By Arden Walther, permission for personal documentation granted by Brian Jahn, nephew.

The Prelude
Ella Warlich was born on April 19, 1904, the daughter of Emil Warlich and Elisebeth (Kosmack). She was the ninth child in a family of thirteen with six brothers and six sisters. Brothers, Albert Emil and Arthur Frederick died at ages nine and seven from the diptheria epidemic in the fall of 1900, and are buried in Denbigh where the family then resided. The family then moved to Sebastopol Township where Ella was raised in the home where Morley and Anna Kosmack now reside.

The other family members were, Gustave, Valeska, Lucy (Mrs. John Kreger), Erick, Albert, Emilie (Mrs. Edward Berger), Ella (Mrs. Heinrich Baumgarten), Gertrude (Mrs. Hans Koester), Seigfried, Magdalena (Mrs. William Fluegel), and Ruth (Mrs. Daniel Jahn).

Adventure and Troubled Times
In 1931 Ella married Heinrich Baumgarten (Heinie, as she called him) and together they worked their way through the depression days of the early thirties. By 1938 money was more accessible and she and Heinie decided to visit Germany where she could meet her in-law family and also visit the ancestral homeland of Warlich and Kosmack families. It was an exciting time that proved to be short-lived.

Soon after their arrival in Germany Heinie became seriously ill and Ella had to look after him as his health deteriorated. In 1939 the Second World War broke out and conditions for communicating with family in Canada became impossible.  Heinie died on August 5, 1940 and Ella took on the status of a foreigner.

Understanding the true impact of those troubled times is best served by sharing excerpts from a letter Ella wrote to her younger sister Gertrude in 1945 as the war had ended.  -------

"Oct. 11, 1945
My Dear Sister Gertrude and Hans.

Now I have the opportunity to write you a letter again.  A dear kind hearted English soldier is going home on leave for a week to England and he is taking this letter along, and from England it goes by air mail, so they tell me.  I am also writing a letter to Rev Ebinger.  I want to know if you are all living yet or not, or why didn’t you write to me once in all these six years.  I tried to get in touch with you all, but in all these years I have only had one letter from Mill, one from Ruth & Dan, and one from Erick & Sarah.  You have no idea what poor mail service we have had during the war years.  These letters I got thru the red cross were all over a year & a half on the way.  So you can imagine, how I longed to hear from home, and never got any mail. 

We can’t send any mail direct from here yet as it is not allowed from the Military Government.  I can only send a letter thru a soldier if he happens to go home on leave for a few days.  A person always finds a good person who understands our present day position here.  In August I sent a letter home to Millie also thru a Canadian officer who went home to Canada. I often think if they got the letter, do you know?  Gert if it is possible, Gert try and send me a letter thru the Red Cross, if you can’t send it any other way. 

I wrote to the Red Cross here and they answered they have no formulas and so that’s the way a person has to be satisfied here.  If I could get formulas from the Red Cross I’d write every month, but you can’t understand how things are here Gert, and Dear Gert if you would go to the consulate and try and get some information there if there isn’t a possibility that I could get back to Canada again as I had no intention to stay in Germany that time when I came over here with Heinie and you know Heinie took sick shortly after we came over here and it was my duty to stay with him when he was sick and in the meantime the war broke out and then I couldn’t go any more and as you know Heinie died the 5 of Aug. 1940. 

He was sick in bed over 11 months so you see it was impossible for me to get away from here before the war broke out and now they tell me here that I have lost my Canadian Nationality thru my second marriage here. Would you ask at consulate if that is true, I can’t believe that. 

Yesterday I went to the city hall to ask an officer when there might be a possibility to go back to Canada or when I could write a letter but when I got there the officer was not there.  He is home in England on leave for 2 weeks and so I’ll go again when he comes back and see what he says.  The war is over so long already and to think that I have to stay here perhaps until next summer is a bitter pill for me.  I always hoped that I could be at home for Christmas already, but that outlooks are very poor.  If only the money stays solid that would be a great thing as my husband Alvin and I have saved up over ten thousand marks, of course that in Dollars isn’t so much.  Nevertheless we are saving up every penny we can, so as to have some money on hand should the time come that we can go back home to Canada. 

As I don’t want to stay here in Germany any longer than is necessary for if we come thru this winter here then we can thank God as food is so terrible scarce we don’t know some days what we shall eat.  I have also learned to eat horse meat here as we get that double portion on the weekly ration.  We eat it because we are hungry.  Then you know otherwise we wouldn’t think of eating horse meat.

 I can’t begin to tell you what we have gone thru here or I could write pages & pages but when I come home I’ll be able to tell you a long long story which has very many sad points in it.  We know nothing else than trouble, sorrow, disappointment and sickness here in Germany.  We hardly know how to laugh any more.  Everything is so earnest and when you don’t know what to cook for the next day you know what you feel like!"

Heartache and Blessings
As a foreigner, Ella soon found herself the target of those strongly influenced by the Nazi propoganda and the dictatorial regime. As  her husband`s sister tried to win points in the system by exposing a foreigner, Ella found support from the kind boarder at her husband`s home. Alvin came to her aid and eventually he married her on February 5, 1944. Her letter describes in detail the events as they unfolded revealing the heartache and the blessings as Ella lived out the war years as a foreigner in Nazi Germany.

