anglican priest in London and during the Cold War, I was the secretary of the British Council of Churches’ Committee for East-West Relations.
My job was to promote relations with the churches behind the Iron Curtain. I used to claim that my parish stretched from East Berlin to Vladivostok.
In 1975 or 1976, on one of many visits to East Germany (where I was born), I received a phone call from the Australian ambassador to the German Democratic Republic.
“I hope you can help us. We need a celebrant to conduct the Anzac Day ceremony at the British War Graves Cemetery in Potsdam, 12 miles from East Berlin. If you, as a Kiwi, are willing to do this for us, it will make much more sense than asking the British Army chaplain in West Berlin.”
This would be a military ceremony. A tough nut for me. I thought of my friend Kippenberger. I could not say no, even though the sword on the cross of the cenotaph simply was not me. Surely, love for friend and foe alike must overrule my feelings. I had to do it.
Deep in the soviet zone
On April 25, the ambassador’s military attaché drove me to Potsdam. Once the seat of Prussian Kings, it is the German equivalent of Windsor, but was then deep in the Soviet zone of Germany.
The cemetery, well tended by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, contains the graves of Commonwealth servicemen who had died in Germany in both world wars, including shot-down air crew and those who had died as prisoners of war.
Present were diplomats from countries accredited to the GDR: India, Pakistan and Commonwealth countries of what had once been the Empire. The ceremony – a bugler at the ready – was just as it would have been in Wellington or Canberra.
Also watching was a Soviet tank brigade, stationed not more than 300 metres away. This was surely an extraordinary way to commemorate what had begun on the bloody beaches of Gallipoli. I prayed for the peace that is always threatened. However much national pride may get in the way, humanity is above all nations.
“That German boy” who was sent home in Dunedin was able to honour the Anzacs not far from his German birthplace, where, until the Cold War ended, Soviet Russia still held sway. This was one way of showing that there is only one world.
Paul Oestreicher lives in Wellington. He has held senior roles in the Anglican church and NGOs internationally. Now 93, he remains a peace and human rights activist.
