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Re: Ex-POW Returns Home After 60 Years in Russia

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: July 14, 2002

"Prisoner of war returns home after 60 years in Russia

Copyright © 2002
Agence France-Presse

By KATINKA MEZEI, Agence France-Presse

VIENNA (July 13, 2002 8:54 a.m. EDT) - The last of 150,000 Austrian prisoners of war captured by the Soviet Union during World War II has returned home to his family after 60 years in exile.

Weak and ill, but with eyes sparkling with joy, 80-year-old Franz Steeg arrived in Vienna International Airport for an emotional reunion with his family, who had thought they would never see him again.

Hugging his five grandchildren, their partners and the widow of his son Franz, who recently died, Steeg was so overcome with emotion he had difficulty speaking.

"I feel good, I am at home," he said simply, his voice barely audible.

A teacher from a working-class family, Steeg joined Hitler's army in 1940. He was posted to France and later to the Russian front.

He was taken prisoner by Soviet forces in 1943, and held in a detention camp in the Russian province of Smolensk until 1950.

It was there he met his second wife, Nadezda Jakusevic, a Belarussian woman whom he married in the forced labour camp where they were both held.

Harald Knoll, of the Ludwig Boltzmann historical research institute, which was instrumental in returning Steeg to his homeland, said Soviet prisoners of war had a tough time.

"They were not treated as well as Austrians taken prisoner in the west. Labor was harder, and the whole country suffered from a lack of infrastructure," he explained.

In 1950 Soviet authorities liberated Steeg from the prison camp, but refused to allow him to return to Austria, his dearest wish. Instead they gave him Soviet nationality.

Steeg moved to Baran, Belarus with his wife and worked there as a teacher. The couple went on to have three children.

Steeg stayed in the Soviet Union for family reasons "and because he was afraid of the Soviet authorities," said Knoll.

It was only recently that Stefan Karner, a director of the Boltzmann Institute, discovered Franz Steeg's case in the Moscow archives and resolved to help him return to his homeland.

With the aid of the Austrian foreign ministry, which intervened in the case in April 2002, Austria's last prisoner of war captured in the former Soviet Union was finally able to return home late on Friday.

Steeg, who is suffering from cancer, showed signs of illness as he arrived in Vienna with his granddaughter Svetlana, who is in her early 20s.

Small and white-haired, he carried his deep emotion with dignity. He is to live in a home for the elderly where he will receive all the medical care he needs.
Asked how he plans to deal with his two families in Austria and Belarus, he whispered: "That's very easy, it's wonderful having two families."

In 1945 there were some 150,000 Austrian prisoners of war in the Soviet Union, most of whom returned to Austria between 1945 and 1948, according to Knoll.
In the west, Britain took 200,000 Austrian war prisoners, the United States 150,000 and France between 50,000 and 100,000. "Their repatriation was completed in 1946," he said.

Copyright © 2002 Nando Media"