Published: May 07, 2008 08:43 pm            

YOUNGSTOWN: Former POW returns to Niagara

German man and his grandson retrace 60-year-old path to Fort Niagara

Heinrich Willert is fielding questions about his past — about his capture as a Luftwaffe officer in the German Army in 1945 and how he ended up at Fort Niagara as a prisoner of war.

He’s talking about his first impressions of the northeast United States after arriving by train in 1944 from a Texas camp — “America is a rich land. A very, very rich land in comparison to Germany.”

And he’s describing himself face-to-face with a local farmer, under whom Willert was working as a prisoner, on the day in May 1945 when Germany surrendered to the Allied Powers. The farmer had told him of the news and then added, “You’re all criminals because of the concentration camps.”

Willert summoned all the English swear words he knew and let them fly. Then, to his surprise, the American took a step back.

“(The farmer) said, ‘I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you,” Willert recalled. “He said ‘Come inside and have a meal.’ Prisoners were never invited to eat with the farmers.”

After the meal, the two smoked a cigarette together.

More than 60 years after Willert returned home to Germany, he’s embarked on the trip he’s always wanted to take but never could.

“I wanted for years to come back to America but it was very difficult,” said Willert, whose white hair, thick glasses and neat blue suit made him look every bit the retired school teacher and principal that he is. “I lived in East Germany and we weren’t allowed to leave it.”

Wilert arrived in Newport News, Va., several days ago with his grandson, Matthias Heinicke, the same place he arrived on Nov. 17, 1943, aboard a ship as a prisoner during World War II.

He spent Wednesday in Niagara County, taking in Niagara Falls before visiting Fort Niagara as a visitor.

Later, he sat down in Gretchen Duling’s home on the Niagara River in Youngstown, surrounded by members of the Porter Historical Society and others. He was interviewed by Peter Boehm, an associate professor of German at Canisius College, and videotaped for archives of the Axis Prisoner of War Coalition.

The coalition spearheaded a six-month oral history project in 2007 involving locals who came into contact with prisoners held at Fort Niagara between 1944 and 1946.

After Wednesday’s interview, about 10 people in the Duling household settled in for dinner. Today, after checking out of their Niagara Falls hotel, Wilert and Heinicke are taking a train to New York City to see the sites.

During the interview, Willert eagerly took the questions and explained answers as best he could, sometimes with the aid of translations by Boehm or Heinicke. He leaned back in his chair when searching for an answer, expressed himself with his hands when his English failed him and burst toward his questioner when excited to recount a given tale.

As the interview wound down, Boehm read a poem of Willert’s that was translated from German. It was about the pitfalls of war and the need for peace.

“I’m not a politician,” Willert said afterward. “And I’m not an expert. We all, and the American population too, should try to make peace and concentrate themselves to make peace.”

        

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