“So now, dear Sister Gert,I wish you could write and tell me all about yourselves. How you spent all these years, or did you have trouble too? Hans being from here. But I hope you were able to live in peace, at least you didn`t have the terrible fear of bombs. We had to creep in underground bunkers to save our lives from the hail of bombs, that was always so terrible, what you have probably seen in the movies or newspapers and heard from the radio here is all too true, and a whole lot worse, especially about those concentration camps, simply terrible!
 
Are you still living in Ottawa? How is everyone? I would like to ask a thousand questions. Are they all living in their old places? Has Lucy got our persian cat, Peter, yet, or is he dead already?  I only wish I were home in Canada. I was finished that day when I got the letter from Erick to say that our dear mother had passed away. I can`t imagine when I come home that mama isn`t there anymore. I just got the letter last August, and to think that mother is dead over a year already.

Is everything the way it was when I left or has there been great changes too?  Is Uncle Fred Kosmack on our old farm yet?  How do the fish taste in Lake Clear? Oh! I wish I had one here now. I`m asking so many questions and probably you can`t write to me, but you know, it does me good when I can write a letter to you and ask all sorts of questions.

Perhaps you wonder why I don`t write much about my husband, Alvin. I would never have married again, but I was almost forced to marry to have someone to protect me from the Nazi horde. It all came through Heinie`s sister. She was a real she-devil. She made life a hell on earth for me after Heinie was dead. She took the car from me and I had bought a nice radio and she took that too along with my fur coat and brown shoes. She took Heinie`s coats, suits, underwear and anything she could use for her big son, and then threw me out of the house and I had to see how I could get along. They knew they were to give me part of Heinie`s inheritance but I was only a dirty foreigner to her during the war and had  no rights anywhere or in
anything.

That`s how Alvin came to be my second husband. He also lived in the same house where I was; he was a boarder at Heinie`s sister`s place and seen what this beast was doing to me and so he gave me a tip and told me to be careful of this person. What`s more, she had a criminal police on hand, who was her best friend, and they always threatened me with concentration camp.  When they seen that Alvin took my part, they also threw Alvin out of the house. You have no idea how many times there was misunderstanding and all on account of me. Also, this criminal police had Alvin to the police station ever so often, and were always looking for a reason to put us two out of the road.

This she-devil said Alvin was no German because he took my part and stood by a dirty foreigner. So, I stayed with Alvin`s brother, Paul and his wife, and so finally we decided the best is to get married and we took a couple of rooms. As Alvin`s mother was also alone, we took her with us; because we couldn`t buy any furniture (as there`s nothing here to buy) and even if Alvin`s mother`s things are all old, we manage to get along fine. We have been together now since the 5th of Feb. 1944 and even since we are married, this she-devil had this criminal police have Alvin to the police station with our marriage papers to see if they still couldn`t make some trouble for us.

Nobody was so glad to see the American troops come here as I was. They saved our lives. A month after the troops were settled here I went to the Commander of the American Army at Witten and told him my whole story from beginning to end and asked him to help me so I could get my belongings back. He said yes, and that gave me encouragement and I went to the police and had one of the police come with us to get our belongings. She was white with rage and cried and scolded, etc. but now that I had help and my country people to back me why I was happy. So I took all my belongings and now we are earning nice money with our auto and have our radio, etc. Her parents had to pay me my share of the inheritance and so now I am waiting  for the day when I can come home again.

I give English lessons now these last months past. I have quite a number of pupils and some give me 2 mark a lesson and others give a pound of flour or peas or beans or wheat and so on so I have a little more to cook and eat. I had to have special permission to be able to drive the car now as everybody is not allowed to drive their cars here. I had to have this permission from the Commandant at Witten of the Military Government.

We have a chauffeur who drives the car as Alvin had an autobus train accident and had several head and breast wounds from which he suffers today yet, especially when there is change of weather. However we have a good chauffeur who can do all auto repairs himself and our auto is mostly used by the city directors, doctors, nurses, etc. which brings in a nice bit of money and so that`s the way we live here – a hard and sometimes discouraging life.

Oh, I so often think if I were only back in Canada where a person could at least have enough to eat. We can`t buy a stitch of clothes either, shoes or stockings, there`s absolutely nothing here any more in Germany. You have no idea how we have to mend our clothes.
 
I wrote in the beginning of my letter that I also wanted to write Rev. Ebinger. But I`m glad when I can write to you. You can give him my best wishes and tell him I often think of the words he said to me and warned me not to go over to Germany. But I did that for love of my husband and had to pay bitter for it. I also see my parents, my mother as I said Good-bye to her and my father he couldn`t say a word any more. Now I see what good parents I have. But I only hope we all shall see each other real soon again in our Dear Canadian home."
.
My dear Canadian home
The previous two parts of this story were documented by the personal letter of Ella Warlich to her younger sister, Gertrude, written at Witten Annen Ardey, Germany on October 11, 1945. Her letter closed with the following comments: